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.

A sea change is coming for the Erie SeaWolves. The Tigers’ Double-A affiliate will be the lucky recipient of a full, fun transformation courtesy of “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver, who made the announcement on Sunday’s show.

In case you are unaware of what the heck we’re talking about here, a quick recap: Oliver recently did a Minor League Baseball segment on his show in which he offered to rebrand a Minor League team out of the goodness of his heart, so long as his staff received full autonomy to do as they wished with no interference from the club. Nearly 50 teams reached out with submissions, and the SeaWolves of Erie, Pa., were ultimately selected.

The team was pretty upfront about its need for a refresh. The main reason? They are named the SeaWolves but play baseball on the southern shore of a lake.

“That’s a problem, Erie. We can help you fix that,” Oliver said on the show.

How he means to do that is, of course, a minor mystery, and the team president of the SeaWolves told our own Ben Hill that he is entirely in the dark. Speaking of Ben, there’s no better ambassador for the Minors and nobody better to tell us (and John Oliver) what great stuff there is to work with over in Erie. So I reached out to him for his take on why the SeaWolves are ready for this makeover.

First and foremost, they’ve been open to change before, embracing the chilly lake effect as the SnowWolves or spooking the competition with their Howl-O-Ween alternates.

“They are shape-shifters by nature,” Ben said. “The SeaWolves are veterans of the sartorial merry-go-round and will be able to handle whatever John Oliver throws at them.”

Take one of their extremely esoteric promo nights from back in 2021 as an example. The team celebrated the 25th anniversary of the movie “That Thing You Do,” about a band called The Wonders that hails from Erie, by playing a game as The Wonders and bringing members of the fictional group to the ballpark.

And what would a Minor League game be without the ballpark eats? The Smith’s sausage stand is a ballpark staple, and when a previous version of it first opened in 2008 as Smith’s Sausage Shack, it released a trippy marketing video to the tune of “Love Shack.” So go ahead, John Oliver; do your wurst.

— Scott Chiusano

• Braves @ Nationals (6:45 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Atlanta has put up an NL-best 19-10 record since April 18, which just happens to be the first game after Spencer Strider landed back on the IL with a hamstring injury. Well, Strider is due back tonight, giving the Braves even more firepower as they climb up the NL East standings.

• Tigers @ Cardinals (7:45 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, who has struck out 61 against just two walks in his last seven starts, faces a red-hot Redbirds squad (13-2 since May 4) that has the fourth-lowest strikeout rate in the game. Something’s gotta give.

• D-backs @ Dodgers (10:10 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): After Arizona clubbed three homers last night to send L.A. to a season-high fourth straight loss, the champs could really use a huge start from ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, one of just two pitchers left from their injury-decimated Opening Day rotation.

I don’t know much about the collectible game (beyond recognizing my 50 Mike Harkey rookie cards were never a good investment strategy), but I do know that anytime there’s only one of something, it’s probably extra valuable.

And if his reaction to pulling a Topps one-of-one Jayden Daniels Superfractor autographed card is any indication, Justin Steele agrees. Pretty cool to see the rehabbing Cubs ace jumping up and down like a kid pulling … a Justin Steele rookie card.

But Steele is no amateur card hound, he’s an avid hobbyist who’s deep in the collector community, and he’s even got a TikTok (@SteelysSportsCards) devoted to his impressive stash.

– Ismail Soyugenc

We love a good milestone, and Kyle Schwarber just got one — the Phillies slugger hit his 300th career home run on Monday. But how many will he finish with? We reached out to Dan Szymborski, the creator of the ZiPS projection system over at FanGraphs, to look into Schwarber’s future.

First things first, Schwarber is projected to hit 28 more home runs this year, for a season total of 44. That would take him to 328 career homers entering his age-33 season, and he’d need 172 more for 500.

ZiPS puts Schwarber’s 50-50 projection for the rest of his career at 139 more homers from 2026 onward. His 90th percentile projection — meaning the high end of his possible career outcomes — is 245 more homers.

That means Schwarber is looking at 460-470 career home runs as his “average” career, and if he can exceed the projection — well within the realm of possibility for an elite slugger like he is — he has a shot at the 500-home run club. That’s a lot of Schwarbombs.

– David Adler

MLB Tonight: Clubhouse Edition is celebrating its return for a fifth season with the first of two special crossover episodes tonight, when former NBA star Jamal Crawford will join Dexter Fowler and Matt Vasgersian to offer fun, unscripted commentary and whiparound coverage of tonight’s games. The 2 1/2-hour “Crawsover Edition” is slated to include celebrity guests and live look-ins while “celebrating greatness and connecting fans through the universal language of competition,” says Crawford, a Seattle native and diehard Mariners fan. Catch it on MLB Network, MLB.TV or MLB.com at 7:30 p.m. ET.

This is your guide to new food and beverage options at ballparks around baseball in 2025, featuring one special offering you won’t want to miss. Happy eating! 

They say everything is bigger in Texas, and that’s definitely true of the Boomstick Burrito, one of the new concession items at Globe Life Field this season. It’s a 26-inch flour tortilla stuffed with rice, beans, seasoned taco meat, Rico’s Nacho Cheese, pico de gallo, lettuce and sour cream. Check out all the other new offers at the Rangers’ home park here.

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When a group of young men flagged down a train that was at risk of derailment, news of their good deed reached the Great Bambino, who visited their orphanage and invited them all to Yankee Stadium.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is the latest star to receive the “Heroes of the Game” treatment, in a short video that shows the evolution of his ferocious swing: “Power is his inheritance,” the narrator says.

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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. Thanks for being here.

Get ready, baseball fans. The “Korean Ohtani” is coming.

His name is Seong-Jun Kim, he’s a two-way player, and he just signed with the Rangers as an international free agent.

Now, we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves here … Kim is still in high school over in Korea, and he’s only 18 years old. So it’ll be a little while before we might see him in the Major Leagues.

But the emergence of a new two-way phenom in baseball is exciting. And the good news is, the Rangers want Kim to stay that way.

“We have full intent as an organization to develop him as a two-way player,” Rangers international scouting director Hamilton Wise said after Texas signed Kim on Sunday. “We believe he has the qualities and ingredients for that challenge.”

Will Kim be a superstar like Ohtani? He thinks he can.

“It’s gonna be hard, not easy,” Kim said after signing (via interpreter Kwangmin “Andre” Park). “But I will do my best. I’m not going to regret anything at all. I will do my best. … If I can improve better and earlier, I can be the best player in the big leagues.”

Here are some fast facts about Kim:

• He’s a shortstop and right-handed pitcher.
• He’s now ranked the Rangers’ No. 15 prospect by MLB Pipeline.
• As a pitcher, he throws a fastball, slider, splitter and curveball and already touches 95 mph with his heater.
• As a batter, he’s an above-average contact hitter and projects for 15-plus home run power in the future.
• His high school in Korea, Gwangju Jeil High School, has produced four other big leaguers: Byung-Hyun Kim, Hee-Seop Choi, Jae Weong Seo and Jung Ho Kang.

Want to know more about the Korean Ohtani? Read all about Kim here.

— David Adler

• Mets @ Red Sox (6:45 p.m. ET, MLB.TV, MLB Network Showcase): The Mets come in having lost three straight games for the first time this season, and they’ve scored three runs in that span. It doesn’t get any easier tonight against Boston ace Garrett Crochet, who is second in the AL with 73 strikeouts.

• Rangers @ Yankees (7:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Jacob deGrom starts are once again marquee events, and this one is no exception as the electric right-hander returns to the city he called home for nine years as a member of the crosstown Mets. He’s actually struggled on this mound in the past, allowing 13 earned runs across three career starts in the Bronx, but he hasn’t pitched there since 2018.

• D-backs @ Dodgers (10:10 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): The Dodgers had their ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the mound last night, and he delivered seven scoreless innings of one-hit ball. Tonight the D-backs send their top man to the hill in Corbin Burnes, who has not allowed a run in 13 innings over his past two starts, and they have a chance to escape L.A. with a big series victory.

(Photo courtesy Mark S. Auerbach)

Connecting with an MLB star can happen in a variety of ways. These days that usually means the pregame autograph line, social media, or perhaps a chance encounter out in public.

But that’s nothing when compared to a group of kids who once saved hundreds of lives and got to meet Babe Ruth as a result.

MLB.com’s Dan Cichalski recounts a story of six orphans who in 1933 stopped a train carrying 400 people from heading into a ditch on a rainy evening in Passaic, N.J.

“At first, the engineer got out and was yelling and screaming at us,” John Murdock, one of the six boys, recalled in a 2005 interview in The Record, a northern New Jersey newspaper. “But when he saw the big ditch underneath the tracks, he got down on his knees and thanked us.”

Their quick thinking had prevented the train from crashing, and they were quickly lauded for averting a disaster and saving lives. When asked what they wanted in return for their heroic actions, one request topped the list: Would you let Babe Ruth know what we did?

An orphan himself growing up in Baltimore, Ruth responded in a telegram with his congratulations and promised that he’d invite the six boys to Yankee Stadium when the team returned from its road trip.

The stars aligned on that night for six orphans to meet the biggest star of them all.

Now that the temporary confusion over his Chicago baseball allegiance has been cleared up, Pope Leo XIV can enjoy the many kind gestures the White Sox have made in celebrating their ties to the supreme pontiff. The latest is a mural at Rate Field showing the pope with the Chicago skyline and a screenshot of the crowd from Game 1 of the 2005 World Series, which the pope attended (merely as Bob). There’s a deep sense of pride to the mural, but if you ask Ed Schmit IV, a family friend who joined the future pope at Game 1, the purpose is simple: “I don’t want anyone to think he’s a Cubs fan, because he’s not a Cubs fan.” Scott Merkin details the club’s tribute here in an excerpt of his latest White Sox newsletter.

— Tom Vourtsis

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, new for this year, a chance to win unique weekly prizes.

Think hitters look forward to playing in Colorado? Just ask Trea Turner, who owns a career .354/.371/.614 slash line with five homers and a .985 OPS in 28 games at Coors Field.

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