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 Matt Monagan.
You’ve probably seen clips of Sonny Gray pitching. Maybe you’ve even seen clips of him hitting?
But have you ever seen the clip of him acting?
Back in 2007, at Smyrna High School in Tennessee, Sonny Gray was the star of “High School Musical.” In this recently resurfaced footage, he is seen playing lead character Troy Bolton in an adaptation of the hit movie starring Zac Efron, where a high school basketball star breaks social norms to get the lead role in the school play.
Gray, a legendary football player at Smyrna High, said he was basically living out the plot of the movie at the time.
"I was in high school, playing high school football," he said. "It was literally like real-life Troy Bolton, except instead of basketball, it was football."
Gray, who also starred in “Grease” and “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” at Smyrna High, said that acting helped to make him a more well-rounded person.
"I'm thankful for it," Gray said. "I can't sing, and I didn't know anything about it, but it got me on stage and out of my comfort zone. It got me doing something I was very unfamiliar with and I actually really, really enjoyed it. It was beneficial to my life."
Gray, of course, doesn’t have much time for acting these days. He’s busy being one of the best pitchers in baseball for the Boston Red Sox, but the theater bug has never left him.
"My family has season tickets to 'T-Pack' [Tennessee Performing Arts Center] in Nashville," said Gray, who still has his home and farm in Tennessee. "When I was here in New York, I would do musicals a lot. My wife and I, one of our first dates was flying to New York to see 'Wicked.'"
A lesson to kids these days from Gray and, I guess, Bolton: Don’t get stuck in one clique or stereotype. Go try it all.
Read the full interview and story on Gray here.
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The first home run of a big league career is a seminal moment. It’s one that players never forget. And that’s just as true for Twins outfielder Walker Jenkins, even if he did hit it off a 37 mph pitch from a position player.
You might think there should be an asterisk on that one, but a ball over the fence is a ball over the fence. And Jenkins argued he was more nervous for this particular at-bat because he didn’t want to look foolish.
“Dude. Just don’t strike out,” he remembered thinking.
Jenkins is in good company, anyway. Fellow Top 100 prospect Luis Lara of the Brewers also hit his first Major League homer off a position player just a few weeks ago. Another pitch that hardly registered, also coming in at, go figure, 37 mph.
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Blue Jays @ Guardians (6:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV)
The AL Wild Card race is shaping up to be a doozy, and these two teams are right in the thick of it. Seemingly out of the picture only a few short weeks ago, the reigning AL pennant winners now sit just 1 1/2 games behind Cleveland for the final spot and have a prime opportunity to erase that gap starting tonight.
Padres @ Reds (6:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV)
San Diego’s backstop of the future is here. The team called up 20-year-old Ethan Salas when rosters expanded, and if he appears in a game behind the plate he will be the youngest catcher in a big league game since Pudge Rodriguez in 1991.
Phillies @ D-backs (9:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV)
It's a southpaw showdown with huge Wild Card implications, as Jesús Luzardo and Eduardo Rodriguez face off. Rodriguez comes in with a scoreless streak of 17 2/3 innings, while Luzardo's 1.31 ERA in August was second best in the bigs over that span. Who will blink first tonight?
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How early is too early to say "Paul Skenes is back"? Because we're tempted to do it right now.
Maybe we should wait and see what Skenes does tonight against the Giants (6:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV), or what he does over the final month.
But we really liked what we saw from Skenes his last time out. Obviously the stat line looked good -- six scoreless against a dangerous Padres lineup. But beyond the box score, the reigning National League Cy Young winner just looked a little bit more like himself.
And there's one big reason: His velocity is coming back.
Skenes' decreased velocity has been the biggest story of his rocky past few months. Three starts ago, on Aug. 11, his four-seamer averaged "just" 95.7 mph -- his lowest in any game of his career, and the first time he sat below 96.
Over his last two starts, though, the velo has crept back up. On Aug. 19, he averaged 96.8 mph. And in his most recent start, he averaged 97.2, his highest in a game since May 28 (which was a 10-strikeout outing against the Cubs).
Skenes also broke the 99 mph barrier in his previous start for just the third time all season, and recorded a strikeout on a nasty sinker at 98.6 -- tied for his second-fastest K of the year, behind only a 99.4 mph strikeout of NL MVP favorite Pete Crow-Armstrong in that May 28 game.
Skenes was throwing pretty much everything in his arsenal harder, and a harder-throwing Skenes is a more dominant Skenes. For better or worse, dominant has become his standard.
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250 FOR 250: BASEBALL IS THE BEST MOMENTS |
MLB.TV SEPTEMBER PRICE DROP |
The final month of the regular season is here, and MLB.TV has you covered.
With the playoff chase heating up, fans can purchase an MLB.TV Seasonal package at a new low price for the season at $29.99. The Single Team package is available for $24.99.
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