Surprise! The Weekly Scorecard is back. Lots of logistics and an explanation in Home Plate, so skip ahead if you can't wait. Or just enjoy the ride.

The Scoreboard

The Mets had a long, long week.

• They solidly avenged Clay Holmes on the 16th with a certified Luke Weaver Legacy Game, complete with some baffling comments about his fondness for Holmes afterwards (which did get a reply). I guess Carlos Rodón just felt really bad about the whole thing and that's why he decided to help us out.
• On the 17th, Carson Benge walked things off (AGAIN!), Tyrone Taylor had perhaps one of the greatest hits of his career, and the Mets won after trailing in the 9th for the first time in basically forever to take the Subway Series. I wrote about this (and really the whole prior week) for my Box Score Banter post, which I very rarely do because I'm worried I'll come across as an obvious Mets fan, but I think they've earned it just this once. Just look at how cute Benge and Soto are!
• We scored 10 runs in the 12th inning on Monday. Don't ask me how it happened, I don't know. I do know that Brett Baty sent a ball to the Shadow Realm, and I was informed afterwards that there have been 9 home runs in Nationals Park of over 450 feet, of which he has 2. I have not verified the veracity of this statement, but it is completely bonkers if true.
• Oh, we also lost a bunch against the Nationals and the Marlins. What else is new? The win we eked out on Thursday was not sexy, but it was sorely needed.

Sunday the 17th was a pretty thrilling day of baseball beyond the Mets game. Paul Skenes and Roki Sasaki evidently had some sort of Freaky Friday incident, as the former got absolutely rocked and the latter had possibly his first good start ever. Lucas Giolito made his season debut for the Padres while Colt Emerson made his major league debut for the Mariners (which unfortunately went decidedly in Giolito's favor). The White Sox walked off the Cubs, and the wind made itself a main character in Sacramento.

Monday the 18th also featured plenty of other attention-grabbing events. Watching the Rays beat the Orioles 16-6 and the Marlins beat the Braves 12-0, my friends and I all looked at each other and went, what the hell is going on in Florida? (That was before we started wondering what the hell was going on in D.C.). While both games obviously got out of hand, the Braves really stole the show; Aaron Bummer walked four batters before giving up a grand slam to Javier Sanoja, of all people, followed by another home run from Xavier Edwards for good measure. It's still hard to properly nail down the greatest game of the night, because J.T. Ginn took a no-hitter into the 9th for the A's in Anaheim... before losing both his bid and the game to an Adam Frazier single and a Zach Neto home run.

A few final notes:

• The Cardinals started an official Tarps Off section in Busch Stadium. We'll see how long that lasts.
• Luck has started to run out for the Cubs, who lost two of three to the White Sox for "Rivalry Weekend" and then got their teeth kicked in at home by the Brewers. The Tigers have likewise been getting demolished, while the Guardians are quietly setting up total dominion over the AL Central.
• Speaking of the White Sox, Mike Vasil has a magic wand, and it's been working pretty well for the team:

On Deck

This is roughly my new section for compiling things about call-ups, injuries, and other sorts of transactions. I still care about them, but there's a lot of them, and it would really clog up the Scoreboard.

• Clay Holmes officially hit the 15-day IL for his right fibula fracture, courtesy of Spencer Jones, who has since been sent back down to AAA. Zach Thornton got called up to try out for the empty rotation spot, and it didn't go as well as we all might have hoped. Allegedly, he was chosen over Jonah Tong and Jack Wenninger because of his superior command, but the jury is still out on whether or not that was the best rationale.
  • Of course, Jonah got called up as well anyways, making his season debut on Friday and pitching several nice scoreless innings in relief. Craig Kimbrel was DFAed in a corresponding move, to the delight of Mets fans everywhere.
  • ...and Thornton is getting optioned back down to Syracuse as Jonathan Pintaro is called up. Jonah's staying for now, though.
• Nick Morabito also made his major league debut, because the Mets just can't cram enough rookies into their outfield. He was initially given #8, which is how my entire group chat realized they hadn't retired Gary Carter's number, before the situation was rectified the next day and his number reassigned to #55.
• SNY has suggested that Francisco Lindor could be back from the IL by late June, on the basis of some encouraging MRI results. I'm obviously excited about the possibility of having him back sooner rather than later, but I do have some concerns about what lineup shuffling will need to happen, especially since Baty seems (by my eye test) to be hitting better now that he's regularly playing 3B again.
• Colt Emerson got his call to the show a scant few hours before making his debut on Sunday, with Brendan Donovan (who, I'm sorry to inform my Cardinals readers, has become my enemy) on the 10-day IL with a groin strain... again. This was particularly good timing because I'd had a massive argument with my father until 2 AM Friday night about the Mariners infield and Emerson's contract. The team's other big moves were bringing Matt Brash and Victor Robles back from the IL.
• Jose Altuve was moved to the 10-day IL with an oblique strain. This came shortly after hitting a home run off Jacob deGrom last Saturday, which raises the question of whether deGrom is perhaps putting some sort of terrible curse on people who hit home runs off him. I wouldn't be too surprised. I also wouldn't be surprised if he hexed Corey Seager just for annoying him or something, since he's on the 10-day IL for lower back inflammation, but then again, that seems to be Seager's natural habitat.
• After completely blowing up and ruining their chances against the Marlins, the Braves have released Aaron Bummer, one of the greatest examples of nominative determinism the world has ever seen. 2025 NL Rookie of the Year Drake Baldwin was also moved to the 10-day IL with an oblique strain.
• Mickey Moniak is now on the 10-day IL with ankle tendinitis. This really sucks, and hopefully will be a reasonably quick recovery.
• The people's princess, Eugenio Suárez, returned from the 10-day IL to trade places with Ke'Bryan Hayes, who's now dealing with a bulging disc.
• Matt Shaw went to the 10-day IL with back tightness (which I'm sure we're all very sad about), so the Cubs called up their #2 prospect, Pedro Ramírez, in order to... not play? I can almost understand Counsell's explanation about exposure to major league life, but it seems like it's really just needlessly taking away playing time from a young player who could use all the development he can get. Letting him play probably couldn't hurt the lineup, either.

The Dugout

Okay, this is where I talk about Various Guys I follow the exploits of for whatever reason, kind of like Connor's Guys from the Rockies vs. Connor newsletter (that's my coworker, check it out!). Except this is generally about major leaguers, and probably won't be the same people all the time.

• Chase Burns and Trey Yesavage are two of this year's most interesting young pitchers. While Yesavage intrigues for obvious reasons given his postseason experience—and it's good to see him coming back well from his IL stint—Burns is fascinating because of how radically he seems to have turned things around from last year. He's been exactly what I said the doctor should order for the injury-plagued Reds rotation when I previewed his season debut in my very first Prospectus piece.
• Last year's Mets game where they almost got no-hit by Gavin Williams is never far from my mind, so his name always catches my eye in box scores. He already had a fantastic season last year, but he's dropped some walks and ramped up the strikeouts, which has greatly improved his FIP. His last start was a masterful 8 shutout innings against the Phillies; I just hope he leaves all the talent at home when the Mets get to Cleveland.
• The Senzaissance is one of my favorite storylines of the season thus far. Senzatela isn't the only hot new thing on the Rockies roster this year, but the success he's had since moving to the bullpen is genuinely astonishing. It's been thrilling to see him become one of the best relievers in the sport instead of someone we dread seeing on the mound.
• I can't talk about great storylines without mentioning Munetaka Murakami, whose praises I sung in my first BSB column and who continues to dispel doubts about his hitting prowess. I'm still not convinced that his 33.2% strikeout rate is a serious problem—not when Kyle Schwarber's is 34.7%, and not when Murakami has a much better walk rate than Schwarber does. He hung out with Ichiro when the White Sox came to Seattle, which apparently has a sweet backstory behind it.
• I was delighted to discover the other night that Rockies rookie TJ Rumfield seems like a very real contender for NL Rookie of the Year. As of yesterday-ish, he led all qualified NL rookies in AVG and OBP, coming second (behind Sal Stewart) in SLG and OPS. His WAR takes a bit of a knock for the crime of playing first base, but he still looks like a good candidate for a top-3 finish from where I'm standing.

One last point of interest that isn't a statline: J.P. Crawford has started taking grounders at third base after offering to move positions to free up space for Colt Emerson and help the team. As it's described, it's a stunning display of leadership that not many veteran players would make, but which seems somewhat par for the course in Seattle. I'm continually surprised (and pleasantly so) by the lengths their players will go to in order to stay there, whether or not more money might be on the table elsewhere.

Home Plate

I know that I said in Roster Moves that I'd be posting soon and then I Didn't Do That. To be frank, school just got completely overwhelming. I didn't have much time for anything besides eating and sleeping, and sometimes not even that. I think I'll talk about it more in a separate post instead of elaborating further here, so for now...

Now that I've had a chance to relax a bit after graduating, I wanted to get back into writing with some regularity outside of my Prospectus contributions. The Scorecard is a good opportunity to do that consistently, but I'm moving it to Friday/Saturday(-ish) for a couple of reasons. The most obvious one is that trying to post on Mondays would make my Prospectus writing hell, because I typically spend my entire Sunday doing that and wouldn't have time to add something else into the mix. It also feels like a "natural" checkpoint (though of course there's nothing natural about the capitalist work week), and it'll let me catch up a bit on what's going on around the league before I write my column on Sunday. (Yes, today is Sunday. It's been a taxing week. But I have the day off of work, so it's fine.)

As you probably noticed on the way down here, there have been some alterations to the structure. Since it's not the offseason anymore and there are actual games being played now, it's certainly not feasible to cover literally everything that happened over the past week. In terms of what I will cover, I just want to talk about whatever I found interesting during the week, which may or may not be the most newsworthy topics. We'll see if anything changes as I go along.

If you missed the link to my latest Box Score Banter column above, that's here. I won't list out everything I've written for Prospectus right now because you've got enough to read as it is, but you can find all of my articles here.

One last big note: I'll be presenting my master's capstone at SABR 54 in Cleveland! The presentation schedule can be found here. (I'll probably talk about my project more in depth when I write about school and graduation and whatnot.)

The Backstop

Nothing today! I spent a fair bit of time this weekend dealing with some medical stuff, so I don't have the energy to make you read anything else. Thank you for making it this far, assuming you did. :)