As the 2025 regular season continues, here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world throughout the day today:
1. Mariners 40-man move incoming:
The Mariners are reportedly poised to select the contract Luis F. Castillo today, who will start today’s game against the Giants and Justin Verlander after teammate and veteran righty Luis Castillo started the club’s last game on Wednesday. In order to make way for that quirky bit of trivia, Seattle will need to clear a 40-man roster spot. With no obvious candidates for the 60-day injured list on the roster, the Mariners will likely need to designate one of their players for assignment, at which point they’ll have one week to either trade that player or successfully pass them through waivers.
2. Henderson likely to be activated:
Gunnar Henderson opened the season on the injured list, but manager Brandon Hyde told reporters (including Andy Kostka of The Baltimore Banner) that it’s “probable” the star infielder will be activated from the injured list to start the club’s series opener against the Royals in Kansas City, for which Baltimore will be facing veteran right-hander Seth Lugo coming off his dominant 2024 season where he finished as the runner up to Tarik Skubal in AL Cy Young award voting. The Orioles have gotten off to a difficult 3-4 start to this point in the season, but the return of Henderson after a year where he broke out to the tune of a .281/.364/.529 slash line and finished fourth in AL MVP voting should go a long way to improving the club’s offense. The return of Henderson figures to kick Jackson Holliday off shortstop back to second base, with Jordan Westburg returning to third base after covering the keystone and Ramon Urias heading for the bench.
3. Minor League Opening Day:
While the major leagues had their Opening Day last week and Triple-A followed suit shortly there after, the rest of minor league baseball has not yet began their seasons. That changes today with the arrival of Opening Day for Double-A, High-A, and Single-A affiliates all around baseball. The earliest of those games is a game between the Double-A affiliates of the Orioles and Pirates, the Chesapeake Baysox and the Altoona Curve. That game begins at 5pm CT this evening, though of course all three levels have 15 games scheduled to run throughout the evening. Prospect hounds will get their first opportunities to catch glimpses of the 51 of MLB.com’s Top 100 prospects who are currently in the lower full-season levels of the minors, including top-ten talents like Twins outfield prospect Walker Jenkins, Tigers outfield prospect Max Clark, and Guardians second base prospect Travis Bazzana.
That’s AI for ya!
Luis G. Castillo is developing, starting his season in Modesto as well. I hope he makes it
What happened to the Tuesday/possibly Thursday chat?
I don’t n claim to know but I heard that Steve is on vacation. That may explain one of them.
I’ll be at the local team’s minor league affiliate this weekend myself.
Signing autographs?
And Mariners will keep throwing out more! It’s a plan
We will produce more Luis Castillos until we finally fool the Red Sox and they give us Tristan Casas for one of the fake ones
Why are the o’s waiting so long to activate gunnar? He was healthy like 2 wks ago. Tore it up in pointless minor lg rehab. He’s ready to go! Hurry the f up baltimore
He was only eligible to get off the IL on April 3 (yesterday)
It’s not just about health. He missed time during spring training and they undoubtedly wanted to make sure he gets his reps in and is truly ready to go.
Given how important he is, there’s no value in bringing him up at the absolute earliest moment only to have him re-injure himself, or start off in a months long slump because he didn’t get properly up to speed.
The MLB season is a marathon, not a sprint.
Considering we have professional athletes breaking ankles rounding the bases on a home run trot or in shower mishaps, or they miss games due to severe sunburns caused by falling asleep in tanning beds (still my favorite)…you can only encase them in bubble wrap for so long. Gunnar’s original tweak was a month ago.
Nice 79-word run-on sentence to start the article. Nick Deeds is in mid season form.
Where are you seeing a 79-word sentence?
The first sentence of the Orioles section that talks about Gunnar Henderson, although I do not think the sentence is actually a run-on sentence, as the author appears to have used the proper commas and conjunctions to make it grammatically correct, even if it runs on a little longer than most people would prefer from a single sentence.
deepsea,
Nice try, but you came up about 20 words short of Nick’s best effort.
It’s 79 words with a lot of subordinate clauses, but I can’t see that it’s run-on. Grammar is OK.
Could have hit an even 80 if he’d used the more proper “in which” instead of “where” near the end.
tom – What’s even more interesting, back in 2000 the Mets had pitchers Bobby J. Jones and Bobby M. Jones start games on consecutive days against the Marlins …. and the leadoff hitter for the Marlins in both games was LUIS CASTILLO !!!
“… and Ramon Urias heading for the bench”. Harsh. Dudes hitting the cover off the ball. Hope Coach Hyde finds a way to keep him in the line up.
Shenton likely getting DFAd
According to Daniel Kramer at the Mariners’ site, there is an opening on the active roster after J. Diaz was optioned on Thursday. That would mean no need for a DFA.
Diaz was still on the 40 man. Just droped Haggen Dazzer from the 40-man.
Luis Freakin’ Castillo
If your 40-man is so tight you can’t make room for a fringe spot start without a DFA gamble, you’ve probably misallocated low-end roster capital.
Thought it said Cheapskate Baysox read too fast