May: Things couldn’t go worse. June: hold my beer.
Recaps
[Arizona Sports] Diamondbacks ace Corbin Burnes exits win over Nationals with elbow discomfort – Burnes started with 4.2 scoreless innings, but something was evidently wrong after he gave up a two-out single to CJ Abrams. His cutter velocity was down into the low 90s mph during the fifth inning. Burnes let out a sigh as he walked back toward the dugout. He had only thrown 70 pitches, as the D-backs led 3-0 while looking to snap a four-game losing streak. “It’s a gut punch, for sure,” Lovullo said. “He is tough. He rarely complains about anything. So when you see him wave the trainer and the coaches out there, you’re holding your breath.
[AZ Central] Burnes’ injury darkens Diamondbacks’ much-needed win over Nationals – After Burnes departed, Shelby Miller pitched a scoreless eighth inning, and Justin Martinez pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to earn his fourth save. The Diamondbacks managed just three hits for the game. Eugenio Suarez’s two-run home run in the first inning was his 16th of the season, tying him with Corbin Carroll for the Diamondbacks’ lead. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. doubled in a run in Arizona’s three-run first. “The support after losing our starting pitcher, our bullpen did a really good job,” Suarez said. “Now we’ve got to go to Atlanta and try to win games and have a good road trip, and keep the energy and mentality like (Sunday).”
[Dbacks.com] Burnes (right elbow tightness) headed for MRI after early exit – “It just got to the point where the tightness was just too much,” Burnes said. “I waved them out and didn’t feel like we needed to push any farther. So hopefully, we caught it early. Hopefully, it’s not bad, but we’ll see.” Burnes was hopeful that whatever it might have been, that by coming out of the game immediately he limited the seriousness of it. “I’ve never had anything like it before, so I really have nothing to compare it to,” Burnes said. “My body does a pretty good job of telling me when I need to not do things and when I can push things, and it was telling me not to push it. So hopefully, it was me kind of shutting things down before it got too bad. But I won’t really know until we get it looked at.”
Team News
[SI] Diamondbacks’ Corbin Burnes Discusses Injury After Early Removal – The concern, of course, with elbow injuries of this nature, is the dreaded Tommy John surgery — a procedure that would end Burnes’ 2025 season on the spot. At this time, no official diagnosis is available. Burnes did, however, tell reporters that he did not feel a “pop,” or feel the discomfort arise from one particular pitch. “There was no one pitch, or pop, or anything that happened. Which I think is, for me, what I’m hopeful to that it wasn’t one certain pitch,” Burnes said.
[Arizona Sports] Eugenio Suarez hits 1 of the farthest home runs by a Diamondback in Statcast era – Eugenio Suarez hit a ball not only onto the concourse in center field but off the wall on the other side of the walkway on Sunday. Suarez worked ahead 2-0 in the first inning against Washington Nationals left-hander Mitchell Parker and swung through a splitter in the zone. Parker threw the exact same pitch, and Suarez crushed it a projected 466 feet to the left of the batter’s eye. That’s the farthest hit ball by a Diamondbacks player since Christian Walker blasted a 467-foot shot in April 2022 against Tylor Megill of the New York Mets.
[Chandler News] Arizona Diamondbacks are playing you, the taxpayer, with stadium demand – Over a hundred studies show that the public loses or the benefits are negligible when tax dollars are used for stadiums. Arizonans do not want to be on the losing end of this tax scheme, and they do not want it to be left out of the decision. In Arizona, some sports deals have won at the ballot box, and some have lost. This one should go to the voters. Let the voters decide if they want to pay $ 20 million per year for 30 years to help billionaire baseball owners. I think it’s a better investment in Arizona to pay for roads, the needs of our vulnerable populations, addressing extreme heat, and of course, workforce fundamentals like childcare and education. Those will lose if the billionaires win in this game.
[SI] Pitching and Defense Have Failed the Diamondbacks – The Diamondbacks established their reputation as a strong defensive team in 2022, and that carried over into 2023. The defense was still above average in 2024, but not quite as sharp. Poorly-timed mistakes seemed to cost them games at times. From the beginning of 2025, the team defense has been overall below average. But they’ve also been making mistakes at the most critical moments. During a recent press conference, manager Torey Lovullo said the front office analytics team showed him numbers indicating they were among the best in the league during innings one through six, but nearly the worst from inning seven onwards. Lovullo could not define exactly what metric he was referencing, however.
And, elsewhere…
[ESPN] Rockies swept again, 3rd fastest to 50 losses in MLB history – Colorado is the third-fastest team to the 50-loss mark — behind only the 1884 Kansas City Unions and 1876 Cincinnati Red Stockings, who got to 50 losses in 57 games. However, in an odd quirk, the 2025 Rockies — with one more victory — will be just the second team to have 50 losses when they record their 10th win, as the 1876 Red Stockings finished their season at 9-56. “You can either fight or not fight. I don’t think not fighting is going to work,” Rockies catcher Jacob Stallings told reporters after the game.
[MLB] What it means to be in 1st place on June 1 – Since 1996 — the first full season with at least one Wild Card in each league after the ‘95 campaign was limited to 144 games due to the strike that began in 1994 — 100 of 168 eventual division champions held at least a share of their division lead entering June 1. That’s 60 percent of division winners… Last season, five of the six division leaders on June 1 went on to win their divisions. In the American League, the Yankees and Guardians both won their divisions, while the Mariners, who led the AL West entering June, missed the postseason. In the NL, the Phillies, Brewers and Dodgers each led entering June and went on to win their divisions.
[LA Times] Going bananas: Why Savannah Bananas tickets cost more than a Dodgers-Yankees rematch – These tickets were only available through a lottery — reserved months in advance. And when they went on sale, all were gone in an instant. The only way in was through the resale market, where just hours before first pitch on Friday, the lowest price (fees and taxes included) for a pair of tickets on StubHub was $ 209.52. Meanwhile, two lowest price StubHub tickets for the Dodgers versus Yankees game were available for $ 171.72. All for the sake of “Banana Ball.” This baseball game is a ballyhoo. One rooted in the thrills, energy and pageantry of early 20th-century carnivals, but with a 21st-century twist — the atmosphere of a TikTok reel brought to life. It’s the showmanship of Ringling Brothers Circus combined with the athletic flair of the Harlem Globetrotters.
Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)
Rating: B
Dir: Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein
Star: Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Rya Kihlstedt, Richard Harmon
Welcome back, unnecessarily complex but undeniably imaginative Grim Reaper. It’s been a while. But it was certainly worth the wait with a thoroughly crowd-pleasing exercise in death porn. This one begins in the sixties, with a disaster unfolding in a restaurant at the top of a skyscraper. I have been to the one in the Space Needle. I will no longer be going back… At 110 minutes, it runs significantly longer than any of its predecessors (which averaged 91), and I was worried it would feel padded to that end. I’m pleased to report this is not the case
