Veteran first baseman/outfielder Trey Mancini and the Arizona Diamondbacks are in agreement on a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training, sources told ESPN, launching a comeback for the 32-year-old who sat out the 2024 season.

Mancini, who has played parts of seven major league seasons, missed 2020 after being diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. He returned to the Baltimore Orioles in 2021 before being traded to the Houston Astros the next season and signing with the Chicago Cubs in 2023.

After signing with the Miami Marlins last year, Mancini was released toward the end of spring training and did not play the rest of the season. He continued working out in Nashville and will compete for a job with the Diamondbacks, who had the best offense in baseball last year and traded for Josh Naylor to play first base, with incumbent Christian Walker signing a three-year, $60 million free agent contract with Houston.

For half a decade, Mancini was a powerful right-handed presence in the middle of Baltimore’s lineup. In 831 career games, he has 129 home runs and 400 RBIs, hitting .263/.328/.448 with a 110 OPS+.

Drafted in the eighth round out of Notre Dame in 2013, Mancini debuted in 2016 and by 2017 was a full-time player, splitting time between first and left field. His best season came in 2019, when he hit .291/.364/.535 and finished sixth in the American League with 75 extra-base hits (including 35 home runs) and 322 total bases.

Mancini will have plenty of competition for a roster spot. In addition to Naylor, Arizona has a loaded outfield, with Corbin Carroll, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Jake McCarthy, Pavin Smith, Randal Grichuk, Alek Thomas as well as non-roster invitations for Garrett Hampson and Cristian Pache.

TORONTO — Max Scherzer joined the Toronto Blue Jays convinced he can win a World Series with a third team following titles with Washington and Texas.

“Winning cures everything,” the 40-year-old right-hander said Friday, three days after his $15.5 million, one-year contract was announced. “All you need to do to wake up in the morning is to have that drive to win, and the rest kind of takes care of itself.”

A three-time Cy Young Award winner, Scherzer was 2-4 with a 3.95 ERA last year for the Rangers. He started the season on the injured list while recovering from lower back surgery and was on the IL from Aug. 2 to Sept. 13 because of shoulder fatigue. He didn’t pitch after Sept. 14 because of a left hamstring strain.

Scherzer feels healthy.

“Normal ramp-up kind of in the lifting, normal ramp-up in the throwing, right where I need to be in terms of my bullpen progression,” he said during a Zoom news conference. “So I’m looking to come in here into spring training at full tilt.”

He joined a rotation projected to include José Berríos, Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt and Bowden Francis.

“The backbone of any team is always the starting rotation,” Scherzer said. “It doesn’t matter how much offense you got, if you don’t have a starting staff, you’re always going to be in trouble if you don’t have starters going out there and eating innings.”

Scherzer learned about the current Blue Jays when he spoke with Bassitt, a New York Mets teammate in 2022, and assistant hitting coach Hunter Mense, a University of Missouri teammate from 2004 to 2006.

“Just understanding how the team is, how the organization is, how they treat the families and how the guys on the team are, where the state of the organization is, how they want to improve,” Scherzer said. “I had a good chat with those guys how the Blue Jays handle everything and felt like this was going to be a fit.”

A Florida resident, Scherzer had geography in mind when considering teams.

“First and foremost is kind of staying here on the East Coast, especially with my family here in Florida. The kids are in school,” he said. “That makes it very easy to be able to get back and forth, be able to see them and have them be able to travel in, as well.”

Scherzer is 216-112 with a 3.16 ERA over 17 seasons with 3,407 strikeouts in 2,878 innings. His average fastball velocity dropped from 94.7 mph in 2020 to 92.5 mph last year.

“I still feel I can pitch at a very high level here. I frankly got all the pitches to be able to navigate a lineup,” he said. “It’s not about throwing 98. If you can throw 94, 95, you can get a lot of people out.”

He limits his use of analytics.

“There’s too much data, actually,” he said. “What we’re talking about with pitching now, I actually completely disagree with. And so, for me I understand what I do well, what I need to look at, what I actually need to be thinking about in terms of all my pitches, in terms of everything I’m doing … there’s some data that’s good, but a lot of data is bad.”

Though Scherzer spent parts of parts of nine seasons in the NL East, this will be his first time in the AL East.

“You got five teams that can all beat each other up. So, that’s the good news,” he said. “When you’re in a highly competitive division, that only makes you better. … It makes you battle-tested.”

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. negotiations are ongoing, meanwhile. The star first baseman has said he won’t negotiate a long-term contract after Toronto starts full-squad workouts Feb. 18.

The 25-year-old, a four-time All-Star, has a $28.5 million, one-year contract and can become a free agent after the World Series.

“You all know our desire to have him here for a long time, and we’ll continue to work towards that,” Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins told reporters during the news conference.

Two-time Super Bowl champion Howard Twilley, a member of the Miami Dolphins‘ undefeated 1972 team, has died at 81.

The National Football Foundation announced that Twilley died Wednesday but did not provide a cause of death.

Before landing in Miami, the wide receiver played at Tulsa. In 1965, he was a unanimous All-American and the Heisman Trophy runner-up after averaging 13.4 receptions per game, which the NFF said remains an FBS record.

“Howard Twilley was one of the greatest receivers in college football history with an uncanny ability to get open and change the course of a game,” NFF chairman Archie Manning said in a statement. “He simply redefined what it meant to be a dominant receiver, and his performance at Tulsa during the 1965 season remains one of the greatest in our sport’s history.”

Both the AFL’s Dolphins and NFL’s Minnesota Vikings selected him in the late rounds of their 1966 drafts, and he wound up in Miami.

He spent 11 seasons with the Dolphins, winning back-to-back Super Bowl championships after the 1972 and 1973 seasons. In 120 career games (82 starts), he caught 212 passes for 3,064 yards and 23 touchdowns.

Twilley started all three playoff games in 1972, making four receptions for 61 yards and a touchdown.

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Howard Twilley, a founding player for the Dolphins in 1966,” the Dolphins said in a statement. “His touchdown in Super Bowl VII helped the Dolphins cap the NFL’s only perfect season and his contributions to the organization will be forever remembered.”

Post-retirement, Twilley owned a chain of sporting goods stores and worked for an investment firm.