Morning Mound Visit: Padres fire pitching coach Larry Rothschild

AJ Cassvell | MLB.com: The Padres fired pitching coach Larry Rothschild after two seasons. San Diego has lost 9 of their last 11, and underperformance from pitching is a big reason why they’re currently out of a postseason spot. Bullpen coach Ben Fritz was named the interim coach.

Matthew LaMar | Royals Review: The Royals are bad, but they’re far from the worst team in baseball. Tanking is already a dubious strategy, but it’s even less effective when everyone else is doing it. Losing 90+ games isn’t enough for a top-three draft pick anymore.

Justin Choi | FanGraphs: Phil Maton has one of the most unusual fastballs in MLB. Typically, four-seamers are thrown in a way to resist downward movement, but Maton’s drops like a sinker. What gives?

Quick Hits

For the third day in a row, the A’s gave up a lead in the eighth inning or later. This time, Ty France did the damage.

Travis Shaw got his first hit back with the Red Sox: a walk-off grand slam.

The Yankees and Atlanta did something that hadn’t been done for over a century. Both teams carried 9-game winning streaks into their game on Monday. The Yankees’ win streak survived and is now at 10 games.