Monday, April 27

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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. Today’s edition is brought to you by David Adler.

We had two big birthday bashes over the weekend. 

No, not parties. Home runs. One by a rising star, one by a superstar. 

First, Pirates phenom Konnor Griffin slugged his first career home run on his 20th birthday on Friday. Then Aaron Judge crushed his 378th career home run on his 34th birthday on Sunday. 

We’ve got some fun facts for you about the two birthday boys.

• Griffin (1st HR of MLB career) 

The No. 1 prospect in baseball was already the rare player to debut as a teenager — Griffin was the first teen hitter to make his MLB debut since Juan Soto in 2018. He might’ve taken until his 20th birthday to hit his first homer, but not a whole lot of players can say they’ve hit a home run at that age … and it makes for some fun bits of trivia. 

Griffin is the youngest player to hit his first career home run on his birthday. He’s the eighth player to do it in the Wild Card Era (since 1995), and the 25th player overall, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. (The most recent was Victor Mesa Jr. for the Marlins on his 24th birthday last Sept. 8.)

Griffin is also only the third player in the Modern Era (since 1900) to homer on his 20th birthday. (No player in the Modern Era has homered on a younger birthday than his 20th.) The last one was also a Pirate: Aramis Ramirez on June 25, 1998. The other was Buddy Lewis of the Washington Senators on Aug. 10, 1936. 

• Judge (10th HR of season, 378th of career)

Judge joined Yordan Alvarez, Munetaka Murakami and James Wood as the only players with double-digit home runs this season thanks to his birthday bash. 

It was his third career birthday home run — Judge also homered on his 25th birthday as a rookie in 2017, and on his 30th birthday in 2022. Lou Gehrig is the only Yankee to hit more birthday home runs than Judge. He hit four. Judge is tied with Yogi Berra and Graig Nettles with three. 

Judge, of course, is in line to chase down some significant home run milestones before his career is out. He needs 122 more to get to 500, and 222 more to get to 600.  

But how many other players have hit that many homers after their 34th birthday?

The 500-homer club is the most attainable for Judge: 56 sluggers have hit at least 122 home runs after their 34th birthday, most recently Nelson Cruz (281), Albert Pujols (211), Adrian Beltré (130), Carlos Beltrán (152), David Ortiz (224) and Alex Rodriguez (124).

The 600 club would require Judge to do what only seven players have done at his age: Barry Bonds (368), Cruz, Hank Aaron (274), Rafael Palmeiro (255), Babe Ruth (244), Big Papi and Andres Galarraga (222) are the only players to hit at least 222 homers after their 34th birthday.    

But we wouldn’t put anything past Judge.  

Want more birthday stats? Check out Baseball Savant’s Birthday Index. And to see which baseball players were born on your birthday, we have a full calendar here. 

 

GAMES OF THE NIGHT

Here are three games to watch tonight. For info on how to watch every game this season, go to MLB.com/Watch. 

Red Sox at Blue Jays (7:07 p.m. ET, MLB.TV) 

The Red Sox enter this AL East rivalry series with a completely new look (more on that in a second). This game also features a great pitching matchup, with AL strikeout leader Dylan Cease (44 K’s) going for Toronto against Boston’s Ranger Suarez. 

Yankees at Rangers (8:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV) 

Judge’s birthday is over, but there’s another one in this game: Rangers star Corey Seager turns 32 today. We’ve also got Max Fried on the hill for the Yanks coming off his most dominant outing of 2026 — eight shutout innings to beat the rival Red Sox last week.

Cubs at Padres (9:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV) 

Two of baseball’s best and hottest teams square off as the 18-9 Padres return from Mexico City to host the 17-11 Cubs.  

CAN THE SOX TURN THEIR SEASON AROUND?

The Red Sox had a huge shakeup over the weekend, parting ways with manager Alex Cora and five members of the coaching staffamid their slow start to the season (even though those changes came after a 17-1 win).

But will that be enough to trigger a bounceback for Boston? 

The Sox currently sit in last place in the AL East at 11-17, entering tonight’s series opener against the division-rival Blue Jays in Toronto (7:07 p.m. ET, MLB.TV). And they just haven’t been playing like the postseason team they were a year ago. 

But in-season managerial changes have sparked runs to the playoffs before — just look at the 2022 Phillies with Rob Thomson, or the 2022 Blue Jays with John Schneider. And the Red Sox did just usher in their new era with a win.  

To flip the script and get back to the playoffs in 2026, the Red Sox are turning to interim manager Chad Tracy — who got the ultimate callup from being the manager of Triple-A Worcester — to lead the way along with a retooled coaching staff. 

Red Sox execs Sam Kennedy and Craig Breslow addressed the team’s shakeup by saying it gives Boston the most runway to change the course of the season. Breslow said: “By acting today, it gives us 135 games ahead of us. So we’ve got almost a full season’s worth of run to take advantage of this fresh start.”

Now it’s up to the players. As ace Garrett Crochet put it: “I feel like the dams are finally about to bust open.” 

THIS WEEKEND IN BASEBALL

In case you missed it, here are a bunch of the biggest things that happened around the league this weekend. 

• The Mexico City Series was a thriller 

The Padres and D-backs played two awesome games at Mexico City’s Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, with the Padres pulling off yet another dramatic comeback to win Saturday’s opener … only for the D-backs to do the same thing to San Diego to win Sunday’s finale. 

• Ohtani back on track? 

You might not have been thinking about it because he has a 0.38 ERA as a pitcher — and because he still managed to get on base every game for almost the first month of the season — but Shohei Ohtani was actually off to a pretty slow start as a hitter (at least by his standards). But his bat might’ve just woken up. Ohtani had his first three-hit game of the season yesterday, including one of his signature opposite-field home runs to left-center that he hits so often when his swing is right.

• Five straight Tork Bombs 

Spencer Torkelson has now homered in five straight games to tie the Tigers’ franchise record, joining Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg, Rudy York, Vic Wertz, Willie Horton and Marcus Thames. Tork also is tied with Munetaka Murakami for the longest home run streak in the Majors this season. The all-time record is eight straight games with a homer, done by Ken Griffey Jr., Don Mattingly and Dale Long.

• Wheeler’s return helps Phils snap skid 

The Phillies got Zack Wheeler back on Saturday, and Wheeler helped them snap their 10-game losing streak with an encouraging performance against the rival Braves in his first start of the year. Wheeler’s fastball averaged 94.7 mph and topped out at 96.5 mph on a strikeout of Ronald Acuña Jr.  

• Witt breaks drought in rain-soaked comeback

Bobby Witt Jr. smacked his first home run of the season to snap a career-long, 157-plate appearance homerless drought in Sunday’s series finale against the Angels. But the big story was the Royals’ wet and wild comeback win — they were down to their last out twice before Jac Caglianone hit a game-tying home run in the ninth and Lane Thomas hit a walk-off three-run homer in the 10th. 

• Chapman making reliever K history 

Aroldis Chapman continues his march up the MLB reliever strikeout leaderboard. By recording his 1,341st career K this weekend, the flamethrowing lefty passed Goose Gossage for second place on the reliever strikeout list and is just 23 K’s away from passing Hoyt Wilhelm for the all-time record.   

• A game-changing challenge in St. Louis 

Rob Refsnyder pulled off one of the biggest ABS challenges of the season at the plate yesterday. Pinch-hitting for the Mariners in a 2-2 game in the ninth inning, Refsnyder overturned a strikeout by successfully challenging the Strike 3 call … then belted the game-winning home run after he was given new life. 

STREAK TRACKER: MILLER TIME

We’re keeping track of Padres closer Mason Miller’s incredible scoreless-inning streak here as it gets into historic territory.

Miller’s scoreless-inning streak

Currently at: 34 2/3 innings 

AL/NL record: Orel Hershiser, 59 innings (1988)

Reliever record (Expansion Era): Gregg Olson, 41 innings (1989-90) 

Miller stands alone with the longest scoreless-inning streak in Padres franchise history. He set the record in Mexico City on Saturday, reaching 34 2/3 innings to pass Cla Meredith. Miller is now closing in on the record for a relief pitcher in the Expansion Era (since 1961), as he’s just 6 2/3 innings from passing Olson for the top spot. 

BEAT THE STREAK

Can you Beat the Streak? Try to top Joe DiMaggio’s record hitting streak of 56 games by selecting a player each day to record a hit. If you get to 57, you can win $5.6 million. Plus, there’s a chance to win unique weekly prizes.

Shohei Ohtani’s bat is waking up, and Marlins starter Chris Paddack has been getting knocked around (28 hits allowed in his four starts this season). Ohtani homered off Paddack when he faced him last year. 

 

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