BWDIK: Atkinson, Brash, Hoy, Lopez, Naylor, Pivetta, Smith, Stieb
Junior National Team alum Nick Pivetta (Victoria, B.C.) has a National League-leading eight wins for the San Diego Padres this season. Photo: San Diego Padres/Facebook
June 29, 2025
By Kevin Glew
Canadian Baseball Network
Some Canadian baseball news and notes from the past week:
Pivetta registers NL-leading eighth win
When the list of National League All-Star Game reserves is unveiled in the next couple of weeks, I hope Nick Pivetta‘s name is on it.
The Victoria, B.C., native registered his National League-leading eighth win of the season on Wednesday when he tossed seven scoreless innings against the Washington Nationals. He allowed just three hits and struck out 10 batters.
Pivetta now owns an 8-2 record and a 3.36 ERA in 16 starts this season. He also has 101 strikeouts in 91 innings. This gives him 1,240 MLB strikeouts for his career, which, as Canadian baseball historian Tyler Partridge recently noted on X, leaves him just six back of 2025 Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Erik Bedard (Navan, Ont.) for third on the all-time Canadian list.
The 32-year-old Pivetta has never been an All-Star. He is in his ninth big league season, but his first with the Padres after signing a back-loaded four-year, $55-million contract with them in February.
Most wins by an MLB pitcher born in Canada in 2025
8 – Nick Pivetta
3 – Cal Quantrill (Port Hope, Ont.), Michael Soroka (Calgary, Alta.)
2 – Cade Smith (Abbotsford, B.C.), Rob Zastryzny (Edmonton, Alta.)
Smith should be an All-Star
Reliever Cade Smith (Abbotsford, B.C.) has been dealing with back spasms and hasn’t pitched since last Sunday, but the Guardians consider him day-to-day and have not placed him on the injured list.
Smith has followed up his outstanding rookie season with an excellent sophomore campaign. So far in 2025, the 6-foot-5 Canuck owns a 2.36 ERA and has fanned 53 batters in 34 1/3 innings in 35 appearances.
He deserves to be an All-Star.
Last season, Smith had a 6-1 record and a 1.91 ERA in 74 relief appearances and fanned 103 batters in 75 1/3 innings. For his efforts, he finished fifth in the American League Rookie of the Year voting and ninth in AL Cy Young voting.
Brash’s scoreless streak still alive
Right-hander Matt Brash (Kingston, Ont.) still has not allowed a run coming out of the bullpen for the Mariners this season. He has now made 18 consecutive scoreless relief appearances since being activated on May 3. During that stretch, he has struck out 17 batters in 16 1/3 innings.
On Tuesday, he recorded his first save of the season in the M’s 6-5 win over the Minnesota Twins.
The Mariners’ media relations staff shared in their game notes on Wednesday that Brash and Andres Muñoz became the first teammates to register 16 or more game scoreless streaks to start their season since Brad Ziegler (29 games) and Santiago Casilla (18 games) accomplished the feat with the Oakland A’s in 2008. Munoz had his scoreless streak snapped yesterday.
It has been a remarkable return for Brash who had not pitched in the big leagues since undergoing Tommy John surgery in May 2024.
In 2023, the 6-foot-1 righty developed into a go-to late-inning reliever for the Mariners. He led major league pitchers with 78 appearances and had a 9-4 record and a 3.06 ERA. He fanned 107 batters in 70 2/3 innings, good for a 13.6 strikeout-per-nine-inning rate.
Soroka sets career-high with 10 Ks
Last Sunday, Nationals right-hander Michael Soroka fanned a career-best 10 batters – including Shohei Ohtani twice – and permitted just two hits in 5 1/3 innings to the reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
Soroka followed that up by allowing just one run on two hits, while racking up five strikeouts, in six innings in his start against the Angels on Saturday.
That marked the eighth straight start that Soroka has thrown at least five innings. It was also his 11th major league start of the season which is his most since he started 29 games in 2019.
The 27-year-old signed a one-year, $9-million contract with the Nationals in December. He is 3-5 with a 4.70 ERA in 11 big league starts this season.
Soroka, a Junior National Team alum, is in his sixth major league campaign.
Lopez red-hot for Marlins
Miami Marlins infielder Otto Lopez, who spent part of his youth in Montreal and played for the Junior National Team, is 13-for-29 (.448 batting average) with two home runs, eight runs and 13 RBIs in his last seven games.
This hot stretch has lifted his batting average from .235 to .260. Lopez also has eight home runs this season, which is three behind Vladimir Guerrero Jr. who leads Canadian-born major leaguers with 11 round-trippers.
Lopez, an ex-Blue Jay, is in his second full season with the Marlins.
Josh Naylor on pace for second 100-RBI season
Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Josh Naylor (Mississauga, Ont.) knocked in 53 runs in his team’s first 81 games this season, which puts him on pace for his second 100-RBI season. Naylor drove in 108 runs for the Guardians in 2024.
On top of leading Canadian-born big leaguers in RBIs this season, Naylor, who is in his seventh major league campaign, also tops Canucks in batting average (.304), hits (89), doubles (18) and stolen bases (10).
Naylor did not start for the D-Backs on Saturday due to a sore neck. He is not expected to be sidelined for long.
Forty-seven years ago, Atkinson was winning pitcher in first Pearson Cup game
Fittingly, Canadian Bill Atkinson (Chatham, Ont.) was the winning pitcher in the first Pearson Cup Game played 47 years ago today. This was an annual exhibition showdown between the Expos and Blue Jays that took place from 1978 to 1986 (There was no game in 1981 due to the strike).
In the 1978 contest, Atkinson, an up-and-coming reliever with the Expos, was told he would be used for two innings in relief, but that turned into four when the contest went into extra innings with the teams tied at 4.
In the bottom of the 10th, Atkinson singled (yes, they let a pitcher hit!) to lead off and then Andre Dawson and Ed Herrmann walked. Larry Parrish then struck out, but next came a move that’s hard to comprehend. With Atkinson, his valuable 23-year-old relief pitcher on third base in an exhibition game, Expos manager Dick Williams ordered outfielder Sam Mejias to lay down a suicide squeeze. When Mejias got the bunt down, Atkinson sprinted towards the plate.
“I slid into home plate just underneath Alan Ashby’s legs. He dropped the ball, so I was safe. But I couldn’t get up because when I was about three or four steps from home plate my groin just went kaboom,” recalled Atkinson in a 2020 phone interview.
“I went into clubhouse and iced it down. The next day it [that area in the groin] was about four times the size.”
Though injured on the play, Atkinson had scored the winning run and, with that, became the first pitcher to earn a win in the Pearson Cup game.
Forty-sixth anniversary of Dave Stieb’s MLB debut
It was 46 years ago today that Dave Stieb made his MLB debut with the Blue Jays.
The then 21-year-old right-hander started against the Baltimore Orioles at Memorial Stadium and allowed six runs (five earned) in six innings and was saddled with the loss in the O’s 6-1 win.
John Lowenstein, the second batter Stieb faced, became his first MLB strikeout victim. He struck out five batters in total.
Following the game, Stieb was upset about the back-to-back home runs he gave up to sluggers Lee May and Doug DeCinces in the sixth inning.
“Just two mistakes,” Stieb told the Toronto Star. “I didn’t mind the hits I gave up early in the game, but no one has ever hit a home run off me before.”
It was the first of 18 starts Stieb would make for the Blue Jays in 1979 and the first of a franchise record 408 he would make for the club in total.
Sabrowski activated by Guardians
The Cleveland Guardians activated left-hander Erik Sabrowski from the 60-day injured list on Friday.
The Edmonton native had been sidelined since spring training with left elbow inflammation.
The Guardians wasted no time in using Sabrowski, calling on him to pitch the ninth inning in their 5-0 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Canuck southpaw was sharp, striking out two batters and retiring the side in order. That extended his streak of scoreless regular season outings with the Guardians to nine, dating back to the end of last season.
Sabrowski, 27, was shelved by elbow inflammation early in spring training. The Guardians have treated the injury cautiously, as the Canadian lefty has already undergone two Tommy John surgeries.
Sabrowski posted a 6.00 ERA in nine minor league rehab appearances with the ACL Guardians, double-A Akron RubberDucks and triple-A Columbus Clippers before he was activated.
Happy Birthday Peter Hoy!
Happy 59th Birthday to former Boston Red Sox right-hander Peter Hoy (Cardinal, Ont.)! The 6-foot-7 right-hander was a member of the Canadian Olympic team in 1988 prior to joining the Red Sox.
He’d spend parts of four seasons in the minors before making his major league debut with the Sox on April 11, 1992 when he pitched a scoreless inning in relief against Cleveland. He’d make four more relief appearances for the Red Sox that season.
Following his playing career, he served as the pitching coach for Le Moyne University in Syracuse, N.Y. from 1997 to 2009. In 2010, he was hired as the head coach at St. Lawrence University. He held that position until 2020.
Fun Fact of the Week
In the 10 seasons from 2010 to 2019, Cincinnati Reds first baseman Joey Votto (Etobicoke, Ont.) had 1,046 walks.
That’s more than 100 more than any other MLB player during that period.