— These are the eight guys who will be in the Home Run Derby Monday night:
Kyle Schwarber, Phillies
Bryce Harper, Phillies
Junior Caminero, Rays
Willson Contreras, Red Sox
Munetaka Murakami, White Sox
Jordan Walker, Cardinals
Jax Caglianone, Royals
Ben Rice, Bronx
— San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama signed a five-year, $252M deal Friday, making him really, really rich at age 22. The way the deal is framed could potentially save the Spurs roughly $50M over the next five years, so they could add other players.
This past year, Wembanyama played in 64 games and averaged career highs in points (25.0) and rebounds (11.5), with 3.1 assists/game.
— St Louis Cardinals’ rookie 2B JJ Wetherholt signed an 8-year, $112.5M contract extension. He is hitting .267 with 13 HR’s, 36 RBI this year.
— Boston Red Sox won in Chicago Thursday, but their team plane had multiple issues, and they didn’t get to New York City until 5:05 Friday, for a game with a scheduled 7:10 first pitch.
Game was pushed back 45 minutes or so.
— Red Sox 6, Mets 2
Wilyer Abreu went 3-for-4, with a home run, 2 RBI
Sonny Gray allowed five hits and a run in six IP.
Red Sox have won seven in a row, are 1.5 games out of the last Wild Card spot.
— Rays 7, Mariners 2
Junior Caminero has homered in 13 of his last 17 games.
Nick Martinez got 16 outs and the win; he is 8-2, 2.65 this year.
— Shohei Ohtani (left knee) was scratched from his pitching start Friday; he’ll DH the rest of the weekend, but he won’t be going to the All-Star Game in Philadelphia.
— Famous birthdays, July 11th:
Clem Haskins, 83
Bruce McGill, 76
Sela Ward, 70
Jeff Kemp, 67
Lisa Rinna, 63
Andre Johnson, 45
Patrick Peterson, 36
Justin Steele, 31
Griffin Conine, 29
— White Sox OF Tristan Peters hit for the cycle Friday night, the first White Sox player to do that since Jose Abreu, in 2017.
— Rangers 7, Astros 3
Wyatt Langford, Jake Burger homered in a four-run 8th inning.
Yordan Alvarez hit his 200th career homer for the Astros.
Rangers lead the AL West by 1.5 games over Seattle.
— Reds rookie 3B Sal Stewart is 23-37 (62.2%) challenging called strikes against him this year, I can’t find any other hitter who has challenged more than 24 pitches this season.
— Guys playing 1B for the Diamondbacks this year have a combined OPS of .565, which would be the lowest OPS for any set of first basemen, for any team in the last 100 years.
— Royals’ SS Bobby Witt Jr is in his fifth year in the big leagues; he has already faced 720 different pitchers. Frank White played played for the Royals for 18 years (1973-90); he faced a total of 703 pitchers.
— When Ryan O’Hearn drove in 10 runs the other night, he hadn’t had an RBI in his previous six games. The last guy to have have 10+ RBI in a game, when he hadn’t had an RBI in his previous six games, was Norm Zauchin, in 1955.
— If the baseball playoffs started today (they don’t):
NL: Braves, Brewers, Dodgers. Wild Cards: Phillies-Cubs-Marlins
AL: Rays, Whits Sox, Rangers. Wild Cards: Bronx-Guardians-Mariners
