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MIAMI — Atlanta Braves ace Spencer Strider will miss the rest of the season after having surgery to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, the team said Saturday.

Dr. Keith Meister in Arlington, Texas, performed the procedure on Friday, using an internal brace to repair the UCL. Strider avoided Tommy John surgery, which he had in 2019 while at Clemson.

Recovery from the internal brace surgery, which uses an artificial material to make the repair, has allowed pitchers to return to the majors in as few as nine months. Tommy John surgery, which uses a tendon from elsewhere in the body to replace the torn ligament, has a typical rehab period of 12 to 18 months.

Strider complained about discomfort in his elbow after pitching four innings in Atlanta’s 6-5 win over Arizona on April 5. An MRI the next day revealed damage to his UCL, and the Braves prepared for the worst.

“You never expect these things to be good or just a blip on the screen,” manager Brian Snitker said last week.

Strider was 20-5 in 2023, leading the majors in wins and strikeouts (281). The right-hander had a 3.86 ERA last season.

He had a 7.00 ERA with 12 strikeouts in two starts this year.

The club’s first attempt at finding someone to fill Strider’s spot in the rotation went poorly. Right-hander Allan Winans was recalled from Triple-A Gwinnett last Sunday after Strider went on the 15-day injured list. Winans allowed seven runs, six earned, over five innings of a disastrous start against the Mets on Thursday and was optioned after the game.

Snitker said the team has been looking at replacement options since Strider initially went down but doesn’t have anyone specific in mind yet.

“We’re monitoring all those guys that are down there,” he said before Saturday’s game against the Miami Marlins. “All the starters. We have some good options, and we’ll just see where we are after different things. It’ll be kind of a day-to-day thing.”

The Braves began Saturday in first place in the NL East with an 8-4 record as they attempt to win their seventh straight division title.

The 25-year-old Strider joins a list of big-named pitchers who have suffered significant injuries this season.

Cleveland’s Shane Bieber, the New York Yankees’ Jonathan Loáisiga, Miami’s Eury Pérez and Oakland’s Trevor Gott are among the pitchers diagnosed with elbow injuries. Meister also performed Tommy John surgery on Bieber on Friday.

“I hate it. I want to see the stars, the best players play,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. “I think just as a baseball fan, I’ll always be a baseball fan. My son is 16 and is a baseball fan. My daughter is 14, and she’s a baseball fan. She comes to the games to watch the best players compete against each other. So we have to figure this out as an industry, as an organization, the whole deal.”

The Marlins have dealt with their fair share of pitching injuries. Their ace, Sandy Alcantara, is out for the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in October. Pérez underwent Tommy John surgery earlier this month after initially being diagnosed with mild elbow inflammation late in the spring.

“We’re all trying to figure this out to keep the best players out there,” Schumaker said. “As much as I don’t want to see Strider facing us, I want to see him pitch in the major leagues for a long time. … We have to figure this out, and it starts down at the youth sports honestly. My son’s in high school and he has a kid on his team that’s having Tommy John surgery. So it starts down below, and the whole baseball community has to figure this thing out.”

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Giants sell 10% stake to private equity firm

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Giants sell 10% stake to private equity firm

The San Francisco Giants have sold a reported 10% stake in the team to private equity firm Sixth Street.

The team confirmed the deal Tuesday but not the amount of the investment, which was first reported Monday by the New York Times.

Sportico places the value of the franchise and its team-related holdings at $4.2 billion.

Sixth Street’s investment, reportedly approved by Major League Baseball on Monday, will go toward upgrades to Oracle Park and the Giants’ training facilities in Scottsdale, Arizona, as well as Mission Rock, the team’s real estate development project located across McCovey Cove from the ballpark.

Giants president and CEO Larry Baer called it the “first significant investment in three decades” and said the money would not be spent on players.

“This is not about a stockpile for the next Aaron Judge,” Baer told the New York Times. “This is about improvements to the ballpark, making big bets on San Francisco and the community around us, and having the firepower to take us into the next generation.”

Sixth Street is the primary owner of National Women’s Soccer League franchise Bay FC. It also has investments in the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs and Spanish soccer powers Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.

“We believe in the future of San Francisco, and our sports franchises like the Giants are critical ambassadors for our city of innovation, showcasing to the world what’s only made possible here,” Sixth Street co-founder and CEO Alan Waxman said in the news release. “We believe in Larry and the leadership team’s vision for this exciting new era, and we’re proud to be partnering with them as they execute the next chapter of San Francisco Giants success.”

Founded in 2009 and based in San Francisco, Sixth Street has assets totaling $75 billion, according to Front Office Sports.

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Ohtani ‘nervous’ in Tokyo but gets 2 hits, runs

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Ohtani 'nervous' in Tokyo but gets 2 hits, runs

TOKYO — Shohei Ohtani seems impervious to a variety of conditions that afflict most humans — nerves, anxiety, distraction — but it took playing a regular-season big-league game in his home country to change all of that.

After the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ Opening Day 4-1 win over the Chicago Cubs in the Tokyo Dome, Ohtani made a surprising admission. “It’s been a while since I felt this nervous playing a game,” he said. “It took me four or five innings.”

Ohtani had two hits and scored twice, and one of his outs was a hard liner that left his bat at more than 96 mph, so the nerves weren’t obvious from the outside. But clearly the moment, and its weeklong buildup, altered his usually stoic demeanor.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Shohei nervous,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But one thing I did notice was how emotional he got during the Japanese national anthem. I thought that was telling.”

As the Dodgers began the defense of last year’s World Series win, it became a night to showcase the five Japanese players on the two teams. For the first time in league history, two Japanese pitchers — the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga — faced each other on Opening Day. Both pitched well, with Imanaga throwing four hitless innings before being removed after 69 pitches.

“Seventy was kind of the number we had for Shota,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “It was the right time to take him out.”

The Dodgers agreed, scoring three in the fifth inning off reliever Ben Brown. Imanaga kept the Dodgers off balance, but his career-high four walks created two stressful innings that ran up his pitch count.

Yamamoto rode the adrenaline of pitching in his home country, routinely hitting 98 with his fastball and vexing the Cubs with a diving splitter over the course of five three-hit innings. He threw with a kind of abandon, finding a freedom that often eluded him last year in his first year in America.

“I think last year to this year, the confidence and conviction he has throwing the fastball in the strike zone is night and day,” Roberts said. “If he can continue to do that, I see no reason he won’t be in the Cy Young conversation this season.”

Cubs right fielder Seiya Suzuki went hitless in four at bats — the Cubs had only three hits, none in the final four innings against four relievers out of the Dodgers’ loaded bullpen — and rookie Roki Sasaki will make his first start of his Dodger career in the second and final game of the series Wednesday.

“I don’t think there was a Japanese baseball player in this country who wasn’t watching tonight,” Roberts said.

The Dodgers were without Mookie Betts, who left Japan on Monday after it was decided his illness would not allow him to play in this series. And less than an hour before game time, first baseman Freddie Freeman was scratched with what the team termed “left rib discomfort,” a recurrence of an injury he first sustained during last year’s playoffs.

The night started with a pregame celebration that felt like an Olympic opening ceremony in a lesser key. There were Pikachus on the field and a vaguely threatening video depicting the Dodgers and Cubs as Monster vs. Monster. World home-run king Saduharu Oh was on the field before the game, and Roberts called meeting Oh “a dream come true.”

For the most part, the crowd was subdued, as if it couldn’t decide who or what to root for, other than Ohtani. It was admittedly confounding: throughout the first five innings, if fans rooted for the Dodgers they were rooting against Imanaga, but rooting for the Cubs meant rooting against Yamamoto. Ohtani, whose every movement is treated with a rare sense of wonder, presented no such conflict.

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Cardinals shortstop Winn out with wrist soreness

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Cardinals shortstop Winn out with wrist soreness

JUPITER, Fla. — St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn was scratched from the lineup for their exhibition game on Tuesday because of soreness in his right wrist.

Winn was replaced by Jose Barrero in the Grapefruit League matchup with the Miami Marlins, with the regular-season opener nine days away. Winn, who was a 2020 second-round draft pick by the Cardinals, emerged as a productive everyday player during his rookie year in 2024. He batted .267 with 15 home runs, 11 stolen bases and 57 RBIs in 150 games and was named as one of three finalists for the National League Gold Glove Award that went to Ezequiel Tovar of the Colorado Rockies.

Winn had minor surgery after the season to remove a cyst from his hand. In 14 spring training games, he’s batting .098 (4 for 41) with 12 strikeouts.

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