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Look for our fantasy baseball starting pitcher rankings, hitter upgrades and downgrades daily to help you make smart fantasy baseball lineup decisions and for MLB betting tips. MLB game odds are provided by Caesars Sportsbook, and fantasy advice is geared toward ESPN 10-team leagues with standard scoring. Note: This file will be updated with overnight pitching changes and weather-related postponements, along with the addition of the latest MLB game odds as of the indicated time of publication. What you need to know for Sunday By Todd Zola Fantasy Baseball Essentials • Closer Chart: Latest bullpen intel • MLB Depth Charts for every team • Player news wire with fantasy spin Hopefully by now, in leagues where lineups lock with the first game of the day, you're accustomed t...

Baltimore Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman recorded his first big-league hit on Saturday night, just hours after being promoted from Triple-A, by tripling against the Tampa Bay Rays. Rutschman's first big moment in the majors came in the seventh inning, when he hit a ball down the right-field line off reliever Ralph Garza Jr. Outfielder Brett Phillips had trouble picking up the ball, allowing Rutschman to motor all the way to third base on what was officially scored as a triple. Take a look: Rutschman was promoted to The Show earlier on Saturday. He was ranked by CBS Sports as the No. 1 prospect in baseball entering the spring. Here's what we wrote at the time: Rutschman, the No. 1 pick in the 2019 draft, is on the precipice of stardom. Evaluators have maintained that he would s...

aturday’s main slate features six games starting at 7:05 p.m. ET to kick-start a weekend of baseball action. Despite the smaller slate, there are plenty of spots to take advantage. MLB DFS Pitching Picks MLB DFS Stud Picks Justin Verlander ($10,300) Houston Astros (-261) vs. Texas Rangers Future Hall-of-Famer Justin Verlander jumps to the top of the list as one of the highest-rated pitchers in our Tournament Model. Verlander has been dominant coming off a missed season because of Tommy John Surgery, posting a 5-1 record in seven starts, with a 1.38 ERA, 25% K rate and 0.68 WHIP. Projected for 6.68 strikeouts, Verlander faces a Rangers projected lineup with a 0.244 strikeout-per-at-bat average and has a slate-low 3-implied run total. Per the Trends tool, when Verlander is a home ...

When I nod my head, you hit it. I’m a dope. I spend more time worrying about what baseball’s doing to baseball than those who run The Game. But a good laugh warms the chill. Reader Pat Esposito sent a screen shot from the Mariners-Red Sox game, as televised Thursday by the MLB Network. After he’d stopped laughing, he felt the need to share a good joke. The Red Sox had the bases loaded — Alex Verdugo on third, Trevor Story on second, Bobby Dalbec on first. That’s when MLBN — from a high, wide shot — decided to graphically explain what it means to have the bases loaded. You know, just in case there wasn’t enough to impede the view or that a viewer, just arrived from the Isle of Duh, needed help. Above Verdugo, MLBN posted a graphic, an arrow pointing down at him. It read, “...

As Major League Baseball looks to continue growing their sport, they have increasingly relied on streaming as more consumers get rid of their cable subscription each year. In addition to MLB.TV, the league has streaming deals with Apple TV+, Youtube and Peacock, while still maintaining their regional deals with cable and satellite providers. So far, the results are encouraging, at least for MLB’s own platform. MLB.TV set numerous records for streaming through the first part of the 2022 season as fans watched more than 2.8 billion minutes of live games on MLB.TV. This made the start of the 2022 season the most-watched 40-day period since the platform released on August 26, 2002. In addition, total games watched are up +9% compared to last season’s previous record total on MLB.TV ov...

For nearly as long as I can remember, whenever anyone asked me who was my favorite baseball player, I said Jorge Posada. He was the player I wanted to emulate from the time I was little. Like Jorge, I didn’t wear batting gloves. Like Jorge, I slightly hunched over in my batting stance (until I realized it was easier to hit standing more upright). Like Jorge, I was a switch-hitting catcher. Then, sometime in middle school, circa 2008, I heard about this local kid named Joe Panik. By that point, he was one of the best high school players in the state of New York and had committed to play baseball at St. John’s. And he lived five minutes from my house Chicago White Sox Jersey  in Hopewell Junction and went to John Jay High School, where I would attend two years later. Suddenly, I had a new...