Front Row Seat: SDFC newcomers set to start again vs. Mazatlán
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Darren Smith
John Gennaro
San Diego FC thinking big picture as it heads into Leagues Cup finale - San Diego Union-Tribune
San Diego FC will take the field for Tuesday’s Leagues Cup match against Mazatlán FC with nothing left to play for in this tournament.
The Major League Soccer expansion club is 0-2 in group play, and has already been eliminated from advancing to the knockout stage. The club is thin on players and battling both injuries and exhaustion — Tuesday marks the club’s sixth match in three weeks.
So expect Varas to lean on his small-but-growing bench during the match, which begins at 7 p.m. at Snapdragon Stadium. Newcomers David Vázquez and Aidan Harangi made their SDFC debuts last week, and are expected see more time; they’ll join a young core that includes fellow 19-year-old Luca Bombino and 20-year-old Manu Duah, among others.
The young players are needed in SDFC is going to build any depth down the home stretch. SDFC (14-7-4) remains at the top of the Western Conference standings with nine regular-season matches remaining, starting Saturday at Kansas City (6-12-6).
Sears battles through Padres debut with signature sweeper stagnant - Padres.com
His best pitch – by a considerable margin – is his sweeper. And it’s among the best in baseball. Entering Monday, it had an 8 run value, making it tied for fourth-best in the Majors alongside Wheeler. Looking up at Sears on that leaderboard is Skenes, a feather in your cap whenever you can hold it.
But despite it serving as Sears’ bread and butter, it got creamed Monday. He got just one whiff on 11 swings with it, and it’s also the offering that D-backs first baseman Tyler Locklear parked for a home run, marking the fifth consecutive outing with a long ball allowed for Sears, the first time that has happened since April 2023.
Rosenthal: In landing Mason Miller, Padres’ A.J. Preller went to lengths others would not - The Athletic
Athletics GM David Forst told reporters, “When the Padres suggested they were open to including Leo, that’s kind of when this got serious.” Preller said it was actually the A’s who proposed a deal including De Vries a few days before the deadline, telling the Padres, “Hey, if this is something you want to do, this is the structure.”
However it transpired, Preller said the final deal — De Vries and pitching prospects Braden Nett, Henry Baez and Eduarniel Núñez for Miller and Sears — was not a matter of him relentlessly wearing the A’s down.
“You’re never going to badger a team. It’s not like that,” Preller said. “It’s more about continually being active and checking in and making sure that as we go through what we need to accomplish, Mason Miller was going to be an option, or he wasn’t.”
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