MLB Player News

Both Blue Jays competing for the starting second base job will play Friday night in Baltimore. Ryan Goins will man that position with Maicer Izturis playing short instead of Jonathan Diaz.

Izturis and Goins have been going in opposite directions at the plate. The former is batting .385 this season while the latter has just one hit in 19 at-bats.

Maicer Izturis has made four straight starts for the Blue Jays at second base, but John Gibbons has declined to name him the full-time starter ahead of struggling Ryan Goins.

Izturis boasts a .455 batting average while Goins has just one hit in 19 at-bats this season. But Gibbons believes the latter is a better all-around fielder and refuses to commit to Izturis.

"I'm not ready to stay that," Gibbons told the Toronto Sun. "Izturis gives you some offense and some defense. Goins is a defensive specialist. We think he's going to hit enough. He's off to a slow start but I expect him to improve on that. But right now we're playing the hot hand, the guy that's swinging the bat."

Gibbons added that he might have considered continuing to play Goins if others in the lineup were hitting better.

Marlins outfielder Marcell Ozuna was one of the few bright spots in his team's 7-1 loss to the Nationals on Thursday.

Ozuna took Washington ace Stephen Strasburg deep for a solo home run in the seventh inning, his only hit of the afternoon. He finished 1 for 4 with a run scored and an RBI. He has a hit in all but one of his first 10 games played. He is hitting .333 (12 for 36) with two homers and four RBI over that span.

Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper snapped out of a funk in a big way Wednesday, as he drove in his first three runs of the season in a 10-7 win over the Marlins.

Harper entered the game in run-production drought, but ended that with one swing of the bat. He took Marlins starter Brad Hand deep in the fourth inning for his first home run of the season, a three-run shot to the third deck in right field. He finished the game 2 for 4 as well, his first multi-hit game of the season.

Harper has gotten off to a dreadful start this season, and is still hitting just .207/.233/310 with 13 strikeouts and just one walk in 29 at-bats after Wednesday's game.  

Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper has been dropped to seventh in the order Wednesday.

Harper has now been passed by Ian Desmond in the lineup. With Ryan Zimmerman also returning, that pushes Harper down to the seventh spot. He's struggled to get going early, hitting just .160 in 25 at-bats.

Cubs outfield prospect Jorge Soler is on the Double-A disabled list with a sore right hamstring, MLB.com reports.

"We need to make sure he's 100 percent before he gets back on the field," president of baseball operations Theo Epstein said Tuesday. "He didn't pull it again, but it obviously hasn't healed all the way. We want him on the field as much as anybody -- he needs the at-bats. We can't force it right now."

Soler has made just one plate appearances this season, smacking a double.

Giants first baseman Brandon Belt has been scorching hot to start the season, a trend his continued Tuesday in a 7-3 win over the Diamondbacks.

Belt opened the game with his fifth home run of the season, a two-run shot to give the Giants a lead they would never relinquish. He ultimately went 2 for 4 with two RBI and two runs scored in the win.

Belt is hitting .343 through eight games, with five of his 12 hits going over the wall. He has driven in nine runs and scored nine more, though he has yet to walk while striking out 10 times. 

Considering he was owned in just 2 percent of leagues to begin the season, Charlie Blackmon was about the last player you'd expect to lead all hitters in Head-to-Head scoring in Fantasy Week 1 (March 30-April 6). But lead them he did, so now here we all are trying to make sense of it.

During his brief stints in the majors and throughout his minor-league career, one thing he's always been able to do is hit for average. He created some skeptics with his poor plate discipline last year, but it was a bit out of character for him, as he's shown by striking out only once so far this year. Even if he never walks a ton, his batting average should allow him to score a decent number of runs batting atop the Rockies lineup, and 20-25 steals are perfectly attainable for him in a table-setter role. Though nobody considers him a power hitter, he performed on about a 35-double, 12-homer pace in 82 major-league games last year, which was in line with his minor-league norms.

I don't think he's the kind of player you'll start every week and wouldn't stress about clearing roster space for him in shallower Head-to-Head points leagues, but trading off some of the speed for a little more power, I could see him contributing at about the same level as Brett Gardner, which would make him a clear-cut mixed leaguer. Just because you wanted Corey Dickerson to beat him out this spring doesn't mean he isn't valuable in his own right.

Phillies manager Ryne Sandberg did not have an update Tuesday on the status of outfielder/first baseman Darin Ruf, who is on the disabled list with an oblique injury. Ruf remains at the team's spring complex in Florida.

Marlins outfielder Giancarlo Stanton is off to a torrid start, batting .345 with two home runs, three doubles and 12 RBI in seven games.

Stanton has been among the best power-hitting outfielders in the majors for a few years, but Marlins manager Mike Redmond went on MLB Network Radio Tuesday morning to explain why Stanton is locked in offensively at the beginning of the season.

"He's really confident right now, but he doesn't feel the pressure to do everything. Now we have guys that can help him," Redmond said.