Back in MLB, new Met Iglesias feels ‘like a rookie’
-
Jorge Castillo, ESPN Staff Writer
NEW YORK — José Iglesias had appeared in 1,096 major league games for six organizations across 11 seasons before Friday. The slick-fielding shortstop is fully pensioned, having accrued 10 seasons of service time. He’s a bona fide veteran. But he felt like he was about to make his big league debut all over again standing in the New York Mets‘ clubhouse Friday afternoon hours before playing in his first major league game in nearly two years.
“I feel like a rookie right now,” Iglesias said.
Iglesias was called up from Triple-A Syracuse to join the Mets on Friday as their whirlwind week continued with a flurry of roster moves. The club, in the midst of playing 26 games in 27 days, executed six player transactions. In came Iglesias, reliever Dedniel Núñez and catcher Luis Torrens. Out went third baseman Brett Baty, starter Christian Scott and catcher Omar Narvaez.
The moves come at the end of a frenzied week for the Mets, who have lost eight of 10 games and designated Jorge López for assignment after the reliever threw his glove into the stands Wednesday and showed no remorse for his actions.
The Mets replaced Baty with Iglesias for middle infield depth, Scott with Núñez for another bullpen arm and Narváez with Torrens for better production at catcher. The club envisions Baty and Scott, two young promising players optioned to Triple-A Syracuse, as parts of their future. Going with Torrens over Narváez, however, was a performance-based decision.
Narváez, 32, slashed .154/.191/.185 in 28 games. The metrics indicated Narváez, who is making $8 million in the final year of his contract, was also one of the worst defensive catchers in the majors two months into the season. New York, as a result, sought a different option to split with Tomas Nido so they acquired Torrens from the New York Yankees for cash.
“There’s always competition,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said .”And, look, we thought that there was an opportunity here to get a player here in Luis Torrens that was going to make our roster a little bit better, or better. And we made the move. But nothing to say about Narvy too because he worked really, really hard. And he was a big part of our team.”
Iglesias is a Met because the team has needed a backup middle infielder since designating Joey Wendle for assignment earlier this month. The left-handed-hitting Baty, a former top prospect, isn’t in New York, for now, because the club chose the right-handed-hitting Mark Vientos over him to play third base.
Baty, 24, batted .225 with four home runs and a .628 OPS in 49 games this season.
“Where we were on the schedule, playing a doubleheader the other day and also facing four lefties in the next six games, there wasn’t going to be much playing time for Brett,” Mendoza said. “Not an easy decision, but it’s time for him to go down there and continue to get some playing time, continue to get reps, continue to develop. And then he’ll be back here. We told him that.”
Scott has been one of the few positives for the Mets this season. The 25-year-old right-hander made his big league debut May 4 and posted a 3.90 ERA in five starts. He held the Arizona Diamondbacks to two runs over five innings Thursday.
Mendoza explained that Scott was sent down to have another reliever on the roster instead of a six-man rotation with three off days sandwiched around the team’s upcoming two-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies in London. Scott is expected to rejoin the Mets soon thereafter.
“He’s a big league pitcher,” Mendoza said.
Núñez, 27, returned to New York for his fourth stint this season. He’s given up three runs over 8⅓ innings across five outings with the Mets, making his major-league debut with the team in April. He owns a 1.38 ERA with 20 strikeouts in 13 innings for Triple-A Syracuse this season.
LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani hit two homers in an 11-5 win over the San Francisco Giants on Saturday night, emphatically ending the three-time MVP’s longest homer drought since joining the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Ohtani led off the bottom of the first with his 24th homer, hammering Landen Roupp‘s fourth pitch 419 feet deep into the right-field bleachers with an exit velocity of 110.3 mph.
The slugger had been in a 10-game homer drought since June 2, going 10-for-40 in that stretch with no RBIs, although he still had an eight-game hitting streak during his power outage.
Ohtani led off the sixth with his 25th homer, sending Tristan Beck‘s breaking ball outside the strike zone into the bleachers in right. He also moved one homer behind the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and Seattle’s Cal Raleigh for the overall major league lead.
Dodgers fans brought him home with a standing ovation as Ohtani produced his third multihomer game of the season and the 22nd of his career.
Ohtani reached base four times and scored three runs in his first four at-bats, drawing two walks to go with his two homers.
Ohtani hadn’t played in 10 straight games without hitting a homer since 2023 in the final 10 games of his six-year tenure with the Los Angeles Angels.
Ohtani had slowed down a bit over the past two weeks after he was named the NL Player of the Month for May with a formidable performance, racking up 15 homers and 28 RBIs.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
BOSTON — Hunter Dobbins had quite the week.
First, he said last weekend that he would rather retire than pitch for the Yankees because his father was drafted by New York twice before being traded.
Then, he went out and beat the Yankees.
A few days after his comments about never wanting to pitch for New York, he had to defend his dad’s story about being drafted by the Yankees in response to a New York Post article that cited multiple official databases and the Yankees’ own records that couldn’t confirm Lance Dobbins ever played with the organization.
On Saturday night, Dobbins (4-1) followed up by going six shutout innings in Boston’s 4-3 victory over New York, his second win over the Yankees in less than a week.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “I’m more worried about just the win column, whether it’s against them or anybody. My job is to try and help this team win as many ballgames as we can, and pitch in meaningful playoff baseball games. That’s what I’m more focused on.”
But he realizes what it means to the fan base in this longtime rivalry, with the Red Sox fans heard chanting about the Yankees outside the park before he spoke in an interview room.
“Yeah, I love being able to perform and get those wins for the fans here,” he said. “They deserve it. It’s a great city, passionate fan base, so being able to get those wins — especially twice in one week — means a lot and looking forward to trying to build on that going forward.”
In his victory over New York last Sunday, Dobbins held the Yankees to three runs over five innings, two on a first-inning homer by Aaron Judge.
On Saturday night, Judge went 0-for-3 against him, striking out twice on curveballs.
“It was just kind of scouting,” Dobbins said of his game plan against New York’s slugger after Garrett Crochet struck him out three times in the series opener Friday.
“Crochet has an electric fastball. I can throw it hard, but the shape isn’t quite as elite,” he said. “So we knew we had better weapons to go at him with, so I felt like we did a good job of kind of keeping a balanced attack throughout the order.”
Dobbins struck out five and gave up only two singles Saturday.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut