Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Thanks for being here.
Fans of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” know all about the pure magic that is finding a golden ticket. (Fans of “The Office” might know it as something else.) At its core, the golden ticket is associated with the bliss of being one of a very lucky few, and the new Athletes Unlimited Softball League has spun that into one of the coolest draft announcements there is in pro sports.
The league, which launches this June and boasts former Marlins GM Kim Ng as its commissioner, will hold its inaugural College Draft Show tomorrow on ESPNU. Here’s the twist: The 12 players who will be drafted are already known, because each of them was surprised with a golden ticket. What’s unknown, and will be revealed tomorrow at 9 p.m. ET, is exactly where they will be picked.
The golden ticket recipients were (in alphabetical order):
• Raelin Chaffin, RHP, Mississippi State
• Danieca Coffey, INF, LSU
• Michaela Edenfield, C, Florida State
• Bri Ellis, INF, Arkansas
• Ana Gold, INF, Duke
• Emiley Kennedy, LHP, Texas A&M
• Sam Landry, RHP, Oklahoma
• Emma Lemley, RHP, Virginia Tech
• Cori McMillan, OF, Virginia Tech
• Devyn Netz, RHP/INF, Arizona
• Korbe Otis, OF, Florida
• Sierra Sacco, OF, Mississippi State
Ng and other softball legends like Natasha Watley, Jessica Mendoza and Jennie Finch spent the past month traveling to college programs around the country to hand-deliver the golden tickets. The dozen incredible player reactions range from raucous walk-off-level cheering with teammates to genuine tears of joy, and each one proves how meaningful this selection truly is. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime opening up for them.
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The golden ticket idea was the brainchild of Athletes Unlimited’s chief broadcasting officer Cheri Kempf, and even Ng has been impressed with how quickly it’s caught on. In an April Forbes profile, Ng talked about traveling to Duke to hand out just the second golden ticket in existence — this one to infielder Ana Gold (the perfect name, of course!) — and how a fan in the stands who saw her coming already knew what was going to happen.
“The idea that this was just the second time we were doing it, and a fan knew what that was, I thought that spoke volumes about the reach that the golden ticket already had,” Ng told Forbes.
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The 12 college players who have had their tickets punched are now eligible to be drafted by one of the league’s four teams — the Bandits, Blaze, Talon and Volts — and will join forces with the former college players who were already picked in a 12-round draft in January. For everything you need to know about the AUSL, including some of the famous names you can watch this summer like Maya Brady (the niece of both Tom Brady and Kevin Youkilis), check out a full rundown here.
— Scott Chiusano
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• Rays @ Yankees (7:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Aaron Judge finished the month of April with a .427 batting average and 1.282 OPS. The calendar has flipped, but don’t expect anything else to change. The Yankees also have Max Fried on the mound to open this divisional clash, and their new left-hander couldn’t have possibly gotten off to a better start in pinstripes with a 5-0 record and 1.19 ERA.
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• Dodgers @ Braves (7:15 p.m. ET, MLB.TV and MLB Network): The last time these two teams met, it was just the first few days of April and things were, shall we say, different. The Dodgers were undefeated and the Braves were winless, and after three games against one another that remained the case. But Atlanta has gradually overcome that dismal start and has won nine of its last 12 entering tonight. How the Braves fare against Yoshinobu Yamamoto will be a good barometer for whether their turnaround is for real.
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May has arrived, and so has Mey.
We’re talking, of course, about Luis Mey, the Reds’ No. 20 prospect who made his MLB debut yesterday and throws absolute darts. He threw 45 pitches at 100 mph or more in Triple-A this season, the most of any pitcher at that level, and he reached as high as 103.5.
Mey pitched a clean ninth inning during Cincinnati’s breezy victory over the Cardinals, picking up his first big league K by blowing a 99.2 mph fastball past Nolan Gorman. His hardest offering of the outing was a 101.3 mph sinker that Alec Burleson took for a ball at the bottom of the strike zone.
Hard as Mey hurls it, he hasn’t quite topped 23-year-old Mets prospect Raimon Gomez, who blistered one at 104.5 mph last week. Clearly there’s a lot more heat on its way to the bigs.
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For those who can’t get enough of the weird, wild and wonderful side of the box score, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a look at some of the more outlandish facts and figures from the past week.
Take the excitement of an inside-the-park homer, mix in the drama of a walk-off, and you’ve got something truly special. On Thursday, Dodgers Minor League outfielder Ryan Ward did just that, walking off Game 1 of a doubleheader with an inside-the-park home run — something we haven’t seen in an MLB game since Cleveland’s Tyler Naquin had one in 2016. Go check out Naquin’s here, if only to see the epic celebration that followed. And while you’re at it, be sure to fire up this video of Ken Griffey Jr.’s walk-off inside-the-parker from 2001. (Because who doesn’t love a good Junior Griffey highlight?) Naquin and Griffey are two of only five MLB players to record a walk-off inside-the-park home run since the turn of the century.
Guardians third baseman José Ramírez has long been one of baseball’s top power-speed players, and his dynamic skill set is starting to put him in some rarefied air. After recording his 250th home run last season, Ramírez collected his 250th stolen base on Thursday, becoming the first player in Cleveland franchise history — and the 24th player overall — to reach both milestones. An even more exclusive group awaits — the 300-300 club, which has just eight members all time.
D-backs slugger Eugenio Suárez delivered the 19th four-homer game in MLB history on Saturday. Remarkably, it wasn’t the first time Suárez was involved in a four-homer performance. That’s because he was playing third base for the Reds when then-teammate Scooter Gennett went deep four times during the 2017 season. (Suárez came around to score on two of Gennett’s four homers.) Naturally, our researcher extraordinaire (and birthday girl!) Sarah Langs had to find out if that ever happened before, so she checked with the Elias Sports Bureau. According to Elias, Suárez became the first player in MLB history to have a four-homer game and also appear in another game where a teammate hit four home runs.
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For all the obscure stats whizzes out there, this one’s for you. See how well you can compare players and their stats before the timer runs out. Three strikes and you’re out! Play free >>
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