MLB Player News

Teel and Quero are the big names here, as they are two of the top catching prospects in baseball. Both have a chance to make their MLB debut this summer, with Teel being the better bet for fantasy success early on. That’s more compliment to Teel than insult to Quero.

Fermín has never homered in 140 major league plate appearances. He’s never even had a barrel, though today’s would have qualified. He homered eight times in 61 Triple-A games last year, and he has hit a ball as hard as 105.7 mph in the majors and 109.0 mph in Triple-A, so he’s not entirely without power. Still, contact is the name of the game for the 25-year-old; he struck out just 9.2% of the time in Triple-A last year and has come in at 13.6% so far in the majors. Assuming that they follow through on demoting the loser of the center field battle between Victor Scott II and Michael Siani, there will be one spot on the Cardinals bench open for Fermín or José Barrero. Fermín is likely the better player of those two, though he might not get many chances to prove it.

Mikolas’s velocity was down some today, so he might have hit the dead-arm portion of his spring. He was doing fine in that regard until this outing, but his average fastball checked in at 90.6 mph today, down 2.6 mph from last year.

Gillispie has middle reliever-type stuff, but he’s probably going to open up as the Marlins’ fifth starter in Edward Cabrera’s absence. He’s allowed just the one run through 12 innings this spring.

Iván Herrera should be one of baseball’s best offensive catchers, but the Cardinals will surely play Pagés quite a bit anyway, since the defensive gulf between the two is pretty wide. Pagés isn’t hopeless offensively, either; he strikes out a little off often and he’s never going to hit for much of an average, but he does have a decent pop. He’s at .241/.313/.414 this spring.

Boone added that Goldschmidt continues receiving treatment to address back soreness that cropped up earlier this week and expects him to return on Thursday or Friday. It’s definitely not an encouraging development for fantasy purposes that the 37-year-old veteran is dealing with back issues heading into Opening Day, but it doesn’t sound like he’s in danger of requiring a trip to the injured list.

The one hit he allowed was a Nick Castellanos solo shot. Harrington, the 36th overall pick in the 2022 draft, could make his major league debut in the Pirates rotation sometime in the first half of the season. He’s not a big upside guy, but excellent command of average stuff should make him a useful big leaguer.

Sánchez allowed four hits, walked none and fanned two. 45 of his 61 pitches were strikes. With his velocity up about 1.5 mph from last year, he looks like one of the NL’s best pitchers right now.

That’s better. Bednar had given up seven runs in his previous two appearances, and this makes just the second time in seven spring outings that he’s retired the side in order. Unfortunately, his velocity is still down 1.5 mph from last year, and we’re not sure whether he’ll be able to flip the switch once the games start to matter. His stock remains well down.

As the farewell tour enters year three, it’s pretty obvious that the Pirates could do better at DH than McCutchen without even spending much more money, if only the team was about winning in the first place. It’s not the McCutchen is abysmal, at least not yet. He managed a 112 OPS+ in 2023 and a 105 OPS+ at age 37 last season. Still, he had easily the highest strikeout rate of his career last year, and he’s struggling to hold up physically even as a DH. Things could come crashing down this season.

Corbin’s arrival provides the Rangers with an experienced back-end rotation stabilizer until Jon Gray (wrist) and Cody Bradford (elbow) are ready to return. We’re assuming that Jack Leiter’s rotation spot is secure following a strong spring, but the 35-year-old veteran’s presence puts some added pressure on Kumar Rocker in the lead up to Opening Day. It’s possible Texas will roll with a six-man rotation, but unless that happens, Rocker is likely the odd-man out. Corbin remains a perfectly cromulent innings-eater at this advanced stage of his career, but he offers virtually zero fantasy appeal after posting a lackluster 5.62 ERA, 1.50 WHIP and 139/54 K/BB ratio across 174 2/3 innings (32 starts) last year for the Nationals.