Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Thanks for being here.

When her stellar career at the University of Washington ended in 2017, infielder Ali Aguilar ventured into the transient world of professional softball.

She played for the Scrap Yard Dawgs in National Pro Fastpitch. She played for Toyota in the Japan Diamond Softball League. She played in the individual-oriented Athletes Unlimited Pro Softball Championship season.

These were fun but fleeting experiences, as has long been the case for even some of the most accomplished softball stars.

“Often,” Aguilar says, “really great players just retire after college.”

The Athletes Unlimited Softball League, which launches this weekend in Rosemont, Ill., and Wichita, Kan., aims to change that.

This is the first professional softball venture to have the backing of MLB. So it’s on stronger financial footing than previous stateside leagues.

As the AUSL’s four teams -- the Bandits, Blaze, Talons and Volts -- begin barnstorming the country this summer, there is real interest and real hope that this will be the league that successfully taps into softball’s explosive growth in popularity.

“Finally, we’re on a trajectory to go somewhere,” says right-hander Mariah Mazón. “You need somebody to back you up, like the WNBA has the NBA. The platform that comes with MLB is so exciting.”

None of the AUSL’s four teams have a home city for 2025. That will change next year.

For now, each team in this traveling property will play a 24-game regular season, culminating with the top two seeds facing each other in the best-of-three AUSL Championship at Rhoads Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on July 26-28.

Every game will be broadcast, giving a larger audience exposure to a talented player pool that includes 50 All-Americans and players from each of the past 11 NCAA championship teams.

Need help picking your favorite team?

The Volts, appropriately, possess a lot of power.

The Blaze, also appropriately, have a lot of speed.

The Bandits will rob run-scoring opportunities with a particularly deep pitching staff.

And the Talons are deep on experience, with players from four international teams.

(As for the style, well, viva complete games!)

It’s not just the startup season that’s exciting but what this could portend for the next generation of softball stars.

“I coach girls back in San Diego that are 12,” says Aguilar, who is suiting up for the Talons. “Now, they can shoot for this. It doesn’t have to stop at college. They can be like, ‘I want to play in the AUSL.’” 

-- Anthony Castrovince

Pick one of the day’s games, open up your board and see if you can get bingo with these baseball occurrences. Play free >>

• Red Sox @ Yankees (7:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV and MLB Network): It’s the season’s first installment of this age-old rivalry, and with some added intrigue. The man who ended the Yankees’ World Series hopes last year, Walker Buehler, takes the mound against them tonight. He’s wearing a different uniform, of course, but the memories will be no less bitter as New York tries to exact some revenge. 

• Cubs @ Tigers (7:10 p.m. ET, Apple TV+): The Cubs’ juggernaut offense, boasting the best run differential in baseball, has the pleasure of meeting Tarik Skubal, who in his past two starts has allowed a total of four hits, zero runs and zero walks and has struck out 20 over 16 innings. That is the dictionary definition of dominance (we’re sure Merriam-Webster would agree). These are also the teams with the top two records in baseball, and while very few experts would have predicted this to be a World Series preview when the season began, it doesn’t seem so outlandish now. 

• Orioles @ Athletics (10:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): The O’s have a mountain to climb to creep into the playoff picture, but the six-game win streak they are riding coming into West Sacramento is a good place to start. What’s most encouraging is that their stars, like Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson, are starting to look more like themselves, and tonight's starter Dean Kremer went 3-1 with a 2.72 ERA in six May starts.

Longtime MLB pitcher Joaquin Andujar once said you could sum up baseball in one word: You never know. 

That humorous yet accurate take on the everlasting wackiness of the sport was on full display Thursday, when we saw two outlandish finishes.

In the first, the D-backs entered the ninth inning down 10-4 against the Braves and had a 0.01% win probability after Eugenio Suárez struck out to lead off the frame. But Arizona squeezed every bit of life out of that infinitesimal chance as they kept the line moving and pulled off a stunning 11-10 victory. Before Thursday, the D-backs were 0-419 in their history when entering the ninth down by six or more runs. 

Hours after the D-backs rose like a Phoenix (get it?), the Rays pulled off their own crazy comeback when they scored two runs on an INFIELD SINGLE to walk off the Rangers. In this one, the Rangers were one strike away from escaping a bases-loaded jam and winning the game. But then there was an infield chopper, some unfortunate defensive positioning and an example of why pitcher fielding practice (PFP) is necessary in Spring Training.

Two games, two unpredictable endings. The wisdom of Andujar strikes again.

-- Jason Foster 

Perhaps nothing tickles a baseball fan's fancy more than an in-depth mock draft, and our MLB Pipeline staff has you covered. Every fan can dream about landing the next franchise-altering slugger or hurler -- or both!

We’ve been compiling and updating mock-ups of the 2025 Draft for months now, and in each of them, we had predicted that the Nationals would take Ethan Holliday -- son of Matt, brother of Jackson -- with the first overall pick to kick things off on July 13.

As of Thursday, however, there was a new name at the top: Louisiana State lefty Kade Anderson. He’s followed by Tennessee southpaw Liam Doyle (Angels) and Oregon State shortstop Aiva Arquette (Mariners), with the talented high school infielder Holliday now predicted to go No. 4 to the Rockies, who drafted his dad in the seventh round 27 years ago.

You can read about all of the top Draft prospects here, and there’s no better place to hear the latest Draft and prospect coverage than the MLB Pipeline Podcast.

-- Ed Eagle

Milestones don’t just mark where a player’s been, they hint at where he might be going.

So when the Padres’ Manny Machado slugged career home run No. 350 on Thursday, the natural follow-up was: Could 500 be within reach? And what other historic plateaus might the 32-year-old chase before he’s through?

Machado’s $350 million contract with the Padres runs through 2033, which means he’ll still have eight years left on his deal at the end of this season. Assuming he plays until the end of his contract, he’ll have ample time to chase down some of baseball’s biggest benchmarks.

500 home runs and 3,000 hits? Only seven players have done both. But Machado, who debuted as a 20-year-old in 2012, has a shot to join that elite group, especially when you consider how durable he’s been throughout his career.

Machado is on pace for 21 home runs in 2025, which would be his fewest in a non-shortened season since 2014. But despite the dip in power, his bat remains a steady force. He is actually on track for a career-high 191 hits, which would put him close to 2,100 knocks by the end of the year. Averaging 150 hits per season thereafter would get him to 3,000 early in the 2032 campaign. He could also put himself on track to reach 500 home runs later in that same season by averaging 20 homers per year from 2025-31. 

-- Thomas Harrigan

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