There's just something about turning the page to a summer month that increases the collective sense of urgency across baseball. June baseball isn't necessarily more important than May baseball, but it does feel more consequential -- this is the baseball that could effectively make buyers and sellers out of most of the league, after all.
Pitching is really the name of the game for the week of June 1 -- featuring this week are both Cristopher Sánchez's bid to continue his already record-breaking scoreless streak and Shohei Ohtani's latest work in what's shaping up to be his best season on the mound yet.
Dodgers at D-backs
4 games (Monday-Thursday)
Head-to-head: The Dodgers swept the D-backs in a three-game set over Opening Weekend, the last time they saw each other. Probably unsurprisingly, the Dodgers last lost one of their season series in 2018.
Storyline: Two of baseball's hottest teams (even considering the D-backs' sweep at the hands of the Mariners over the weekend) are meeting up again after two months apart, and on the underdog's home turf, too. The Dodgers still have a firm grip on the NL West, but with the Padres spinning out and this nicely timed series, the D-backs could make themselves a real concern this summer.
Watch out for: Although he's lagging a bit behind the pack in the innings department, Ohtani (nine starts, 0.82 ERA, 0.82 WHIP, 10.0 K/9) clearly has his eyes fixed on the one award he's yet to win -- that glorious Cy Young. He'll make start No. 10 opposite Zac Gallen on Wednesday.
Mets at Mariners
3 games (Monday-Wednesday)
Head-to-head: Two teams that haven't seen much of each other historically, since the expansion of interleague play in 2022, each has won two head-to-head series. The Mets won 2025's set, two games to one.
Storyline: The Mariners have clawed their way back over .500 and into first place in the AL West, which isn't great news for the Mets, who are working on a four-game run of their own but still have a ways to go to climb out of the hole they dug early -- they're seven games under through Sunday's action.
Watch out for: Better for the Mets: Juan Soto is on some kind of roll. Since May 14, he's hitting .382/.469/.873 (1.342 OPS) with nine homers and 18 RBIs in 15 games.
Guardians at Yankees
3 games (Tuesday-Thursday)
Head-to-head: The Guards and Yanks split their games in 2025 (3-3) but the Guardians haven't won a season series outright since 2019. They've also met seven times in the postseason since 1997, although the Yankees have now won each of the last four, most recently the 2024 ALCS.
Storyline: These may be two perennial contenders, but this matchup has been an excellent example of the disparity between the AL East and AL Central in recent years, and the Yankees, no doubt, have to see this as an opportunity to build on their recent surge out of a bit of a May funk. Of course, the Guardians would much rather be considered as legitimate a first-place team as any other, but they do have the worse record and run differential (a stark 97-run gap between them) and just lost their weekend series against the last-place Red Sox.
Watch out for: It took Travis Bazzana a minute to settle in, but he looks perfectly comfortable now. Since May 13 (17 games), 2024's first overall pick is hitting .353 with a .544 SLG, seven doubles and two homers.
Padres at Phillies
3 games (Tuesday-Thursday)
Head-to-head: These two last met all of a week ago in San Diego, a series the Phillies swept. They split their 2025 season series, three games apiece.
Storyline: If you've been out of the loop for the past month or so, Phillies lefty Sánchez has elected not to allow runs anymore. Sánchez's scoreless innings streak, which covered the entire month of May (and actually began on April 30), is now up to 44 2/3 innings, the seventh-longest single-season streak since 1920. How far into June might he carry this one? We shall see -- certainly we're curious to find out if facing the Padres a second time in a row will change anything about the results.
Watch out for: Fernando Tatis Jr. is finally on the board -- he hit his first home run of the 2026 season on Saturday. Perhaps a dubious achievement, but overall, the last week or so has gone so much better for the now 27-year-old Tatis -- since May 24, he's hitting .448.
Pirates at Braves
3 games (Friday-Sunday)
Head-to-head: The Pirates won the 2025 season series against the Braves -- their first win against Atlanta since 2017 -- but it's hard to compare that matchup to this one, which may as well be happening between two entirely different teams.
Storyline: Quite the test awaits the Pirates, who've won six of their last eight and need to find some kind of momentum coming into June. The problem is that, better as they've looked this week, those six wins came against the Blue Jays, Cubs and Twins -- who even at their very best aren't quite the equals of the mighty Braves, now 40-20.
Watch out for: Two Braves for the price of one -- Ronald Acuña Jr. enters the week with five home runs in his last four games, while Michael Harris II is 11-for-25 (.440) with a double, two homers and seven RBIs in his last six.