ESPN | Enrique Rojas: The Red Sox sit in last place in the division, and even though the last Wild Card slot is currently held by the .500 Texas Rangers, there isn’t much faith in Fenway making a push to contend this year. Plenty of people expect Boston to be sellers, and they have a few short-term rentals that could entice some good returns including their closer, Aroldis Chapman, who is miraculously in the best form of his career despite now being 38 years old.
Chapman knows he’s on the trading block, and could expect to be in a different uniform by the deadline, but there’s one particular jersey he wouldn’t want to put on again unless his conditions were met. He said he would want an apology from the team, more specifically Brian Cashman, for how his Yankees tenure ended before he could feel comfortable playing for them again. This may come as a surprise to anyone who was following the team when he last played here, because that 2022 season burned every ounce of remaining goodwill the closer had with the fanbase — after years of underperformance in the playoffs and routine stretches of blowing games by not coming close to finding the strike zone, Chapman went and got a tattoo midseason that got infected forcing the team to sit him on the IL and all but handed the closer gig over to Clay Holmes. Then at the end of the year, Chapman got left off the postseason roster when he missed a mandatory practice before the ALDS.
Frankly, the Sox would never trade Chapman over to their archrivals in the first place so this is a moot point, but I also wouldn’t want him to ever come back even if he is pitching lights out nowadays and I certainly don’t think Cashman owes Chapman any sort of apology. I hardly think I’d be alone in that belief.
NY Post | Greg Joyce: The Yankees are heading north of the border to Toronto for the first time this season, and thus also returning for the first time since their brutal ALDS games last year. The team may be without Aaron Judge in the lineup for the foreseeable future, but their rotation looks to be significantly better than when they traveled up and got shelled for 23 runs in two games. They’re also facing a Blue Jays team that is much further out of the race than the last time they made their initial trip up, as last year’s first meeting was the turning point that gave Toronto a division lead that wouldn’t get relinquished following a four-game sweep.
NY Daily News | Gary Phillips: There was some friendly tomfoolery at the ballpark on Wednesday, as Cody Bellinger was subjected to a professional heckler. The content creator Trevor Gilmore has a dedicated page to heckling the road team’s left fielder with some ultimately harmless jokes alongside playfully calling them a bum, and he gets invited by several MLB teams to come and run his schtick for them with Cleveland happening to be his latest appearance. Bellinger said that he heard the chants loud and clear, but had fun with it and noted that he had some good lines.
MLB.com | Henry Palattella: Paul Goldschmidt entered this season expecting a part-time role for the first time in his lengthy career, and he openly embraced the role of the veteran backup. He kept himself productive enough in the first month and change of the season, but once injuries began to mount in the lineup and his name started appearing regularly in the lineup again he showed that there was no rust on the seven-time All-Star’s bat. He’s had a hot May and carried it over into June, hitting for a .924 OPS with seven homers and 23 RBI in 31 games played, and even though some of the regulars are set to return soon having a productive Goldy who can stay ready whether he’s sitting for days on end or has to play a week straight will be vital to this team staying in a rhythm offensively.
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