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. Today's edition is brought to you by David Adler.

Let's throw it back to the 1933 All-Star Game, the very first one ever. What a lineup the American League had in that one. The middle of the order was four legendary Hall of Fame hitters: Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Al Simmons.

But we want to draw your attention to the guy who was batting sixth, right behind Simmons: White Sox third baseman Jimmy Dykes. 

Dykes was a pretty good player in his day. He made the first two All-Star Games in '33 and '34, and he got some MVP votes a handful of times in his 22-year career. But that's not why we're talking about him right now. 

We're talking about him because, 93 years later, he is still the one and only White Sox third baseman to start an All-Star Game. 

But that near-century drought could end this year!

With Phase 1 of All-Star voting underway -- fill out your ballot here -- Miguel Vargas has a strong case to be the AL's starting third baseman for the 2026 Midsummer Classic. 

The 26-year-old is having a breakout year for the White Sox. Among primary third basemen this season, Vargas leads outright in home runs (15), RBIs (41), runs scored (47) and walks (43), and he sits near the top of the leaderboard in OPS (.859) and Wins Above Replacement according to both Baseball Reference (2.4 WAR) and FanGraphs (2.3 WAR).

Vargas is one of the biggest reasons for Chicago's surprising turnaround. Entering tomorrow's series opener against the MLB-best Braves at Rate Field (7:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV), the White Sox are 34-31 this season and hold the second American League Wild Card spot. 

This is a team that lost over 100 games each of the last three years. If not for Vargas' big breakout, they very well might not be in postseason contention in 2026. 

Thomas Harrigan has more on why Vargas is a deserving 2026 All-Star who could break the White Sox drought >> 

Emerson Hancock takes the mound for the Mariners today (6:35 p.m. ET, MLB.TV) in the middle of a breakout season. 

He's cut his ERA by two full runs from where it was sitting the last couple of seasons. From 2024-25, Hancock's ERA was 4.84. This season, it's 2.80. 

There are a few things Hancock is doing differently to drive that improvement, but the big obvious one is that he's throwing a lot more sidearm than he used to. 

Over the last three seasons, Hancock has lowered his arm angle from 27 degrees (2024) to 18 degrees (2025) to 12 degrees (2026). (The closer to zero degrees you get, the more sidearm you are.) 

By now, Hancock has one of the most sidearm arm slots of any Major League starting pitcher. The only one with a lower arm slot is Chris Sale.

Starters with the most sidearm arm angles in 2026

1. Chris Sale: 10 degrees
2. Emerson Hancock: 12 degrees
3. Nick Lodolo: 15 degrees
4. Luis Castillo: 17 degrees
5. Spencer Arrighetti: 19 degrees

And wouldn't you know it -- Sale is the exact pitcher who inspired Hancock to make his change. Yes, even though Hancock is a righty and Sale is a lefty.

Mariners pitching coach Pete Woodworth hopped on MLB Network yesterday to tell the origin story of Hancock lowering his arm slot. 

The idea came from watching Sale dominate the Mariners on Sept. 5 of last season. Hancock, who at the time had been moved to the bullpen for Seattle's playoff push, decided he wanted to try to mimic Sale's iconic sidewinding delivery. 

Hancock asked Woodworth what he thought. Woodworth -- who was actually college teammates with Sale at Florida Gulf Coast University -- told his pitcher it'd be a great experiment … for the offseason. 

Did Hancock follow that plan? Nope! He used his new Sale-inspired delivery in his next outing for the Mariners two days later.

The change has stuck, and it's worked wonders for Hancock this season. The actual pitching motions look a little different, but there's no denying Sale and Hancock's parallel arm angles.

"It wasn't anything that we said, 'Hey, this isn't working. You need to drop down,'" Woodworth said. "He just started evolving into who he naturally is and found his natural slot."

Hancock isn't the first pitcher to emulate Sale's sidearm style. The Mets' Sean Manaea did the same thing in 2024 and was awesome down the stretch and into the postseason. 

Pitching can be a copycat world, and it's always cool when something like this works out.

Gavin Williams just beat the Yankees. Can he do it for a second straight start? 

The Guardians ace is on the mound for tonight's series opener in Cleveland (6:40 p.m. ET, FS1 / MLB.TV). It's the second meeting of the two AL powerhouses in less than a week. 

Williams won his start at Yankee Stadium last Wednesday to move to 9-3 with a 3.20 ERA and an American League-leading 94 strikeouts. He's been on a heck of a run for the Guardians ever since the 2025 All-Star break, with a 2.72 ERA that's fifth best among qualified starters over that time.

One pitch more than any other has unlocked Williams' ace potential: His sinker. Even more specifically, his backdoor sinker. That's the pitch to watch against the Bronx Bombers. Jared Greenspan breaks it down here.

See, Williams loves to throw his sinker -- a new pitch that he added in 2025 -- to the outside part of the plate against right-handed hitters. He starts it off the plate away, and it runs back over the edge of the strike zone. 

That's the opposite from how a lot of pitchers use their sinkers these days. They tend to throw them hard inside, to jam the hitter. 

And the reason Williams uses his sinker that way is pretty interesting. He needed a fastball to attack righties away, but it can't be a four-seamer, because he gets so amped up when he pitches that he yanks his four-seamer out of the strike zone, and hitters don't chase it. 

So, enter the sinker, which, no matter how excited Williams gets, still finds its way back over the plate thanks to its natural movement. 

"I get a little bit too juiced up, so my miss is way worse with the four-seam on the outer half," Williams told MLB.com. "I'm able to run [the sinker] back -- where with the four-seam, I just pull it. It's an auto take every time."

Read the whole story about Williams' unique sinker approach >>

Here's the news and notes from around the Majors this weekend. 

• After a couple more big games against his old team in the Freeway Series, Shohei Ohtani now leads the National League in OPS (.939). He also leads the National League in ERA (0.74), out of all the pitchers who've thrown at least 50 innings. Pretty good.

• Just a month after surgery, Tarik Skubal made his first rehab start at High-A West Michigan. And the back-to-back Cy Young winner looked as dominant as ever, throwing five scoreless innings with six strikeouts and touching 99 mph on his fastball. Skubal could be back in the Tigers rotation as soon as this weekend for a key AL Central series against the Guardians.

• Cam Schlittler got back on track with a 5 2/3-inning, one-run start against the rival Red Sox in yesterday's series finale at Yankee Stadium. He continues to lead the American League with a 1.87 ERA. And according to the Elias Sports Bureau, Schlittler’s 2.38 career ERA is the third lowest by any Major League pitcher through their first 28 starts since 1913, trailing only Paul Skenes (2.14) and José Fernandez (2.19).

• Jacob Misiorowski set yet another velocity record by topping out at 103.7 mph in his start against the Rockies on Saturday. That's the fastest pitch thrown by any MLB starter in the pitch tracking era, which goes back to 2008. Coors Field was no match for Misiorowski, who now has a 1.50 ERA and a Major League-leading 116 strikeouts this season. 

• Roki Sasaki finally looks like the pitcher the Dodgers were hoping for. He turned in his finest outing as a Major Leaguer on Friday, throwing seven shutout innings with 10 strikeouts against the Angels. Roki's fastball was humming, topping out at a career-high 100.6 mph, and his new, harder splitter racked up six K's.

Life is just better when seen through McGonigoggles. 

During Sunday's Tigers game, the Detroit broadcast showed a young fan named Cece wearing homemade goggles (made of plastic cups attached to a pair of empty lenses) with "McGonigoggles" written on a piece of paper across the frame.

Mere moments after the broadcast cut back to game action, McGonigle crushed his fourth home run of the season. That prompted the broadcast crew to proclaim: "The McGonigoggles are working today!"

And things only got better from there. McGonigle sent Cece and the Tigers faithful home happy with a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth to lift Detroit to victory over the Mariners. 

The McGonigoggles even got a shoutout from McGonigle himself in his postgame interview.

"Shoutout, Cece," McGonigle said. "Thank you so much. Keep wearing those goggles."

Clearly this is the hot new trend in baseball fashion. 

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