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.

If you are joining us today from your desk at your home or work office and there is a decade-old bobblehead staring back at you, then please do read on. And if you are sitting at an unfortunately bobblehead-less desk, do not despair. You should also read on, because there are plenty of chances to catch up!

Since everybody loves a ballpark giveaway – and that means much more than just bobbleheads, by the way – our 30 beat reporters pored over the calendar and came up with the best promotion for each team this season. Feel free to parse through the list on your own to find your favorite team, but for any roving baseball fans out there, we figured we’d curate the selections even further into these very scientific categories:

Best bobblehead giveaway:
It’s nearly impossible to choose just one, but the Marvel-Orioles crossover gets the nod for this Cal Ripken Jr. Iron Man bobblehead, which coincides with Marvel Day at Camden Yards on June 28. It features baseball’s Iron Man in the superhero’s signature suit, with the helmet at his feet.

Most devious giveaway:
This is a feat of creativity (and a little bit of shade) by the Astros, who are giving out Jose Altuve socks when they play the Padres on Sunday. You might remember that last year, against the Padres, Altuve famously took off his cleat and sock to show the umpire he really had fouled a ball off his foot. Now nobody need be barefoot at the ballpark.

Giveaway with the most utility:
You might not have known that pickleball, the sport that has been making quite the racket in recent years, originated not far from T-Mobile Park, on Bainbridge Island. So the Mariners are honoring those local roots with a pickleball paddle promotion on Aug. 24.

Most Milwaukee giveaway:
The card game Cribbage is huge in Wisconsin, and it has quite a few fans in the Brewers’ clubhouse. Link up with friends and family at American Family Field on May 17 for the chance to snag a Cribbage board featuring the Brewers’ famous racing sausages.

Most fashionable giveaway:
It’s a large-brim straw Cardinals hat, and you can complete the outfit with a matching shirt by purchasing a Margaritaville Night theme ticket for May 23. Don’t waste away this opportunity.

— Scott Chiusano

Rays center fielder Jake Mangum robbed a Red Sox batter of a hit last night, but in the process he was also robbed … by the wall? That’s right, his batting gloves got stuck between the padding, and Mangum didn’t even realize it until he got back to the dugout. And there the perpetrator stood, unmoving out there in center field, acting all high and mighty.

Perhaps boosted by the enigmatic torpedo bat, Jazz Chisholm Jr. is among MLB’s leaders in homers so far with six, but that’s not enough for him. The Yankees’ second baseman has come up with a lighthearted way to equate his production to that of teammate and two-time AL MVP Aaron Judge by creating a new stat: Home runs + stolen bases.

What’s the statistical merit of this category? We’ll check with the Baseball Savant team and get back to you on that, but as Bryan Hoch details in his Yankees Beat newsletter, Judge (trailing Chisholm, 10-9) is having fun with it: “I told him I was going to catch him in stolen bases this year.”

• Giants @ Phillies (4:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Up against the club with MLB’s third-best run differential (+26) and needing a win to prevent a third straight series loss, the Phillies have the right guy on the hill. They’ve won each of the last 10 games started by Cristopher Sánchez, including the playoffs, dating to last August.

• Yankees @ Rays (7:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): This may not feel like much of a road game to the Yankees, who offered up their Grapefruit League and Single-A park in Tampa to the Rays for this season while hurricane-ravaged Tropicana Field is repaired. Steinbrenner Field’s dimensions mimic Yankee Stadium’s, but it’s been a welcoming home for the Rays, 8-7 at the park so far this year.

• Angels @ Rangers (8:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV, MLB Network): This set is coming at the perfect time for the Rangers, who have overtaken the Halos for the AL West’s top spot while also winning seven straight against them dating to last year. One more win will give Texas its best run vs. the Angels in club history.

• You can add another head-scratcher to the growing list of MLB’s most bizarre injuries: The Twins’ Jose Miranda strained a muscle in his left hand while trying to keep a case of water from falling.

• Thirteen years ago today, Jamie Moyer (49 years, 150 days) became the oldest pitcher in history to earn a win, backflipping his way past the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Jack Quinn, who had held the record for 79 years. The key to Moyer’s win that night? The all-time leader in home runs allowed with 522 kept the Padres in the park.

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STAFF PICKS

You won’t be able to take your eyes off Wayne State reliever Ethan Getting, though you might wince in pain.

Stephanie Raleigh isn’t thrilled with the moniker her son Cal has embraced, but she’ll go along with it.

James Wood has all the traits of a prototypical power hitter — except that he doesn’t pull fly balls in the air. Like, ever.

No top Draft pick had ever caught a fellow top pick before this week. Sarah Langs has that nugget and more in her weekly roundup of notable stats.

Markers for Three Rivers Stadium’s pitcher’s mound and second base — where Roberto Clemente doffed his helmet after the final hit of his career — were unveiled on Thursday.

Catch D-backs vs. Cubs at 2 p.m. ET, then it’s the Dodgers and Rangers facing off at 8, followed by the Giants and Angels joined in progress.

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SCOREBOARD

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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.

The human body has its limits. Anybody who has ever grunted when they rise from a chair, or started to feel that dull pain in the lower back knows this all too well. But there’s a Division II reliever out there who is pushing those limits further than they’ve been pushed before. You might need some ibuprofen just from watching him.

His name is Ethan Getting of Wayne State University, and he has taken the type of exaggerated over-the-top delivery you might remember best from two-time Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum and put it, uh, over the top. Our “weird baseball” expert Matt Monagan spoke with Getting about how he came to find this funky form, but it’s the type of thing you need to see to truly wrap your head around.

Just admire (or cringe at) the almost fully horizontal contortion of his torso above, and notice where the ball ultimately comes out of his skyward-pointing hand (top photo), forming an almost perfect 90-degree angle. It’s no wonder, as Getting says, that “everybody just looks at each other in the other team’s dugout and says, ‘What is that?’”

We don’t actually have a good answer to that question, but the motion is completely natural for Getting and it happens to be working. His coaches are rolling with it and letting the kid do his thing. That’s led to his velocity ticking up almost 10 mph, and he’s struck out 27 batters over 19 2/3 innings, in large part because they “can’t see it at all.” And as my high school coach used to bark every time I stepped in the bucket, you cannot hit what you cannot see.

While Getting hopes this isn’t the peak of his pitching career, he has most likely reached the apex of his delivery. Any more, the reliever joked, and “I think I might fall over.” There have been plenty of quirky windups in MLB (test your knowledge of them here), but the closest comparisons to Getting’s electric elasticity are probably Lincecum or former Guardians reliever James Karinchak.

Both of those guys had incredible nicknames — “The Freak” for Lincecum and “Wild Thing” for Karinchak — so a moniker might be the next step for Getting. May we suggest “Mr. Fantastic”?

— Scott Chiusano

In keeping with the theme of pitchers doing mind-boggling things, we bring you Mariners prospect Jurrangelo Cijntje. The ambidextrous hurler has been featured in this space before, but each time he takes the mound it’s a spectacle, and you can watch his start for High-A Everett tomorrow at 9:30 p.m. ET, FREE on MLB.TV. And if you’re wondering how soon you might see this 21-year-old who throws upper 90s with both arms in the bigs, Daniel Kramer spoke to Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto about that very topic.

• Marlins @ Phillies (6:45 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Miami was just swept by the D-backs, but Sandy Alcantara did not pitch in that series. He does, however, pitch tonight, and the Marlins are undefeated in all three of his starts. On the other side is Phillies ace Zack Wheeler, looking to right the ship after consecutive rough outings.

• Dodgers @ Rangers (8:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV, MLB Network): Not only is this a matchup between the two most recent World Series winners, but the opener features a must-see battle on the mound: Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs. Jacob deGrom. While deGrom has the hardware, it’s Yamamoto who has looked like the better pitcher early on, with a 1.23 ERA that is second best in the NL.

• Padres @ Astros (8:10 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): The Padres are off to their best start since the 1998 team that went to the World Series, and they open a set against a team that knows a little something about playing in and winning the World Series. This is also a (Kyle) Hart vs. (Ryan) Gusto pitching matchup, so we’re assuming the Padres will play with a lot of heart and the Astros will play with much gusto. Which should make for a competitive game.

Baseball has entered the Spider-Verse. Rangers starter Patrick Corbin channeled his inner Peter Parker on Wednesday, when he took the mound after suffering a (spider?) bite that had him struggling to walk one day prior. But the real Spider-Man may have been the college center fielder who scaled the wall on Thursday for a gravity-defying home run robbery (a real web gem, if you will) that was straight out of a comic book.

On this day in 2012, the fan-favorite Bartolo Colon looked less like a Cy winner and more like a Cyborg. That’s because he threw 38 consecutive strikes, easily the most in recorded baseball history. Those on hand to see it were incredulous. Jonny Gomes said you can’t even get a pitching machine to do that. It’s a feat that may never be repeated, and one that some might say is even more unlikely than Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting 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.

Who’s hot right now: Corey Seager has been on fire, with 10 knocks during his current five-game hitting streak. He’ll be facing his old Dodgers mates, against whom he’s gone 3-for-6 with two homers and a double.

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