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Diamondbacks News

(SI.com) How Will Diamondbacks Handle Looming Roster Crunch?

They begin a 10 game home stand tomorrow night at Chase Field, and will play 13 games in 13 days between May 5th to the 17th. Thanks to the off day today, they may not feel the need to add another relief pitcher right away at the beginning of this stretch, but almost certainly within a few days they will need to add a pitcher to help cover innings. Doing so will result in a roster crunch on the position player side of things.

(Arizona Sports) ESPN gives Diamondbacks 7th-highest grade in MLB for performance in April

While there are still five months to go in the 2023 MLB season, the D-backs have certainly turned some heads around the league, including ESPN’s David Schoenfield, who gave them the seventh-best grade in baseball after April with a B+.

(AZ Central) Arizona Diamondbacks’ Ketel Marte productive again from both sides of plate

For most of his youth, Marte hit only from the right side. About two months before he signed his first professional contract at age 16, he took up switch-hitting.

Given what he has accomplished throughout his career, the ability to also hit from the left side has served him well. But Marte went into last offseason wondering if it might be keeping him from being even better.

MLB News

(ESPN) How the Baltimore Orioles became a contender

Baltimore general manager Mike Elias didn’t just sit around waiting for the prospects to join the burgeoning core. In August 2021, Baltimore placed a waiver claim on shortstop Jorge Mateo, who blossomed last year, broke out this year and is currently eighth among position players in Wins Above Replacement. Standout reliever Bryan Baker came via waivers, too, three months later, and lefty reliever Cionel Perez two weeks after that. Right-hander Yennier Cano, author of 11 hitless, walk-free innings to start the season, arrived in a trade last July in which the Orioles, on the fringes of contention, dealt closer Jorge Lopez to Minnesota.

(LA Times) Inside the ‘secret’ baseball academy the Dodgers are running in Uganda

Hidden at the end of a narrow, rutted dirt road in central Uganda, wedged between a concrete wall and a hillside dotted with palm trees, is the only baseball academy run by a major league team in Europe or Africa.

The Dodger blue paint and the white interlocking LA on the archway above the entrance identify the owner, but the team will say nothing about the facility, about its interest in Uganda and what, exactly, goes on behind that concrete wall.