Month: March 2023

Mere hours before their season opener against the Miami Marlins on Thursday, the New York Mets announced that right-hander Justin Verlander was being put onto the injured list with a “low grade teres major strain” in his side. The team said Verlander will continue throwing at moderate intensity and will re-evaluated after undergoing more scans in a week. In his absence, right-hander Tylor Megill will take Verlander’s spot in the rotation.

The 40-year-old Verlander said Thursday: “Looking back, it’s something that was lingering. I thought it was something I was working through. In my bullpen yesterday, I still felt a teeny bit of something.” Verlander added that his velocity had been down in his last spring training start, and he wanted to be extra cautious at the beginning of the season: “The fact that I’m going to be able to continue to throw is showing how minor of an injury it is,” adding that he would be pitching if this were the playoffs, “but it just makes too much sense to not push it right now … It’s not something to mess around with. In my mind, it’s being prudent, being smart and getting it looked at.”

Verlander, coming off his third career Cy Young award, signed a two-year, $86.6 million deal with the Mets this winter.

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NY Yankees’ Aaron Judge, who led MLB with 62 home runs in 2022, earned MLB’s first home run of the 2023 season on Thursday. In the first inning on Opening Day, the reigning American League MVP saw a 93 mph sinker from San Francisco Giants ace Logan Webb and smashed it some 422 feet over the Yankee Stadium left center field fence for his first home run of the year, and his first one as Yankees captain. The Yankees went on to defeat the Giants 5-0. Yankee pitcher Gerrit Cole also had an impressive debut on his fourth Opening Day start in pinstripes, striking out 11 Giants through six innings to set a franchise record previously held by Tim Leary in 1991 (9 strikeouts).

Before taking the field Thursday, Judge had joked about the Giants-Yankees Opening Day matchup for the first time ever, putting him up against the team that he rooted for growing up in Northern California and also pursued him in free agency. Said Judge with a smile: “I don’t know who at MLB did that to me, but it’s great. Logan Webb’s a great pitcher, he’s had a couple great years, and looking forward to many more out of him. But it’s going to be a fun afternoon, that’s for sure, getting a chance to play the team I watched a lot as a kid.” Judge had considered joining the Giants in the offseason before signing a nine-year, $360 million deal to remain with the Yankees. Said Judge: “It was kind of a dream come true getting a chance to speak with them and get an opportunity to go there. But in the end, it just worked out for me to come back to the Yankees, and I’m happy with my decision.”

Judge was voted AL MVP last season, finishing first in home runs (62) and RBIs (131) and second in batting average (.311), recording an inordinate 1.111 OPS and breaking Roger Maris’ 61-year-old AL home run mark.

The Yankees will host the Giants in the second game of the series at 4:05 p.m. EDT Saturday at Yankee Stadium.

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Penn State and Mike Rhoades have agreed on a seven-year deal worth over $3 million per year for him to become the next head coach of the Nittany Lions. Matt Fortuna tweeted that Rhoades will have an average salary of $3.7 million across his seven-year deal with Penn State. Rhoades will replace Micah Shrewsberry, who left to take the head coaching job at Notre Dame. Shrewsberry was 37–31 in his two season with Penn State, leading the program to its first NCAA Tournament bid in over a decade.

Penn State tweeted: “Welcome to Happy Valley, @CoachRhoades A proven winner and a Pennsylvania native, we are thrilled to officially announce Mike Rhoades as the next Peter and Ann Tombros Endowed Men’s Basketball Head Coach → https://bit.ly/MikeRhoades #WeAre”.  

Rhoades said in a statement: “It’s with great honor and excitement to be Penn State’s Peter and Ann Tombros Endowed Men’s Basketball Head Coach. I would like to thank Dr. Bendapudi, Pat Kraft and Michael Wade Smith for their faith in me and the opportunity to lead this great program. We will be bold, different and aggressive moving our program forward. We will play with great energy and excitement while always being relentless in our pursuit of making this basketball family into something special. I can’t wait to get to work.”

Rhoades just finished his sixth season as VCU’s head coach, compiling a 129-61 record with the Rams. He made the NCAA Tournament in three of those six seasons, including this past one. The 2022-23 Rams team finished with a 27–8 record and 15-3 mark in the Atlantic-10 Confernece. The team won both the regular season and tournament titles.

According to sources, Utah State’s Ryan Odom is expected to be the top candidate at VCU to replace Rhoades.

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The Atlanta Falcons signed veteran defensive end Calais Campbell in free agency to a one-year deal with the franchise.

Campbell, a second-round pick in the 2008 NFL Draft, spent his first nine seasons with the Arizona Cardinals. The six-time Pro Bowl selection and former Defensive Player of the Year then spent three seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars, who traded Campbell to the Ravens in 2020; he was released earlier this month.

Campbell logged 809 combined tackles, 165 tackles for a loss, 99 sacks, 57 passes defensed, 16 forced fumbles, 12 fumble recoveries, three interceptions and three touchdowns in 227 appearances over his first 15 seasons in the league.

Campbell totaled 36 combined tackles, 5.5 sacks, four tackles for a loss, two passes defensed and two forced fumbles in 14 starts last season.

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