Here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world today:
1. deGrom still waiting for season debut:
Rangers veteran Jacob deGrom was slated to make his season debut over the weekend, but was scratched from his scheduled start due to a neck issue. Via Shawn McFarland of the Dallas Morning News, manager Skip Schumaker indicated that deGrom could still make his first start of the year during the club’s current series in Baltimore. Righty Jack Leiter has already been announced as today’s starter, but deGrom could start tomorrow’s game against Orioles righty Zach Eflin or pitch Wednesday versus lefty Trevor Rogers. The 37-year-old deGrom enjoyed his first full season of the decade in 2025, making 30 starts for the first time since winning the NL Cy Young Award in 2019. The righty’s 2.97 ERA and 3.64 FIP weren’t quite the same level as his peak, but that’s still clearly front-of-the-rotation production the Rangers are counting on as they look to return to the playoffs this year.
2. Murakami kicks off MLB career with homer streak:
Longtime NPB slugger and current White Sox rookie Munetaka Murakami exploded onto the stateside scene over the weekend, hitting home runs in three consecutive games against the Brewers to kick off his MLB career. The corner infielder took a deal well below expectations with Chicago due to concerns about his contact rate and defensive ability. Those concerns will take a lot more than one series to fade, but there was never any doubt about his prodigious power. That’s absolutely played so far, and when the White Sox head to Miami to face Chris Paddack (5.35 ERA in 2025) Murakami will look to extend his career-opening homer streak to four games. That game is scheduled to take place at 6:40pm local time in Miami this evening, with Davis Martin (4.10 ERA in 2025) set to take the mound opposite Paddack.
3. Key starters making team debuts:
As the first turn through the rotation of the 2026 season continues, a number of impact starters will make their first starts with new teams today. Cubs right-hander Edward Cabrera (3.53 ERA in 2025) will take on the Angels at 6:40pm local time in Chicago, while the Red Sox will send southpaw Ranger Suarez (3.20 ERA in 2025) to the mound against the Astros at 7:10pm local time in Houston. Ryan Weathers (3.99 ERA in eight starts last year) will make his Yankees debut against the Mariners at 6:40pm Seattle time, while Paddack (Marlins), Walker Buehler (Padres), Nick Martinez (Rays), and Kyle Harrison (Brewers) are among the other starters making team debuts. It’s not quite a team debut, but Justin Verlander (3.85 ERA in 2025) is slated to make his first start for the Tigers since 2017 at 7:10pm local time in Phoenix against Diamondbacks righty Michael Soroka (who is making his own debut for the Snakes).
Well we have half the bullpen unavailable. Nice
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The first week of the MLBTR Fans Fantasy League is in the books!
Here’s your first week results:
Salzilla 6 RunDMC 3
Ignorant SOB 8 WadeBoggsWildRide 3
FLANSTER 9 MeowMeow 2
Oppo Nacho 9 Sean P 1
StudWinfield 8 Stpofsd 3
Gwnning 5 lwalt27 5
Trades:
Yesavage for Benge/Burnes
Strahm for Sasaki
Rasmussen for Bohm/Cavalli
The tie was in honor of Spring Training! Or Bud Selig calling off the ASG 😆
Nice! Too late to start a second league? We just met in Boston for our law school alum fantasy league. So actually know stuff now
You guys should not only post your weekly transactions, but also rumored transactions so the peanut gallery can weigh in. An MLBTR playa trade rumors board. How meta is that?
Too late to start a second yeah, but stay tuned to the Opener on Mondays where I’ll be posting updates. You never know if we’ll have an opening!
I think as I go here, we’ll post more and more insights. I feel like it’s a pretty rad look into Fantasy from a MLBTR fans perspective.
Sounds like fun. What format and how did you guys run it? A Yahoo type auto draft? Maybe we can rouse another 12 clubs on short notice to set up an in process league since you’re also h2h. We’d be the AFL to your NFL
Tonight’s rumored trade offer is Kyle Manzardo & Andrew Painter for Nick Kurtz and Jason Adam…
Team A needs the SP upgrade and a replacement firstbaseman, Team B would welcome the offense and bullpen upgrades. Stay tuned Theo!
Looks like 12 Categories H2H
Anyone else here want to start another 12 person league? Can do an auto draft – we’re only 2 weeks in and can then have our AFL champ take on their champ Joe Namath style
you guys got a league going? nice
winner gets bragging rights on these boards for the next year haha
Sean and I are just following the Red Sox example when it comes to scoring…
Sasaki starting too
One weekend into the season and the Lords of Baseball already have umpiring issues. C.B. Bucknor had 6 ball/strike calls reversed by ABS in the Boston-Cincinnati game on Saturday.
Add to that a ridiculous called third strike on Trevor Story, and he didnt even ask for help from the first base ump, like he’s suppose to.
On a counter point, in the same game, the Red Sox were foolish for losing both of their challenges by the 2nd inning. Otherwise Bucknor probably would have had 3 or 4 more overturns.
ABS should call all the Balls/Strikes and Bucknor (63yo) should call it a career.
I felt bad for the Sox not having their challenges cause his zone was garbage, but I guess that’s part of the learning curve.
Bucknor has been horrible for well over a decade. He’s a big reason why the automation movement picked up steam.
West and Hernandez are gone. Bucknor and Eddings are the two other horrendous umps from that era.
Vid on the ball/strike calls in Reds/Red Sox game yesterday:
youtube.com/watch?v=chIh0Zvp1wE
@HalosHeaven: Don’t forget Laz Diaz.
Good call.
Its a mistake getting behind this ABS in any way.
Use it to audit umps, demote them if they are posting extraneous accuracies but the ABS is not only degrading the respectability of the game, it can and will be gamed by pitchers.
I also believe it will eventually lead to hitters having such a keen understanding of their strike zone that they will eventually develop the ability to hone
-in in a way that they really can’t when their zone is warbled game to game by the unique intricacies of an umpire’s strike zone.
Chase rates will go down, walks will increase, BA will increase. Long games that will make the pitch clock seem foolish.
Hitters will eventually be taught to hit in an upright stance to take away the high strike call. Everybody will, in time, have the same approach at the plate.
It isnt a small change to the game, it is in my opinion the eradication of the spirit of the game.
Im against the ABS. Its a trojan horse and it will destroy baseball.
Umpires like Bucknor, West, Eddings, Diaz, and Hernandez brought this on the game. Their strike zones were whatever they decided they wanted them to be.
If West didn’t like a pitcher, he’d call a heater over the middle of the plate a ball. If he didn’t like a hitter a ball two feet off the plate was a strike. And there was nothing anybody could do about it.
The vast majority of the umpires do/did a great job. But when the union refused to cut loose the egregious ones they created the demand for technology that could overrule them.
That isnt all together true.
You are singling out umpires who have been railed on and its more or less crowd mentality.
Its like that scene in the movie, “Clerks” when the Chewly’s gum representative starts picking on Dante for selling cigarettes, all the patrons in the store join in berating him. When the gum representative is thrown out of the store, one of the guys who had joined in on the outlash goes up to the counter and says, “pack of cigarettes”
There is no demand for the technology, it is being injected into the game by brute force. Players and umpires fear they will be ostracized for opposing it.
Umpires are the physical presence of fairness on the field, are charged with upholding decorum, the strike zone and the umpires unique character are part of what makes the game great.
The strike three call is one of the best moments of the game, no matter what the score is. Going to lose that with the ABS.
Clerks has nothing to do with it. To make your scenario realistic: What if the industry invented the perfect filter that never let tar and nicotine to reach the lungs, would you say “There is no demand for the technology, it is being injected into the game by brute force” No, of course not.
Umpires are flawed, computers are not. Let the umpire move off to the side and monitor catcher interference, check swings and other matters, let ABS do balls and strikes.
I will not watch baseball until they go full ABS.
Absolutely no excuse.
Absolutely no excuse for what? Humanity and fair play?
Umpires are charged with keeping the game honest, for maintaining decorum on the field and for promoting good sportsmanship amongst the players.
The ABS makes them a formality. Their heart, their spirit, in everyway is fairness, honesty, repsectability and sportsmanship. Take away the umps and those principals will be uprooted too.
How can the umpires be the physical presence for fairness when they are guys like Bucknor, West, and Hernandez?
If those guys called fair, accurate strike zones the contingent of fans who want automation would be a small minority. Instead most of us like it.
Thus far the only significant strike three call to get overturned was an incorrect one on Eugenio Suarez.
Fans of the “let umpires do whatever they want” version of the game always point out that automation makes us lose the “human element” of the game. The umpires aren’t supposed to be the humans who decide the game but in far too many cases they were.
Fans want the players to be the humans who decide the outcomes of games. We also realize that tracking a 98 MPH pitch at 2400+ RPM is a really freaking hard thing to do. So getting some help actually creates fairness.
I can say I sat directly behind the ABS guys in the press box this year and the home plate umpires are using the system to help themselves. They will talk to the techs between innings and ask about certain calls. The good umps (as almost all are) want to get the calls right. And if they do ABS will be a non factor.
It is odd how resistant to change baseball is. I like the watching the tennis majors and essentially everyone is cool with the automatic line calls.
@JJ – that is mostly bullhonk.
Accepting this ABS as an umpire is mostly about toeing the company line.
Umpires call their zone, they do their best to call it consistently, fairly, honestly, while using their authority to maintain decorum, fair play and good sportsmanship.
Has an ump rail roaded a player or a team for getting out of line, sure, but they dont hold grudges and there authority is never totalitarian.
It’s that spirit that ABS brings to the game. Totalitarian authority. There are six umpires on the field.
That is all I have to say about it really. It isn’t a small issue. Making it out to be about spin rates and CB Bucknor is mostly diversion. Its a convenient argument for an intrusion that should have every fan, every player, concerned as much as every umpire is.
“Has an ump rail roaded a player or a team for getting out of line, sure, but they dont hold grudges”
ABS will never rail road anyone, and of course umps hold grudges, they’re human beings.
Cody Ponce also debuts today
Bucknor is finally being exposed for his incompetence behind the plate. Expect this to be a regular feature.
Bucknor has been the worst ump in the league since the early 2000’s.
….and compounds it with the self righteous attitude during games. I totally get missing balls and strikes—that has to have a degree of difficulty even at that level. Some miss more than others—and some, like Bucknor just don’t seem to give two hoots on the field about those misses. Hoping now that the data will level thing out.
There have been times I’ve watched a game on TV not knowing who the umpires are, and a blatantly bad call is made, and 9 times out of 10, it has been Bucknor.
The last Rays game I went to he was an ump, and I booed like hell when they announced his name. He did, or course, blow a call or two. I know Hernandez has been bad, but I’ve always thought that Bucknor was head and shoulders worse than anyone.
I think you’re right that this new technology, albeit from the devil Manfraud himself, will root some of the bad ones like Bucknor out.
Bucknor has definitely deserved far more heat than he received. Everyone pointed at Hernandez while Bucknor was just as bad or worse.
Now that Hernandez is gone more people are starting to realize just how bad Bucknor is.
Teams, scouts so silly to dismiss murakami.
He is living up to the potential so far & exceeding it
Knock against him was not being able to hit high velocity. All his hits/HRs off of cutters or sub-standard fastball.
We shall see how he performs. MLB may have indeed short-changed Murakami but way too early to determine that.
He’ll walk and strike out a ton but we’ll see how the numbers shake out.
There are zillion guys who started off hot. The league adjusts to them, finds a weakness, and most turn back into pumpkins. A long ways to go yet.
Murakami has also struck out 31% of the time so far. There was a reason most teams said no thank you and that reason was a combination of high strike out rates and bad defense. The White Sox are a team that really has nothing to lose if he is bad.
ENOUGH about strikeouts for f sake
3 home runs in 3 games, .538 OBP, 1.872 OPS
only juiced up bonds can claim those #s
ask every single organization right now, they are slapping themselves for not signing this guy. he was right there for the taking. for years he was hyped. then suddenly out of the blue EVERY TEAM passed. in 2 years he’s gonna get PAID
@salem….only Bonds and probably 18,000+ players can claim those #s in any three game stretch.
I’m guessing not a single franchise is questioning themselves on a three game sample size.
Probably the only team that should be questioning the move is actually the White Sox because his three game homer barrage only has them losing by an average of 6 runs a game.
Perhaps a pitcher would help more???
Based on 3 games? You can’t be serious. His spring training stats were mediocre which is over a longer sample size. Still way too early.
Uh in his 3rd game today with the Nats Joey Wiemer is batting 1.000 with 2 HRs and an OPS over 3! Murakami is a piker 🙂
36% strike outs in MLB. 40% whiff rate on fastballs of 95+. That is why no contending teams even made him an offer and he was forced to play for the White Sox.
In 2 years he will be out of work in MLB if he can’t figure out how to hit gas.
Those numbers from his first 3 games have now been cut almost in half after 6 because he went 2 for 12 with 5 strike outs, no walks and no XBH against the Marlins.
White Sox might have gotten quite the steal with Murakami but I’d feel more comfortable saying it a month or two into the season especially considering he has struck out four times in three games.
He’s also walked four times.
.000 BABIP seems unsustainable.
They didn’t call him Tokyo TTO for nuthin’.
Maybe he finishes the year .000 but with prodigious SLG. How fun would that be?
Uh, can’t tell if you’re joking. He’s only had 13 plate appearances. If you exclude the 4 BBs, 4 Ks and 3 HRs that 0.000 BABIP is based on 2 balls in play ABs.
It’s very much a joke, sir. It’s a comment on the meaninglessness of small sample sizes framed in style of those lazy comments that cherry pick one stat.
The moment I wrote it I knew it could be ambiguous considering where we are but then I decided that’s part of the fun.
Joey Wiemer with an 837 OPS+
Not bad
Jacob DeIL
deGrom is hurt. Glad to see everything’s back to normal for him.
they are boarding up the stores on the southside, Murakami Fever is airborne and contagious!