SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — After taking it on the chin from the Europeans in the Ryder Cup for much of the past two decades, the stage is set for the U.S.
With an 11-5 lead heading into Sunday, the U.S. team needs only 3.5 points in 12 singles matches to reclaim the Ryder Cup. It’s the largest lead heading into singles play since Europe had the same advantage in 2004 and the biggest for the Americans since a nine-point lead in 1975. No team has ever come back from more than four points down on the final day.
The Americans are seeking back-to-back Ryder Cup wins on American soil for the first time since winning at The Greenbrier in 1979 and PGA National Golf Club in 1983.
Here is a look at the singles matches and the big climb ahead for Europe:
SCORE: UNITED STATES 11, EUROPE 5
Schauffele, a two-time runner-up in major championships and an Olympic gold medalist, has performed exceptionally well on another big stage with a 3-0 record as a Ryder Cup rookie. According to research from ESPN Stats & Information, his three victories are the most by a captain’s choice since they were introduced in 1989. If Schauffele beats McIlroy, his four points would be the most by a U.S. captain’s choice.
It has been a forgettable Ryder Cup for McIlroy, to say the least. He was expected to be one of the stars of the European team, but instead has gone 0-3 and was held out of a session for the first time in his career. He lost two matches on the same day for the first time on Friday.
Odds: Schauffele -120; McIlroy +150; Tie +550
Prediction: Schauffele 4 and 3
Cantlay, the reigning FedEx Cup champion and PGA Tour Player of the Year, is 2-0-1 in his Ryder Cup debut. His game has grown tremendously over the past 18 months. Look for the former UCLA star to be a major champion soon.
He’ll face a fierce competitor in Lowry, who won The Open at Royal Portrush in 2019. He is one of the best European players in windy conditions. Why European captain Padraig Harrington didn’t play him in more than two matches might be questioned when it’s over. Lowry drained an 11-foot par putt on the 18th hole of Saturday’s four-ball match to hold off Harris English and Tony Finau.
Odds: Cantlay -125; Lowry +163; Tie +550
Prediction: Tie
Rahm is the No. 1-ranked player in the world and has certainly played like it at Whistling Straits. If not for the steady play of Rahm and fellow Spaniard Sergio Garcia, the Europeans’ six-point deficit would be even larger. Rahm is 3-0-1 and his 3.5 points are the most by a reigning world No. 1 at a single Ryder Cup. He has accounted for 70% of Europe’s points — the highest percentage by any player entering the singles session since 1979. Rahm took down Tiger Woods 2 and 1 in his first singles match in Paris in 2018.
Scheffler, 25, doesn’t yet have a PGA Tour victory, but he’s one of the game’s rising stars. He’ll need everything he has to defeat Rahm, who has been better than everyone in the world for the past year. Somebody had to play him, and Scheffler apparently drew the short straw.
Odds: Scheffler +210; Rahm -162; Tie +550
Prediction: Rahm 3 and 2
DeChambeau was the longest hitter off the tee on the PGA Tour last season, but Garcia is also sneaky long, even at 41. Garcia ranked tied for 16th in driving distance with a 309.4-yard average and he has a large advantage in Ryder Cup experience.
Garcia has won 25 career matches, the most in Ryder Cup history — two more than Nick Faldo and three more than Arnold Palmer. His 28.5 points are also the most in the event’s history. DeChambeau earned his first full point in Saturday’s four-ball matches. Garcia is 4-4-1 in singles matches, but he is 3-0-1 in his past four.
Odds: DeChambeau +100; Garcia +125; Tie +550
Prediction: Garcia 1 up
Morikawa, 24, won on tour for the first time in his eighth start, then won his first major in his PGA Championship debut. He won his second major — The Open — in his eighth start in one. It’s no surprise that he’s 3-0 in his first Ryder Cup.
The first Norwegian to compete in the Ryder Cup, Hovland is probably going to be one of the stars of the European team for years to come. He is one of the most talented young players in the world, even if his 0-3-1 record this week might not reflect it. He is one of the best ball strikers in the world and will win big in the not-too-distant future. His putter let him down at times over the first two days here.
Odds: Morikawa -110; Hovland +138; Tie +550
Prediction: Morikawa 1 up
Johnson, the No. 2 player in the world, has rediscovered his form in a big way after a not-so-great 2021 season. He is the first American to enter singles with a perfect 4-0-0 record since 1979, when both Larry Nelson and Lanny Wadkins did it. He is firing on all cylinders and will be difficult to beat.
It has been a very disappointing performance for Casey, whom the Europeans could historically count on to earn at least a half-point in his matches. He is 0-3 so far this week. Casey is 1-1-2 in singles matches at the Ryder Cup; his last victory came against Jim Furyk at The K Club in 2006.
Odds: Johnson -162; Casey +210; Tie +550
Prediction: Johnson 3 and 2
There were questions about whether Koepka wanted to be here — he blamed the media for putting a negative spin on his comments about Ryder Cup week being hectic — but he has been thoroughly engaged. He probably isn’t thrilled about his 1-2 record and might be looking to take out his frustration on Wiesberger, the first Austrian to compete in the Ryder Cup and the lowest-ranked player in the Official World Ranking on either team. Koepka is 1-0-1 in singles at the Ryder Cup.
Odds: Koepka -175; Wiesberger +225; Tie +550
Prediction: Koepka 3 and 2
Finau, a captain’s choice, really seems as excited to be here as any player in the field. He played better on Friday than he did on Saturday. He’ll try to hand Poulter his first singles loss at the Ryder Cup. It might be Poulter’s last appearance as a player in the event. Since 2004, Poulter, 45, has defeated Dustin Johnson, Webb Simpson (also tied him), Matt Kuchar and current U.S. captain Steve Stricker. The heart and soul of the European team, Poulter might be an assistant captain in Rome in 2023 and captain at Bethpage Black in 2025.
Odds: Finau -125; Poulter +163; Tie +550
Prediction: Tie
Thomas cares about the Ryder Cup as much as any other player. He’s probably not satisfied with his 1-1-1 record this weekend. He went 4-1 in Paris in his debut and beat McIlroy 1 up in singles. Hatton, a fiery Englishman, has fared better than most of his teammates with a 1-1-1 record this week. He sank a putt on the 18th hole to tie a four-ball match on Friday and then teamed with Shane Lowry to win a four-ball match on Saturday. Hatton lost to Patrick Reed 3 and 2 in his singles match in Paris. Thomas’ putting will have to improve for him to take down Hatton.
Odds: Thomas -137; Hatton +175; Tie +550
Prediction: Hatton 1 up
It’s English against an Englishman. English, a U.S. rookie, was 1-1-0 in foursomes and four-ball matches. Westwood, 48, is the oldest player on Europe’s team and this will likely be his last Ryder Cup match. His 11 appearances at the Ryder Cup are tied with Nick Faldo for the most by a European player. Westwood has won 23 points in his career, but not much of his damage has come in singles, where his record is 3-7. He’s 0-2 this week and another loss would give him 21 in his career, which would tie Neil Coles (1961-77) and Christy O’Connor (1955-73) for most by a European player. That’s what happens when you play in the Ryder Cup so often.
Odds: English -110; Westwood +138; Tie +550
Prediction: Tie
Spieth’s putter has let him down for much of the weekend, which is why he has a 1-2 record going into singles. He has never won a singles match in the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup. He’s a combined 0-6. One of the heroes of the European team’s 17.5-10.5 victory in 2018, Fleetwood has failed to earn a full point this year. He is 0-1-1. In Paris, he earned four points by going 4-1. After winning each of his four matches in foursomes and four-balls with Italy’s Francesco Molinari, Fleetwood lost to Tony Finau 6 and 4 in singles three years ago.
Odds: Spieth -110; Fleetwood +138; Tie +550
Prediction: Half
Berger, one of the best ball strikers in the game, is 1-1 in his first Ryder Cup. Fitzpatrick is still searching for the first point in his career. The Englishman went 0-2 in his Ryder Cup debut at Hazeltine in 2016 and he’s 0-2 this week. He’ll attempt to avoid going 0-5 on Sunday in singles play. According to ESPN Stats & Information research, only four players have ever played in multiple Ryder Cups and not earned at least a half-point. Each of them represented Great Britain and Ireland before European countries were added in 1979: Tom Haliburton (1961-63), John Panton (1951-53, 1961), Alfred Padgham (1933-37) and Arthur Lacey (1933 and 1937).
Odds: Berger -110; Fitzpatrick +138; Tie +550
Prediction: Berger 3 and 2
Predicted final score: United States 18, Europe 10
CINCINNATI — Using the trendy torpedo bat for the first time, Elly De La Cruz had a single, double and two home runs for a career-high seven RBIs as the Cincinnati Reds routed the Texas Rangers14-3 on Monday night.
The torpedo model — a striking design in which wood is moved lower down the barrel after the label and shapes the end a little like a bowling pin — became the talk of Major League Baseball over the weekend, especially after some of the New York Yankees used the model in a resounding sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers.
Aaron Leanhardt, a former physics professor at the University of Michigan who is being credited with the design, says “it’s about the batter, not the bat,” though, and Reds first-year manager Terry Francona agrees.
“I think it’s more the player than the bat,” Francona said of De La Cruz, Cincinnati’s No. 3 hitter. “I said that before the game, and I still do.”
De La Cruz spoke with reporters after the win and was asked about his bat choice, and whether the 3-0 Yankees influenced his decision.
“No,” he said. “It was because of, ‘How’s it feel like?'” And then when asked if he’d use it again, he looked down at the podium and laughed.
It was that kind of night for the Reds, a much-needed effort for a club that dropped two of three games to the San Francisco Giants in the opening series of the season. Brady Singer pitched seven scoreless innings in his Cincinnati debut, and the Reds batted around in the sixth to double their lead to 12-0. And it all started with Matt McLain, who missed the 2024 season because of a shoulder injury. He hit his third home run of the season to give Cincinnati a 2-0 lead in the first.
The 14 runs were Cincinnati’s most since a 19-2 victory over St. Louis on Sept. 29, 2023.
“It’s impressive,” Francona said of McLain. “Because it’s cold out there. But I thought it was good for our whole ballclub. Let them get loose a little bit and have some fun.”
McLain and De La Cruz are viewed as an infusion of youth for a club that believes it can compete in the National League Central. The kind of talent that brought Francona out of retirement.
“Yes,” Francona said when asked if Monday was the type of De La Cruz performance he could marvel at. “And I know I’m on the late show on that.”
And though it’s quite early, De La Cruz is hitting .438 with 6 runs, 8 RBIs and 1 stolen base.
“I’m more in control, like more mature,” De La Cruz said of the start to his season. “I feel like I’m more in control, on defense and offense.”
Texas rookie Kumar Rocker struggled against the Reds, allowing six earned runs in three innings for Rangers, who opened with three wins in a four-game series versus the Boston Red Sox. Jake Burger hit his first home run for the Rangers in the ninth.
Cincinnati first baseman Christian Encarnacion-Strand was hit by a pitch on the wrist in the sixth. He stayed in the dugout for the seventh, and after the win, Francona said he was day-to-day.
WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Chicago Cubs catcher Carson Kelly hit for the cycle against the Athletics on Monday night — and even walked twice, too.
Kelly homered in the fourth inning, had a two-run single in the fifth, doubled and walked in the sixth, and tripled in the eighth. He became the first Cubs player to hit for the cycle since Mark Grace on May 9, 1993, against the Padres — before Kelly was even born in 1994.
According to ESPN Research, Kelly is the first player with a cycle in the month of March, and just the 17th catcher with a cycle in MLB history. The last one from a backstop was on June 12, 2023, when J.T. Realmuto of the Philadelphia Phillies accomplished the feat.
From a team perspective, no catcher for the Cubs had registered a cycle since Randy Hundley did so on Aug. 11, 1966, against the Houston Astros.
Kelly, who made the score 17-3 with his RBI triple, and the Cubs diffused all the buzz surrounding the Athletics’ home opener in their minor league ballpark. The visitors pounded out 21 hits on Athletics pitchers en route to cruising to an 18-3 victory.
The Chicago Cubs, who already have been to Japan and Arizona before this trip, took the Athletics’ opener in stride, and after a 2-4 start, they were ready to play winning baseball.
“It’s a normal road trip, it just feels a little different,” Cubs first baseman Justin Turner said. “Obviously, opening up here, being the first ever major league game in Sacramento is something, I guess, I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing but we’re here. Looking forward to going out and playing some good baseball.”
EARLY IN THE 2023 season, Aaron Leanhardt started asking New York Yankees hitters what they needed to perform better. He was a minor league hitting coordinator for the team, and with league-wide batting average the previous year at its lowest point in more than a half-century, Leanhardt approached that spring with a specific question: How, in an era ruled by pitching, could offense keep up?
“Players were frustrated by the fact that pitching had gotten so good,” Leanhardt said.
An MIT-educated physics professor at the University of Michigan for seven years, Leanhardt left academia for athletics specifically to solve these sorts of problems. And as he spoke with more players, the framework of a solution began to reveal itself. With strikeouts at an all-time high, hitters wanted to counter that by making more contact. And the easiest way to do so, Leanhardt surmised, was to increase the size of the barrel on their bat.
Elongating the barrel — the fat part of the bat that generates the hardest and most contact — sounded great in theory. Doing so in practice, though, would increase the weight of the bat and slow down swing speed, negating the gains a larger sweet spot would provide.
Leanhardt started to consider the problem in a different way. Imagine, he told players, every bat has a wood budget — a specific amount of weight (usually 31 or 32 ounces) to be distributed over a specific length. How could they invest a disproportionate amount of that budget on the barrel without throwing off the remainder of the implement?
The answer led to what could be the most consequential development in bat technology since a generation ago when players forsook ash bats for maple. The creation of the bowling pin bat (also known as the torpedo bat) optimizes the most important tool in baseball by redistributing weight from the end of the bat toward the area 6 to 7 inches below its tip, where major league players typically strike the ball. Doing so takes an apparatus that for generations has looked the same and gives it a fun-house-mirror makeover, with the fat part of the bat more toward the handle and the end tapering toward a smaller diameter, like a bowling pin.
The bat had its big debut over the weekend, as the Yankees tied a major league record with 15 home runs over their first three games. Nine of those came from five Yankees who adopted the bowling pin style: Jazz Chisholm Jr. (three), Anthony Volpe (two), Austin Wells (two), Cody Bellinger (one) and Paul Goldschmidt (one). The hullaballoo over the bats started almost immediately after Yankees announcer Michael Kay noted their shape on the broadcast, and by the end of the weekend players around the league were inquiring to bat manufacturers about getting their hands on one.
The Yankees’ barrage of long balls permeated beyond players’ fascination and into the zeitgeist. Some fans and even opposing players wailed fruitlessly about the legality of the bats — Brewers reliever Trevor Megill called the bats “like something used in slow-pitch softball” after watching his teammates surrender home run after home run over the weekend. But the bats abide by Major League Baseball’s collectively bargained bat specifications for shape (round and smooth), barrel size (no larger than 2.61 inches in diameter) and length (a maximum of 42 inches). Most also didn’t realize that the bowling pin bat was used for some of the most consequential hits of 2024 thanks to one of its earliest adaptors.
Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton is owed as much credit as any player for the bowling pin revolution. Leanhardt’s logic behind the bat’s geometry made sense to Stanton, whose average bat velocity of 81.2 mph last year was nearly 3 mph ahead of the second-fastest swinger and more than 9 mph quicker than the average MLB swing. Even with outlier metrics, Stanton gladly embraced a bat that could make his dangerous swing even better — and used it while pummeling seven home runs in 14 postseason games.
TO UNDERSTAND HOW the bowling pin bat works is a lesson in physics. Take a sledgehammer and a broom handle. The sledgehammer will be more difficult to swing because much of its weight is distributed to the tip. The broom handle, meanwhile, can be swung with immense speed but doesn’t contain significant mass. If the length and weight of bats are constants, the distribution of mass is the variable — and Leanhardt conceived of a bat that optimizes both so it can do the most damage.
“This bat is just trying to say: What if we put the mass where the ball is going to hit so that we have an optimized equation of mass and velocity?” said Scott Drake, the president of PFS-TECO, a Wisconsin-based wood products laboratory that inspects all MLB bats to ensure they’re within the regulations. “You’re trying to take a sweet spot and put more mass with that.
“Wood is highly variable,” he added, “and everything is a trade-off.”
In the case of the bowling pin bat, it’s a trade-off hitters using it are willing to make. Because so much of the mass is in the barrel, swings that don’t connect on it produce results often more feeble than those of traditionally tapered models. As Leanhardt said, though, if a ball off the end of a bowling pin shape leaves the bat with an exit velocity of 70 mph compared to 71 mph for the traditional one, both are likely to result in outs. The difference between a 101 mph batted ball and 102 can be a flyout versus a home run.
“That’s the question of the whole wood budget,” said Leanhardt, who left the Yankees after serving as a major league analyst during the 2024 season and currently is the major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins. “Every penny counts. The fact of the matter is you want your barrels to count the most. You want the most bang for your buck there.”
Turning those principles into reality took buy-in from the entire bat supply chain. Once players bought into Leanhardt’s seedling of an idea, they requested samples from bat manufacturers. Leanhardt worked with a number of MLB’s 41 approved bat makers to make the idea real, and the spec bats were given model numbers that start with BP for bowling pin, though he admits that “torpedo sounds kind of cooler.”
Figuring out the right balance took time. Bowling pin bats take precision to produce. Every fraction of an ounce in bat manufacturing matters. Bats are measured not only on a standard scale but via pendulum-swing tests. The more balanced a bat, the more it oscillates. Traditional bats, their weight distributed disproportionately toward the end, didn’t go back and forth nearly as much.
With relatively lenient regulations from the league allowing manufacturers leeway to create products as long as they stay within the regulations, the new — and perhaps better — mousetrap was born. Stanton’s success was the ultimate proof of concept, and manufacturers came to spring training this year with bowling pin models for players to try in games.
“There’s new pitches getting invented every year,” said Minnesota Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers, who used a bowling pin model in the first three games this year and went 1-for-8. “We’re just swinging the same broomstick we’ve swung for the last 100 years.”
Well, similar at least. Playing in an era when the average fastball velocity was an estimated 10 mph slower than the current average of around 95 mph, Babe Ruth swung a 36-inch, 44-ounce bat. As pitch velocity increased in the decades since, players shaved ounces off bats — tools to ensure they had the requisite speed to catch up with pitches.
“The bat is such a unique tool,” Jeffers said. “You look at the history of the game, and they used to swing telephone poles. Now you try to optimize it, and it feels like some branches are starting to fall for us on the hitting side of things.”
Jeffers, who has spent countless time searching for ways to counterbalance the technological revolution that helped create a generation of pitchers with the best stuff ever seen, swung a bowling pin model from manufacturer B45 in batting practice one day this spring and proceeded to order a batch that arrived during the final two weeks of spring training. Around the same time, Chisholm received his new bowling pin bats and was struck by how he couldn’t tell the difference from his traditional model.
“I mean, it still felt like my bat,” Chisholm told reporters Sunday, echoing Jeffers’ sentiment that bowling pin varieties swing similarly to their standard counterparts. “I hit the ball at the barrel, feel comfortable in the box. I don’t know what else to tell you. I don’t know the science of it, I’m just playing baseball.”
The science is multifold. Beyond the potential increases in exit velocity from the increased mass in the barrel, the weight distribution toward the knob should promote faster swings. Among the five Yankees who have used the bat, all have seen bat-velocity increases year over year, with Volpe up more than 3 mph, Bellinger up 2.5, Wells 2, Chisholm 1.1 and Goldschmidt — an inveterate tinkerer who has also used bats with hockey-puck-shaped knobs — 0.3 mph.
“Credit to any of the players who were willing to listen to me, because it’s crazy,” Leanhardt said. “Listening to me describe it is sometimes even crazier. It’s a long-running project, and I’m happy for the guys that bought into it.”
Because the data — on bat velocity as well as effectiveness — is of such a limited sample, nobody is yet proclaiming that the bowling pin bat will unquestionably revolutionize the game. But more bowling pins will be showing up in major league games soon. Leanhardt said his new team, the Marlins, will feature players using the bat in games. Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Junior Caminero laced an RBI single Sunday with a bowling pin model. In addition to the Yankees and Marlins, the Chicago Cubs and Baltimore Orioles are seen throughout the industry as the teams that have invested the most time and money researching bat geometry and optimization.
One player who does not plan on using the bowling pin model said multiple teammates plan to at least try one in batting practice after the Yankees’ nine-homer outburst Saturday. How many eventually adopt it as their full-time piece depends on feel as much as success. Comfort with a bat is vital for it to go from BP to a big league game, and in a sport where advantages don’t stay secret very long, New York’s might wind up lasting all of one weekend.
“There’s going to be a lot more teams wanting to swing them,” Jeffers said, “because of what the Yankees did this weekend.”