August 6, 2026 [LINK / comment]
Not surprisingly, the Los Angeles Dodgers pounced on the opportunity to trade for Tarik Skubal, the Detroit Tigers' ace pitcher. Baseball fans almost everywhere heaved a massive groan of disgust about how the rich teams keep getting stronger (and thus presumably richer), leaving the smaller market teams with a sense of futility. While that was a bitter pill for Tiger fans to swallow, things didn't exactly get off on the right foot with his new team. In Wrigley Field on Tuesday, he gave up 2 runs over 6 innings and took the loss to the Cubs; final score 5-1. Believe it or not, sports fans, the World Champion L.A. Dodgers have lost SIX games in a row! And in Seattle meanwhile, the Tigers managed to win 3 of their last 4 games by lopsided shutouts scores, so they are still clinging to thin wild card hopes. (You can read the full story, including the Nats' trades of Luis Garcia to the Yankees and Foster Griffin to the Guardians, both of which I discussed previously, at MLB.com.)
In addition, the Orioles traded their star catcher Adley Rutschman (and another catcher) to the Red Sox. Rutschman is currently injured list, and the Red Sox are betting that he'll improve to his performance levels of the last couple years.
Also on Monday, the San Francisco Giants traded Luis Arraez to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for three pitchers. He ranks 2nd in MLB batting average (.326) right now. The fact that he his a solid defensive second baseman forced the Phillies to move Alec Bohm to first base and Bryce Harper to right field for the first time in several years. So what did Arraez do in his first at-bat with the Phillies in their game against the Nationals on Tuesday? He hit an RBI single, of course. Two innings later, an RBI double.
Expectations for the Washington Nationals have come crashing down over the past week, and any hope for meaningful redemption in the once-promising 2026 season has vanished. It's all about dignity and learning for next year, and perhaps staying reasonably close to a .500 record and no lower than 4th place in the NL East. The last-place New York Mets have won their last 3 games, and are now only 5 games behind the Nationals.
In Wednesday's game, Jake Irvin allowed only 2 runs in 5 1/3 innings on the mound, but the Nats kept wasting opportunities to score, as usual, and Phillies were leading 2-1. But in the 7th inning Brady House hit a solo homer to tie it, and soon C.J. Abrams hit an RBI single to take a 3-2 lead. But then the Phillies tied it, so it went to the 10th inning, when both teams scored one run, and then in the 11th inning something almost magical happened. C.J. Abrams hit a 2-run triple that bounced at a weird angle off the center field wall, and frankly he would have had an inside-the-park homer if he hadn't paused to watch the ball, as he so often does. (Nasty habit.) Then, with no bench reserve players left, manager Blake Butera had pitcher Miles Mikolas pinch hit because Clayton Beeter (a relief pitcher) was due up to bat but apparently wasn't up to the task. The veteran Mikolas, however, was: he put down a sacrifice bunt that not only scored C.J. Abrams from 3rd base but also got him onto 1st base. Thanks to Andres Chaparro, 3 batters later, Mikolas scored the 5th run in that inning for the Nats, and one more run came in after that. A SIX-run rally!! And that is how the Nationals' abysmal 7-game losing streak came to an end, with a 10-4 final score.
In this evening's game, Miles Mikolas pitched about as well as usual, giving up 6 runs in the first 3 innings. In the top of the 4th inning, one of the newest Nats, Andrew Pinckney, hit a home run in his first major league at-bat! (Strangely enough, that was not his first run scored, however, as he entered the game as a pinch runner the day before, and then scored a run.) That was about the only bright spot in a game that ended with a 7-3 Phillies victory.
Meanwhile, James Wood was put on the 10-day injured list for an oblique strain, confirming the initial indications.
Yesterday and today I finished updating all the pages for past and present MLB stadiums in Atlanta, Georgia (3 stadiums). Among the newly spiffed-up pages is Truist Park, which features these dazzling sunlit photos of a brief visit in February 2021. My photos of the only game I ever saw at Turner Field were poor in quality due to overcast, wet conditions. (Regrettably, I have no photos of downtown Atlanta.) Then I decided to do likewise for the stadiums in Buffalo, New York. I figured that since Sahlen Field just about qualifies as having been home to an MLB team for a full year, it deserves equal treatment. So of course I had to come up with nice composite photos of it as well as the site of War Memorial Stadium, where much of The Rookie was filmed.
On the Baseball home page, which serves as a handy navigational nexus for browsing all the information-packed baseball pages, I updated the "Stadium photos: a tasty sampler" section, with 41 new "composite" photos, of which 10 stadiums no longer exist and of which 5 are no longer used for Major League Baseball. So I have such composite photos for 26 of the 30 current MLB stadiums, leaving four yet to be visited by me! One of those four, Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, is one of those marginal cases, like Sahlen Field. I'll have to get out to Arlington, Las Vegas, San Diego, and St. Petersburg in the next couple years and finish my "stadium chase"! I also made a few minor corrections on that page. (Note that the composite photos which I created based on photos submitted to me by fans, such as Angel Stadium, are not included on that page.) For a variety of reasons, I decided on these six stadiums as being "the best of the best":
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT (as if you didn't know): Wrigley Field, Tiger Stadium, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Yankee Stadium, Oracle Park, and Fenway Park. (Photos taken from 2004 through 2023.)
Most notably on that page, I added a few lines to my "wish list" for what changes need to be made in baseball. I first came up with a "If I were commissioner" wish list when Bud Selig was the commissioner, and now that Rob Manfred is in charge, the task of keeping baseball clean and fair as well as profitable is just as challenging as ever. This suggestions are beefed up with some explanations of why I think they are so important.