AL East

Baltimore Orioles slugger Trey Mancini has accepted an invitation to participate in the 2021 MLB Home Run Derby at Coors Field during All-Star week, according to Roch Kubatko of MASN Sports.

Trey Mancini will participate in the Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game in Denver, per sources. As @danconnolly2016 reported. Brandon Hyde hadn't heard the news yet. Said "that would be a great experience for Trey."

— Roch Kubatko (@masnRoch) June 26, 2021

Mancini, who was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2020, is enjoying a productive season at the plate in 2021 after being declared cancer-free in November. The 29-year-old has 14 home runs in 75 games this season while slashing .256/.332/.460.

Asked earlier this season if he had any interest in the Derby, Mancini told reporters he wouldn't hesitate to join the field.

"I would love it," Mancini told Dan Connolly of The Athletic. "... I'd definitely do it."

He'll certainly have his work cut out for him in Denver as reigning Home Run Derby champion Pete Alonso of the New York Mets returns to defend his title. They'll be joined by Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani.

Five spots remain in the Derby, though sluggers Aaron Judge, Fernando Tatis Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Gary Sanchez have already said they will not partake this time around.

It's unclear who will fill out the field; however, Kyle Schwarber, Matt Olson, Adolis Garcia and Jesse Winker may find themselves in a position to accept an invitation as they continue to rake this season. Still, the best story will no doubt be Mancini, who 15 months after his diagnosis has returned to baseball only to continue teeing off on opposing pitchers.

Now he'll get to do it on one of his sport's biggest stages.

Wander Franco finally made his long-awaited MLB debut on Tuesday, and the card memorializing the moment set a new sales record, according to Darren Rovell of Action Network.

His Topps Now debut card sold 61,035 copies in one day. In his impressive first appearance, he recorded his first major league hit on a game-tying three-run home run. The Rays eventually fell to the Boston Red Sox 9-5 in 11 innings. 

JUST IN: Wander Franco debut card breaks 24 hour @Topps Now sales record. 61,305 of these cards were ordered in a single day. pic.twitter.com/joahgG1UBI

— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) June 24, 2021

"In that at-bat I actually knew I was going to hit a home run because that was the pitch I was looking for,'' Franco told reporters through an interpreter after the game. "I ended up getting the pitch that I was looking for and I was able to help the team out.''

The 20-year-old was the top prospect in MLB when the Tampa Bay Rays called him up in preparation for their crucial AL East series against the Red Sox earlier this week. He hit .315 with seven home runs and 39 RBI with the Triple-A Durham Bulls earlier this year. 

There's a long way still to go, yet Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is making it easy to dream big about the company he might keep by the end of the 2021 Major League Baseball season.

After two good-not-great seasons with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2019 and 2020, the 22-year-old is making a mockery of opposing pitchers by way of a .337 batting average and MLB-leading marks with:

• 23 HR
• 59 RBI
• 169 TB
• .440 OBP
• 1.111 OPS
• 202 OPS+
• 3.8 rWAR

Oh, and he's also leading the American League with a .671 slugging percentage.

As he peaked with a 162 OPS+ in 2000 and 7.4 rWAR in 1998, even Guerrero's Hall of Fame father arguably never had a season like the one his son is having. 

But then, that's nothing to be ashamed of. Because if he stays on this pace, Vladimir Jr. will end up with numbers few others have reached.

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The History within Vlad's Reach

Because he already leads the AL in home runs and runs batted in and is also second to Michael Brantley (.350) in batting average, Guerrero has a shot at baseball's Triple Crown.

If he gets it done, it would mark the 28th Triple Crown season—periodic reminder that the Negro Leagues are now rightfully represented as major leagues—and only the second such winner in the last 54 years. It would be just him and Miguel Cabrera, who achieved the feat amid an MVP season in 2012.

One issue with the Triple Crown, though, is that it measures a hitter's offensive prowess not relative to his historical peers but to that of his contemporaries. Between this and the awkwardly arbitrary nature of judging a hitter strictly by his average, homers and RBI, the Triple Crown is frankly more of an oddity than anything else.

It's more instructive, for example, to point out that Guerrero could become only the 23rd player in modern history to finish with a .330/.440/.650 batting line. And since Juan Soto achieved his .351/.490/.695 line last season in only 47 games, Guerrero would be the first to do so over a full season since Albert Pujols slashed .357/.462/.653 in 2008.

Mind you, baseball's offensive environment has changed a lot since 2008. The average line that year was .264/.333/.416, compared to .239/.313/.400 in 2021. Because that's life when strikeouts are historically prevalent and teams have mastered infield shifts.

As it adjusts for offensive environments and park factors, this is where OPS+ is helpful. And if Guerrero can keep his OPS+ over 200 for the full season, he would be the first to do so since Barry Bonds ended the 2004 campaign with an absurd 263 OPS+.

What would makes things even more interesting, however, is if Guerrero stays on his home run pace.

Because he's hit 23 homers while playing in all 70 of Toronto's games, Guerrero is hitting 0.33 homers per game and therefore on a 162-game pace for 53 home runs. If he gets there, he'd claim just the fifth 50-homer season in the last decade.

He could cross the 50-homer threshold while also maintaining his 200 OPS+. That particular club has only six players in it—and no new members since Bonds and Sammy Sosa joined in 2001.

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Where Did This Version of Vlad Come From?

Because Guerrero comes from baseball royalty and had hit .331/.414/.531 in the minors, it was perhaps inevitable that he would become baseball's hottest hitter.

But to get to this point, he basically had to reinvent himself.

Though Guerrero hardly embarrassed himself as he slashed .269/.336/.442 with a 109 OPS+ in his first two seasons, there were things he clearly needed to do better to live up to the hype that accompanied him when he arrived as baseball's No. 1 prospect.

For starters, he simply needed to get in better shape. And while he clearly had a knack for avoiding strikeouts and generating exit velocity, the former didn't come paired with a talent for drawing walks, while too much of the latter went to waste on the ground.

As if on cue, Guerrero got serious and dropped pounds by the dozens between the end of the 2020 season and the start of the 2021 campaign. The slimmer version of him is undoubtedly better, specifically to the extent that his swing is quicker and more explosive.

It's the kind of difference that you can just, you know, see.

Yet this difference can also be quantified, including with regard to how Guerrero has improved an already sturdy performance against fastballs:

• 2019: .306 AVG, .478 SLG
• 2020: .272 AVG, .472 SLG
• 2021: .399 AVG, .746 SLG

The youngster's strike-zone judgment, meanwhile, now resembles that of a more experienced player in how he's attacking good pitches while letting the bad ones go:

Practically speaking, this has allowed Guerrero to bring his walk percentage (14.3) into closer proximity with his strikeout rate (16.7). It's also a factor behind yet another upward shift in his average exit velocity, which is now in the 99th percentile at 94.8 mph.

The catch should be that Guerrero's average launch angle is still in single digits, but that's misleading. He's doing a much better job of launching balls in the sweet spot, and fly balls and line drives account for a career-high 47.8 percent of his batted balls.

It all adds up to a .437 xwOBA that, like many of his results, is the best mark in MLB. Which is to say: Yeah, Guerrero really is that good right now. 

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Ah, But Can He Avoid the Bellinger Fade?

There is, of course, an obvious problem with projecting Guerrero's numbers after 70 games. He still has 92 games to go, and those won't necessarily look anything like his first 70.

For an appropriate cautionary tale, one only needs to look back to 2019 to find Cody Bellinger.

Like Guerrero has in 2021, the Los Angeles Dodgers star got off to a rip-roaring start with a .355/.452/.701 line and 23 home runs through 70 games. But while he still captured the National League MVP Award, he cooled as he slashed .264/.368/.570 with 24 homers through the end of the season.

Contrary to what one might think, the writing wasn't on the wall that Bellinger was bound to come back down to earth like that. His xwOBA through those first 70 games was a whopping .476. That was 16 points higher than his wOBA at the time, not to mention 39 points north of where Guerrero is now.

But if there are reasons to believe that Guerrero can avoid a similar slide, they start with how he's trending in the opposition direction as Bellinger was then.

Whereas Bellinger's results began declining after a red-hot April, the 1.240 OPS that Guerrero has in June is his best mark of the season. Likewise, his expected results are also in good shape:

As such, perhaps the bigger questions concern whether Guerrero will stay healthy—which is one for the crystal ball—and whether pitchers will continue giving him pitches to hit. On that front, he's already seeing a lesser rate of in-zone pitches in June (46.1 percent) than he did in April and May (47.0 percent).

Guerrero, though, has responded by swinging at 72.3 percent of those offerings after hacking at 71.3 percent in April and May. That's perhaps too slight a difference from which to draw conclusions, but it may indicate greater urgency on his part to try to do damage when opportunity knocks.

In any case, it's hard to find any angles from which Guerrero doesn't look totally locked in. As long as that remains the case, his historic pursuits may indeed reach historic ends.

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Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.

The Toronto Blue Jays' Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will not take part in the 2021 Home Run Derby, the first baseman told sports broadcaster Hazel Mae.

However, he is still planning to participate in the All-Star Game at Denver's Coors Field:

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has decided not participate at this year's Home Run Derby.

He's looking forward to being at the All Star Game in Colorado but told me he'd like to use the time to regroup, refresh mentally for the second half of the season. #BlueJays

— Hazel Mae (@thehazelmae) June 21, 2021

Guerrero currently leads MLB in WAR, OBP and OPS, per Baseball Reference. That's in addition to his MLB-high 59 RBI and 23 home runs, which are tied for the league lead with Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels. Ohtani will be taking part in the Derby, which is slated for Monday, July 12.

Guerrero participated in the 2019 Derby when he was a rookie, reaching the final round before losing to the New York Mets' Pete Alonso. He hit 91 home runs through three rounds, including 40 in the semifinals.

The son of Baseball Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero hit a record 29 in the first round before doing so again in the semis. However, then-Los Angeles Dodgers (and current Chicago Cubs) outfielder Joc Pederson matched his 29 homers, forcing the semis to go to swing-offs. Guerrero won there, 40-39.

Guerrero's prodigious home run power has been nothing short of spectacular this year. Per Baseball Savant, he has the second-fastest exit velocity (94.8 mph) and seventh-strongest hard-hit rate (54.7 percent) in the bigs. His home runs are also traveling an average of 412 feet.

Fans won't get to see Guerrero tee it up at the 2021 Derby, but they'll still get to watch him in the All-Star Game, which is set for Tuesday, July 13.

The top prospect in MLB is in the minors no longer.

The Tampa Bay Rays announced Sunday that they are planning on calling up Wander Franco, who will join the team in Tampa when a crucial American League East battle begins Tuesday against the Boston Red Sox.

Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times was the first to report the news.

The shortstop has appeared in 38 games for Triple-A Durham this season. The 20-year-old is slashing .315/.367/.586 with seven home runs and 35 RBI.

Wander Franco hit two more triples last night.

He has a 13-game hitting streak.

He’s hitting .423 (!!!) in June.

More here: https://t.co/kYMVsBRdnc

(🎥 @DurhamBulls)https://t.co/5wzlPMvefG

— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) June 17, 2021

According to Topkin, the Rays—who have lost their last six games—gave him the news as the Durham Bulls were driving from Virginia to Jacksonville for their next series.

Tampa Bay’s recent skid dropped the Rays out of first place in the AL East. Wander Franco is a potentially transcendent sort of player — the star that the cobble-it-together Rays have lacked for a while now. First with the news of his call-up was @TBTimes_Rays

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) June 21, 2021

"I’m ready to play in the big leagues," Franco said in February via team interpreter Manny Navarro, per Topkin. "I’m ready to achieve the goal that I’ve been trying to achieve since I was a little kid, to make it up to the big leagues."

While he's clearly made an impact for the Bulls this season, the native of the Dominican Republic had never played above High-A ball before this season. He signed with the Rays in 2017 and debuted the following spring, earning Appalachian League Player of the Year honors at the age of 17.

He was among the players named eligible to join the Rays in their run to the 2020 World Series, though he wasn't added to the roster. He also joined the Rays for spring training this season, hitting .257 with a home run and three RBI through 16 games.

The Rays have optioned right-handed pitcher Drew Rasmussen to Triple-A. The team will still have to clear a spot on the 40-man roster by Tuesday in order to promote Franco.

The Red Sox have a half-game lead over the Rays for first place in the division.

The New York Yankees apparently made turning a triple play an area of focus in the offseason.

With runners on first and second and clinging to a 2-1 lead in the ninth inning, the Bronx Bombers turned a Sean Murphy ground ball into three outs to beat the Oakland Athletics on Sunday.

Just ending the game on our daily triple play 🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/Hwt7C8hRqj

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) June 20, 2021

This was the third triple play by the Yankees, tying the MLB record. According to ESPN Stats & Info, the Philadelphia Phillies were the last team to end a game with a triple play when they accomplished the feat against the New York Mets in 2009.

With the victory, New York has won five of its last six games after falling to just one game over .500 following a 7-0 defeat to the Philadelphia Phillies on June 13.

Clearly, the Yankees should try turning triple plays more often.

The New York Yankees returned home to the Bronx on Friday night for what was supposed to be a celebratory homecoming. The COVID-19 restrictions had been lifted, and a full-capacity crowd was expected at Yankee Stadium for the series opener against the Oakland A's.

Instead, only 24,037 showed up, and they booed their own team, as a pitcher who was supposed to wear pinstripes earned the win in Kelly green.

It's tough to know what to make of the Yankees these days. They swept the Toronto Blue Jays this week but were undone by AL West-best A's. The game was mostly tied until the sixth, when Oakland went single-single-home run for a two-out rally and went up 5-3. The team came back home with some swagger after that sweep but was unable to build on that showing.

"You're up against a good opponent, and it's razor-thin," manager Aaron Boone said in his postgame Zoom press conference. "You have two outs, and nobody's on looking like you're going to get out of that inning. So obviously, there is frustration that we didn't pull one out tonight."

Meanwhile, James Kaprielian, once a can't-miss Yankees prospect after New York selected him in the first round of the 2015 draft out of UCLA, earned the win for the A's, limiting the Yankees to three earned runs on three hits over 5.2 innings.

The Yankees gave up Kaprielian in a trade for Sonny Gray in 2017. In New York, Gray was never the ace he was in Oakland. He's now having a career resurgence in Cincinnati, and Kaprielian is doing exactly what he was expected to do in Oakland.

Should they have hung on to Kaprielian?

Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

It probably stings a little considering how little starting pitching depth the Yankees have behind ace Gerrit Cole. The only thing they can do now is try to build on some of the good things they've done lately and wait to see if they can plug some of the holes at the trade deadline at the end of next month.

There is a belief that they can turn things around and start climbing the standings. It's one of the most cliche cliches in the book, but they take it game-by-game and never doubt when they're down, especially since four of the last five wins and six of their last eight have been of the comeback variety.

"I think that confidence is growing within our group," infielder DJ LeMahieu said Friday. "We had the lead, they hit a homer and I felt like we were going to come back one way or another, but we just couldn't put anything together. But I think our confidence is growing from our group in those situations."

So, what is plaguing the Yankees, and what can be done about it?

The Yankees live and die by the home run. They slugged two of them Friday, and they've hit 27 in their last 16 games. But there aren't a lot of rallies like the ones the A's put together in the sixth. They just have to out-slug their opponents on most nights.

This feared lineup wasn't producing offensively to start the season, but it overcame that cold open. LeMahieu, the 2020 American League batting champ, came into the game hitting .306 over his last eight. He went 1-for-4 with a two-run homer against Oakland to improve on those numbers.

"I'm not super hot right now. The ball is not a beachball right now," he said. "But I think I'm where I need to be."

It's where the Yankees need him to be because they aren't getting a lot of production from Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier and Miguel Andujar. But Brett Gardner and Gary Sanchez have been hot as of late, which is a good sign for an offense with the 15th-best OPS that needs to overcome a thin starting rotation.

Jameson Taillon had a good outing, but he's still making adjustments after missing the 2020 season to rehab from Tommy John surgery.

"It's been the in-game execution," Taillon said. "I can play catch with the best of them, I throw great bullpens, but when it comes down to it, you need to make the pitch when the game is on the line and there are runners on base. You have to have that mentality of, 'I'm going to make this pitch, and I'm going to out-execute the hitter.' I feel like, to this point, sometimes that just comes and goes."

The Yankees will rely on Taillon heavily as we get deeper into the summer. With Corey Kluber out and Deivi Garcia getting beat up in Triple-A (1-2, 8.10 ERA, exited after the first inning during last start with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre), Taillon has to remain durable and eat some innings until the Yankees can get some reinforcements.

"Hopefully, I can put my foot down and go back to who I know I can be and who I know I need to be going forward," he said.

So where will these reinforcements come from? The bullpen is the fourth-best in MLB (second-best in the AL), and the Yankees are getting a decent amount of innings from their starting pitchers (361.2), but they have to get innings from somewhere with Corey Kluber (shoulder) and Luis Severino (Tommy John rehab) both out right now.

It's clear they need to target a starter.

They could try to get someone like Matthew Boyd from the Detroit Tigers. The 30-year-old left-hander would help alleviate the pitching situation now and into next season since he's under team control through 2022 (arbitration-eligible this winter).

The big target would be shortstop Trevor Story of the Colorado Rockies. That would solve a lot of their problems. The pressure would be taken off Torres. Rougned Odor is fine off the bench, but Story would put them over the edge.

But taking on Story would require the Yankees to go over the luxury-tax threshold.

The other option is to change managers, but no matter how much fans on Twitter try to get a hashtag trending, it's not going to sway the organization from keeping a manager who is so popular with the players. A managerial change is not the right option to begin with. It might have been George Steinbrenner's preferred way of doing business, but these are different times and chaos is bad for the ballclub. Midseason firings signal chaos.

The Yankees aren't chaotic; they're just in the middle of the pack. There is still time to turn it around, and the performance of some of the hitters as of late indicates that they can right the ship. But they can't do it without some pitching help. After all, this year is all about pitching.

It’s too soon to boo. The Yankees aren't dead in the water yet.

The New York Yankees announced that shortstop Gleyber Torres left his team's road game against the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday with left lower back stiffness (h/t Brendan Kuty of NJ.com). He will be evaluated further on Friday.

Torres is hitting .260 with three home runs and 23 RBI in 59 games. He went 0-for-2 with a strikeout on Thursday before second baseman Rougned Odor replaced him in the lineup. Tyler Wade, who started at second base, moved over to short.

The 24-year-old has been looking to bounce back after a relatively disappointing 2020 campaign. He dealt with both hamstring and quadriceps injuries and finished the year with a .243 batting average and three home runs in 42 appearances.

It was out of character after earning All-Star selections in each of his first two years in the majors. The former top prospect lived up to the hype by finishing third in Rookie of the Year voting in 2018 before getting MVP votes in 2019.

His injuries fit in with the rest of the Yankees, who have had some bad luck in recent years.

Wade should spend time at shortstop if Torres is unavailable. The Yanks start a three-game homestand against the Oakland Athletics on Friday.

New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole is the latest pitcher to express frustration with Major League Baseball's decision to take a hardline stance on all foreign substances being used during games to grip the baseball. 

Speaking to reporters after a 3-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday, Cole urged MLB to "please just work with us" to find a solution:

"It's so hard to grip the ball. For Pete's sake, it's part of the reason why almost every player on the field has had something, regardless if they're a pitcher or not, to help them control the ball.

"We are aligned in a lot of areas with the commissioner's office on this." 

Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Tyler Glasnow told reporters on Tuesday that he had to change the grip on his fastball and curveball because he stopped using sunscreen in anticipation of the rule change. 

"I switched my fastball grip and my curveball grip," Glasnow said. "I had to put my fastball deeper into my hand and grip it way harder. Instead of holding my curveball at the tip of my fingers, I had to dig it deeper into my hand. I'm choking the s--t out of all my pitches."

Glasnow said the change contributed to him suffering a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament and flexor strain.

Cole and Glasnow both said MLB should have made the change during the offseason to give players a chance to adjust, instead of implementing the rule in the middle of the season. 

MLB announced that it will implement enhanced enforcement of rules that prohibit players from applying foreign substances to the baseball. 

Starting pitchers will be subject to more than one mandatory check by umpires during games. Relievers will be checked either at the end of an inning or when he gets removed from the game, depending on which comes first. 

Catchers will also be subject to checks, as well as position players if they are observed making moves to their uniform or body that are consistent with applying some substance to the balls. 

Umpires have the discretion to check players at any point if they notice a ball has "an unusually sticky feel to it," or if they notice pitchers going to any part of their body or uniform to potentially apply a substance to the baseball. 

Anyone who is found to be in violation of the rules will receive an automatic 10-game suspension. 

Cole tied his season-low with four strikeouts in his start against the Blue Jays, but he only allowed two earned runs and four hits over eight innings. 

As an early-season favorite for the American League MVP, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. memorabilia has seen a dramatic increase in value. 

Citing Only Alt Official, Kendall Baker of Axios noted the value of the Toronto Blue Jays star's Topps Chrome rookie card has seen a 300 percent increase in value to $209 compared to where it was at in June 2020:

Trading cards are the closest thing we have to a "stock market for athletes."

Fascinating to see a player's year-to-date performance mapped out like this.

Vlad Jr.'s base rookie card is up 300% this calendar year, per @OnlyAltOfficial. pic.twitter.com/PlkVPFwamC

— Kendall Baker (@kendallbaker) June 16, 2021

Guerrero was promoted to the big leagues as a 20-year-old in April 2019. He received a tremendous amount of hype because of his performance in the minors and as the son of 2016 Hall of Fame inductee Vladimir Guerrero. 

MLB.com ranked Guerrero as the best prospect in baseball heading into the 2019 season. He was OK during his first two seasons, posting a .269/.336/.442 slash line with 24 homers and 102 RBI in 183 games. 

Through 65 games in 2021, Guerrero has been the best hitter in baseball. He leads MLB in all three triple slash categories with a .345 batting average, .450 on-base percentage and .690 slugging percentage. His 22 homers nearly match his total from the past two seasons combined.