Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball

You don't see that type of aggressiveness, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. You have to give [him and fellow Team USA member Nolan McLean] credit because they've been preparing to be in this situation. Already at three ups, already at 46 pitches, that takes a lot of work behind the scenes. The good thing is that he feels good and that he was able to do it.

The Phillies have released outfielder Nick Castellanos, per a club announcement. He's now a free agent who can sign with any club for the league minimum. Castellanos was slated to report to camp in the next few days. He'll now stay at home and wait to learn where his next opportunity will come. He's entering the final season of a five-year, $100MM contract that calls for a $20MM salary in 2026.

There are a lot of them, and they do not exist only on social media. They are inside of group chats that talk about how much money the Los Angeles Dodgers are spending after winning the past two World Series, and they are in cities big and small that look at the Dodgers with envy masked by eye-rolls and curses.

It's been more than a year since right-hander Joe Jimenez pitched in a big league game. The now-31-year-old righty was terrific for the Braves in 2023-24, pitching to a combined 2.81 ERA and compiling 40 holds and three saves while fanning 30.1% of opponents against a 7.2% walk rate. Jimenez missed the entire 2025 season after undergoing surgery to repair cartilage in his left knee and underwent a second "cleanup" procedure this past November.

In 2024, Lively tossed 151 innings with a 3.81 earned run average, an 18.7% strikeout rate and a 7.8% walk rate over the life of 29 starts. He entered the 2025 season locked into a rotation spot for manager Stephen Vogt and posted a sharp-looking 3.22 ERA in nine starts, but the under-the-hood numbers were less encouraging. Lively's strikeout rate dipped to 16.3% while his walk rate rose to 8.4%. His chase rate, swinging-strike rate and opponents' contact rate all went in the wrong direction.

The FanGraphs Depth Chart assignment has Elder throwing 109 innings as a starter and ten in relief; for Wentz, it's 18 innings as a starter and 34 in relief. The range of other projection systems features the combination of these two guys going about 110 to 240 innings, though you shouldn't take the upper end of that range seriously because that's more of a "how healthy are they?" measure than a depth chart-informed one.

I don't know that it needed to be Suarez specifically, but Orioles president of baseball operations and GM Mike Elias has thus far failed to add a front of the rotation starting pitcher. is probably good for 2 WAR and still has breakout potential. But (likely) better pitchers such as Suarez, Dylan Cease, , Framber Valdez, Michael King, MacKenzie Gore, and Freddy Peralta were available this winter and the Orioles didn't add any of them.

Eric Cerantola 's development began after moving from Montreal to Oakville, Ont., where he attended Holy Trinity Catholic Secondary School and played for the Great Lakes Canadians and the Junior National Team under longtime national team coaches Adam Stern and Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Greg Hamilton . A multi-sport athlete, Cerantola also excelled in hockey and was selected in the eighth round of the 2016 Ontario Hockey League Draft by the Owen Sound Attack before ultimately choosing to pursue baseball full-time.

Longtime major league catcher Jacob Stallings has taken on a new role in the Pirates' baseball operations department, Stallings tells Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Specifics surrounding his job are still being ironed out, but for now the plan will be for Stallings to be in Pittsburgh around once a month to consult with the front office and spend time visiting minor league affiliates throughout the year to work on the development of the organization's young catchers.

Astros pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training tomorrow. The team's roster remains jumbled as camp is soon to get underway. They're still heavily right-handed and have an arguable surplus of infielders with an unimposing outfield mix. Trading an infielder, especially Isaac Paredes, has been the most speculated avenue to balancing the roster. General manager Dana Brown has repeatedly said the Astros aren't motivated to do so.

The left-hander made only two playoff appearances last year but had a signature moment against the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 3 of the World Series. He entered in the top of the 12th and got Nathan Lukes to ground out with the bases loaded to keep the score tied at 5-5. The Dodgers went on to defeat the Blue Jays, 6-5, in 18 innings.

Reds catcher Tyler Stephenson won his arbitration hearing against the team, reports Gordon Wittenmyer of the Cincinnati Enquirer. He'll earn the $6.8MM figure submitted by his reps at ACES rather than the $6.55MM figure submitted by the team.

For pitchers, though, it was all over the place. Sometimes one system clearly did better than the others, but more to the point, pitchers had breakouts and lost seasons that deviated from their central estimate (or even their distribution, insofar as I could generate or infer it) more often. Why this dichotomy? My guess - an educated guess based on me tinkering with IWAG to little avail - is that hitters

We're excited to welcome Clayton, Anthony and Joey, three stars right off the field who can provide fresh perspective on the players, teams, and everything that makes baseball special,