Weekly Scorecard: Jan 20 - 26, 2026

The big winter storm has hit! I hope you're all doing well and staying warm; Boston is two feet deep in snow, but I blog on nevertheless. (Now with donations open! More on that later.)

While I'm on the topic of the cold, I'd like to share Alex Pretti's parents' statement following his murder by ICE on Saturday:

We are heartbroken but also very angry.

Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the hero term lightly. However his last thought and act was to protect a woman.

The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed.

Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.

This is far from the first atrocity ICE and DHS have carried out this month, and it almost certainly won't be the last. We don't know the names or faces of most of the people they're committing unspeakable violence against, because most of those people are in "detention centers", or prisons, or concentration camps, with no cameras showing the truth of what's going on. We should, however, hold on to the memories of those we do know—for their sake, and ours.

The Scoreboard

Before any roster-related news, I'd like to note that Spencer Strider and Bailey Ober have shown support for the people of Minneapolis this weekend (as has Katia Lindor), which is a hell of a lot better than most players will ever do. Let's hope that we see more of this going forward and less of MLB's usual bootlicking spinelessness.

Speaking of spinelessness: Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones were elected to the Hall of Fame last week, and while I honestly couldn't care less about the "cheating", I do care about the domestic violence. My more detailed thoughts on that will be part of a much longer post at some point, but for now, I really liked what Craig had to say about it in Wednesday's Cup of Coffee:

I don't know how anyone could vote to give a person like that the game's highest honor, but 333 of 425 Hall of Fame voters – most of whom claim to agree that a player's character is part of the criteria for election – apparently don't give a crap that Jones is an abuser. I find that pathetic and the electorate's willingness to look the other way when it comes to violent abusers is one of the many reasons I've removed myself from Hall of Fame debates.

Am I happy when a player I like is recognized by the Hall? Of course! But I also think it's pretty meritless overall, and this is a big reason why.

Beltrán's election is far from the most exciting thing to happen in Queens this week, since you probably heard that we landed Freddy Peralta in a big deal with the Brewers, sending over Brandon Sproat and Jett Williams in exchange. I can be a bit of a prospect hugger sometimes, so I am sad to see one of our Christmas elves go—not least because I think Sproat has great stuff and could turn out to be very exciting. But it doesn't really get more exciting than Freddy! David Stearns certainly seems to agree.

We finally brokered a deal with the White Sox for CF Luis Robert Jr., which pretty much everyone expected to happen at the trade deadline. Unfortunately for my emotions, this came at the cost of Luisangel Acuña, our favorite little guy who's been tearing it up in winter ball. It really derailed part of my rough outline on the Bo Bichette signing and its implications:

Rounding out our major signings, we picked up reliever Luis García. There were also a number of interesting things on the media front—namely a couple of Carlos Mendoza podcast appearances and this New York Post article—that I don't really have the time to get into here, but that will probably feature in a dissection of my thoughts on the upcoming Mets season as a whole.

Probably the biggest non-Mets news from the market is Cody Bellinger's five-year, $162.5MM return to the Yankees; previous reporting suggested Boras was pushing for a seven-year deal that evidently not even the Yankees would agree to, so Bellinger seems to have had less success in driving up his price than other big-name free agents this offseason. Additionally, the Nationals have begun yet another rebuilding incident, sending MacKenzie Gore to the Rangers in exchange for five prospects. I don't have the Juan Soto trade tree on hand, but you have to imagine it looks a little silly by now.

Smaller notes on the Mets and Mariners this week:

• The Mets are signing veteran arm Craig Kimbrel to a minor league deal. Additionally, they've DFAed the legendary Richard Lovelady to open up a spot for Vidal Bruján.
  • A brief anecdote: I went to a Durham Bulls game in 2023 with some of my college friends shortly before most of us moved various places post-graduation for work/grad school/whatever, and Bruján was in the lineup for the Bulls that night. Fast forward to August 2025, and a couple of my friends who attended that game with me were graciously hosting me in New York for the Mets-Mariners series at Citi Field. They aren't huge baseball people, but they agreed it would be fun to catch one game together, and so we went to the Braves-Mets game on the 14th (particularly because I wanted to snag the Pete Alonso replica jersey, a decision which aged really well). Playing RF for the Braves that night? Vidal Bruján, of course. It's the little coincidences like this that keep things exciting.
• The Padres have signed Samad Taylor to a minor league contract, following his DFAing by the Mariners.
• The Mariners are giving Dane Dunning a minor league deal, as well as exchanging cash considerations to get Cooper Criswell from... oh hey, the Mets!

And in other news:

• The Giants are giving Harrison Bader $20.5MM over two years to help fill out their outfield—assuming he doesn't get injured representing Israel in the WBC first.
• Twins ace Joe Ryan and Mariners pitcher Bryce Miller settled to avoid arbitration.
• Yu Darvish might be retiring, following a weird bit of reporting that initially presented it as a sure thing; he and his agent clarified shortly after that it was only under consideration and not a final decision.
• Max Scherzer still hasn't signed (and may not anytime soon). Neither has Andrew McCutchen, who is (rather rightfully, IMO) not happy with the Pirates organization over it.
• The White Sox are signing Seranthony Domínguez as another large move in a surprisingly hot offseason (for them).
• Remember when I mentioned José Ramírez's contract extension in my 100 Things post? He just signed a new one through 2032, adding $106MM onto his existing contract and restructuring it to have $70MM deferred.
• The Twins are getting one twin back on their roster in Taylor Rogers, though unfortunately the other half of the pair is already up in Toronto.
• Everyone's favorite veteran relief pitcher Dick Mountain—excuse me, Rich Hill—is taking a break... for now.

Home Plate

Like I mentioned at the top: it's now possible to financially support this publication! Turns out it's very easy to set up a link for this kind of thing, even if I'm not currently doing it directly through Ghost itself. I say this on my donation page already, but I have no plans to paywall FS2S anytime soon; I write this stuff for the love of the game, and I also don't publish consistently enough for that to be reasonable right now anyways. I hugely appreciate any amount you choose to toss into the tip jar, since job prospects aren't panning out quite as well as I'd hoped at the moment, but by no means do I require it to pay my rent.

I haven't posted about baseball cards on here a lot yet, but I do collect them, and Mark Armour very generously sent me a surprise box that turned out to be all of the Topps Heritage "Flashbacks" inserts from 2003–2024, as well as a few original cards from the 1970s. As a lover of baseball history as well as cards, I can't wait to dig further into them (and I've already spotted one mistake—namely, that Dave Winfield was actually drafted by four professional sports leagues, not the three that the 2022 Topps Heritage BF-7 card claims).

On Sunday, I was lucky to catch a snow day screening of The Other Boys of Summer, the award-winning documentary on the Negro Leagues and Black baseball as told by the players themselves. I highly, highly recommend attending (or organizing!) a screening of the film if you have the chance, because it's incredibly moving and important to hear players like John Miles and Minnie Miñoso and Mamie Johnson tell us firsthand what it was like to play baseball as a Black athlete both before and after 1947, one of the most vital—and most widely erased—parts of baseball (and U.S.) history.

The Backstop

I care about a lot of things in life: the New York Mets, the happiness of my friends, the right balance of spices for a perfect pumpkin pie. My greatest loyalty in this world, however, is to justice.

My second greatest loyalty is to spite.

As such, I rather quickly changed my allegiances for the span of about three hours yesterday in order to root for the "New England Patriots" over the Broncos. Fortunately, I didn't have to expend much effort caring about them, because I put the game on and promptly took a nap for pretty much the entire duration. And then I got to watch the game that really mattered, because yay, Seahawks! (On that note: does literally every professional athlete in L.A. have to get the Freddie Freeman veneers?)

Football aside, I also watched Bull Durham this past week with a friend and had a great time. I did take plenty of notes, but I was most entertained by the "difference between hitting .250 and .300" speech, because I'd given basically the same one just a few days before:

Hope you bat 1.000 this week, folks.