Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Today's edition is brought to you by David Adler.
Let's try to solve one of the biggest mysteries in baseball this year.
Three hundred and forty Major League players have hit at least one home run this season. Fernando Tatis Jr. is not one of them.
The Padres star has played 35 games and taken 152 plate appearances without hitting a single homer. That is just unbelievable.
Entering play today, here are the three players who have the most plate appearances in 2026 with zero home runs. One of these things is not like the others …
- Chandler Simpson (Rays): 154 PA // 0 HR
- Fernando Tatis Jr. (Padres): 152 PA // 0 HR
- Luis Arraez (Giants): 144 PA // 0 HR
That's two of the slappiest slap-hitters in baseball … and then Tatis. This is a guy who's hit 42 home runs in a season! Tatis is basically a lock for at least 25 homers a year if he plays the full season.
To make things even crazier, Tatis ranks in the top 1% of ALL big league hitters in hard-hit rate. He's hitting the ball harder than basically everybody in the whole league! But he hasn't hit one single ball over the fence. Simpson and Arraez, the two hitters Tatis is sharing his homerless territory with? They rank at the very bottom of the league in hard-hit rate.
Tatis is mashing the ball. And yet … he's not mashing the ball. Not in the way we'd expect from him, at least.
So what's going on? We have some ideas. Mike Petriello investigates Tatis' bizarre power outage here.
|
THE MOST EXTREME SWING IN BASEBALL |
MLB has a new bat speed king in 2026. Junior Caminero has dethroned Giancarlo Stanton and Oneil Cruz.
But that's only half of what makes Caminero's swing unique. Because the Rays slugger has both the fastest and the flattest swing in the Majors.
It's all part of his plan: Caminero's elite bat speed gives him his explosive power, and his level swing helps him stay on plane with the pitch to better square up the baseball.
Here's how Caminero stacks up with the other hitters at the top of Statcast's bat speed leaderboard, and the ones on the "flat" side of the swing path leaderboard (a lower angle is a more level swing, meaning the bat path is closer to parallel to the ground).
|
Caminero already had a fast and flat swing last season, when he broke out and hit 45 home runs. Now his swing has gotten even faster and even flatter, and he's really in a class of his own.
With that swing, Caminero is on a 40-home run pace again in 2026. He has nine through the Rays' first 36 games, and his overall offensive production is right in line with last year.
|
Now here's a fun nugget. We asked Caminero where his fast-and-flat swing comes from -- and it turns out it traces back to a piece of hitting advice from none other than Albert Pujols.
Pujols was Caminero's manager in the Dominican Winter League a couple of years ago, and again with the Dominican Republic at the 2026 World Baseball Classic. And who better to talk hitting with than one of the greatest of all time?
"I just want to be on plane with the pitch," Caminero told us this week (via Rays interpreter Kevin Vera). "And that was one thing that I learned in the Dominican with Albert Pujols. He was telling me, 'Hey, just get level with the pitch.' Because the whole point is obviously to hit the ball in the air, but you don't want to pop it up, you don't want to fly it up. You want to elevate it [the right amount], so then you're able to hit home runs."
Read our deep dive into Caminero's extreme swing, and why it works for him, here.
|
ANTONE BACK AFTER 3 TOMMY JOHN SURGERIES |
Here's a story everyone can feel good about: Yesterday, Tejay Antone, who's undergone three Tommy John surgeries in his career, returned to the mound in a Major League game.
The Reds righty made his 2026 season debut against the Cubs at Wrigley Field, completing his recovery from his third Tommy John. Antone threw a perfect eighth inning in relief, including strikeouts of Alex Bregman and Seiya Suzuki.
Plenty of pitchers have returned from Tommy John surgery to have successful careers. Some pitchers have even been able to come back from two Tommy Johns. But three? Antone doesn't have a whole lot of company.
The only other pitchers known to have come back from three elbow reconstruction surgeries like Antone are Jonny Venters and Jason Isringhausen.
Mark Sheldon has the story on Antone's remarkable comeback.
|
A division rivalry game for the hottest team in the AL and a showdown between two of the National League's top clubs are the highlights of tonight's slate, in a doubleheader airing exclusively on ESPN.
Rays at Red Sox, 7 p.m. ET (WATCH HERE)
The Rays have won six games in a row and 12 of their last 13, and their pitching staff has a microscopic 1.23 ERA over that 13-game run. Tampa Bay just swept one division rival in the Blue Jays, the team's MLB-best fifth series sweep this season. Now the Rays take on another rival in the Red Sox.
Cardinals at Padres, 10 p.m. ET (WATCH HERE)
Is tonight the night that Tatis hits his first home run of the season? We'll find out when these two NL playoff contenders take the field. Both the Cards (21-15) and the Padres (22-14) sit in second place in their divisions, and both are within striking distance of the first-place teams, the Cubs and Dodgers.
|
10 YEARS AGO, THE IMPOSSIBLE HAPPENED |
Today is the 10-year anniversary of one of the most fun moments in recent baseball history: Bartolo Colon's home run.
The fan-favorite pitcher was 42 years old when he hit his first career home run for the Mets, a once-in-a-lifetime shot off James Shields in San Diego on May 7, 2016.
You might remember Gary Cohen's gleeful home run call: "It's outta here! Bartolo has done it! The impossible has happened!"
MLB has a YouTube video up today reflecting on the home run 10 years later. You can also re-live Bartolo's home run with our oral history of the miraculous moment.
Oh, by the way … You know who else hasn't forgotten Bartolo's home run? Bartolo himself.
Colon posted on social media today: "I think I still have one more left in the tank."
Someone get that man a bat.
|
|
|
© 2026 MLB Advanced Media, L.P. MLB trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of Major League Baseball. Visit MLB.com. Any other marks used herein are trademarks of their respective owners.
Please review our Privacy Policy.
You (geoffgould.gr8iphone@blogger.com) received this message because you registered to receive commercial email messages from MLB.com.
Please add info@marketing.mlbemail.com to your address book to ensure our messages reach your inbox. If you no longer wish to receive commercial email messages from MLB.com, please unsubscribe or log in and manage your email subscriptions.
Postal Address: MLB.com, c/o MLB Advanced Media, L.P., 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
|
|
|
|
