(Royals)—Kansas City Royals starter Zack Greinke looked ready to go in his last Cactus League start before he becomes the oldest pitcher to make an opening-day start in Royals history.
He’ll be on the mound Thursday afternoon when the Royals open at home against the Twins. Minnesota will go with Pablo Lopez who joined the Twins in the offseason from the Marlins.
Greinke needs two more wins to get to 225 and 118 strikeouts to become the 20th pitcher to throw 3,000. Only Justin Verlander (3,198) and former Missouri Tiger Max Sherzer (3,193) are ahead of him as active pitchers.
It will be Greinke’s seventh opening day start. The game will be the first opening day as manager for the Royals’ Matt Quataro.
The Royals finish spring training this afternoon before opening at home against the Twins on Thursday. Last night the two teams played to a 4-4 tie. The Royals opened a 3-0 lead on a two-run homer in the fourth inning but Texas scored twice in each of the last two innings for the tie.
(Cardinals)—It’s the time when hopeful young guys get the word on whether they’ve made “the show” or whether they’re going to ride minor league buses again.
Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol called Jordan Walker into his office Saturday, gave him a candid evaluation of his spring training work and then told him, “You deserve every bit of being with us on opening day.”
He’s 20. He’s six feet-five, a third baseman becoming a left fielder, who played his way onto the opening day roster by hitting .284 in the Grapefruit League with three homes, nine RBIs, and 19 runs scored in 65 at-bats. Last year at Springfield he hit .308 with 22 stolen bases to go with his 19 homers.
He will be the youngest Cardinals player to make his major league debut since 1999. That was Rick Ankiel’s year to get the great news.
Jack Flaherty, scheduled to pitch the second game of the regular season Saturday, had an ugly wrap-up in Florida, as the Cardinals lost to the Astros 24-1, getting outhit 20-9. Flaherty got just 11 outs, gave up six hearned runs on four hits and three walks. He struck out one batter and only 39 of his 69 pitches were strikes. He finishes spring training with an ERA of 6.41. Opposing batters hit .329 against him.
Miles Mikolas will be the opening day pitcher.
The Redbirds wrapped up their spring training schedule with an 8-2 win over the Orioles. Jordan Montgomery had a solid five innings with one run, three hits, four strikeouts and a walk on 72 pitches.
The Cardinals open against the Blue Jays, in St. Louis, Thursday.
(BATTLEHAWKS)—Quarterback A. J. McCarron hit 19 passes in a row Saturday night against the Las Vegas Vipers. He finished 23 for 29, three touchdowns and 236 yards. The Battlehawks are now 4-2, tied with the Seattle Sea Dragons for second place behind D. C. Defenders, who are undefeated.
The XFL season is starting to run down for the ‘Hawks. They’re on the road for the last time next Sunday against the Houston Roughnecks. They finish up with three straight home games against the Vipers, the Sea Dragons, and then play the Orlando Guardians.
(NCAA TOURNAMENT)—A historic final four has been set after a couple of weeks of bracket carnage. For the first time since the NCAA started seeding teams in 1979, no number ones made it to the great eight.
The whole tournament has been one of great upset. One-third of the games played to narrow the field to the Final Four have seen a lower ranked team prevail over a higher seed. That means no #1 will be in the final four for only the fourth time. It happed previously in 1980, when there were only 48 teams in the tournament, 2006 and 2011 after the expansion to 64 teams.
The final four features one team seeded as high as fourth—University of Connecticut. Two number fives (San Diego State and Miami of Florida) and a sixth seed, Creighton.
Next weekend San Diego State (5) plays Creighton (6) and UConn (4) plays Miami of Florida (5) will decide who will play for the big trophy.
Now the racin’
(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick withstood three furious overtime restarts to win his first race of the year and post the first Toyota victory of 2023 at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas. It’s his first win with his new team, 23XI racing. He’s driving the car Kurt Busch would have been driving if he was healthy enough to be in a race car this year.
Instead, Busch was in the television broadcasting booth and admitted he was choked up as he watched “his” car win by 1.4 seconds over Kyle Busch, Alex Bowman, Ross Chastain, and pole-sitter William Byron.
Reddick and Byron had fought for the lead during most of the, eventually, 75-lap race. They led 69 of the laps, 41 by Reddick.
The race had an international flavor with four “ringers” who were brought in because of their road-racing experience. Kimi Raikkonen, the 2007 Formula One champion, was as high as fourth before finishing 29th. Jenson Button, the F1 champion in 2009, was 18th. Jordan Taylor, the reigning champion in the IMSA Series, filled in for the injured Chase Elliott and came home 24th after reaching the top ten briefly. INDYCAR driver Conor Daley was 36th, dropping out early with a bad transmission.
(INDYCAR)—The high banks of the Texas Motor Speedway will see INDYCAR’s second race of the season next weekend.
(F1)—Formula One is in Melbourne, Australia next weekend for the Australian Grand Prix.