CHICAGO (AP) — The Baltimore Orioles acquired left-hander Nick Raquet in a trade with the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday.
The addition of Raquet puts another lefty in the bullpen for first-year manager Craig Albernaz. The 30-year-old Raquet was designated for assignment by the Cardinals on Sunday.
The Orioles also transferred right-hander Zach Eflin to the 60-day injured list. Right-hander Brandon Young was optioned to Triple-A Norfolk.
Eflin, who turns 32 on Wednesday, is sidelined with right elbow discomfort.
“He's getting a second opinion today,” Albernaz said before Tuesday's game at the Chicago White Sox. “And also, the way it's trending, 60-day makes a ton of sense.”
The 27-year-old Young pitched five scoreless innings in Monday's 2-1 win over the White Sox. He was brought up from Norfolk to fill in for Eflin after Cade Povich, Baltimore’s first option for the start, worked 5 2/3 innings in long relief Sunday at Pittsburgh.
“B.Y. stepping up, giving us five innings of shutout baseball was exactly what we needed,” Albernaz said. “It just speaks to our starting pitching depth.”
The Orioles sent minor league second baseman Brayden Smith to the Cardinals for Raquet, a third-round pick in the 2017 amateur draft.
Raquet made his major league debut last year, tossing two scoreless innings for the Cardinals in September. He was 1-0 with a 3.00 ERA in two relief appearances for Triple-A Peoria this season, last pitching on Wednesday.
“You can never have enough left-handed pitching, especially relievers,” Albernaz said. “You love the strike-throwing ability he has shown. ... So the biggest thing for us right now is to get him acclimated. He hasn't thrown in a little bit. So we want to make sure that he gets outside, plays catch and touches the mound and we'll kind of go from there.”
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FILE - St. Louis Cardinals' Nick Raquet is seen Feb. 17, 2026, in Jupiter, Fla. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)
HOUSTON (AP) — Still aglow from their triumphant lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts put in a call to their friends aboard the International Space Station on Tuesday as they headed home from the moon.
It was the first moonship-to-spaceship radio linkup ever. NASA's Apollo crews had no off-the-planet company back in the 1960s and 1970s, the last time humanity set sail for deep space.
"We have been waiting for this like you can’t imagine,” Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman called out.
For Christina Koch on Artemis II and Jessica Meir aboard the space station, it marked a joyous space reunion despite being 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) apart. The two teamed up for the world's first all-female spacewalk in 2019 outside the orbiting lab.
Koch told her “astro-sister” that she'd hoped to meet up with her again in space “but I never thought it would be like this — it's amazing.”
“I'm so happy that we are back in space together,” Meir replied, “even if we are a few miles apart.”
Houston's Mission Control arranged the cosmic chitchat between the four lunar travelers and the space station's three NASA and one French residents.
As Tuesday dawned, Wiseman continued to beam back pictures of the previous day's lunar rendezvous, which set a new distance record for humanity. The highlight: an Earthset photo reminiscent of Apollo 8's Earthrise shot from 1968.
Koch described being awe-struck by not just the beauty of Earth, “but how much blackness there was around it."
“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she told the space station crew. “The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized" when viewing the home planet from the moon.
The first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972, Wiseman and his crew are aiming for a Friday splashdown off the San Diego coast on Friday to wrap up the nearly 10-day test flight.
It sets the stage for next year's Artemis III, a lunar lander docking demo in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will follow in 2028 with two astronauts attempting to land near the lunar south pole.
As for the Orion capsule’s pesky potty, Mission Control assured the astronauts that no repairs were required Tuesday. The toilet has been on-and-off limits to the crew ever since last week’s launch, prompting them to rely on a backup bag-and-funnel system for urinating.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told the crew following the lunar flyby Monday night: “We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing” ahead of the next Artemis mission.
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In this image provided by NASA, the Artemis II crew captured this view as the Earth sets behind the Moon during a lunar flyby, Monday, April 6, 2026. (NASA via AP)
In this image provided by NASA, Artemis II crew members, from left, Victor Glover Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch, pause to turn the camera around for a selfie midway through their lunar observation period of the Moon during a lunar flyby, Monday, April 6, 2026. NASA via AP)
