Welcome to the First Pitch Podcast, brought to you by Pitcherlist.com, your daily morning podcast, updating you on everything you need to know to win your fantasy baseball league.

Here's your host, Jake Crumpler.

What's up, Fantasy Managers?

Welcome back to another episode of The First Pitch brought to you by pitcherless.com.

My name is Jake Crumpler, and I'll be your host for this edition of the pod.

You can follow me on Twitter at Jake Crumpler, and you can find all of my work at Crumplerbaseball.com.

Let's dive into everything baseball related from Wednesday, July 23rd.

We'll start it off as always with the transactions, injuries, news and notes from around the league, kicking things off at the bad news.

As starting pitcher, David Festa was placed on the 15-day IL with shoulder inflammation.

It's not been the breakout season that I expected for Festa.

And unfortunately, it will be put on pause now

as he is dealing with a shoulder injury. In a corresponding move, Travis Adams was recalled

from the minors, and he's expected to start on Sunday versus the Nationals. Next, we have second

baseman Nick Lofton, who was placed on the seven-day concussion IL unfortunate there,

but the Royals were prescient to acquire Adam Frazier earlier this season,

and he will take over the strong side of a second base platoon for the Royals with Tyler Tolbert

on the short side of that second base platoon.

And a corresponding move outfielder MJ Mel Melendez, was recalled from the miners.

He opened the season batting 085, 085 batting average with one homer and a negative 6 WRC plus before being demoted.

And since being demoted at AAA, Melendez has batted 248 with 13 homers and 14 steals, good for a 91 WRC plus of nothing,

exceptional, nowhere near the 40 plus homer season he had in the minors a few years ago,

and it looks like Melendez will just be the Royals' fourth outfielder moving forward.

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