Designed to break your heart - the 2026 MLB regular season thread

Opening Day is less than a week away!

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”

Joe Castiglione reading this in 2024

https://i.postimg.cc/Gtj09X13/IMG-1317.gif

Play ball.

It is, it is, with time out now and again for some fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWQmXFMZUMc

i wonder how ball/strike challenges will impact umps calling anything near the zone a strike on 3-0 and the zone shrinking on 0-2. like i wonder if it will be an unwritten rule that you don't challenge those calls. i guess it will be situational.

like i wonder if it will be an unwritten rule that you don't challenge those calls

god, I hope not

Chris Sale already said he wouldn’t challenge anything

Tyler O’ Neill home run opening day: y/n?

Roki Sasaki 15 earned runs in 8 2/3 spring innings, 2.77 WHIP

Slotted as #3 starter, I believe

it seems weird that not every team is playing on opening day. i didn't check every team but i noticed that KC/ATL doesn't start until friday

I read six teams aren't starting until Friday. It was to give NBC an exclusive window in prime time.

that's lame

The Yankees and Giants are off on Sunday too.

i read that it used to be tradition that the reds would always play first, guess that went out the window!

Speaking of the Reds, did we all see Joey Votto’s gift to them for opening day?

https://www.mlb.com/amp/news/joey-votto-gifts-street-clock-to-reds-at-great-american-ball-park.html

https://www.bajablasthomeruns.com/

ugh Bert Kreischer this season is doomed

first walk of the season drawn by . . . luis arraez!

I can't recall a time ever when the Giants opened up the season first, and it's been probably a decade since they opened at home.

My thoughts as well.

I don’t have Netflix and thought I could piggyback on my brother's account, like I have done in the past but they locked me out. $8 wouldn't kill me but nah.

golden sombrero for Judge while every other Stankee is the reincarnation of Roberto Clemente

So, sounds like the Netflix broadcast was not popular

it made roughly $1m for each team, which is clearly all that matters

Watched I think a couple of innings and then went to sleep, opening day to forget. This is all my fault, the last time I watched the Giants open their season against the Yankees they also got shit on. Apparently I missed Bonds show up, drop a nuke that he almost signed with the Yankees, and leave again lol

https://bsky.app/profile/lukeknox.me/post/3kbnxlj5s6h2d

Ozuna loudly booed at Citi field

Nbc announcers spotlighting a betting parlay for the game feels like a new low.

yeah, i was watching a mlb highlight reel of the opening game yesterday, and it showed a ABS challenge (called strike; upheld as it just caught in the zone) and the announcer was like ".....and if you bet on the first ABS in MLB being upheld...you would be a winner" or something.

thanks

honestly would love to get a 30-second break from each game and just show me a live feed of a near-empty casino at 5 am with one dude and a bucket of tokens, just feeding the slot machine and staring at his phone

IT'S BIG BALL CHUNKY TIME

Skenes gave up 5 runs in the bottom of the first and then got pulled after the Mets batted around!

“As we go to commercial break, we’d like to congratulate those of you who took that parlay where Skenes would give up 5 runs and be taken out after two-thirds of an inning. Enjoy your payout and we’ll be right back.”

Tbf, those runs sounded like a team effort (I missed the first few runs tho)

Just saw the boxscore for Skenes...yikes--hope he's not hurt.

He looked ok. Think it was just bad luck/ one of those games

america's feelings are hurt due to the iran war fuckup and the it's affecting skenes as well

Mets lineup is very sexy

Carson Benge’s first big league hit is a home run

that's my boy!

unintentionally funny and interesting piece of cards radio commentary from ricky horton

“a bad day to be a reliever….and a bad day to be in this city"

however, we’re in the middle of cardinals devil magic comeback against the rays so all is well

jj wetherholt will be mvp by 2030, easy, i’m calling it now, no problem

this guy jj wetherholt, he can’t miss

Skubal today: 6 innings, 3 hits, 6 K, no walks, no earned runs. Without any recency bias whatsoever, I am officially declaring him the best pitcher in baseball.

Cubs extending Nico Hoerner

The dodgers still looking very dodgery

Man its good to be back

was at the game today, pretty great atmosphere, I really love going to opening day because it comes right as the weather starts getting better, it's nice to see all these people around again

did not appreciate that it was against the White Sox, aren't opening day games supposed to be divisional??? oh well, we beat the hell outta them, notched 20 strikeouts which is apparently tied for a Brewer record

15 teams in each league means at least one game has to be intraleague, I guess

A lot of solid debuts today… Wetherholt, McGonigle, Benge & DeLauter

Just watched Jeff Kent chatting it up with Kruk and Kuip in the broadcast booth, he was smiling his head off and in great form, which I gather is not vmic for him

are the giants going to score this year

Nope

cubs having two 10-game winning streaks and one 10-game losing streak in their first 54 games is . . . something

the entire american league is garbage apart from three teams (and i'm not really sold on cleveland)

while the mets are indeed laughable what on earth is going on with the tigers

like 15 players on the IL iirc

rub some dirt on it

Best smile in baseball: Jesús Sánchez. (Grand slam last night, having an excellent season.)

Love him! Against the old team too

So do I--he's just so much fun (or at least he is when he's hitting so well--I'm a terrible person.)

who would have guessed that once he was cured of ringworm, Tatis Jr. would transform into Tony Gwynn

One crucial difference, Tony Gwynn hit home runs once in awhile

I have very specific fantasy team-related interest in Fernando, and I watched every single one of his extra base hits linked from the spray chart on his savant page. Hoo boy…no lift and no power.

Here's one for you Ohtani is the greatest player of all-time folks:

As of yesterday Shohei was leading MLB in bWAR (3.9).

...but with his gem that he pitched today, Cris Sanchez may overtake Ohtani in TOTAL WAR (offense + pitching) despite not hitting.

I estimate Sanchez is at 4.6, but will need to check tomorrow am to verify.

(Sanchez has pitched 79.1 innings vs. Ohtani's 49.0)

ok, looks like Shohei's been lurking in this thread.

🤫😎

Best player of all time? Ohtani's not even the best player on his own team! Before yesterday, Andy Pages had a higher bWAR than Ohtani! Obviously Ohtani's talents are way overhyped. PAY ANDY PAGES.

Cristopher Sánchez is on track for a Carlton/Gooden season in the WAR department. (He can't possibly keep this up, though.)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/27/hardly-anyone-watches-baseball-in-the-uk-so-why-do-we-keep-speaking-its-language

The Rays playing in St Pete is definitely like Grimsby Town’s ground being not in Grimsby but in Cleethorpes

xp this is erasure of me

...anddddd there it is:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/war/leaders

congrats 2 Cris Sanchez: you win Cy, MVP and best player of all-time.

why are the dodgers paying ohtani $2m a year when they are getting just as much production from andy pages who they only need to pay $800k a year?

How bad can an MLB player hit in 2026 and stay in the lineup?

dear god: Ke'Bryan Hayes, 3B, Cincinnati Reds (.142/.195/.225, 17 OPS+)

You can add Tyler O'Neill to that piece's list. After 107 PA: .161/.271/.237, 47 OPS+.

and i don't think you can call tyler o'neill a great defender

odd to see the pirates make an appropriate personnel decision in dumping hayes last summer

speaking of which, the rangers dfa'd cutch : /

Didn't read the piece, so I missed the defensive part of it...I do seem to, in general, notice more hideously low batting averages around the league than normal.

iirc batting average was last lower than this in 1968

League wide OBP is .318 so far, 1968 was .299. Slugging almost 50 points higher.

1/3rd of the way through 2026... what are some of your biggest surprises?

Riley Greene, fresh after smashing 36 homers, going Full 1984 Dave Winfield to successfully sacrifice power for average, can be added to the list

Tatis' first dinger is 451 ft

there are the seeds of a very embarrassing “shirts off” movement in stl

― z_tbd, Saturday, May 16, 2026 2:50 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

these guys were chanting overrated at PCA last night just before he hit a big HR directly into the shirtless crowd. then the guy who caught the ball tried to throw it back but couldn’t hit the field. in an ideal world this would kill off the movement but we do not live in an ideal world

Kinda sad development in Pittsburgh this morning: Carmen Mlodzinski, one of their journeymen guys trying to break into the rotation, got demoted to long relief despite pitching fairly well (3.76 ERA, 1.42 WHIP, 4W-3L) and was unhappy about it... which looking at the Pirates SP roster, perhaps he has a right to?

Nevertheless he was told he'd be the long relief guy after Jared Jones' start but then come game day, didn't report to the game on time. So the Bucs moved him to the restricted list. With that and Konnor Griffin's sudden move to the IL makes me worried about the state of the team.

The Pirates have Carmen Mlodzinski and Jhostynxon García? They're hogging all the good letters.

i'm not sure why they didn't simply send bubba chandler to the bullpen, but he's never really worked in relief. between chandler sucking and jones likely being on an innings limit, mlodzinski was likely to get a lot of action -- i think the pirates merely valued his versatility!

also as a former first-rounder he's not exactly a journeyman. but i don't think quitting on yr team is likely to make anyone want him in their rotation . . . and it certainly hasn't gone over well with pirate fans

this is an interesting if not particularly user-friendly project: https://boxscore.online

among other things it highlights rarity/oddity; supposedly luis castillo's line of 5 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 3K for the mariners today has never happened before in 222,444 previous games: https://boxscore.online/game/823133

separately, if you miss old-school newspaper box scores with league leaders and such, there's this: https://boxscore.email/mlb (a slightly different formatting is at https://boxscore.email/mlb?paper=1)

that is awesome

This is nice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8dbdCwC1bg

Guy in the crowd wearing a Carlton jersey!

Hadn't thought about his injury issues since 2023:

https://www.mlb.com/news/aaron-judge-diagnosed-with-stress-fracture-in-ribs

playing with a broken rib for a whole month… damn

between this and the shit they did with anthony rizzo a few years back i am coming to question the yankees medical staff

no idea what the extent of Judge's injury is but when I had a broken rib there was nothing to do: Maybe kt tape (placebo effect?), rest and try not to cough or sneeze. it sucked until one day it didn't.

how did you break your rib?

crashing into the barriers in a criterium

classic shasta

judge says he might have injured it diving for a ball

when are they gonna transition judge into a permaDH?

I fell off a bike and dislodged a rib a couple years ago. They told me it would heal by itself and that coughing/sneezing would be painful. It was a couple weeks before I could run again and maybe 6 weeks to get back to doing workouts. It was more uncomfortable than anything else.

in st louis, ricky horton is struggling to say, in so many ways, how he feels about the boys in the RF stands. they are not the shirts off crew, they are the tarps off crew (currently chanting ‘mvp’ for jordan walker as he rounds the bases). today ricky can’t stop talking about how sunny it is in st louis, and whether the boys have enough sunscreen out there. horton is working with some other less experienced radio broadcaster who is listening respectfully and quietly as horton mentions this every single inning. ricky horton pitches a kiosk - funded by horton and the unnamed rookie broadcaster - with sunscreen. for the tarps off drew. in the background, before the walker hr, you could hear the tarps off crowd chanting “take it off! take it off! take it off!” at someone for about 20 seconds, followed by an uproar of applause. ricky horton mentions a new idea to the rookie broadcaster: ricky is going to go his car. get his sunscreen (at least 30+ SPF, of course). and then go straight to the tarps off section and give that bottle of sunscreen to them. he is worried about the boys. and he likes their energy. the rookie mentions the baseball game. no, no says ricky. if mike shannon were here he would have loved it too

I enjoyed listening to Shannon on MLB audio his last couple of years. Was only aware of him a little from baseball cards.