Tarik Skubal commanded the zone while dominating the San Diego Padres on Thursday. Making his third straight Opening Day start for the Detroit Tigers, the reigning back-to-back Cy Young Award winner threw 49 of 74 pitches for strikes, including 17 of 22 to start an at-bat. Moreover, he mixed with aplomb. Skubal garnered 14 called strikes, 10 of them on either his four-seamer or sinker, as well as 11 whiffs, nine coming on changeups. He departed after six innings having surrendered just three hits, with six strikeouts and nary a free pass.
His M.O. for attacking the strike zone? I asked the 29-year-old southpaw about that following one of his spring training outings earlier this month. As it has become increasingly common for pitchers — particularly power pitchers — to aim middle and let their stuff play from there, I wanted to know how precise he is with intended location.
“My changeup, I throw down the middle, but that’s because when I throw it down the middle, the result is down and away,” replied Skubal. “And when I throw my slider down the middle, the result is glove-side and down. So, there are pitches I throw down the middle, but that’s just visually, as opposed to what I’m actually doing.
“I feel like I do a good job of throwing strikes,” continued Skubal. “As far as really executing every pitch that I throw… I don’t know. There is probably a metric on it. I’d like to think I’m a little bit above average, but I don’t know what the numbers say.“
Measuring command is an imperfect science, so where Skubal ranks depends on your metric of choice. According to our PitchingBot model, he was among the best of the best. Last season, Skubal graded out at 64 (on a 20-80 scale) tying him with Seattle’s Bryan Woo at the top of our botCmd leaderboard.
Stuff+ isn’t nearly as bullish on his command. Asked for their input, my colleagues Ben Clemens and Michael Rosen both pointed out that Skubal is merely a little better than average. Ben’s inclination is to “split the difference [between botCmd and Location+] and say he is solidly above average.”
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Regardless of his ranking, Skubal knows that pinpoint precision isn’t a requirement for pitchers — especially ones who possesses a high-90s heater and a bat-missing seam-shift changeup.
“I don’t really care if I hit my spot if I’m competing in the strike zone, getting ahead, getting into leverage [counts],” he explained. “Going right after guys is what matters to me.”
A finesse pitcher he’s not, and in all likelihood, he never will be. Skubal made that clear when asked by another reporter about Toronto’s Max Scherzer, against whom he’d just matched up in a spring training tilt.
“I think every pitcher probably admires him,” Skubal said of the 41-year-old future Hall of Famer “Early in his career…. I think he was told that he was going to break down, when he was 21. And he sure as [expletive] hasn’t. I love that. I love those types of stories like ‘The max effort thing wouldn’t work.” I don’t know. He’s been pretty good. Look at his numbers and what he’s been able to accomplish.”
“I don’t want to ever not be a power pitcher,” Skubal went on to say.
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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS
Pete Crow-Armstrong is 7 for 9 against Miles Mikolas.
Joe Garagiola went 22 for 49 against Robin Roberts.
Robin Ventura went 16 for 30 against Tim Belcher.
Andre Dawson went 23 for 55 against Phil Niekro.
Rick Manning went 8 for 19 against Mark Fidrych.
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Jake Bird is looking to get back on track after a train wreck conclusion to his 2025 campaign. When I wrote about the 30-year-old reliever for FanGraphs last July, the first line began, “Jake Bird is having a career-best season.” That was certainly the case. When we’d spoken at Fenway Park a few days earlier, Bird boasted a 2.79 ERA, a 2.64 FIP, and a 28.6% strikeout rate over 38 appearances comprising 48-and-third innings. Given that Coors Field was his home venue, those numbers weren’t simply a personal best, they were flat out impressive.
Things proceeded to go south for the then-Rockies right-hander. Over his final 10 big-league appearances — seven with Colorado and three with the New York Yankees following a trade deadline deal — he allowed 17 hits, six walks, and 21 runs (!) over seven tumultuous innings. A stint in Triple-A wasn’t much better: he registered a 6.32 ERA over 15 outings with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.
What happened?
“It’s weird,” Bird told me at Yankees camp a few weeks ago. “When we talked last year was kind of the turning point of my season, in a bad way. I had to do a lot of looking at it, trying to figure out what happened, because I obviously wasn’t able to right the ship. I think a lot of it was about me flying open, versus staying on a line. Other than that… now is really just about having that reset and staying healthy.”
I asked Bird if health became an issue, or if maybe he just ran out of gas.
“I mean, I felt really good,” Bird told me. “It’s something where you look back in the offseason when you’re doing maintenance on your body, and maybe something was making me compensate in a certain way. I felt good, and my stuff was okay on paper, so who really knows. It’s hard to say.”
The path going forward? Is there anything pitch-wise that he needs to improve upon?
“After I got traded over here, we talked about fastball shapes,” Bird replied. “My sinker was really good at getting ground balls at points, but when I started struggling, that pitch is what was getting me hung out to dry. And it’s kind of weird, because it wasn’t too different earlier in the year. It was getting hit more than my breaking balls were, but not as much as they were getting hit in July. So, maybe I want to throw another fastball, with another shape, so that hitters can’t just wait for one.”
Along with sweepers and curveballs, Bird threw 322 sinkers, five four-seamers, and 24 cutters last season. Over his first two outings this year, he has thrown 11 sinkers and eight four-seamers (as well as six sweepers) while retiring six of seven batters. He has three strikeouts and has induced a double play.
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A quiz:
The team with the most sacrifice hits over the past 10 seasons also has the most since the turn of the century (2000). Another team has both the fewest over the past 10 seasons and the fewest since the turn of the century. Who are the teams on opposite ends of the sacrifice-hits spectrum?
The answer can be found below.
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NEWS NOTES
MLB’s 2026 Opening Day rosters included a total of 247 players representing 16 different countries and territories outside of the United States. The Dominican Republic (93) had the most, followed by Venezuela (60), Cuba (20), Canada (17), and Japan (14).
The Carolina League’s Myrtle Beach Pelicans (Low-A Chicago Cubs) have hired Joey Robertson as their new radio play-by-play announcer. The Virginia Tech alum spent last season as a broadcast and media relations assistant for the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs.
Doug Camilli, a catcher who played for the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1960-1964, and for the Washington Senators from 1965-1969, died on March 17 at age 89. His father, Dolph Camilli, won the 1941 NL MVP award with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
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The answer is the Colorado Rockies and the Boston Red Sox. The Rockies have
325 since 2016, and 1,511 since 2000. The Red Sox have 101 since 2016, and 499 since 2000.
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Patrick Wisdom is now in the Mariners system, the 34-year-old corner infielder having signed with Seattle as a free agent over the winter. He spent last season in the KBO with the Kia Tigers. Non-tendered by the Chicago Cubs in November 2024, Wisdom was subsequently playing in Mexico when Kia came calling.
“There were some [MLB] teams in the mix, but Korea seemed like a good opportunity,” Wisdom said of the move to a different continent. “It’s a big commitment to go halfway around the globe, but the family and I decided we should do it. My wife and I have three kids, and we put them in school there. Kia did a great job caring for us; they gave us everything we needed. There was a learning curve — it’s a different culture — but we really enjoyed living there.”
The Tigers certainly enjoyed what Wisdom brought to their lineup. The slugger hammered 35 home runs while logging a .535 slugging percentage and a 126 wRC+. That he also fanned 142 times — the third-highest total in the circuit — made him somewhat atypical in terms of hitting style.
“Kia expressed that they wanted me to hit homers and drive in runs, but overall, the KBO is kind of in the same boat as NPB,” explained Wisdom. “They play the game for what the game calls for. If you need to get a guy over, you bunt him over. They hit-and-run a lot. They steal bases. It’s not all velocity and home runs. They love that too, but at the same time, it’s more the art of baseball.”
One of the cultural differences was fan behavior in ballparks.
“The atmosphere really stood out,” said Wisdom. “They have a lot of passion for the game. I’m not saying that MLB doesn’t play with passion, but every game in the KBO is high energy. All of the fans are chanting. Everyone has a song. Here, sometimes the games can be kind of quiet. That’s not a bad thing, but it is a big difference that I experienced in Korea.”
Wisdom is beginning the current campaign — his 16th in professional baseball — with Triple-A Tacoma. He went 2-for-3 with a home run on Friday as the Rainiers opened their season with a 7-6 win over the Reno Aces.
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FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The NPB season got underway on Friday with the defending champion Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks edging the Hoikkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 6-5 in one of six Opening Day matchups. Each team homered three times.
Bobby Dalbec went deep in his NPB debut as the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants opened their season with a 3-1 win over the Hanshin Tigers. Trey Cabbage, who homered 17 times for the Giants a year ago, also went yard.
The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles had the most resounding Opening Day result, routing the Orix Buffaloes 10-0. Carson McCusker and Luke Voit combined for four hits and seven RBIs.
The KBO season got underway on Saturday with the defending champion LG Lions losing 11-7 to the KT Wiz. Sam Hilliard went 3-for-4 with a home run for the winning side, while his teammate, 19-year-old shortstop Gang-min Lee, logged three hits in his debut.
The Hanwha Eagles had the KBO’s most dramatic Opening Day win, tallying three two-out runs in the bottom of the 11th inning to beat the Kiwoom Heroes 10-9. Baek-ho Kang delivered the game-winning hit.
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Johnny King is ranked sixth on our 2026 Toronto Blue Jays Top Prospects list, with a 45 FV. Drafted 95th overall in 2024 out of Naples [Florida] High School, the 19-year-old left-hander has the potential to grow into much more than that. As my colleague Brendan Gawlowski wrote when profiling him in January, “If all goes well, he could well launch himself into the Top 100 discussion.”
King’s numbers last season were along the lines of what you might expect from a talented-but-raw teenager facing professional hitters for the first time. Over 61-and-two-thirds innings between the Florida Complex League and Low-A Dunedin, he logged a 2.48 ERA and 39.5% strikeout rate, but also a 13.9% walk rate. As Gawlowski stated, the youngster will “need to work on the plate a little more.”
An evaluator for an American League team whom I spoke to offered a similar concern, as well as praise, for the young hurler.
“His velocity is up to 98, although he needs to locate better,” the scout told me. “His changeup has made a lot of progress. When he came to pro ball he didn’t really have one — he was basically just fastball-breaking ball — and that pitch will help everything play better. He seems to have the aptitude, and he’s a competitor, so I see a future big league starter if everything comes together.”
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FARM NOTES
The Triple-A season got underway Friday with a slate of games that included the Charlotte Knights riding roughshod over the Durham Bulls by a count of 19-2. The Chicago White Sox affiliate hammered six home runs, three of them in an 11-run fourth inning. Tanner Murray went 4-for-6 with a pair of dingers and five RBIs.
Konnor Griffin went 1-for-3 with a walk and a stolen base in his Triple-A debut as the Indianapolis Indians were outscored 4-2 by the St. Paul Saints. The 19-year-old shortstop in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization proceeded to go 2-for-3 with a pair of walks and another stolen base on Saturday.
Brendan Beck had Opening Day’s best pitching performance. The 27-year-old right-hander in the New York Yankees organization fanned nine batters and allowed just one baserunner over five shutout innings as the Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders blanked the Buffalo Bisons 8-0.
James Tibbs III went 4-for-5 with two doubles and a triple to help lead the Oklahoma Comets (Dodgers) to a 13-6 win over the Albuquerque Isotopes last night. Ryan Fitzgerald went 3-for-5 with a double and a home run.
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A random obscure former player snapshot:
Don Gross grew up in small-town Wedman, Michigan, attended Michigan State University, and went on to have an under-the-radar career. A southpaw who toed the rubber for the Cincinnati Reds from 1955-1957, and the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1958-1960, Gross was a combined 20-22 with 10 saves and a 3.73 ERA over 145 appearances comprising 398 innings.
His most notable outings came with the Reds. On seven occasions, Gross hurled a complete game while allowing one or fewer earned runs, twice while going 10 frames. He was also out-dueled by Warren Spahn in a 1-0 loss to the Atlanta Braves, with Joe Torre driving in the contest’s lone run. Todd Benzinger, who played for Cincinnati and four other teams across the 1987-1995 seasons, is Gross’s nephew.
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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE
At MSU Today, Melody Kindraka wrote about how former big-league outfielder and college coach (including for the Spartans) Danny Litwhiler revolutionized baseball.
The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey wrote about how Craig Breslow knows that it is crunch time for his job in Boston.
Also by McCaffrey: CB Bucknor had six pitches overturned by ABS yesterday (it would have been more had the Red Sox not run out of challenges) and he also called out Trevor Story on a questionable checked swing, prompting the ejection of Alex Cora.
SNY’s Chelsea Janes wrote about how the new-look Mets lineup embodied David Stearns’ vision in a dominant Opening Day performance.
MLB.com’s Sarah Langs looked at 10 players who could reach career milestones in 2026.
Dave McNally won 20 or more games for the Orioles in four straight seasons, has four World Series wins on his ledger, and played a leading role in the legal case that brought free agency to baseball in 1975. Montana-based journalist Dennis Gaub believes that the Billings native belongs in the Hall of Fame, and he shared his reasoning at Baltimore Baseballl.
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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS
In the decade of the 2000s, 51.8% of all MLB plate appearances came from players who were at least 29 years old. In the 2010s, that percentage dipped to 45.0%. In the 2020s, it is 42.2%. (Per Baseball America.)
Four players in MLB history have 8,000 or more plate appearances and a batting average of exactly .300: Roberto Alomar, Freddie Freeman, Enos Slaughter, and Michael Young.
Alan Foster was the most successful player selected and signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1965’s inaugural MLB draft. A second-rounder out of a Hacienda Heights, California high school, Foster pitched in parts of 10 big-league seasons and logged 48 wins and 5.4 WAR. The Dodgers’ 10th round pick that year was a right-hander out of the University of Southern California they failed to sign: Tom Seaver returned to school, ultimately landed with the New York Mets, and went on to log 311 wins and 92.4 WAR.
Hal Newhouser went 80-27 with a 1.99 ERA and 24.6 WAR for the Detroit Tigers from 1944-1946. “Prince Hal” posted records of 29-9, 25-9, and 26-9 during that three-year stretch, twice capturing AL MVP honors.
Old Hoss Radbourn went 140-57 with a 1.81 ERA and 23.0 WAR for the National League’s Providence Grays from 1882-1884. The Hall of Fame right-hander was at his best in the last of those three seasons, going 60-12 with a 1.38 ERA over an unfathomable-by-today’s-standards 678-and-two-thirds innings.
On today’s date in 2003, the Boston Red Sox traded Javier López to the Colorado Rockies in exchange for a PTBNL (Ryan Cameron). Cameron pitched in 10 professional seasons, all in the minors. López made his MLB debut with the Rockies in April and went on to take the mound 839 times, all in relief, over 14 big-league seasons.
The Montreal Expos signed Greg A. Harris on today’s date in 1985. On September 28 of that same season, the right-hander pitched ambidextrously against the Cincinnati Reds in the 703rd, and final, appearance of his 15-year career.
Players born on today’s date include Tom Tellmann, a right-hander who went 18-7 with 13 saves and a 3.05 ERA over 227 innings while pitching for three teams across the 1979-1985 seasons. In 1983, the Watten, Pennsylvania native notched nine wins and eight saves while logging a 2.90 ERA with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Also born on today’s date was Ferris Fain, a first baseman who slashed .290/.424/.396 with a 127 wRC+ over 4,905 plate appearances while playing for three teams, mostly the Philadelphia Athletics, from 1947-1955. A five-time All-Star who won batting titles in 1951 (.344) and 1952 (327), Fain drew 904 walks and fanned 206 times over the course of his nine-year career. He was known for a hot temper and enjoying a drink.
Clarence Beers is one of the more obscure pitchers in St. Louis Cardinals franchise history. In his lone MLB game, the right-hander faced seven Chicago Cubs batters on May 2, 1948 and retired just two of them. His time down on the farm was far more extensive, and far more successful. Beers’s 13 minor-league seasons included his going 25-8 with the Houston Buffaloes in 1948.