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.

Have you ever seen a switch-thrower play in an MLB game? Actually, we can answer that for you: No, you haven’t. At least not until yesterday.

To be clear, we’re not talking about a switch-pitcher. Pat Venditte had his time in The Show.

We’re talking about a position player who can throw with both hands from multiple positions. That kind of player had never graced a Major League stage until Sunday’s A’s-Orioles game, when the Athletics’ Carlos Cortes made big league history.

The rookie entered the game in the bottom of the eighth inning as a defensive substitution for right fielder Brent Rooker. Although Cortes was drafted by the Mets as a second baseman in 2018, he had been a full-time outfielder for the past few years, so he was quite comfortable in right with his left-handed glove. 

Then came the switch. After the A’s chose to pinch-run for Gio Urshela in the ninth inning, they found themselves with no other natural infielders available to take his spot at third base. But the A’s did have someone with at least some experience playing on the dirt. 

So, a one-of-a-kind plan was put into action: Cortes borrowed teammate Max Schuemann’s right-handed glove and took over at the hot corner.

“I was cool with it. But I was nervous,” Cortes admitted after the game to MLB.com’s Martín Gallegos.

There were no balls hit to Cortes at third, a position he had never played professionally before Sunday. But his spot in history was secure: He had just become the first documented position player to enter an MLB game throwing with one hand and then switch their throwing hand and position later in the same game. 

Cortes is a natural lefty, but he learned as a child to throw right-handed because his father, Juan, wanted his son to increase his positional versatility. In Baltimore, that skill set came in quite handy. 

-- Brian Murphy

• Pirates at Brewers (7:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Atop our latest Power Rankings, the Brewers are shooting for their 10th straight win, one shy of tying their season-high mark. Yesterday, Milwaukee rallied from a five-run deficit to sweep the Mets, courtesy of NL Rookie of the Year contender Isaac Collins’ walk-off heroics. In his past 20 games, Collins has driven in 17 runs.

• Red Sox at Astros (8:10 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): There’s so much going on with this game ... where do we start? Tonight marks Carlos Correa’s first game back in front of his home fans since he was reacquired by the Astros in a Trade Deadline stunner. It’ll also be the first game back in Houston for Alex Bregman, who signed with the Red Sox in the offseason. Finally, Cristian Javier makes his first start since undergoing Tommy John surgery last year, and he faces Garrett Crochet, who has won nine straight decisions for Boston. Get all that?

• Padres at Giants (9:45 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): San Diego enters a key stretch of its schedule, facing the Giants and Dodgers 13 times over the next two weeks. The Padres, who are two back of L.A. for first place in the division, might be at the right venue for tonight’s opener, as San Francisco has lost 10 of its past 11 home games. But in eight career home starts against the Friars, Logan Webb has a 1.99 ERA.

What a difference two months can make. In mid-June, New York was the epicenter of the baseball world. The Yankees and Mets ranked among MLB’s best and held healthy division leads, making a Subway Series showdown in the Fall Classic seem entirely plausible. Now, though, both clubs are stuck in a jam that makes the city’s rush-hour traffic seem tame by comparison.

Both teams were active buyers prior to the Trade Deadline on July 31, but adding some fresh faces to the mix has done nothing to solve either’s woes. Since the calendar flipped to August, the Yankees are 2-7 and the Mets are 1-8. As a result, they now find themselves in a similar spot -- clinging to the third Wild Card berth in their respective leagues.

So which club’s panic meter is higher right now? It’s gotta be the Yankees. Sure, missing the playoffs would be a disappointment for the Mets, especially with franchise icon Pete Alonso potentially in his final year with the team. But they can take solace in having superstar slugger Juan Soto in his prime. The club’s regime, led by president of baseball operations David Stearns and manager Carlos Mendoza, is also still relatively new, and the farm system is starting to bear fruit. And with owner Steve Cohen’s aggressive mindset, the club has the ability to outbid everyone for the top players on the free-agent market.

For the Yankees, missing the playoffs -- especially with another MVP-caliber season from Aaron Judge, who will be 34 in 2026 -- one year after reaching the World Series would be a major disappointment, to put it mildly. (It's gotten so bad lately that even the great Mariano Rivera tore his Achilles in the Old Timers' Game.) Holding onto the final Wild Card spot could also be a tougher task for the Yankees than the Mets, with the red-hot Guardians and the underachieving-but-dangerous Rangers right behind them.

-- Thomas Harrigan

• In the midst of his 20th MLB season, Justin Verlander did what only nine pitchers before him have accomplished, recording his 3,500th career strikeout on Sunday with the Giants. The 42-year-old right-hander struck out the side in the first inning, putting himself in the top 10 of MLB’s all-time strikeouts list – a list that is headlined by Nolan Ryan (5,714), Randy Johnson (4,875) and Roger Clemens (4,672).

• History was made over the weekend in Atlanta, as Jen Pawol became the first woman to umpire a regular-season MLB game during the Marlins-Braves series at Truist Park. She worked both ends of Saturday’s doubleheader -- as the first-base ump in Game 1 and the third-base ump in Game 2 -- then called balls and strikes as the home-plate umpire in Sunday’s series finale.

• Two weeks after becoming the first Japanese player enshrined in the Hall of Fame, Ichiro Suzuki took the field at T-Mobile Park and watched as the Mariners retired his No. 51 jersey -- the franchise’s third retired number after Ken Griffey Jr.’s No. 24 and Edgar Martinez’s No. 11. In a unique twist, No. 51 will be retired a second time next summer in honor of fellow Hall of Famer Randy Johnson, who wore it from 1989-98.

• Everything seems to be going the Brewers’ way right now -- they are winners of nine straight games after a sweep of the Mets -- and that good fortune extends beyond the field, too. In the clubhouse after Friday’s dramatic victory, rookie phenom Jacob Misiorowski, who was helping teammate and avid collector Rhys Hoskins open packs of Pokémon cards from 1999, pulled a holographic Charizard – the rarest card he could have pulled, he said.

For those who recall the finale of Seinfeld back in the spring of 1998, it was a bona fide sensation. Seinfeld had been an enormously popular show, and more than 76 million people tuned in, the fourth most to watch a series finale. Did viewers like the episode? Not particularly, but ask fans of The Sopranos: It’s not easy to stick the landing.

That said, the show’s cultural ubiquity has continued decades later, especially in Coney Island, where the Brooklyn Cyclones have staged the wildly popular "Seinfeld Night" for the past 11 years.

Our own Matt Monagan has some details from this year’s iteration, which featured a bobblehead of the infamous Kramer Painting, themed food, an appearance by Patrick “David Puddy” Warburton and the highly competitive Elaine Dance Contest.

If that's not enough Seinfeld for you, Houston's Jason Alexander (no, not that one!) pitched a gem yesterday against -- fittingly -- the Yankees. No word on whether he napped under his desk following the game ...

-- Bryan Horowitz

Welcome to Spinball, where baseball meets spin the wheel. You’ll have nine spins to put together your roster of four hitters and one pitcher. See how your team stacks up among the leaderboards at the end of each week! Play free >>

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