Eugenio Suarez has quietly been one of the most productive hitters in baseball over the past decade, but there was nothing quiet about his night against Team USA in the World Baseball Classic championship game.
Team Venezuela shut out the Americans for the first 8 2/3 innings before surrendering a two-out, two-run home run to Bryce Harper in the bottom of the eighth to tie the game 2-2. But Venezuela’s Luis Arraez led off the ninth with a walk and was pinch-run for by Javier Sanoja, who stole second. Then Suarez smacked a Garrett Whitlock changeup on the seventh pitch of the at-bat to the gap in left-center field, giving the Venezuelans a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
The 3-2 win was the first-ever for Venezuela at the World Baseball Classic, while for the Unites States it was the second-consecutive 3-2 loss in the title game at the WBC.
Which brings us to today’s quiz. Suarez finished the 2026 World Baseball Classic 5-for-20 at the plate with two home runs, a double and four RBIs, and is one of 24 active MLB players to hit 40 home runs in a season. How many of those players can you name in five minutes?
Good luck!
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“Changeups, throws strikes, been there, done that,” said Cora. “Had a great season two years ago with the Yankees. Last year, he was really good in the first part of the season [for the Tigers]. It just didn’t happen for him or them in the second part.”
Entering his age-36 season in 2026, Kahnle had been one of MLB’s most dependable relievers before taking a bit of a step back with Detroit last season. He posted a 4.43 ERA for the Tigers in 2025 — his highest in seven years — but the veteran right-hander pitched to a 2.90 ERA from 2019-24 (he pitched just once in ‘20 and missed the entire ’21 campaign recovering from Tommy John surgery).
Boston’s bullpen is starting to come into focus. Fireball lefty closer Aroldis Chapman will lead the way, followed by ace righty setup man Garrett Whitlock. Righties Greg Weissert, Justin Slaten and Zack Kelly should also pitch in high-leverage spots. From the left side, Coulombe expects to be ready for the start of the season despite his late signing. Jovani Morán, who pitched for Team Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic, could give Cora a third lefty.
If Kahnle has enough time to be ready by Opening Day on March 26, he projects as the final reliever in Boston’s bullpen. The alternative would be for Kahnle to open the season on a brief Minor League rehab assignment or get some work at the team’s training base in Fort Myers for a few extra days.
Given that he pitched twice for Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic, Kahnle might be able to ramp up enough to head to Cincinnati with the Red Sox for the season opener.
While there were some troubling trends in 2025, particularly his lower strikeout rate (18.7%, 21st percentile in MLB) and higher walk rate (11.6%, eighth percentile), his changeup — which he uses more than any other pitch — was still effective and he induced relatively soft contact.
Opponents hit .217 against Kahnle’s changeup in 2025, which he threw 85.6% of the time, the highest usage right for a single pitch by any MLB pitcher. The hard-hit rate against him was a career-high 37.3%, but that still ranked among the top 25% of qualified pitchers. And Kahnle’s ground-ball rate, while down from 2024, was still 47.6%, which also ranked in the 75th percentile.
Kahnle, a fifth-round pick in 2010 by the Yankees, was taken by the Rockies in the Rule 5 Draft three years later. He made his Major League debut with Colorado in 2014, and he spent the first two seasons of his career with the Rockies before being traded to the White Sox. He was dealt to the Yankees ahead of the Trade Deadline in 2017.
Upon returning from Tommy John surgery, Kahnle signed with the Dodgers for the 2022 season. Elbow issues limited him to 13 appearances for Los Angeles before he re-signed with the Yanks and posted a 2.38 ERA over the next two seasons.
The hope is that since he’s just a year removed from an excellent performance — and he’s been fairly durable over the past three seasons — Kahnle’s middling 2025 will turn out to be just an aberration.

For the first time in 15 years, the beloved Backyard Sports franchise is releasing a new game later this summer.
On July 9, Pablo Sanchez, Kiesha Phillips and the rest of the Backyard gang will be back on the baseball diamond in Playground Production’s all-new Backyard Baseball video game. Announced last month, it will be the first new video game entry to the series since Playground Productions brought back the iconic franchise in August 2024.
Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated caught up with Playground Productions CEO Lindsay Barnett to discuss a few exciting specifics that Backyard Sports fans can expect to see, including if MLB players will be featured in the new game. Read on:
There will be a multiplayer mode
Friends and families, rejoice! You can now play against each other in the new Backyard Baseball. Barnett told Sports Illustrated that multiplayer mode was the top request she heard from fans over the past two years.
“Having that communal experience together as a family is something that I really love,” Barnett said. “I think it’s also a good even playing field for kids to be able to beat their parents maybe for the first time.”
You can bet I’ll be taking my 11-month-old daughter yard with Pablo Sanchez as soon as she’s old enough to play. Anyways, moving on …
It will be a 3D game with 2D elements
Something that Barnett and Playground Production’s team of animators focused on as they designed the game was to have this new edition reflect the originals that made the Backyard Sports franchise so special, all while launching the game into the third dimension.
“Technology has come a long ways in 15 years; it’s really exciting what we’re able to deliver,” Barnett said. “Being able to do this as a 3D game also allows us to do camera movements and updates and all sorts of things that the 2D game was not going to be able to do.”
Still, though, there will be 2D elements in the new game for a more nostalgic feel—like the baseball card in the image below. And yes, that is your first look at Pablo Sanchez in the new game:
Back, back, back … Introducing Backyard Derby mode
It’s just like MLB’s annual Home Run Derby—with a Backyard Sports twist.
“It’s really hard,” Barnett said. “Can you hit all of these wild card, power-up pitches thrown back-to-back-to-back? Millennials who grew up with the games are going to be really excited to see how competitive it is.”
There will be difficulty levels to appeal to all ages
In the February press release announcing the new Backyard Baseball game, Playground Productions called it the “most ambitious” entry in the Backyard Sports series yet. What makes it so ambitious? The wide range of difficulty levels in the new game.
“Most games in general have a very specific audience that they’re going after,” Barnett said. “They can say this game is for [a certain] age group. We don’t say that with ours because we have a very, very wide audience. … For the millennials who grew up playing these and are between 27 and 40, we need to make sure that this is hard enough for them. We have competitive modes in this game, really for the first time. On the flip side, we still need to be really conscious that we are creating a game that if you have never played baseball before, and you’ve never played a video game before, you’re going to have a great experience with this. Having the full spectrum of gamers is a big challenge. We have delivered on that.”
You can play under the lights in night mode
In all of the previous Backyard Sports games, every contest has been played in the daylight. That’s changing in this new game with the addition of night mode, which will arrive with fireworks. Literally.
“Being able to see all of the different stadiums at night is so beautiful and creates a new part of the game, but it feels so nostalgic,” Barnett said. “… We also have a really cool thing that if you hit home runs during night mode, you get [to see] incredible fireworks that are special for each character. … The [home run] blimps can’t fly at night, so you have to do something else, and fireworks felt so Backyard and also so ’90s nostalgic.”
All 30 original Backyard Sports characters are back. And there are other characters to unlock
Pablo Sanchez, Stephanie Morgan, Kenny Kawaguchi and the rest of the original 30 Backyard Sports characters are back in this new game, designed to reflect their look and feel from the originals.
“I think we went through over 20 iterations of Pablo just to get his face-to-hat ratio correct,” Barnett said. “It was really, really important to us.”
But that’s not all. If you notice in the art below, Kenny Kawaguchi’s baseball card notes he is 19 of 33—meaning there are three unlockable characters in the game.
But who are those unlockable characters?
“It might be a couple different Backyard characters that might be available to play for the first time, or available to play again as unlockables,” Barnett said, giving fans a hint of who it could be. “There will be additional unlockables at launch. We’re also really excited about how to expand the universe as well through [downloadable content] as it goes on. This is not a live service game, but what we’re committed to is making sure that we always have interesting updates for fans, whether it’s athletes or comedians or influencers or whatever it might be that could appear in the Backyard. “
And now, for the biggest question of all …
Will there be MLB players in the new ‘Backyard Baseball’ game?
It sounds like that answer will be yes. Barnett didn’t reveal any names, but she did say this:
“MLB players were very important to the original game. With that said, there also were a lot of iconic players who are now retired who were in the game originally. They might not be current MLB players; they could be iconic MLB players, or a little bit of a mixture of both. I think fans are going to be able to see that in some of the unlockables and also possibly some DLC [downloadable content] down the road.”
There you have it. We’re counting down the days until July 9. I’ll see all of you at Steele Stadium.
More MLB from Sports Illustrated

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Forget the score for a moment. Forget the lineups and the pitch counts and the spring training caveats. What happened when Venezuela knocked off a star-studded Team USA to win the World Baseball Classic championship was something that transcended box scores — and the latest episode of the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast made absolutely sure you understood why.
The final was 3-2. Eugenio Suarez delivered the dagger with a late RBI double. Bryce Harper gave the Americans a brief, electric lifeline with a tie-breaking home run in the eighth. And then — just like that — Venezuela finished the job in the ninth. Eduardo Rodriguez, the crafty left-hander, was brilliant on the mound. Team USA, assembled from a dream-lineup of the sport’s biggest names, never got its powerful offense untracked.
In the aftermath, beat reporters Joe Noga and Paul Hoynes on the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast asked the question nobody could sidestep: was this baseball’s Miracle on Ice?
Noga didn’t shy away from the comparison — or from acknowledging what it meant far beyond the diamond
“To see the passion and the joy and what it meant to those players and to that country to win that championship, it’s definitely the biggest sports moment in the history of Venezuela,” Noga said. “You’ve got to consider it that.”
The biggest sports moment in the history of Venezuela. That’s not hyperbole carelessly tossed into a conversation. That’s a statement that lands with full, devastating weight when you consider what’s happening in that country right now — the economic devastation, the political turmoil, the daily survival that millions of Venezuelans face. A group of their countrymen walked onto an international stage and beat the most powerful baseball nation on the planet. In that context, this championship carries an emotional charge that goes far beyond sport.
Noga pushed the Miracle on Ice comparison further, wrestling with whether the David vs. Goliath framework truly applied
“Were the Americans the big bad Russian hockey team there in this equation?” Noga asked. “Were the Venezuelans ragtag bunch? You know, there’s plenty of major leaguers on that Venezuelan roster that contributed, but for them to come together and knock off the United States, who had to have been the more heavily favored team, I gotta believe that the David and Goliath theme fits.” — Joe Noga, Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast
The argument holds. Venezuela’s roster was stocked with major leaguers — this wasn’t a true amateur underdog story. But Team USA wasn’t just a collection of baseball players either. They were an assembled juggernaut, a national brand, a lineup that reads like an All-Star ballot filled out by unanimous vote. They showed up with the weight of expectation, the resources of the richest baseball infrastructure in the world — and as Hoynes pointed out, something unmistakably symbolic.
More Guardians coverage
Bubble wrap him now: The Guardians must get Chase DeLauter across the spring training finish line
Guardians score 5 in the 8th to come from behind and beat Reds, 8-6
Venezuela beats US, 3-2, on Eugenio Suárez’s 9th-inning double to win first World Baseball Classic title
“Team USA came in wearing the USA Olympic hockey jerseys, the gold medal jerseys,” Hoynes said. “It was politically charged. Just like the 1980 Miracle on Ice. Instead of Russia in the U.S. this was Venezuela in the U.S. There’s a lot of similarities in that.”
Political. Charged. Gold medal jerseys as a deliberate statement. It wasn’t subtle, and it wasn’t meant to be. The United States arrived projecting dominance, a reminder of a championship already claimed. Venezuela arrived with something else entirely — pride, unity, and the weight of an entire struggling nation on their backs. That asymmetry of motivation is precisely what makes the upset so resonant.
Hoynes also noted that Venezuela faced arguably the tougher bracket road, playing back-to-back games in the semifinals and championship — a gauntlet that tested their pitching depth to the absolute limit. None of it slowed them down.
There are legitimate nuances to the Miracle on Ice comparison. The 1980 US hockey team was built from amateur college players facing a professional Soviet machine — that purity of amateurism doesn’t exist here. And Hoynes reasonably noted that spring training timing affects even elite players, which may partially explain Team USA’s offensive struggles. Both points are fair.
But none of those caveats diminish what Venezuela accomplished. A nation navigating genuine hardship watched its players step onto that field and beat the world’s most powerful baseball country in the biggest game the sport offers outside the World Series. That means something profound. The passion of that Venezuelan dugout, the tears, the unbridled celebration — that was not spring training emotion. That was history being made in real time.
Want to hear the full debate on Venezuela’s WBC win, the Miracle on Ice comparison, and what it all means for the sport? The latest episode of the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast dives deep into all of it — don’t miss this one. Listen now.
Read the automated transcript of today’s podcast below. Because it’s an AI-generated transcript, it may contain errors and misspellings.
Podcast Transcript
Joe Noga: Welcome back to the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast. I’m Joe Noga, joined by Paul Hoynes. Hoynsie, the Guardians come out on top and a road game in their home ballpark in Goodyear, Arizona last night, defeating the Reds 8 to 6. Comeback win for the Guardians. Colby Allard on the mound as a starter. We were used to seeing him as a reliever last season and sort of a guy who pitched in a variety of different roles, but Stephen Vogt telling us a couple weeks ago that they were going to get Allard stretched out. I guess that it doesn’t bode well for his chances to, to make the opening day roster, but it does sort of get him into a, a position where he can help the, the club out. And, you know, AAA Columbus is going to need guys in their starting rotation. It looks like that’s where Allard might be starting the season.
Paul Hoynes: Yeah, Joe, I mean, he pitched very well. Three innings, five strikeouts, gave up a home run, was char when gave up. You know, his line said two runs, one unearned run because of an error. But yeah, I thought he pitched really, really well. He was sharp. He’s, you know, he’s got some inner fortitude. I mean, he’s not throwing really hard, but he challenges hitters. He works the edge, but he’s really, really aggressive. He throws a lot of strikes and, you know, that’s what we saw last year and last night. That’s exactly what we saw against if he, you know, obviously I don’t think he’s going to make the ball club coming out of the camp, but if he agrees to go down and at Columbus get stretched out some more, I mean, I think he can really help this team at some point during the regular season.
Joe Noga: Yeah, you talk about mental fortitude. I guess there’s also the mental fortitude of just being able to be adaptable and accept whatever role. If they tell you right up front, hey, there’s not a spot for you right now either in the rotation or in the bullpen, but we know that you’re going to help us at some point during the season. Just in talking to Colby Allard all throughout last year, you see that sort of step through. It’s not just he knows himself, knows what he’s capable of and like you said, aggressive attacks the hitters but, but doesn’t necessarily blow you away with his stuff. He’s a pitcher, he pitches to guys and he gets guys out by pitching to them. And that’s, you know, not something you see a lot of in, in in baseball now, especially coming out of a bullpen. But you know, you’re talking about guys that, that you know are high 90s throwers that, that have crazy breaking stuff. Kobe Allard isn’t a guy who, whose metrics jump off the page at you in that regard, but he’ invaluable when it comes to, you know, go out there and get us three outs.
Paul Hoynes: He’s a, he’s a guy that gets it. There’s a lot of guys in the big leagues that don’t get it, that they play the game one way. This is a guy that, he’s been through the kind of the mill, so to speak. He’ll, he’s adaptable, he’ll, he’ll change roles. He knows what he has to do to be a long guy, to be a short guy, to be a starter. He’s kind of learned through the attrition of the game and come out and, and has come out the other end, I think much, much better for it. Yeah.
Joe Noga: And that comes to go through it. He was a first round draft pick. He was a guy who had a lot of expectations and demands who, who didn’t have a lot of success early on and he had to, he had to, you know, sort of be humbled and learn and come back and, and now you get the best version of him, I think. And I know that Stephen Vogt recognizes that in him. I see that just in the way he talks about him. Yeah, don’t, don’t count Colby Allard out at some point. He is definitely going to help this ball club during the regular season. A guy who’s definitely going to help the, the ball regular season is Reese Hoskins. I think we saw that last night. His, the birthday boy, 33 years old and he goes yard in the, the game against the Reds. His second home run of the season for, for Cleveland.
Paul Hoynes: Yeah, really a shot too. Two outs in the fourth. He almost hit the, he may have hit the scoreboard in left field, Joe, way beyond the left field fence. It just, it looks like he’s finally getting into a groove. They’ve been giving him a lot of at bats since they signed him as a, you know, brought him into camp as a minor league free agent. And this is a guy that right handed hitters got some power. You know, he really fits well into this club and this lineup and now they’ve, you know, he’s just got to stay healthy for the rest of camp these last few, you know, several days at camp and they’ve got to make you Know, find, you know, then they have to maneuver the 40 man roster to get, get him a spot.
Joe Noga: Yeah, I misspoke their third home run in the year for, for Hoskins, third home run in training camp for him. But I think between you and me, we, we both really, there’s, there’s no doubt that they’ve got a spot and they’re going to find a way to get him on the roster and he’s going to, to, to sort of help solidify that lineup, particularly against left handed pitching. I think we’re going to see him often against lefties but also, you know, wouldn’t be surprised to see him in there against right handers occasionally too. They’re, they’re going to play him and they’re going to find ways to use him during the regular season as well as Chase DeLauter, the, the rookie is doing just about everything that you, you want and expect and hope for him. They had him in the number three spot in the order last night. With Jose Ramirez still taking his time. Coming back off the shoulder injury, Lauder had a hit, 1 for 3, had a strikeout. But he’s batting.393 this spring with 1076 OPS. His double last night was 115.3 miles an hour off the bat. The hardest hit ball by a guardians player in spring training this year. Everything looks like it’s full steam ahead. All systems go with Chase DeLauter.
Paul Hoynes: Yeah, and he made a nice catch in right field. Showed some speed out there, you know, on a drive on near the left field. I mean the right field foul line I should say.
Joe Noga: Yeah.
Paul Hoynes: In right field. And Joe, you know, the countdown is on. It’s almost like Valera didn’t make it and it, you know, it doesn’t look like he’s going to be able to open the season because of the calf muscle. Every time, you know, the Lauder comes to the plate or catches a fly ball, you, you, you, you just kind of waiting for something, you know, the other foot of the other shoe to drop. So you know, hopefully that, you know, this is a good sign he’s played really and just, just make it to opening day and then, then we’ll go from there.
Joe Noga: Put him in bubble wrap for the next week. Make sure he gets on the plane to Seattle from, from Phoenix next week on, on Tuesday night. And as long as nothing happens between now and then, we’re looking at the, the starting right fielder and, and a guy who’s pretty much going to be a linchpin for this lineup, they’ll still take their time. They’ll, they’ll still, you know, don’t be surprised, don’t be shocked. You know, if he plays on opening day, then he doesn’t play in the second game or that they load him in that first week. But you know, they, they’ve seen what he can do and they want him to be able to perform at his, his max. So they’re, they’re going to do whatever they can to, to keep him on his feet and keep him healthy. Like you said, George Valeria didn’t make it. That was the other side of that equation was, you know, was Valera going to stay healthy finally in training camp? And, and once again the injury bug jumped up and, and bit him. We’ve got Valera and Hunter Gaddis both in that sort of same position where they might be close to being able to get, and get ready to play, but there’s just, they’re just running out of time in training camp to do that. And it looks more and more like both of those guys are going to open the, the season on the injured list.
Paul Hoynes: Yeah, and there’s no reason to push them right now, Joe. I mean I heard Hunter Gaddis might be ready by the time they get off this, you know, the seven game season opening trip through Seattle and in Los Angeles, he might be ready for the home opener. But we’ll wait and see and probably the same, you know, I would think Valera will probably, you know, who knows with the, with the calf muscle, how long it’ll take. But they’re not, I don’t think they’re, they’re, they’re serious, serious injuries. You’re not looking at a lot of time down. You know, as long as Gaddis, you know, right forearm is, is, is a minor injury and they’re being careful with it.
Joe Noga: Yeah. And I think about like the, the guys who were likely to start the season on the injured list. Usually you’re talking about off season guys who had surgery or anything like that. I believe it was year David Fry was open the season on the injured list because he was still recovering from elbow surgery. You can use that 60 man injured list as well to free up a spot on the 40 man roster and maybe that’s the way they get Reese Hoskins on. If, if a guy like Andrew Walters is, is not ready or won’t be ready for an extended period of time because Walters is coming back off of surgery, maybe he’s the, the spot where they, they can manipulate and get Hoskins on the 40, man.
Paul Hoynes: That’s a good point. Definitely. You know, he’s, you know, he is making progress, but still he’s not going to be ready for opening days. You know, he. And he’s going to have to, you know, go through an entire spring training. So, yeah, he’s, he’s somewhere down the road there and he’s, you know, a good candidate for the 60 day high.
Joe Noga: L. Yeah, and that again, that takes them off the 40 man roster in terms of using up a spot there. So it’s, there’s possibilities all over the place as far as the, you know, the rest of the game. Last night we did see Travis Bazzana come up late in the game. He got a nap batter. Two actually. He got, he started the game three. Three. Three at bats. Two hits. No, I’m sorry, three at bats. And he drove in a pair of runs with a double late in the game. Batting.294.897 OPS in in spring training. Limited number of at bats. Uh, 17 so far. Uh, hitting the ball well, uh, and, and playing solid defense.
Paul Hoynes: Yeah, he just, you know, he. This was a really good at bat that Bazzana had and turned into a two run double. It came off red starter Nick Lodollo, a lefty. So it was a left on left at bat and Bazzana went the other way. He drove a double into the gap and in the left center to the fence and scored two runs. So, you know, we’re starting to see more and more of this guy’s game develop. Joe, I think he may have maybe, you know, getting the word that he, okay, you’re going to go down, you’re going to start the season at Columbus. Maybe just relaxed him a little bit. He knows where he’s going because that was a, that was just a great at bat that he had and going the other way against the lefty. So that, that was encouraging. And we saw him the night before make some nice plays at second base. So, you know, his. We’re starting to see why, you know, the Guardians made this guy the number one pick in 2024.
Joe Noga: And DeLauter and Bazzana likely to both be participating in the spring breakout game on Thursday. That game has a new start time. It’s 11am out in Arizona, 2pm here in Cleveland. They’re making all sorts of time changes because of the weather, because the heat. While we’re getting snowed out at the St. Patrick’s Day parade, they’re worried about 100 degree temperatures out in Arizona out there. Hoynsie yeah, Bazzana and DeLauter are probably on that, that roster because like we were talking here, Major League Baseball wants the top rated prospects playing in these showcase games. They’re making Connor Griffith play for the, the Pirates and that’s a guy who all the, you know, all the signs point to Griffin making the opening day roster for Pittsburgh and he’s the number one overall prospect going right. Likely that we’ll see Bazzana and probably DeLauter as well. Don’t know how much of them we’ll see in that game. But you definitely don’t want to expose either of those guys to any sort of injuries, getting extra playing time or anything like that in spring training when both are so close to contributing and being such a big part of what the major league team is ready to do this year. I just, you know, how much are we looking forward to that, that spring breakout session as it comes up tomorrow afternoon?
Paul Hoynes: Yeah, I think it’ll be fun, Joe. I mean, it was, it was enjoyable last year when they played it and you know, you’re going to see some of the Guardians top prospects. You know, I’m sure Ralphie Velasquez will be there. We had such a good spring. We might see Tolentino there, although he’s, he’s kind of still up with the big league. You know, he’s still kind of bouncing between a big league team and helping them. He played last night, but yeah, I think, you know, you really get a good look at, you know, some of the top players in Cleveland’s farm system, which, you know, is, is highly rated by a number of publications this year.
Joe Noga: Yeah, the Guardians Cactus League, you know, games have, have been like spring breakout games for most of these guys anyways. We, we’ve seen so much of the, these top prospects already playing in the Cactus League games. It’s like, why, why do we need an extra showcase? Haven’t you been paying attention? I don’t know, it’s. To me, it, it seems like the guys who, who already have one foot sort of on the major league roster, making them participate in the extra, you know, game there almost feels like when the NBA has its All Star game and it’s, it’s rookie showcase and they make the second year players go back and play in that, you know, you’ve got Victor Wembanyama playing in that game a couple of years ago and it’s like, you know, this guy’s like a frontline NBA superstar. Why are you making him play in a rookie game? It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but that’s sort of the feeling that I get with, with this spring breakout is if these guys are already close to making the major league roster, then they shouldn’t be forced to have to play in some showcase. You know, bring up the guys from, from single A and let them play.
Paul Hoynes: Yeah, guys like, you know, I think James Violet. Yeah, yeah, sure. Jason Cheerio could play. Kahlil Watson. Those, those kind of guys, I think are, you know, would. Should make the, the. The roster or would be on the roster. You know, pitchers like Cal, Stephan, Raylan, Doty. What is it? Doty, Maybe even Espino might get an inning. So, you know, we’ll see how that goes.
Joe Noga: Yeah, and maybe let Espino start that game. That’d be kind of fun. But yeah, that’s the spring breakout. Definitely something to keep an eye on tomorrow. Pedro Avila, who was, who had signed after playing a year in Japan and had gone through a camp, was informed on Monday that he was not going to make the opening day roster, asked for and was granted his release yesterday. So Pedro Avila going, going shopping for a major league gig. What do you think the chances are he finds one with another team or maybe could he come back to Cleveland?
Paul Hoynes: Yeah, I think this is a tough time to be a free agent, to be making calls around. Everybody is trying to get their roster down to, you know, 26 or they’re not necessarily looking to add. You’re looking to subtract now. So tough, tough time of the year to be looking for work. Pedro, you know, was, you know, not coming off a great, great year with Japan in from his. With the, the Yakult Swallows last year in Japan. So, you know, I think I’d say it’s, it’s 50, 50 that he, you know, he comes back and probably signs a minor league deal with Cleveland. You know, hopefully I, you know, I’m. Hopefully he gets a big league job. Pedro’s a good guy, pitched well here in 2024 and you know, he’s, you know, you’re doing what you got to do. You got to ask for your release. You’ve got to have your agent call around trying to see if there’s another job available and if not, you got the guardians to back on.
Joe Noga: Yeah. And Stephen Vogt spoke very highly of Pedro on Monday. Sort of really gassed him up in terms of what he, you know, contributed and what he means to the club. I guess it sounds like there’s a, you know, door is always open sort of policy there. But you Know, you never know who might take a chance on him at this point in 2024. Avila was getting ready to go to, you know, start the season with the Padres and they, he cut him. The Guardians picked him up right away and early in April there that, that first week of April and he, he stayed with the club and, and really contributed all the way through the playoff run. So, you know, even, even contributed emotionally during that, that playoff run, as we recall. So no, just. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll keep an eye on where, where Avila ends up and if he does resign and, and accept a minor league assignment from the, the Guardians as well. All right, Last, the World Baseball Classic championship game against Venezuela. Bit of a struggle on offense for the US The Venezuelan team scoring, you know, what, what’s probably considered one of the biggest upsets in World Baseball Classic history. I think to win that, win their first title in that game. They, they come through Eugenio Suarez with the, the big RBI double late in the game and what, four, two was the final branch. Three, two, three, two. The United States really never got it going offensively. Bryce Harper with a late home run to, to tie the game in the eighth inning. But, you know, Suarez comes back in the ninth and, and there’s. What do you have to say about the, the United States getting to the championship game, getting to the end, being so close once again and not being able to finish the job in the, the World Baseball Classic?
Paul Hoynes: Yeah, I think, I think we got to remember this is still spring training. That’s, that’s the key to me that throw these, all these teams, you know, I think, you know, the upper echelon teams, you know, really performed well. When you take into effect the, you know, the time of year it is, especially for the players, big league players who are, you know, not, you know, I don’t think they’re in top form yet. Maybe that caught up to the U.S. you know, Team USA. It seemed like they, like you were saying, Joe, they never got on track offensively. They had the, you know, one of the best lineups, you know, a dream lineup in, in, you know, and they just, But I think they showed they were human. They showed that this is. You don’t play the season yet starts in March, but it usually starts in late March. And so these, you know, these games were, were highly charged. And I think sometimes that gets the better of even great players in a,
Joe Noga: in a best of five or even a best of three series. Do you think the United States takes two out of three in that or, or do you think they have a better chance in a longer series? I mean, obviously, baseball playoffs are a longer format. You know, the team that’s, you know, the better team that day doesn’t necessarily win the series because there’s more of an opportunity to, for your players to sort of come to the, come to the front and perform over a longer series. A single elimination tournament like this, you know, you really sort of have to build your roster for that. To, to win one game, I guess, is the way to look at it. Was it a failure, maybe, of roster construction, the, the approach? Or was it just the pressures of, you know, 30 different managers and GMs calling Mark DeRosa and telling him how to use their players?
Paul Hoynes: I think that’s, there’s a little bit of all of the above in, in the, in that answer, for sure. I think when you get a lot of those, you know, kind of a. Personalities in one room and, you know, all those, you know, those, like those great players, you know, who’s the leader, who’s not the leader, you know, that, that, that seems to, that would be a tough job for a manager to manage to just the kind of. Who plays, who doesn’t play. You tell Bobby Witt he’s, you know, I, I don’t know. That’s, that’s a little tough. And so I think, you know, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of that. And like you said, Joe, there, there’s a lot of outside influences, you know, at work with this team, too, because, you know, you can’t use certain pitchers past a certain pitch limit or you’re going to use this guy two days in a row. All that stuff comes into play because it’s still spring training.
Joe Noga: But on the other hand, you. It’s still spring training for Venezuela, too. And to see the, the passion and the, you know, joy and what it meant to those players and to that country to win that championship. It’s, it’s probably the biggest, it’s definitely the biggest sports moment in the history of Venezuela. You’ve got to consider it that. But does it equate to the miracle on ice? Does it, you know, were the Americans, the, the big bad Russian hockey team there in this equation? Were the, were the Venezuelans, the, the ragtag bunch? You know, there’s plenty of major leaguers on that Venezuelan roster that contributed, but for them to come together and knock off the United States, who had to have been the more heavily favored team, I gotta believe that, you know, the David and Goliath sort of theme there fits. And no country has needed a shot in the arm more than Venezuela, considering the, the, you know, economic and political times that we’re living in. So you got to think of. Think of this as one of the biggest upsets in, in the. The history of the sport.
Paul Hoynes: Yeah. I think, you know, Team USA came in wearing the USA Olympic hockey jerseys, rather championship, the gold medal jerseys. Yeah. It was political and it was politically charged. Just like the 1980, the Miracle on Ice. There was instead of Russia in the U.S. this was Venezuela in the U.S. there’s a lot of similarities in that, Joe. And Venezuela, you know, played a great game. They came back late and won it. They had probably the tougher road to go. They had to have played back to back games in the semifinals and the finals. So. Yeah. And their, you know, depth was tested on the pitching end of it. Hats off to Venezuela. They won it and they deserve to win it.
Joe Noga: Yeah. And as you predicted, Eduardo Rodriguez going out there and, and really shoving on the mound, a guy that, in a big situation, you don’t want to face a crafty lefty like Rodriguez. That was an outstanding performance by him to lead Venezuela to the championship. All right, Hoynsie, that’s going to wrap up today’s edition of the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast. Off day for the Guardians on Wednesday. They’ll be back at home against the Royals on Thursday and we’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Paul Hoynes: Good deal.

MIAMI — Venezuela manager Omar López went beyond the limit to help his nation win its first World Baseball Classic.
Major league clubs routinely place restrictions on how national team managers can use pitchers at the WBC. One key for López and Venezuela in Tuesday night’s championship game was that he talked some MLB team executives into dropping their initial limitations. U.S. manager Mark DeRosa accepted such restraints.
That allowed López to pitch Chicago Cubs closer Daniel Palencia for the second straight night and third time in four days. Palencia retired three straight batters to seal a 3-2 win.
“I woke this morning, three text messages from different organizations trying not to pitch guys back to back,” López said before the game. “One of my strengths is talk, and I send my text back fighting for my guys and then set a phone call with everybody. When you talk and you get an agreement, you negotiate it, everything is going to go well.”
López relaxed a bit after the back and forth.
“I have my guys tonight to go back to back if I need to, and that’s the most important thing,” he said.
DeRosa didn’t use Mason Miller, perhaps baseball’s best reliever, because he promised the San Diego Padres he would pitch the 27-year-old righty only in a save situation. Miller had Monday off after throwing 22 pitches in the ninth inning of Sunday’s 2-1 win over the Dominican Republic, when his fastball averaged 101 mph.
After Bryce Harper’s two-run homer tied the score 2-2 in the eighth against Venezuela, DeRosa brought in Boston’s Garrett Whitlock to start the ninth. Whitlock walked Luis Arraez, and pinch-runner Javier Sanoja stole second. Sanoja came home when Eugenio Suárez doubled to the left-center gap on a full-count changeup.
“Honoring the Padres,” DeRosa said of Miller’s absence. “Had we taken the lead, he was coming in, but I wasn’t going to bring him in to a tie game.”
With the U.S. the home team and batting last, there was no chance for a save situation once the game entered the ninth inning tied.
“I wanted to honor the fact that there was a situation there where, if it was tied, we were going to use Whitlock,” DeRosa said. “We had talked to the Red Sox about that. And if we had the lead, we were going to use Mason.”
Palencia, a 26-year-old right-hander, threw 13 pitches in a perfect ninth to close out Saturday’s 8-6 quarterfinal win over Japan, striking out two and ending the game by retiring Shohei Ohtani on a popup.
He threw 15 more pitches Sunday in a 1-2-3 top of the ninth that finished a 4-2 win over Italy.
Against the U.S, he needed just 11 pitches that raised his three-game total to 39. Palencia struck out Kyle Schwarber on a 98.5 mph four-seamer, induced a popup from pinch-hitter Gunnar Henderson and blew a 99.7 mph fastball by Roman Anthony for a title-winning strikeout.
Palencia’s fastball velocity averaged 98.1 mph against the U.S., down from 99.3 mph vs. Italy and 98.8 mph vs. Japan, but it was good enough.
He threw 30 fastballs over the three games, seven sliders and two splitters, totaling 26 strikes and 13 balls.
“With that fastball, it is not easy to have good control, but I train that with my coaches in Venezuela,” he said during the tournament. “I trained like a sprinter because I learned that it is about velocity, the capability of the muscle to move.”

If you’re getting the itch to get outdoors and start enjoying all those weekend tailgate parties, you’re not alone. That’s why we dug up the perfect Portable Charcoal Grill at Walmart to use all MLB season long.
The Expert Grill 14.5-Inch Portable Charcoal Grill is now retailing for just $20 at Walmart.
Not only is this Expert Grill Portable Grill the ideal size to transport in your vehicle, but it’ll give you that bold charcoal flavor you’ve been craving all winter. With 138 square inches of cooking space, you can feed a hungry crowd with ease. The grill can serve up to eight burgers at once on its steel cooking grid that’s also easy to clean.
Adjust the temperature of this Expert Grill Charcoal Grill with the stainless steel air damper on the lid. The lid and fire bowl have a porcelain coating for durability. The grill weighs in at just 5.29 pounds, so you can take it anywhere, including the beach, on a picnic, camping and, of course, all those tailgate parties.
Plus, Walmart is offering this Expert Grill Charcoal Grill with free same-day delivery, so it’ll arrive ASAP.
More Walmart portable gril deals
You can also check out even more portable grills at Walmart, including these popular picks that are also on sale.
Ktaxon Portable Steel Charcoal Grill for $50, instead of $78
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Cuisinart Petite Gourmet Propane Kettle Grill for $150, instead of $180

After undergoing a full-scale revamp last offseason, the waters have calmed on the Texas Rangers’ television front.
Thanks in large part to the Rangers Sports Network, fans can enter the 2026 season with a little more stability on where to watch their favorite MLB team. That new stability brought with it a ratings boost last season, as RSN broadcasts produced a 37% increase in households delivered over the 2024 season average in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, according to Nielsen ratings.
Rangers broadcasts are mostly sticking with what works in 2026, with another 130+ Rangers games to be viewed on RSN via cable and direct-to-consumer streaming platforms along with a handful of games on over-the-air broadcasts
Here’s how to watch the Texas Rangers in Year 2 of the Rangers Sports Network.
2026 Rangers schedule
Cable and satellite providers
RSN has partnered with several traditional cable providers to air Rangers’ games in Dallas. Customers of DirecTV, U-Verse, Spectrum and Astound Broadband will be able to watch the RSN channel, which will air around 135 games this year.
For specific channel numbers and more information about individual providers, go to rangers.com/tunein.
Streaming options
More digitally inclined Rangers fans will be able to watch RSN on Victory+, the same streaming platform that currently hosts Dallas Stars games. While the Stars’ games air for free on the platform, the Rangers Sports Network will cost fans $100 for a subscription to watch.
FuboTV is another streaming option for RSN. The streaming platform will offer Rangers Sports Network as a standalone subscription that can be locally paired with a Fubo Free plan or Latino plan. This would include the same games available to cable customers.
Related
Over the air
The Rangers will once again air games as free over-the-air broadcasts. The club’s television schedule has 15 games, all Friday night games (plus two preseason exhibition games) set to be televised on KDAF CW33 for viewers in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. These can be watched using an antenna.
For over-the-air availability in other areas of the Rangers’ TV territory, go to rangers.com/tunein.
National broadcasts
A number of Rangers games will air exclusively on national broadcasts throughout the season. This includes four games on Fox, four on Peacock/NBC, three on ESPN and one on Apple TV.
Out-of-market viewers
For Rangers fans living outside of the team’s TV territory, all local broadcasts will be available on MLB.TV. The single team package costs $129.99 for the year. while the service’s All-Teams offering (except for local blackouts) costs $149.99 for a year.
Twitter/X: @Coylio33
Find more Rangers coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.

MIAMI — Venezuela manager Omar López went beyond the limit to help his nation win its first World Baseball Classic.
Major league clubs routinely place restrictions on how national team managers can use pitchers at the WBC. One key for López and Venezuela in the championship game was that he talked some MLB team executives into dropping their initial limitations. U.S. manager Mark DeRosa accepted such restraints.
That allowed López to pitch Chicago Cubs closer Daniel Palencia for the second straight night and third time in four days. Palencia retired three straight batters to seal a 3-2 win.
“I woke this morning, three text messages from different organizations trying not to pitch guys back to back,” López said before the game. “One of my strengths is talk, and I send my text back fighting for my guys and then set a phone call with everybody. When you talk and you get an agreement, you negotiate it, everything is going to go well.”
López relaxed a bit after the back and forth.
“I have my guys tonight to go back to back if I need to, and that’s the most important thing,” he said.
DeRosa didn’t use Mason Miller, perhaps baseball’s best reliever, because he promised the San Diego Padres he would pitch the 27-year-old righty only in a save situation. Miller had Monday off after throwing 22 pitches in the ninth inning of Sunday’s 2-1 win over the Dominican Republic, when his fastball averaged 101 mph.
After Bryce Harper’s two-run homer tied the score 2-2 in the eighth against Venezuela, DeRosa brought in Boston’s Garrett Whitlock to start the ninth. Whitlock walked Luis Arraez, and pinch-runner Javier Sanoja stole second. Sanoja came home when Eugenio Suárez doubled to the left-center gap on a full-count changeup.
“Honoring the Padres,” DeRosa said of Miller’s absence. “Had we taken the lead, he was coming in, but I wasn’t going to bring him in to a tie game.”
With the U.S. the home team and batting last, there was no chance for a save situation once the game entered the ninth inning tied.
“I wanted to honor the fact that there was a situation there where, if it was tied, we were going to use Whitlock,” DeRosa said. “We had talked to the Red Sox about that. And if we had the lead, we were going to use Mason.”
Palencia, a 26-year-old right-hander, threw 13 pitches in a perfect ninth to close out an 8-6 quarterfinal win over Japan, striking out two and ending the game by retiring Shohei Ohtani on a popup.
He threw 15 more pitches Sunday in a 1-2-3 top of the ninth that finished a 4-2 win over Italy.
Against the U.S, he needed just 11 pitches that raised his three-game total to 39. Palencia struck out Kyle Schwarber on a 98.5 mph four-seamer, induced a popup from pinch-hitter Gunnar Henderson and blew a 99.7 mph fastball by Roman Anthony for a title-winning strikeout.
Palencia’s fastball velocity averaged 98.1 mph against the U.S., down from 99.3 mph vs. Italy and 98.8 mph vs. Japan, but it was good enough.
He threw 30 fastballs over the three games, seven sliders and two splitters, totaling 26 strikes and 13 balls.
“With that fastball, it is not easy to have good control, but I train that with my coaches in Venezuela,” he said during the tournament. “I trained like a sprinter because I learned that it is about velocity, the capability of the muscle to move.”

With the World Baseball Classic coming to an end on Tuesday night and Spring Training barreling to its end, the MLB season is finally within reach after a long winter. For the New York Mets, it’s been a winter of chaos, as multiple long-time Mets left in free agency or were traded away.
Pete Alonso and Edwin Diaz, two fan favorites, opted to sign with the Baltimore Orioles and Los Angeles Dodgers, respectively, and Brandon Nimmo was traded to the Texas Rangers. After a collapse in the final months of the 2025 regular season, these losses signaled even more panic among New York fans.
With that being said, the Mets didn’t let their losses dictate their offseason. In the midst of losing cornerstone players, New York’s front office stepped up to acquire plenty of impact players, like Bo Bichette, Freddy Peralta, Marcus Semien, Devin Williams and Jorge Polanco.
Each of these players will have a big role to play as the Mets look to rebound as an organization from their disappointing 2025 season, but a surprise name has emerged to make the roster out of camp, and it isn’t anyone they acquired this offseason.
Carson Benge Pushing to Make Mets’ Opening Day Roster
The No. 2 prospect in the Mets’ farm system is outfielder Carson Benge, who has had nothing short of a spectacular Spring Training. In 11 games this March, Benge has carried a batting average of .406, an OPS of .972, and has electrified fans in the field.
Benge didn’t come into camp expecting to crack the Mets opening day roster, but his stellar play may be forcing New York’s hand. A first round pick in the 2024 MLB Draft, Benge shot through the Mets farm system last year; he started the season in high-A, and was in AAA by the end of the season.
And he was a stud at every level; across all three teams, Benge hit .281 with 15 home runs and 73 RBI in the 2025 season. He has the potential to be a true five-tool player at the MLB level, but no one thought his emergence would come so soon.
Benge on Cusp of Making Mets’ Opening Day Roster
With the loss of Brandon Nimmo, an outfield spot has opened up. The only sure thing in the Mets outfield now is Juan Soto.
Benge, Luis Robert Jr., Tyrone Taylor, and Brett Baty are all vying for everyday roles to start the season.
In a year with so much turnover, Benge may not have been what Mets fans were expecting to provide them some relief, but he may be just the guy to re-ignite the future of the team.

Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell announced yesterday that Seiya Suzuki has been diagnosed with a minor PCL strain, and he will be further evaluated in the final week before MLB Opening Day. Suzuki appeared to have injured his right knee when attempting to steal a base in the first inning of Team Japan’s WBC quarterfinal match.
The initial diagnosis is somewhat positive news for the Cubs, but the speculation that he could miss time opens the door for trade speculation as well, and FanSided’s Mark Powell is now urging the Cubs to trade for New York Yankees outfielder Jasson Dominguez.
More MLB on Heavy: Eugenio Suarez’s Clutch RBI Lifts Venezuela Over Team USA in World Baseball Classic Final
Should the Cubs Trade for Jasson Dominguez?
According to Powell, a trade for Jasson Dominguez makes sense right now due to the Cubs’ need for an outfielder and the fact that Dominguez might come at a relatively low price considering he’s set to start the season in Triple-A.
Here is the full hypothetical trade by Powell:
Cubs receive: Jasson Dominguez, New York Yankees receive: OF, Josiah Hartshorn, RHP, Brandon Birdsell
With Seiya Suzuki set to become a free agent after the season’s end, it makes partial sense to offload Suzuki now, because if he does post another monster offensive season, Chicago will at least have a replacement option in Dominguez, who is still just 23 years old.
There are shaky aspects of Dominguez’s game, like his defense and ability to drive the ball against left-handed pitching. Still, Dominguez comes with several years of team control and has also recorded fewer than 1,000 at-bats in his career. The 1,000 MLB AB mark is usually when you can really judge a player’s ability to hit at the big-league level.
Dominguez isn’t there yet, but with New York already having a strong outfield, that leaves Dominguez on the outside looking in.
More MLB on Heavy: Braves Sign Former Diamondbacks Pitcher to Minor League Deal
Will Jasson Dominguez Get Traded?
It seems like, as of now, the Yankees’ plan for Jasson Dominguez is to get him as many at-bats as possible in the minor leagues to start the season before he’s eventually brought back up.
There’s no doubt that he will be called upon at some point this season, but the situation and timing are unclear.
So, while the speculation continues to grow, urging the Yankees to trade him, which isn’t a far-fetched idea, New York would also like to hold onto its former top prospect, because it would be even more alarming for the Yankees if they trade Dominguez somewhere and he thrives in another organization.

Omar López is the kind of manager who emphasizes combining hard work with team chemistry. He’s a key mind behind the success of the Houston Astros, but now he’s carrying the weight of an entire nation on his shoulders. After a stunning 8-5 victory over the defending champions, Japan, and a tough semifinal win, López has taken Venezuela to its first-ever WBC final. For a country with an extreme passion for the sport, López is now one win away from securing his legacy.
Before we find out if the Venezuelans can secure their first-ever WBC title, let’s dig deeper into the man behind their success so far.
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Who is Omar López?
Omar E. López was born on January 3, 1977, in Valencia, Carabobo, Venezuela. He loved playing baseball as a kid and was influenced by ‘legends’ Ozzie Guillen and Andres Galarraga. His early performance translated into a professional career at the age of 19. But he never made it to the MLB.
López’s short stint as a baseball player is limited to the minor leagues. He was signed as a rookie by the Chicago White Sox in 1996 and played for the Bristol White Sox for 2 years. The Diamondbacks signed him as a Class A player in 1998, and he played for the South Bend Silver Hawks for one year. He was able to excel as an infielder in his short stint.
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He moved on to coaching and scouting at the age of 22. Omar López was a part of the Astros’ Venezuelan program from 1999 to 2007. He coached many players who later proved to be big names in the major league.
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Omar López has been the bench coach for the Astros since 2024. He has also managed the Venezuelan national team in the 2023 WBC and 2024 WBSC Premier12. It is under his leadership that Team Venezuela has beaten the defending champions Japan in the quarterfinals and a strong Italian side in the semis in the current WBC.
People often wonder how he finds time to manage Cangrejeros de Santurce, a Puerto Rican winter league team as well.
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Who Is Omar López’s Wife?
Omar López married Helen Barreto more than two decades ago, and the couple has two children. Both his children, Omar Eduardo López and Emily Gabriela López, are into sports. While Omar Jr. followed his father’s footsteps, Emily is into volleyball.
He is a senior infielder for the Bethune-Cookman University Wildcats, and she is a student-athlete at Belmont Abbey College. López is often spotted bringing his family to the stadium or visiting his children’s games.
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Helen plays an integral part in Omar Sr.’s career decisions. She is the one who pushed him for the managerial duties in the Puerto Rican winter league.
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Who are Omar López’s Parents & Siblings?
There is no documentation on López’s parents. The same goes for his siblings. But the closest thing he has to that is his colleague Rodney Linares. He thinks of him as a brother and is very thankful “to God for putting Rodney in [his] career.”
What is Omar López’s Ethnicity & Nationality?
Omar López has often spoken emotionally of his pride in the national flag and respect for those who have represented the country before him. His birth makes him every bit as Venezuelan as the people he looked up to while growing up and watching baseball.
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His Latino/Hispanic ethnicity made him extremely effective for coaching the Spanish-speaking young prospects in his early Astros days. However, there is no publicly available information to confirm his religious ties.
What is Omar López’s Net Worth?
Omar E. López isn’t overly fond of showing off his wealth. There is hardly any info of his earnings to substantiate a specific figure. However, as the Astros’ bench coach, his annual salary is estimated to be between $200,000 and $350,000.
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Notably, he doesn’t earn anything for managing the Venezuela national team. Well, anything but respect.
“Because it is the only thing I can do,” López admits. “It is the only thing I can do for my country.”
What is Omar López’s MLB Contract & Salary?
His current role as a member of the coaching staff for the Houston Astros indicates a multi-year deal. But neither the organization nor López has ever disclosed any amount. However, it is expected that his earnings have increased following his promotion to bench coach from first base coach.
What Are Omar López’s MLB Career Highlights?
During his coaching and scouting time with the Astros’ Venezuelan program, he identified José Altuve. And it is often termed as one of the most famous finds in modern baseball. Notably, Altuve was rejected by the academy for his 5’4’’ height at that time.
Under his management, Altuve won the Venezuelan Summer League MVP, leading his team to the championship in 2007. But he wasn’t the only highlight of López’s scouting skills. His ability to guide the young Spanish-speaking prospects earned him the Astros’ Player Development Man of the Year in 2010.
Since then, López has coached many players like Carlos Correa, Yordan Alvarez, and Teoscar Hernández, among others, who excelled in the Major League later in their careers.
He won multiple winter league championships and led the Quad Cities to a Midwest League title in 2013. López went on to win the Texas League Manager of the Year award in 2018.
He was also an integral part of the Astros’ World Series triumph in 2022. Under his leadership, Venezuela reached the quarterfinals in the WBC 2023. He also led the national team to a fourth-place finish in the 2024 WBSC Premier12.
Right now, Venezuela is one of the finalists in the 2026 WBC, ready to take on tournament favorites this Wednesday.
Omar López might not have been a big name as an MLB player. But he is a symbol of dedication in the sport. He has proved his scouting and coaching skills time and again.
Now we wait to see if he can add another feather to his cap.

Carter Loewen, a right-handed pitcher in the San Diego Padres organization, has suddenly retired from Major League Baseball, according to his MLB.com transactions log.
Loewen, 27, appeared in two games with the Padres this spring, allowing two runs over one inning with two strikeouts. Now, he’s retired from the game of baseball.
Loewen was initially drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the 40th round of the 2016 MLB Draft. He elected to go to college, though, and ended up signing with the Padres as an undrafted free agent out of Hawaii in June 2020.
Loewen started in High-A and gradually worked his way up through the minor league ranks. Last year, he reached Triple-A for the first time in his career, where he pitched well in limited action, throwing 2.1 shutout innings with three strikeouts. Across his 18 appearances in Double-A, he had a 2.38 ERA with 20 strikeouts across 22.2 innings.
Loewen has dealt with a series of injuries over the last few years. He missed a majority of the 2022 season recovering from Tommy John surgery and missed half of last season due to an injury. However, less than two weeks ago, he spoke to Blue Jays Nation’s Ben Wrixon about his plans to prioritize his diet and stay healthy for the 2026 season.
“One very low-hanging fruit for me is diet, and what I put in my body,” Loewen said in early March. “If I’m lacking in iron or calcium or whatever the bloodwork comes back to show, I’ll try to do the best that I can to hit the areas where the level might not be fully filled.”
He also wanted to focus on sleep.
“The sleep aspect is obviously huge because that’s when your body recovers from going out and throwing 96 (mph) every night. That’s not a very easy thing to do on the body,

Baseball fans were already spoiled in 2026 by a seat-gripping World Baseball Classic. And as the worldwide tournament comes to an end, the excitement continues with the transition into the regular MLB season.
Ahead of Opening Day on March 26, the Diamondbacks held a media event showcasing ballpark upgrades — such as a new and improved ribbon board and a huge new scoreboard that Dbacks’ President Derrick Hall said was the height of

The mistress of killer pitcher Dan Serafini escaped with a slap on the wrist after admitting she covered up his 2021 deadly attack on his in-laws.
Samantha Scott, who worked as a nanny for Serafini and his wife Erin Spohr’s family, was sentenced to two years’ probation Monday for helping the baseball star after he shot Spohr’s parents in a twisted bid to win her inheritance.
Scott, 35, was the prosecution’s key witness against Serafini and told the jury how she drove Serafini from Nevada to the Lake Tahoe area on the day he shot his in-laws at their Lake Tahoe home.
Scott also drove Serafini back to Nevada after the shooting and lied to investigators about it afterward, according to KCRA. She pled guilty to an accessory charge in February 2025.
The former pitcher’s mistress at her sentencing Monday said “fear and misplaced loyalty” clouded her judgment.
“My heart goes out to the victims and their family,” said Scott in her appearance before a judge at a Placerville court. “I cannot undo what happened, but I truly wish that I had acted differently.”
Serafini, 52, last month was sentenced to life in prison without parole for murdering his father-in-law, Gary Spohr and shooting his mother-in-law, Wendy Wood, in the head. Wood recovered after Serafini shot her but subsequently took her own life.
“[Serafini] is a monster who knows no moral boundaries and has zero reservations about taking the lives of others to benefit himself,” the victims’ daughter, Adrienne Spohr, said of Serafini his sentencing, according to the news station.
Spohr spoke out again about the terrible impact of her father’s murder and her mother’s death at Scott’s sentencing this week.
“House arrest with the ability to travel within 150 miles is not accountability,” said Spohr of Scott’s punishment.
“That radius allows vacation, leisure and freedom. My parents have none of that,” she added.
The deadly ambush stemmed from a $1.3 million loan intended for his wife’s horse ranch business, prosecutors argued at his six-week trial last year, prosecutors said.
They alleged Serafini murdered his in-laws to claim their $23 million fortune through his wife’s inheritance.
Serafini, who was arrested with Scott in 2023, was convicted in July of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and first-degree burglary.
The former baseball player at his sentencing rejected the charges against him and railed against the justice system.
“Justice is fragile. I am just a man,” he whined, according to KCRA.
“I am far from perfect, but I am no murderer. We live in a society that lacks compassion and empathy. A society that sadly thrives on hearing the misfortunes of others. I sit before you today, a broken man, humiliated, embarrassed, angry, and sad. But I am not a murderer. I am a survivor, but I am no murderer.”
Serafini was a No. 26 draft pick by the Twins in 1992 who finished his MLB career with the Rockies in 2007, when he was suspended 50 games for using performance-enhancing drugs.
Serafini revealed he had lost $14 million through bad investments and a divorce settlement during a “Bar Rescue” episode showcasing the Nevada bar he opened in 2013.

“Me and Roman were like, ‘Man, it’s gonna be a little different going back to Fort Myers after this,’ ” Whitlock said.
Still, the Sox have found reason to be excited about how their players have performed on an elevated March stage. As a group, they have had a spectacular tournament.
“It is amazing seeing my teammates doing a really good job in this tournament, because that gives them the opportunity to be ready for the season,” said Abreu. “If they keep doing that, we’re gonna have a really good season with the Red Sox.”
Anthony, who’d been unable to experience the playoffs last year due to the oblique injury that ended his year, has been one of the best players on the field for a loaded Team USA. His .318/.423/.591 line — along with a go-ahead, left-on-left homer in the semifinals against the Dominican Republic — reinforced the sense that he’s a budding star.
“Playing in this game and playing in this tournament the way he has has obviously showed everybody what we all know about him,” said Team USA (and former Sox) teammate Alex Bregman. “I feel like he’s going to be one of the best players in the game of baseball for a long, long time. I feel like there will be many playoff runs for him, and he’ll lead many teams to the postseason.”
Abreu authored a seminal moment in the tournament and in Venezuelan baseball history with his go-ahead homer (and epic bat flip) against Japan in the quarterfinals. Jarren Duran was electric for Mexico, slashing .333/.412/1.000 with three homers. Masataka Yoshida (.375/.444/.813) excelled for Japan. Nate Eaton even took Tarik Skubal deep for Great Britain, and slashed .316/.316/.579.
Anthony, mindful of suggestions the Sox will be power-deficient, took some amusement at the show of muscle by his Boston teammates in the tournament, and what it might say about the adequacy of their thump.
“I mean, the bar isn’t very high. Nobody seems to think any of us has any power, or any of us is going to hit many home runs,” said Anthony. “So it’s easy [to exceed expectations] when the bar is set low.
“It’s funny, but we know the players that we are, and we know how we work, and we believe in our ability and what we can do, what we’re going to do this year. When [you] look at all these guys [in the WBC], I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised.”
Added Whitlock: “We know we’ve got juice.”
The eye-opening performances haven’t been limited to the batter’s box. Whitlock (3 scoreless innings with 5 strikeouts entering Tuesday) was dominant in the late innings, including in a perfect inning of work in the semifinals.
“Garrett Whitlock doesn’t get enough love,” said Team USA manager Mark DeRosa. “He’s one of the best relievers in the sport.”
Greg Weissert was equally impressive as the closer for Team Italy, firing 3⅓ scoreless innings and recording a tournament-high three saves. Brayan Bello allowed one hit and struck out seven over five innings in his start for the Dominican.
There were exceptions. Both Contreras and Suarez had only limited playing time in the tournament, and will now have to get on an accelerated track to be ready for the start of the season.
That said, in nearly every WBC game, it felt like there was a noteworthy contribution from a member of the Red Sox — making the tournament something of a showcase for the team’s potential. The players hope they’ll be able to carry the energy of what they’ve experienced — and their on-field production — into the regular season.
“It’s not surprising to see what these guys are doing,” said Anthony. “It’s not surprising to see a guy like Wilyer hit a ball into the second deck. But to see him and the passion for his country, this event brings out the best in you. To see that, you can’t help but be excited as a Red Sox player, as a fan, whatever it may be, watching everyone do their thing.”

There was a time—not long ago—when baseball believed it understood its place in the modern sports economy. The sport was a regional game masquerading as a national pastime, rich in history, but lagging in marketing muscle.
Without a salary cap, baseball’s biggest stars made their money in contracts, not commercials. The legends of the sport sold jerseys, not entire industries.
Then Shohei Ohtani arrived like a rocket tearing across the sky. He didn’t just change the economics of baseball, he transformed them.
In 2026, Ohtani is expected to earn more than $127 million dollars in off the field earnings alone. A number so staggering that it doesn’t just shatter the record for baseball, but it shatters the record for all of sports. Period. The number eclipses Tiger Woods’ once untouchable mark of $105 million dollars in endorsement deals from 2009. It’s a number that places Ohtani in a category all his own.
And yet, the most absurd part isn’t the number itself. It’s the gap.
According to Sportico, Ohtani makes more in endorsements than the top 15 highest paid MLB players who make a combined $47 million in off-field earnings. It’s more than likely that Ohtani earns more money in endorsements than every single player in MLB combined. Think about that for a moment. In a league filled with MVPs, Cy Young winners, and billion-dollar franchises, one player has turned the endorsement economy into a one-man monopoly.
That’s not a gap. That’s a canyon.
Ohtani’s rise to this record-breaking milestone is a triumph, but it’s also an indictment on Major League Baseball. For decades, the sport failed to globalize its stars the way the NBA, PGA, NFL, and soccer did. MLB marketed teams, not individual personalities. It tried to sell the country on tradition instead of transcendence.
Even Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton ($20M) makes more money in off-field endorsements than any other MLB player outside of Ohtani.
According to Forbes, the list of highest paid athletes in terms of off-field earnings in 2025 reads like a who’s who of global superstars.
Stephen Curry, thanks to his Under Armour deal that ended in 2026, was the only other athlete close to Ohtani at just under $100 million. Next was LeBron James ($85M), Lionel Messi ($75M), Cristiano Ronaldo ($50M), Kevin Durant ($50M), Giannis Antetokounmpo ($45M), Rory McIlroy ($45M), and Woods ($45M).
Scottie Scheffler ($30M), Neymar ($30M), Patrick Mahomes ($28M), and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ($25M) round out the top-ten, but Ohtani is on an island all his own.
Ohtani is baseball’s first true modern global superstar—an athlete who moves seamlessly between cultures, languages, and markets. In Japan, he is omnipresent. Billboards. Television. Subways. Taxis. Entire city blocks feel like extensions of his brand.
His endorsement portfolio reads less like a sponsorship sheet and more like a corporate empire: Seiko, Kosé, Kowa, Hugo Boss, Japan Airlines, New Balance, Fanatics, and more than 20 total partnerships. When Japanese brand Kirin signed him as the face of its “Immune Care” campaign, it wasn’t just a deal—it was a nationwide event.
This is what baseball never had before: an athlete who isn’t just famous, but culturally embedded.
And here’s the twist that makes the entire story even more audacious—Ohtani is doing all of this while technically being one of the lowest-paid players on his own team.
His $2 million salary with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2026 ranks 17th on the roster. A number that would be laughable if it weren’t so strategically brilliant.
Because Ohtani understood something most athletes never do: money isn’t always about what you earn—it’s about when you earn it, and what it allows you to build.
By deferring $680 million of his $700 million contract, Ohtani didn’t sacrifice wealth. He weaponized it. He gave the Dodgers financial flexibility to construct a superteam, stacking talent around him like kindling around a fire. The result? Back-to-Back World Series Championships. Global visibility. Baseball dominance.
And dominance, in turn, feeds the machine.
Winning amplifies relevance. Relevance drives endorsements. Endorsements create empires.
That’s why the Dodgers are the modern day Evil Empire, and Ohtani is at the center of it.
Even the Dodgers’ clubhouse culture reflects his reach. Last season’s home run celebration—a playful gesture mimicking a Japanese skincare ad—wasn’t just a joke. It was a signal. A reminder that Ohtani’s influence stretches beyond the diamond and into the everyday rhythms of global commerce.
He isn’t just in advertisements. He is a walking advertisement.
New Balance understood this early. Their partnership with Ohtani isn’t structured like a traditional baseball deal—it mirrors the architecture of an NBA signature empire. Shoes, apparel, global campaigns. In 2026, the brand expanded his collection into dozens of products, effectively turning him into a walking, swinging, pitching marketplace.
And still, somehow, this might only be the beginning.
Because what makes Ohtani truly dangerous to the record books isn’t just his popularity—it’s his duality. He is the only athlete in modern sports who can dominate two roles at once, a once-in-a-century talent at the plate and a Cy Young Award caliber pitcher on the mound. Ohtani has the only two 50-50 seasons in MLB history. 50+ homers and 50+ stolen bases in 2024, and 50+ homers and 50+ strikeouts as a pitcher in 2025. He has four MVP awards. Two World Series titles. A résumé that reads like fiction.
The word “unicorn” gets thrown around too easily in sports. With Ohtani, it still feels insufficient.
Even when you widen the lens beyond active athletes, the only name that truly dwarfs him is Michael Jordan, whose Jordan Brand empire generated an estimated $300 million in 2025. But that’s a different kind of legacy—built over decades, fueled by nostalgia and ownership.
Ohtani is doing this in real time.
And that’s what should both excite and terrify the rest of baseball.
Because this isn’t just about one player making more money than everyone else. It’s about one player changing the economic blueprint of an entire sport. The next generation of stars won’t chase contracts the same way. They’ll chase markets. They’ll chase global reach. They’ll chase what Ohtani has built—a brand that transcends borders and turns performance into currency.
Baseball didn’t create this moment.
Shohei Ohtani did.
And now the sport is racing to keep up with the future he’s already living in.

Altafiber made an announcement on its website that it

Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz believes he has a way to make the World Baseball Classic even better.
Smoltz appeared on “The Dan Patrick Show” on Tuesday and was asked how MLB could up the ante with the international baseball tournament.
“I think you make it bigger when you do it in the middle of the season and shut it down for a week,” Smoltz opined. “I’ve been saying that for years. I think it’s the perfect spot to showcase the international talent, you would have everybody wearing that uniform, they’d be in midseason form, there would be no restrictions, you truly get to see the Goliath against the Goliath without them coming out and throwing a million arms.”
This year’s World Baseball Classic has been incredibly successful for the sport, with Tuesday’s championship, won 3-2 by Venezuela over Team USA, expected to shatter viewership records.
While Smoltz acknowledged it likely wouldn’t ever happen, he pointed to the success of the Four Nations Face-Off the NHL put on in 2025 instead of an All-Star Game.
“This tournament has accomplished its goals,” Smoltz said about the WBC. “Team Italy, baseball’s gonna be thought of differently there. You’ve got other countries that are bringing baseball to the forefront when other sports were really kinda marquee and king. That has worked. Is it the perfect timing? No.”
He said he passed along his idea to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and said he would be OK with the idea of doing a World vs. USA format to replace the MLB All-Star Game.
“If you shut the game down for a week and give everybody the break they need, you could do so many things to promote within that week and own that week,” Smoltz said.
While Smoltz’s ideas are interesting, it would be a tough sell for MLB to hold the event in the middle of a season.
And while the eight-time All-Star made a fair point in the tough job Team USA manager Mark DeRosa has, having to run decisions by players’ MLB managers first, that likely wouldn’t go away during some sort of in-season international tournament.

With a breakout season for the Royals last year, Maikel Garcia made his name known around MLB. Now his name is resonating on the world stage.
The 26-year-old infielder was named MVP of the World Baseball Classic after Venezuela defeated the tournament favorite USA with a thrilling 3-2 victory in the final on Tuesday night.
Garcia hit .385 for the Classic with a home run and seven RBIs, and he drove in the first run of the game in the final with a sac fly off USA starter Nolan McLean. He also had a key hit in Venezuela’s decisive three-run rally in the seventh inning of the semifinals against Team Italy.
“The place I come from, we are born with that characteristic, to be competitive every day no matter where you are playing or what you are playing,” Garcia said earlier in the tournament. “I love facing the best rivals.”

Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani isn’t just the best baseball player in the world. He’s also the driving force behind why Japanese fans are watching Major League Baseball.
In a country where baseball already pulses through the culture like oxygen, Ohtani has turned passion into obsession. According to a YouGov Sport survey, nearly 8 in 10 Japanese fans now say he’s one of their favorite MLB players, and more importantly, 79 percent admit he’s the reason their interest in Major League Baseball has grown.
Ohtani’s current team, the Dodgers, have now become Japan’s team. A commanding 59 percent of the nation said the Dodgers are their favorite MLB team. That’s no coincidence. Ohtani, alongside countrymen Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, has turned Dodger Stadium into a second home for millions of fans watching from across the Pacific.
When the Dodgers reached the 2025 World Series, more than half of Japanese sports fans tuned in—and 86 percent of them weren’t just watching. They were emotionally invested.
This is the rarest kind of athlete, the kind who doesn’t just dominate a sport but redefines its geography. Ohtani hasn’t simply bridged Japan and America—he’s collapsed the distance between them. Every home run, every splitter, every moment under the lights pulls two baseball worlds closer together.

NEW YORK (AP) — Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Johan Rojas was suspended for the first 80 games of the season by Major League Baseball on Monday following a positive test for the performance-enhancing substance Boldenone.
Rojas’ suspension was announced after a grievance filed by the players’ association appealing the discipline was denied by independent arbitrator Martin F. Scheinman.
Barring rainouts, Rojas would be eligible to play for the Phillies on June 25. He would lose $395,305 in salary from his contract, which pays at a rate of $803,500 while in the major leagues and $321,826 while in the minors. If there are no postponements, the suspension would be over 92 days of the 187-day season.
He is ineligible to play in the 2026 postseason.
Rojas, 25, hit .224 with one homer, 18 RBIs and 12 stolen bases for the Phillies last season. He was demoted to Triple-A Lehigh Valley on Aug. 1 and didn’t play for Philadelphia during the remainder of the season. Rojas was 3 for 15 with one RBI for the Phillies during spring training this year.
He has a .252 career average with six homers, 73 RBIs and 51 stolen bases over 250 games.
Rojas was slated to play for the the Dominican Republic’s World Baseball Classic roster but was dropped ahead of the tournament.
He is the sixth player disciplined this year for a drug violation, the third under the major league agreement.
Atlanta outfielder Jurickson Profar was suspended for the entire season on March 3 after testing positive for exogenous testosterone and its metabolites. The failed test was Profar’s second offense under the drug rules.
Free agent outfielder Max Kepler was banned for 80 games on Jan. 9 after a positive test for Epitrenbolone.
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The prospect event started in March 2024 and is heading into its third iteration, with a tournament format already announced for 2027 and ’28. While more memories will be made in the coming matchups, here’s a look back at some of the showcase’s top moments to date.
Paul Skenes vs. Jackson Holliday (March 14, 2024)
Before making their big league debuts and becoming catalysts for their respective clubs, MLB’s former top prospects dueled in Spring Breakout. Skenes — now the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner — fired three offerings of 100+ mph in a six-pitch strikeout.
Holliday’s swinging punchout marked the second meeting between the former No. 1 Draft picks. The two had faced off two weeks earlier, with the Pirates ace getting the Orioles second baseman to ground out on the second pitch. Read more »
The Big 3 (March 13, 2025)
Not even a full year before slugging a home run for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, Roman Anthony was headlining Boston’s next vaunted trio. Infielder/outfielder Kristian Campbell and shortstop Marcelo Mayer smacked back-to-back third-inning homers for the Red Sox against a bevy of top Rays prospects, with Anthony following them two frames later with his own long ball. Read more »
Here comes Bubba Chandler (March 14, 2025)
One year to the day Skenes sat down Holliday, the next top Pirates hurler took center stage. After closing out the inaugural Spring Breakout game, Chandler got the nod in Year 2, delivering two perfect innings with four strikeouts and two ground-ball outs. The moxie-driven right-hander fired 11 fastballs at 98.5 mph or faster. Read more »
Trey Yesavage’s unofficial pro debut (March 14, 2025)
Just eight months after being selected in the first round by the Blue Jays, the former East Carolina hurler made the right first impression in his long journey to pitching in the World Series later in the year. Yesavage worked around traffic in the first inning before pumping gas in the second — striking out the side with a cutter, a fastball and a changeup. Toronto’s top prospect continued that across four levels before his big league debut in September. Read more »
The revival of the switch-pitcher (March 15, 2025)
A first-round pick by the Mariners, Jurrangelo Cijntje garnered looks from both sides of the rubber. The ambidextrous hurler came out throwing from the left side before switching to his right hand — even against seven left-handed hitters. But fate brought the perfect final test of the night as 2024’s first overall pick, Travis Bazzana, stepped into the box. Cijntje kept throwing from the right side against the Guardians’ lefty, powering a 97 mph four-seamer to secure the five-pitch strikeout. Read more »
Two-homer games galore (March 16, 2024)
The inaugural weekend featured multihomer games from a trio of then-Top 100 prospects. The Rays’ Xavier Isaac sent one of his two roundtrippers 419 feet at 110 mph off the bat. Towering Yankees slugger Spencer Jones one upped himself on his second homer at 427 feet, while Tigers infielder Jace Jung got a nod of respect from Hall of Famer Alan Trammell:

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Phillies outfielder Johan Rojas’s 80-game suspension for use of a performance-enhancing substance was made official by the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball on Monday.
The league announced that Rojas tested positive for Boldenone, in violation of the league’s drug policy. Rojas’ suspension will begin at the start of the 2026 season. He is ineligible for the postseason this year.
In a statement, the Phillies said they, “fully support Major League Baseball’s Joint Prevention and Treatment Program and are disappointed to hear today’s news of Johan’s violation.”
Rojas’ ban was first made public two weeks ago when he abruptly left the Dominican Republic team at the World Baseball Classic after reports from the country indicated a looming positive test.
Rojas, 25, skipped from Double A straight to them majors in 2023, playing 59 games for the Phillies. He played in 120 games in 2024, then batted .224 with one homer and 18 RBIs in 71 games in the bigs last year. He hit 4-for-43 in the postseason in 2023 as a regular starter in center.
Rojas hit .279 in 35 games in Triple A last year. He was 4-for-24 with a double and two RBIs in 10 games this spring.
He’s the third Phillies to test positive for a performance-enhancing drug in the last year, joining pitcher Jose Alvarado and outfielder Max Kepler.

MIAMI — If Johan Rojas plays for the Phillies this season, it won’t be until at least the last week in June.
Rojas received an 80-game suspension without pay after he tested positive for boldenone, a performance-enhancing substance, Major League Baseball announced Monday. The 25-year-old center fielder is ineligible to play at any level until June 25.
In a statement, the Phillies said they are “disappointed” to learn of Rojas’ positive test and “fully support” MLB’s joint drug prevention and treatment program.
News of Rojas’ test result leaked on March 2 upon his withdrawal from the Dominican Republic’s roster for the World Baseball Classic. Rojas filed an appeal with MLB and declined multiple requests for comment while awaiting a decision.
But Rojas continued to play in spring training games for the Phillies, most recently going 0-for-1 with a walk Sunday in Clearwater, Fla., against the Braves. He was 4-for-24 (.167) in 10 Grapefruit League games.
Regardless of the pending suspension, Rojas was hardly a lock for the Phillies’ opening-day roster. Justin Crawford is set to take over center field, and Rojas has minor-league options. Veteran utilityman Dylan Moore and reserve outfielder Bryan De La Cruz emerged as likelier bench candidates.
» READ MORE: Justin Crawford showcases ability to put a ball in play on the ground: ‘That’s all he needs to do’
The Phillies’ center-field depth does take a hit with Rojas’ ban. Brandon Marsh, who is expected to play mostly left field, could shift to center, if necessary. The Phillies’ best option in triple A is now 27-year-old Pedro León, who was claimed off waivers from the Astros. León went 2-for-20 in seven major league games in 2024.
Rojas, an elite defender, made his major league debut in 2023 and was a pleasant surprise at the plate, batting .302 with a .771 OPS in 164 plate appearances.
But he struggled ever since. Among 316 players with at least 500 plate appearances since the beginning of the 2024 season, Rojas ranked 308th with a .591 OPS.
According to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, boldenone is an anabolic androgenic steroid that was originally developed for veterinary use but is commonly taken by athletes to increase muscle mass and strength. It is prohibited under MLB’s joint drug prevention and treatment program.

Major League Baseball announced on Monday that Phillies outfielder Johan Rojas has received an 80-game suspension after testing positive for Boldenone, a performance-enhancing substance, in violation of Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. It was reported a couple of weeks ago that Rojas had tested positive for a PED, but that he was appealing. It now appears the appeals process has been completed, as Rojas will begin serving his suspension to begin the 2026 season.
Rojas, 25, has been Philadelphia’s center fielder for a decent chunk of the past three seasons. He gets great marks for his defense and also steals bases, but his offense has been more questionable. Since the start of 2024, he has a .237/.279/.312 batting line. That translates to a 64 wRC+, indicating he was 36% below league average at the plate in that time.
Despite his assets, the lack of offense has pushed the Phillies to move on from relying on Rojas. They acquired Harrison Bader at last year’s deadline. Bader became a free agent at season’s end, but the Phils plan to give prospect Justin Crawford the job.
Rojas could have started 2026 as a fourth outfielder or perhaps gotten regular playing time in the minors. If Crawford struggled in his first exposure to major league pitching, Rojas could have been a speed-and-defense fallback. That’s now off the table for the first half of the season. Rojas could return in the second half, but players who receive PED suspensions aren’t eligible for the postseason.
Without Rojas, the Phils feel a bit light in terms of center field depth. Left fielder Brandon Marsh has experience there but is probably stretched defensively. Pedro León is on the 40-man but has just seven big league games under his belt. Utility player Dylan Moore has some limited experience in center. He’s not on the roster but could be selected to serve in a multi-positional bench role.
As Opening Day gets closer, it’s possible some other guys become available. As teams make their final roster decisions, some guys will end up on waivers or in free agency. Perhaps the Phillies can add some extra center field coverage in the coming weeks.

It’s become an annual tradition, it seems — the Houston Astros don’t have a Top 100 prospect in baseball.
That tradition continued earlier this spring when MLB Pipeline released its Top 100 list and no Astros showed up. It’s not that the franchise has trouble developing talent. The Astros reached the playoffs eight straight seasons from 2017-24, with two World Series titles, four American League pennants and seven AL West crowns. For seven straight seasons Houston reached, at minimum, the AL Championship Series.
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A team cannot do that without developing talent. Houston just hasn’t had those top-shelf prospects.
That could change in 2026. MLB.com’s Sam Dykstra highlighted three prospects that could crack the Top 100 sometime this year — outfielder Kevin Alvarez, shortstop Xavier Neyens and outfielder Ethan Frey.
The Astros’ Big Three Prospects
Alvarez might be the most anticipated of the trio. The Cuba native signed last January for $2 million and had a terrific campaign in the Dominican Summer League, where most international prospects play their first year as professionals. In 47 games he slashed .301/.419/.455 with a .874 OPS, including two home runs and 33 RBI. He also had 12 doubles and three triples. He should play stateside this year.
He just started a spring training game with the Astros, where he went 0-for-3 with a strikeout. He may play one more game with the club before Houston breaks camp to head back home next Sunday.
Neyens hasn’t played a professional game yet. The Astros selected him in the first round last July and he signed a $4 million bonus to pass on college baseball. But he didn’t play a pro game because the Astros wanted to give him extended ramp-up time at their team complex in Florida.
Now 19 years old, the 6-foot-4 left-handed infielder has a 65 grade on his power on the 20-80 scouting scale. Already 210 pounds, he projects as a power hitter in the Majors, which is why many scouts see him moving to third base. He led Mount Vernon (Wash.) High School to a state championship and in the title game he was intentionally walked four times.
Frey was selected in the fourth round of the 2025 MLB draft out of LSU, the same school that produced former Houston All-Star third baseman Alex Bregman. The Astros wasted no time with him and had him start his pro career at Class-A Fayetteville in August. There, he slashed .330/.434/.470 with three home runs and 17 RBI. He also had five doubles But, what stood out was his plate discipline. In just 100 at-bats he drew 20 walks and struck out just 25 times.

Infielder Max Muncy homered in the bottom of the fourth inning during a Spring Training game today. Also, infielder Max Muncy homered in the bottom of the fourth inning during a Spring Training game today.
MLB has two players named Max Muncy in its ranks. One is a former first-round Draft pick who debuted last season with the A’s. The other is a three-time World Series champion slugger with the Dodgers. They share the same birth date (Aug. 25), and on Monday, they each went deep in the same inning of their respective Spring Training games.
The A’s Muncy homered first, launching a pitch against the Angels a projected 361 feet out to right field in the bottom of the fourth. Just a few minutes later, the Dodgers’ Muncy followed suit by homering toward right-center field versus the Brewers in the bottom of the fourth.

MESA, Ariz. – Considering his status as one of baseball’s truly elite prospects, it was set up to be nearly impossible for Leo De Vries to live up to the hype as he entered his first big league camp with the Athletics.
Not only did De Vries, MLB’s No. 4 overall prospect according to MLB Pipeline, meet those lofty expectations, but he also showed all the skills required to compete at the highest level – all at the ripe age of 19. Defensively, he looked like a Major League shortstop with a strong arm and sure hands. At the plate, he routinely took quality at-bats against big league pitchers.
From the eyes of A’s manager Mark Kotsay, who, along with the rest of his coaching staff, closely evaluated De Vries this spring for the first time since joining the organization as part of a package from the Padres for Mason Miller last year, the final step for the teenage phenom’s development is on the physical side. That was the message Kotsay imparted to De Vries on Sunday afternoon after he was reassigned to Minor League camp.
“The biggest thing for Leo is to get in the weight room and really put the work in to add the muscle,” Kotsay said before Monday’s 3-0 win over the Angels at Hohokam Stadium. “We can all add weight, but it has to be good weight, and it has to be a strength component that he can maintain for 140 games or more. I think that’s what Leo recognized through our meeting yesterday.”
De Vries put a bow on his impressive spring by crushing a home run off Guardians starter Tanner Bibee at an exit velocity of 103.1 mph during Sunday’s 12-6 loss at Goodyear Ballpark. In 17 spring games, the switch-hitting shortstop hit .409 (18-for-44) with three homers, three doubles, 11 RBIs and three stolen bases.
The A’s will likely send De Vries to Double-A Midland to start the year, but the anticipation for his eventual call to the Majors is already building – and could come perhaps as early as this season.
“Does he have the skillset to play in the big leagues? Absolutely,” Kotsay said. “The talent? Yes. Now, it’s going to just be the ability to withstand a season and maintain the strength and have that burst throughout the season.”
De Vries headlined a group of A’s top prospects reassigned to Minor League camp on Sunday who left a strong impression. Also among the cuts were left-hander Gage Jump (A’s No. 3 prospect and MLB No. 57 overall), outfielder Henry Bolte (A’s No. 5) and third baseman Tommy White (No. 9).
Jump appeared in four spring games and allowed just two runs in 9 2/3 innings with seven strikeouts. The 22-year-old southpaw is expected to begin the year at Triple-A Las Vegas, and his advanced arsenal shown throughout camp suggests his debut is on the horizon.
“Just continue to pound the strike zone and go perform,” Kotsay said of his message to Jump as he’s reassigned to the Minors. “It’s not if he’s going to be here, it’s when he gets here. The polishing there is just being able to finish at-bats, pitching into the sixth inning, taking advantage of the bottom-half of those lineups and going out and having a lot of success.”
“For Bolte, there’s reason to think he can have an impact on this ballclub this year with what he was doing in Spring Training,” Kotsay said. “He’s the most physical out of the younger group that isn’t going to start out with us, for sure. He’s arguably, next to Denzel [Clarke], the most athletic, and next to [Brent Rooker], the most powerful. So, there’s a lot to like about Henry.”
White, meanwhile, hit .441 with four homers, two doubles and 15 RBIs. More importantly, he displayed improved defense, which has been a knock on him since coming out of college at LSU in 2024, at both third base and first base.
“He’s got elite bat-to-ball skill,” said Kotsay. “But in camp I saw a player that really took to heart the message of, ‘Hey, you need to really go get strong. You really need to go work on your speed and defense.’ He took that to heart. He maximized his offseason and was a part of a group of young players that showed that they’re going to push these [Major League] guys.”

Milwaukee Brewers fans are quite familiar with the name Luis Urías, but some might not have been aware he’d come back to their favorite team.
Urías played 330 games for the Brewers from 2020 through 2023, racking up a more-than-respectable 6.3 bWAR. He was traded to the Boston Red Sox in the summer of 2023, then moved on to the Seattle Mariners in 2024 and the Athletics last year.
After the A’s cut him loose last summer, Urías wound up signing back with the Brewers on a minor-league contract. But what could have become a fun reunion story instead passed by without an appearance in a big-league game.
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Urías moves on to Diamondbacks after missing WBC
On Monday, Urías signed a minor-league contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks, per the Reno Aces’ official X account. The Aces are the Diamondbacks’ Triple-A affiliate in the Pacific Coast League.
Urías was supposed to participate in the World Baseball Classic for Team Mexico, which would have been the third time he’d been on the roster. Unfortunately, he was taken off the roster due to injury in between the team’s final exhibition game against the Los Angeles Dodgers on March 4 and their tournament opener on March 6 due to injury.
With the Brewers’ Triple-A affiliate in Nashville, Urías posted a .731 OPS in 13 games last season. He never saw a spot on the major league roster open up in front of him, as the Brewers stayed committed to Caleb Durbin at third base, Joey Ortiz at shortstop, and Brice Turang at second base down the stretch.
Of course, Durbin wound up getting traded in February, but Urías was a free agent by then and even if he’d been brought back, he wouldn’t have been on the 40-man roster, and wouldn’t have likely been in serious consideration for the opening day roster.
Instead, he now gets a clean break, and the Brewers have to hope the infielders they’ve replaced him with over the last three years can avoid a similar drop-off to the one he once experienced.

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Johan Rojas will officially be suspended 80 games without pay by Major League Baseball after an unsuccessful appeal after testing for a banned performance-enhancing drug.
The league announced Rojas’ official suspension of Rojas, the Philadelphia Phillies outfielder, after testing positive for Boldenone, an anabolic steroid.
The news broke earlier this month that Rojas, 25, failed the test. As a result, not only did he face an MLB suspension, but he was removed from the Dominican Republic’s World Baseball Classic (WBC) roster.
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The D.R. fell to Team USA, 2-1, in the WBC semifinals on Monday night, as the latter now heads to the final to await the winner of Venezuela and Italy.
Rojas won’t be able to play until the second half of the MLB season, and if the Phillies reach the playoffs, he will not be eligible for the roster.
BRAVES STAR FACES 162-GAME SUSPENSION AFTER SECOND FAILED TEST FOR PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING DRUGS: REPORT
Rojas has played his entire career with the Phillies thus far, making his big-league debut in 2023. After offensive struggles, Rojas saw a demotion back to the minor leagues in 2024, though he still managed to play 120 games for Philadelphia.
In 2025, Rojas slashed .224/.280/.289 with a .569 OPS over 71 games for the Phillies. He hit just one home run and tallied 18 RBI across 172 plate appearances.
Before he was suspended, Rojas was hitting .167 over 24 spring training at-bats.
With his appeal denied, Rojas became the second major leaguer to be slapped with a lengthy suspension, though Atlanta Braves star Jurickson Profar will be forced to miss the entire 2026 season after getting a 162-game suspension for his second PED offense.
Profar was suspended 80 games last season after a positive test in March for chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), which is a hormone that helps produce testosterone in the body.
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Profar also intended to ask the MLBPA to file a grievance to appeal any discipline earlier this month.

MIAMI (AP) — Ten days later, the United States and the Dominican Republic would have kept on playing.
Geraldo Perdomo watched Mason Miller’s full-count slider appear to drop just under the strike zone and took a step toward his team’s dugout on the third-base side, thinking he walked to put runners at the corners.
Then plate umpire Cory Blaser emphatically signaled strike three, stranding the potential tying run at third base and giving the United States a 2-1 win Sunday night that advanced the Americans to the World Baseball Classic championship game against Venezuela or Italy.
“He knew he was wrong,” Perdomo said. “I knew it was 100% wrong.”
Major League Baseball’s Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System will launch when the season starts March 25, and it likely will be adopted for future editions of the WBC. The Dominicans would have been able to appeal to the so-called robot umpire if they had a challenge remaining.
“It looked a little down. Yes, I’m glad we had no ABS,” U.S. outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said. “I’m happy that the human element was in full effect.”
Perdomo heard the call, found it hard to believe and while still holding his bat lurched it overhead in an arc, nearly tapping the wood against his butt.
“We didn’t lose the game there,” the Arizona star said.
MLB announced in September that ABS will be used during the regular season and postseason in 2026 following testing that started in the minor leagues in 2019.
“I don’t want to focus on the last pitch,” Dominican manager Albert Pujols said. “I’m disappointed about the way that the game ends, but I don’t want to criticize any of that. It just wasn’t meant to be for us.”
Miller threw 13 of 22 pitches at 100 mph or higher. He gave up a one-out walk to Julio Rodríguez, who advanced to third on a wild pitch and Oneil Cruz’s groundout.
Perdomo fell behind 1-2, worked the count full, then fouled out a pair of triple-digit heaters. Miller followed with his second slider of the at-bat.
“He called strike three. That’s all I care,” American first baseman Bryce Harper said.
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