Mining the News (2/27/26)

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American League

Angels

• Robert Stephenson hopes he can manage his thoracic outlet syndrome symptoms.

RHP Robert Stephenson
Injury: Right elbow inflammation
Expected return: 2026
Status: Dealt with a nerve issue and thoracic outlet syndrome symptoms in the offseason after ending last year on the injured list, but believes he can manage it. Has been throwing bullpens with no issues this spring and said on Feb. 23 he expects to be ready for Opening Day.

Rangers

• Jack Leiter is adding a cutter.

But for Leiter, adding this new cutter could be the key to him taking the next step.

“It’s honestly just kind of a natural pitch,” Leiter said. “It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s late and it moves just enough to get off the barrel and bails you out of counts. You’re not looking for swing and misses with it, per se. It’s more to just finish at-bats quicker, which is what I’ve been needing in order to be more efficient. So I think it kind of fits what I was trying to accomplish with going deeper into games and throwing more innings this year.”

Leiter said he learned the cutter grip from Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet this offseason.

Red Sox

• Patrick Sandoval and Kutter Crawford might not be ready by Opening Day.

Sandoval and Crawford both didn’t pitch in 2025 due to injuries, and haven’t been put on the schedule yet for Grapefruit League games. The calendar alone might make it hard for them to make enough progress to be ready for Opening Day.

Sandoval will throw at least one more live batting practice before he is cleared for games. Crawford’s next session will be an up-and-down, but not against hitters.

“They’re behind,” said Cora. “But [they are] trending in the right direction.”

• Marcelo Mayer wants to add more speed to his game while also making a few adjustments to his swing.

Mayer specifically wanted to add speed back into his game. It wasn’t something he showed much in the minors, swiping 17 bases in 2022 and 13 in 2024. Manager Alex Cora has frequently noted the benefits of his team’s athleticism over the past year. Mayer wanted to be part of that equation.

“Speed was such a big part of my game when I was a little kid,” Mayer said. “That’s the way that I love to play. I love to play hard, I love to run, I love to steal bases, take that extra bag, and I felt it was just a good opportunity to get after it so I could start playing like that again.”
…
Perhaps more important than speed, Mayer worked on making a few adjustments to his swing. While his big-league debut marked a major milestone, it didn’t go as planned, injury aside.

He struck out at a 30 percent clip and especially struggled against lefties in a small sample size, going 4-for-26. Over the winter, he worked on staying back and getting his hands in a better position to swing. He felt he was crashing forward too much, which set him up for failure before the pitch even arrived.

Royals

• Luinder Avila is looking to add a slider.

Avila already has a nasty curveball that generated a 50% whiff rate in his short sample size as a reliever last year. He can spin the ball well, and now he’s tinkering with a slider. It’s a pitch that he learned at the very end of last season and said he threw once in his final outing of the year on Sept. 28.

“It needs to be 88-90 mph, and I feel good with it,” Avila said through interpreter Luis Perez. “It’s all about the grip. I talked to a lot of players that throw it and are successful.”

• Seth Lugo is reshaping his slider.

One thing you can count on with Lugo: He’s always tinkering. The 36-year-old is shrewd and has made a career out of reinvention. In his spring debut Monday, Lugo threw five sliders and averaged 85.6 miles per hour with the pitch – a 2.4 mph increase from his slider last year. Not only that, but Cubs batters swung four times on that pitch and whiffed all four times. Now that is interesting.

Never one to give away his secrets, Lugo was fairly vague when asked about it.

“It’s something I’m working on,” Lugo said, noting that it’s a relatively recent addition. “It’s a new grip, new mentality. Something I’m coming up with.”

Twins

• The Athletic’s Aaron Gleeman ranked the team’s starting pitcher options.

Here’s a look at the internal starter options, including my best guess at how the Twins’ brass views the rotation hierarchy a month before Opening Day.

1. Joe Ryan
2. Bailey Ober
3. Taj Bradley
4. Simeon Woods Richardson
5. Zebby Matthews
6. Mick Abel
7. Andrew Morris
8. Connor Prielipp
9. Kendry Rojas

• Matthew Leach of MLB.com thinks Liam Hendriks will eventually be the closer …

All of which brings us back to the original question. Down the stretch last year, following the Twins’ Trade Deadline selloff, Sands and Topa both got closing opportunities. But neither really seized the job, and Minnesota’s front office spent much of the winter acknowledging that it was seeking a late-inning righty.

That pitcher still has not materialized, though it’s worth noting that the club has a history of making transactions all the way up to Opening Day. So it’s not as though they couldn’t still make a move. But if Hendriks doesn’t look like he’s going to be ready to start the season, they may be forced into doing so.

… but Hendriks is still working himself back from elbow surgery.

One Twins observer said the shapes on Hendriks’ off-speed pitches looked good, but his fastball needs progress. The fastball touched 92 mph, but Hendriks said he’s still working to find the proper extension to increase velocity, saying he was too “muscle-y.”

Hendriks is excited to compare his biomechanics from 2019 through ’22 to Monday’s effort after throwing in front of the Twins’ motion capture technology, which will compare his stride and determine if he’s jumping too much or not enough.

Hendriks previously noted it feels as if he never truly returned from his 2023 Tommy John surgery, and he believes he can still be effective on the mound. He saw improvement from his early bullpen sessions in terms of glove-side command and was animated while describing the session to teammates.

• Connor Prielipp added a curveball and knows he won’t be able to throw for a full season.

Connor Prielipp wants to remain a starting pitcher and added a curveball this offseason to further that goal. Prielipp threw a curveball earlier in his career, but it developed into a slider over time. Adding a new curveball has been easy for Prielipp, who pitched 82 2/3 innings in the minors last season, his first full season since high school.

Although his goal is to stay as a starter, Prielipp isn’t ruling out a career in the bullpen. The Twins mentioned Prielipp as a potential relief candidate early in the offseason, though he’ll build up as a starter for now.

“With my injury history, just being healthy for a full year last year was the main goal,” Prielipp said. “The Twins did a great job managing me with the workload. … As long as I’m playing baseball, I’m happy. But I’d love to be a starter as long as possible.”

• Taj Bradley added a sinker and tweaked his splitter.

Bradley spent this offseason working on a revamped two-seam fastball, also known as a sinker, as a way to generate outs early in counts and induce weak contact from right-handed hitters, who have a higher career slugging percentage (.444) off him than left-handers (.418).

After debating — mostly out loud with himself after Sunday’s start — whether the revamped sinker should be considered his fifth or sixth pitch, officially, Bradley settled on a simplified version: “Just another pitch to throw in the mix and keep hitters off balance.”

Twins coaches have also been working with Bradley to tweak the grip on his splitter to improve consistency with a pitch that has always shown flashes of being a swing-and-miss weapon. He struck out three-time All-Star Ozzie Albies with the overhauled splitter and used it to induce a double-play ball from Olson.

Yankees

• Giancarlo Stanton is in so much elbow pain that he can’t open a bag of chips.

Stanton told NJ.com on Wednesday that he has “good days and bad days” with his elbow pain, which still keeps him from doing common tasks.

“I can’t open a bottle,” Stanton said. “I can’t open a bag of chips … a bag of anything. That’s the way it is.”

• Ryan McMahon shortened his stance.

With 42.7 inches between feet, McMahon had baseball’s fourth-widest stance last season. He also stood 32 inches away from the inside edge of the plate, the Majors’ fourth-longest distance (Nos. 2 and 3 were Paul Goldschmidt and Aaron Judge, respectively).

By narrowing his base, McMahon is aiming to improve his hip mobility while reducing his strikeout rate (32.3%) and whiff rate (35.2%), which were career highs and the worst among qualified Major Leaguers.

“It really comes down to cleaning up some of the swing and miss,” manager Aaron Boone said. “That rose a little bit on him last year. If we can cut into that, he’s a guy that not only could hit for some power — as he’s shown throughout his career — but I think there’s some on-base [potential] there.”

National League

Diamondbacks

• Drey Jameson is working on adding a changeup.

Jameson’s control was strong with 15 strikes due in large part to his four-seam fastball topping out at 98 mph. The changeup, on the other hand, is a work in progress considering both of the hits he gave up came on that pitch.

“The main focus for me, necessarily, isn’t the heater,” Jameson said. “I would say it’s getting that changeup with the speed difference to get back to a 7-10 mph speed change. Today, I think it was probably up there.”

• Brandon Pfaadt is still dealing with some side discomfort that popped up during the offseason.

Right-hander Brandon Pfaadt is being "slow-played" because of some kind of a "side" issue that popped up during the offseason, manager Torey Lovullo said. Shouldn't prevent him from being on time to start the season. He is pitching in a backfield game today.

— Nick Piecoro (@nickpiecoro) February 26, 2026

Marlins

• The team will do some mixing-and-matching with their high-leverage relief spots.

Miami will once again play matchups and pockets when navigating the latter part of games. The highest-leverage situation doesn’t always happen in the ninth.

“I think that could be anyone that is out in our ‘pen that day,” McCullough said. “We’ll continue to look at the ‘pen very much similar [to] last year. And certainly, Pete is going to finish a lot of games for us. There’ll be times when Pete throws the eighth inning or throws somewhere else.