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MLB News & Moments You Should Know: 6/12/2025

Jesús Rises, a Citi SHO, and the Pope.

Asher Dratel
MLB Morning News 6/12/2025

Stay updated on everything baseball with our morning MLB News & Moments articles. We’ve got you covered to keep you in the know.

How’s everybody’s fantasy season going? It’s a real land of contrasts for me. I’m practically giving up on half of my teams at this point, even while the rest are sitting very pretty near the top of the standings. At least things are going well for my Yankees, so I can focus my emotional well-being entirely there for the time being.

Looking around the league as a whole, I’m surprised by how there are not many surprises in the standings right now. I guess the NL East? But at this point despite any of our preseason thoughts, the Mets are clearly the dudes in that division, rotation questions be damned. Aside from that, it’s pretty much just favorites in first and everybody playing catchup. I’ll be keeping an eye on the NL West in the coming days, though; there’s a lot of room for some interesting movement there.

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Today’s Headlines

 

Winzardo

It’s been a rough spot for fantasy managers running out Jesús Luzardo as he gave up a whopping 20 earned runs over 5.2 innings between a pair of starts on May 31 and June 5. His Wednesday matchup wasn’t necessarily great on paper, as the Cubs came into the game hitting .253/.325/.438 against LHP (good for a 116 wRC+, second best in the NL to only the Dodgers). But it wasn’t a further slide down the regression slope for Luzardo:

He rocked a CSW% of 30 across all of his pitches for the six innings, with his four-seamer, changeup, and slider all coming in at 30% or higher, and in general, his arsenal looked much more organized compared to the previous two disaster outings:

(If you’re a PL Pro member, I highly recommend looking at those previous two starts compared to this one on the Live Statcast Pitch App; it’s a pretty striking un-jumbling.)

Philadelphia wasn’t slouching at the plate on the North Side, either, hanging six runs on Ben Brown and another on Génesis Cabrera en route to their 7-2 win. It was an especially good afternoon for Alec Bohm, who contributed four RBIs, including a two-run single:

And a solo homer:

And I would be remiss not to post Kyle Schwarber doing Schwarbear stuff:

With yesterday’s win, the Phils are 10 games over .500, although still five games behind the Mets in the NL East. More on them below.

AZ Sweeps Back To Even

Huh, I just realized it’s pretty much all NL today in the headlines. Weird. Anyway, the Diamondbacks completed their sweep of the Mariners in… some kind of battle in the West. Seattle got out to an early lead, scoring a run on a Jorge Polanco RBI single in the first, then added another run on a Donovan Solano solo shot in the fifth. But in the bottom of the sixth, the snakes bared their fangs as Eugenio Suárez hit his third grand slam of the year:

AZ added another run later that inning on a Pavin Smith solo shot:

That 5-2 score would hold through the rest of the game, and Shelby Miller picked up his seventh save of the year with a low-stress ninth, giving up a two-out single and striking out two. He’s seemed to step ably in the high-leverage spot for Arizona that’s been vacated by Justin Martinez, going back on the IL with elbow troubles. With last night’s win, the Diamondbacks are back up to a .500 record, although in a wildly competitive NL West, that puts them in fourth place.

David Goes The Distance

I got to attend the Mets game last night with several coworkers, and while I yet again tried to teach all of my softball teammates how to properly keep score (shout out to the Citi Field jumbotron for showing batting outcomes in the standard shorthand) we didn’t quite appreciate that we were watching a milestone start from David Peterson.

That’s not just Peterson’s first career shutout, it’s the first shutout by a left-handed Mets pitcher since Steven Matz all the way back in 2019. David’s final line for the night: 9 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 0 BB, and 6 Ks for a nicely symmetrical outing. His ERA for the season is now down to 2.49 as the Mets’ pitching lab keeps on chugging in 2025.

And the Summer of Pete continues, as Pete Alonso got the Mets on the board in the first with an RBI double:

The rest of the offense came in the form of a two-run bomb off the bat of Juan Soto:

Plus a pair of solo shots from Brandon Nimmo, one to left and one to right:

Wednesday’s win brings the Mets to 20 games over .500, and the Tigers’ loss means they now have the best record in baseball (with one less game played than Detroit). It also makes for their fifth win in a row, which would be more impressive if it wasn’t for…

A Giant Win Streak

…that’s right, the current longest win-streak in the majors, as the Giants won their seventh in a row out in Colorado. It was a dramatic affair, with Willy Adames clearly enjoying the thin mountain air and hitting his second home run in as many days to put the Giants out to an early lead in the top of the first:

The Giants tacked on another run in the top of the third on an Adames sac fly, but then the Rockies switched things up with a four-run bottom of the inning off of Robbie Ray, who seems to clearly not be enjoying the thin mountain air:

Colorado added another pair of runs across the fifth and sixth inning, going into the eight with a 6-3 lead, but San Francisco turned the tables yet again with a four-run inning of their own, kicked off with a bases loaded walk to score Adames (he ended the night 3-for-4 with a trio of runs, hits, and RBIs) before Mike Yastrzemski tied the game with a booming double off of the wall in right-center:

A Tyler Fitzgerald sac bunt scored the go-ahead run, and then in the ninth inning, the Giants added four more insurance runs. Camilo Doval came in for a non-save appearance and had a very shaky outing, giving up three hits, walking one, and serving up a solo shot to Hunter Goodman before he was able to record the final out to secure the streak. SF is currently in second place in the NL West, a scant half game behind the Dodgers. They’ll be looking to tie LA in the standings on Thursday as they finish up their series in Colorado before flying back to California for… a series in LA against the Dodgers. Dramatic!

Paging Dr. Jobe For Jobe

And in what seems to be the necessary “downer news item to round out the headlines,” we have the news that Detroit’s top prospect Jackson Jobe is going to need Tommy John surgery:

We’ll need to wait for details about the procedure to know more about the recovery timeline, but it’s a bummer for an arm we were all very excited to finally see on a big league mound this year.

 

Best Moments From Yesterday

 

Papal Vestments, Only At Lids

I have nothing to say about this beyond being utterly shocked that it’s a real photo.

I had to check several places, and it wasn’t until I saw an uncropped photo with an AFP credit on MLB’s site that I actually accepted this wasn’t a very convincing photoshop. What a time to be alive.

Get Carter

Evan Carter got caught in the open while trying to steal second against the Twins yesterday and found himself in quite the pickle:

Classic MLB pickle in the middle, 1-3-4-1-6-2 caught stealing

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero.bsky.social) 2025-06-12T00:51:52.850Z

I love how long this goes on for like some kind of comedy bit, but more importantly, I love how completely textbook it all is! Look at those arms all cocked, displaying the ball, making sure there’s no confusion when it gets thrown to the next player! Just fantastic form all around.

Inside The Players Studio

The Athletic ran a multi-part anonymous poll amongst MLB players and published the results on Wednesday. You’ll need a subscription to read the whole article, but Kaci Borowski wrote up the questions that MLBers answered about each other, which included “Which player do you most like to watch play?” (Shohei Ohtani ran way with first place in that one) and “What hitter would you least want to pitch against in Game 7 of the World Series?” which unsurprisingly had a top three of Juan Soto, Ohtani, and Aaron Judge. My favorite quote from that question was about Judge:

“He puts fear in pitchers even when he’s not due up in the inning. You’re wondering about him the next inning.”

I think Dennis Lin may have the more juicy poll results, though, as he collated the opinions on organizations and managers. The top two names on the “Which manager, aside from your own, would you most like to play for?” list are Bruce Bochy and Terry Francona, which don’t come as much of a surprise, but Stephen Vogt came in a close third, which wasn’t the name I expected to see there. It does seem like we heard a lot about how well-liked he was in the Guardians clubhouse last postseason, and I guess it’s true, and word’s gotten around.

Meanwhile, in the least surprising category, the first-place results for “Which manager, aside from your own, would you not want to play for?” are a tie between Bud Black and Oli Marmol. But it seems like it’s not necessarily personal, as my favorite quote from the whole exercise spells out:

“Honestly, whoever was the Rockies’ manager was who I was going to say.”

Anyway, I don’t want to spoil everything, so if you have an Athletic/NYT sub, check out both articles; it’s fun stuff. Players really don’t care for the Rockies, White Sox, or Athletics…

 

Injuries and Other Moves

 

⚾ Shane McClanahan has paused his rehab and is looking for further opinions on his triceps nerve issue. It’s definitely not the update managers were looking for regarding the erstwhile Tampa ace, although it is another good reminder that you can never be too cavalier about any arm injuries, even if they get played down at the time.

⚾ The Royals activated Lucas Erceg off of the IL, but one of the corresponding moves is Cole Ragans going back to the IL with a rotator cuff strain.

⚾ Jazz Chisholm Jr. left Wednesday’s game with left groin tightness. He’s DTD as of Wednesday night.

⚾ The Yankees are considering having Ben Rice start games as the catcher with the return of Giancarlo Stanton looming (he’s currently rehabbing with the Double-A Somerset Patriots). Rice already has five appearances at C, and this would likely accelerate him gaining eligibility in all formats.

⚾ The Dodgers are trying to move Ben Casparius back into their rotation on a full-time basis, given the loss of Tony Gonsolin and the return of Michael Kopech.

⚾ Milwaukee is moving Aaron Civale into the bullpen to make room in their rotation for Jacob Misiorowski.

⚾ The Twins are trading Jorge Alcala to the Red Sox. The return is Low-A utilityman Andy Lugo. Apparently, Minnesota was about to DFA Alcala, and Boston figured they would just skip the whole process and make the trade they were going to propose anyway.

 

Articles You Should Read

 

Luis Arraez Has Entered the Contact Rate Death Spiral – Dan Szymborski, FanGraphs

Cheat Stance, Cheat Stance, Everybody Do the Cheat Dance – Matthew Trueblood, Baseball Prospectus (sub req’d)

 

Fantasy Baseball Coverage

 

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Hitter Performances

Waiver Wire Picks

Starting Pitcher Streamers

 

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Asher Dratel

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Asher hails from Brooklyn, wears a 2008 Joba Chamberlain jersey to every Yankees game he attends, and pronounces BABIP funny. Appreciator of Beefy Lad dingers and beers. @asherd.xyz on Bluesky.

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