Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today's games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Thanks for being here. The newest member of the Tigers' bullpen is a hard nut to crack.
That's right, last night the team that was all about "pitching chaos" in its run to October last year added a chaotic creature to the mix when a squirrel teamed up with the relievers in the bullpen dugout in the outfield at Comerica Park.
The bushy-tailed critter took an eventful trip around the outfield first, greeting Riley Greene before moving on to the fence along the warning track, where Tyler Holton got quite the fright. The squirrel then scaled the chain-link and moseyed its way into the bullpen dugout, where it spent the rest of the game among the Detroit relievers. |
And everyone (except Holton, of course), seemed to enjoy the company. Tommy Kahnle was even dubbed the "squirrel whisperer" for his fearless encounters with the creature.
"He kept coming back to me," Kahnle said. "He liked me. I don't know."
"Tommy didn't have a lot of friends growing up," fellow reliever Will Vest joked, "so he talked to squirrels." Kahnle's new buddy wasn't even the only squirrel that popped its head up around baseball last night, with a particularly muscular one also showing up at Citizens Bank Park. We tend to keep track of these sorts of things, so if you want to see what other non-squirrel animals have taken a big league field in the past (geese, raccoons and snakes, oh my!), check it out here.
In an effort to elicit some groans from you, venerable readers (and editors!), we'll leave you with two puns that snuck their way into various places on MLB.com last night: The Nutty Throwfessor, and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullpenwinkle.
Yeah, we know, pretty acorny.
-- Scott Chiusano |
- Pirates @ D-backs (Live! Right now! On MLB.TV): The D-backs would love nothing more than to bounce back quickly from last night's loss, in which the Pirates erased a six-run deficit with nine runs in the last four frames. But waiting for them this afternoon is Paul Skenes, who appears to have gotten right back on track after a few erratic (for him) outings. A win gets Arizona back to .500.
- Cardinals @ Orioles (6:35 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): The O's modest weekend win streak -- a season-high three games -- may be over, but they continue to see encouraging signs from Jackson Holliday, perhaps their biggest key to a turnaround. The former No. 1 overall pick, still just 21, is hitting .302 with a .509 slugging percentage in his last 11 games. Mike Petriello sifted through Statcast's newly unveiled swing metrics to break down exactly what Holliday has been doing differently and why it bodes well for him and the O's.
- Blue Jays @ Rangers (8:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Good news, Corey Seager fans: The two-time World Series MVP is officially back from the IL, and the Rangers should benefit right away. With Seager in the lineup, Texas has gone 15-11 and scored a full run per game more than without him (12-18). For the Jays, meanwhile, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has reached in 27 straight games, MLB's longest active streak.
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Pranks and organized sports go together like peanut butter and jelly, and it's no different in The Show. Of course, like anything else, some teams are better at it than others. No. 12 Milwaukee prospect Logan Henderson, just three starts into his career, found out the hard way this weekend that the Brewers are among the best.
You see, before throwing five shutout innings against the Orioles, the 23-year-old right-hander was two minutes behind the scheduled start time when he threw his first pitch. That's a major no-no in the Major Leagues, what with all of the TV obligations and commercial breaks timed just about to the nanosecond these days -- at least that's what he'd been led to believe. For this grave mistake, when Henderson arrived to the visiting clubhouse at PNC Park a couple days later, he found a letter from the MLB Commissioner's Office on a chair in front of his locker. Inside the envelope was a fine for $5,000.
"I'd been in the big leagues maybe 10-11 days at that point, so it hit hard," Henderson said. "I was more defeated than anything. I knew I started late, but I was thinking, [$5,000] is pretty steep."
As Adam McCalvy details in his latest Brewers Beat newsletter, Henderson's teammates and coaches waited two days before finally letting him in on the gag, not wanting to ruin his concentration before his next start Sunday (5 IP, 1 ER, by the way), as Henderson had planned to write a letter to the Commissioner's Office pleading his case on Saturday night.
It should come as no surprise that the Brewers are an elite-level pranking team, not when their manager, Pat Murphy, has more than a few victims of his own.
When Murphy was Milwaukee's bench coach, he had convinced first-round pick Sal Frelick that he was the team's videographer -- for nearly all of Spring Training. He also repeatedly sent pitcher Aaron Ashby running into the clubhouse for spikes in preparation for pinch-hitting at-bats that were never going to happen.
"Murph is the master of that stuff," said pitching coach Jim Henderson.
-- Ed Eagle
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Baseball's a sport where you fail more times than you succeed, and it humbles you. What's beautiful about it, though, is there's always another chance to make a big play or get a big hit. And even at your lowest point, your teammates will be there to pick you up.
That was the case for Marlins rookie infielder Ronny Simon, who had tears in his eyes as he was taken out of the game after making three errors in the span of three innings last night. But the 25-year-old had the full-throated support of his teammates and manager afterward.
"I said, 'I know you're not trying to do any of that behind me,'" starting pitcher Max Meyer said. "'Keep your head up, and I obviously know you always want to have my back, and I'm going to try to get yours.'"
Even a superstar on the opposing side had a positive message to pass along.
"Everyone who's won a Gold Glove or Platinum Glove has had one of those nights," Fernando Tatis Jr. (who has both of those awards to his name) said. "I definitely know he's a great player."
Here's to better days ahead for Simon.
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