
How a wave of fast, young defensemen is changing the NHL
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adminLAS VEGAS — Roman Josi was kind of joking. But he also kind of wasn’t upon assessing what the Norris Trophy landscape could look like over the next decade.
Josi, who won the Norris as the NHL’s top defenseman after the 2019-20 season, would know. The 31-year-old Nashville Predators captain appeared to be in position to capture a second Norris last season, when he scored 23 goals, amassed 96 points and averaged more than 25 minutes per game.
Then came Cale Makar. The 23-year-old Colorado Avalanche star dazzled throughout the season in scoring 28 goals, accruing 86 points and also averaging more than 25 minutes per game.
Josi had more first- and third-place votes, but Makar, in his third NHL season, came away with his first Norris by a difference of 25 points.
“He could have left me that one, right? Because he’s probably going to win 10 in the next 10 years,” Josi said. “Last year, there were so many guys who had unbelievable years and it is going to be the same going forward. There are more and more guys coming. It’s going to be a huge challenge. It’s also going to be a lot of fun.”
Josi has a point. The year before Makar won, New York Rangers star Adam Fox took home the Norris as a 23-year-old. The achievements of Fox and Makar add to a growing belief that the impact the young, puck-moving defensemen will have on the NHL is only beginning.
Think about the blue-line talent age 25 or younger. It started with the “older group” featuring Thomas Chabot, Jakob Chychrun, Charlie McAvoy, Mikhail Sergachev and Zach Werenski. They were soon followed by a second wave led by Evan Bouchard, Rasmus Dahlin, Noah Dobson, Miro Heiskanen, Quinn Hughes, Fox and Makar. Now a third group is starting to emerge with players such as Bowen Byram, Jamie Drysdale and reigning Calder Trophy winner Moritz Seider at the vanguard, with others such as Luke Hughes, Owen Power and Jake Sanderson potentially on the verge of breaking through.
Many of them are not old enough to rent a car without signing a waiver, but they are playing a role in driving discussion about where this league is heading.
“Growing up, I felt like that was kind of the way the game was heading,” said Werenski, who was drafted eighth overall by the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2015. “A lot of defensemen were puck-moving. I played at the U.S National Team [Development Program] with Noah Hanifin and Charlie McAvoy, guys who play similar styles to me. Now you see Cale Makar and Roman Josi. Those guys are so talented, almost scoring 30 goals and 100 points and still playing great D.
“Nowadays to be successful, the game is so fast, you have to be a good skater. But you also have to be able to create offensively as well.”
PUCK-MOVING DEFENSEMEN have always existed in the NHL, but the influx seems to have picked up considerably over recent seasons.
Buffalo Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams, who played 10 years in the NHL as a center, said he felt like the evolution was starting to happen around the time he retired in 2008. Early in his career, defensemen played a bigger and meaner style. Toward the end, that type was still around, but players like two-time Norris Trophy winner Duncan Keith, who could skate and take space away, had begun to emerge.
Adams said more defensemen over the years have developed into stronger skaters who could read plays, break up neutral zone activity and make life difficult for opposing forwards while also having the offensive skill to become a complete threat.
“I look at a player we drafted — Mats Lindgren — in the fourth round,” Adams said of one of the Sabres’ picks in 2022. “He has some elite skating tools at 18 years old. Those are the type of defensemen you are seeing more of. If you can have that, the feet, you can defend well and make a good first pass, those are valuable. The ones that are extremely intelligent who can process the game at a high level and sort out reads, those types of defensemen are becoming more valuable.”
The Sabres hired Adams in 2020, putting him in charge of a rebuild in Buffalo. Part of his strategy has centered around Dahlin and Power. Dahlin was drafted two years before Adams arrived, whereas Power was selected with the No. 1 pick of the 2021 draft.
Adams said Power’s ability to process the game in addition to his defending, skating, puck-moving ability and vision were all traits the organization believed would translate at a high level.
“You look at our team with Rasmus already in the group, there was a thought that if we get into a big game, they could both be on the ice for 30 minutes a game whether it is together or separately,” Adams said. “That is a really valuable thing to have.”
Dahlin, who was drafted with the first pick in 2018 by the Sabres, said growing up in Sweden shaped how he viewed the game. Countrymen Victor Hedman, Erik Karlsson and Nicklas Lidstrom have combined to win 10 Norris Trophies since the start of the century.
That trio inspired a generation of Swedes. Dahlin said he grew up with Adam Boqvist, who plays for the Blue Jackets, and Rasmus Sandin, who plays for the Toronto Maple Leafs. He recalled how they all played the same style.
“I was able to realize at a young age that a defenseman can also have fun offensively,” Dahlin said. “I’m a little mixed. I have my own style. But I for sure looked at those guys.”
Makar, who was the second defenseman drafted after Heiskanen (No. 4 overall) in 2017, said he started playing defense in atom hockey (age 9-10). He said he liked being a forward but enjoyed being a defenseman more because it allowed him to be the first skater back and in a position to control the game.
He praised his youth coaches who helped him gradually get more comfortable being a puck-moving defenseman. Makar said those coaches showed him a lot of faith, to the point he admits to looking like “a little bit of a puck hog” when watching footage from his youth hockey days.
Even back then, Makar could use his agility, stickhandling, speed, timing and vision as a way of deceiving opponents to his advantage. But because he did not see defensemen at higher levels play that way, Makar thought it might not work as he went up the ranks.
“It might have been the first year in Canada they aired the NCAA championship with [Shayne] Gostisbehere and Union,” Makar recalled. “That was kind of the first guy where I was like, ‘Wow. He’s doing that. All the stuff that I am doing right now, but at a level that is way higher.’ In my mind, it was like, ‘Wow. There is some hope there.’
“It was the first moment I realized there was a change in style. That was definitely a defining moment for sure.”
Dahlin, Makar and Werenski were all top-10 draft picks who broke into the league at an early age. Dahlin played as an 18-year-old after spending two seasons with Frolunda, facing older competition back home in Sweden. Makar played at the University of Massachusetts prior to debuting in the Stanley Cup playoffs at 20, while Werenski, who starred at the University of Michigan, came to the league at 19.
By comparison, the 2008 draft had four defensemen — Doughty, Zach Bogosian, Alex Pietrangelo and Luke Schenn — who were taken with the second, third, fourth and fifth picks, respectively. Doughty debuted at 19 and played 81 games his first season. Bogosian debuted at 18 and played 47 games. Pietrangelo broke into the league at 19, but his first full season came at 21, while Schenn played 70 games in his age-19 season. Karlsson, who was drafted 15th, played in 60 games as a 19-year-old.
So while playing young defensemen is nothing new, Pietrangelo said teams have changed their approach with them. The Vegas Golden Knights star said it feels like more teams are trying to find ways to take advantage of the salary cap, and one is by trusting young players on cheaper deals before they become too expensive. He also said the game has developed into requiring more skilled defensemen than in the past, when the focus was to have more physical blueliners.
“I think now the young players are just better skaters,” Pietrangelo said. “Some of these guys that come in now, obviously, you look at Makar and those guys are just exceptional. For the most part, every defenseman at our camp can skate and move the puck. That’s kind of where the game is going.”
Pietrangelo said he initially played third-pairing minutes in his first full season with the St. Louis Blues. He eventually gained more trust from the coaches and began working his way into a top-four role. Pietrangelo finished his rookie campaign with 11 goals and 43 points in 79 games while averaging 22 minutes.
Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said generating offense has become so difficult that teams need all five players on the ice to contribute. He said the previous philosophy was to pair a puck mover with a stay-at-home partner. There is still the expectation all defensemen know how to defend, but there is also an understanding they must be part of the offense.
Bednar, who is the third-longest tenured coach in the NHL, has gone through the experience of trusting a young puck-moving defenseman on three separate occasions. The process the Avs used to assimilate Samuel Girard, as well as Makar and Byram, required buy-in from the entire team.
“First and foremost, you have to be able to check to play in this league, whether you’re a forward or a defenseman,” Bednar said. “To help drive the offense out of them, we encourage our guys to push themselves up the ice and be part of it. There’s the decision-making process. Not only the defensemen who are up in the play, but for our forwards. It’s really team driven. If you want your defensemen to be up in the play, then your forwards have to know their responsibilities are filling in for them. So you’re working in that five-man unit all the time.”
WITH THE INCREASED responsibilities for this crop of young defenseman comes increased compensation. These players are now starting to get paid a lot of money by the time their entry-level contracts expire.
Getting to that point took time. ESPN interviewed four agents who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could speak freely. All four have negotiated deals for young puck-moving defensemen.
“The market has moved $2.5 million in the course of three years,” one agent said. “When we did a client’s bridge deal, I wanted eight years at $7 million to $7.5 million and that is what I was fighting for. When we did his second deal, the first thing my client said was, ‘Boy, aren’t you glad we did not sign that deal?’ because by that point, the numbers had shifted into the $9 million range.”
For example, both McAvoy and Werenski were among the first of the group who signed bridge deals after their ELCs ended. McAvoy signed a three-year deal worth $4.9 million annually while Werenski signed for three years at $5 million.
Werenski signed with the Blue Jackets on Sept. 9, 2019 while McAvoy re-signed with the Boston Bruins less than a week later.
“I’ve never been on that side of the table [as a general manager]. But the point of the bridge deal is to keep the cap [hit] low,” the agent said. “The bridge deal allows you to have a competitive team with a player that has no leverage.”
The same agent compared the Bruins’ situation with McAvoy to that of the Maple Leafs with Auston Mathews, who was also drafted in 2016. He said the Bruins signing McAvoy to a bridge deal before agreeing in October 2021 to an eight-year extension worth $9.5 million per year that starts in 2022-23 allows the Bruins to hypothetically have McAvoy on their roster for 14 seasons, including the three years from his entry-level deal. It’s a contrast with Mathews, who signed a five-year extension after his ELC, which means he’ll be under team control for only eight seasons.
“As long as the marketplace is what it is, you are happy to pay them,” the agent said. “That is another piece of this. If a guy is that good, why not give them the money? You can keep them for 14 years or possibly lose them after eight or nine years.”
Signing bridge deals is still a possibility. Every team’s situation is different. But the class that featured Fox, Heiskanen, Hughes and Makar saw a deviation from bridge deals, with those players signing long-term contracts after their initial deals.
“We had a guy who went to college and then had an immediate impact in the NHL,” another agent told ESPN. “To me, that first class was the one that sort of opened the door for young defensemen playing immediately, and that second elite class blew the doors off and basically said, ‘Hey, we need to be paid.'”
That same agent said that was his approach when it came to getting his client a new contract after his entry-level deal ended. The agent’s argument was that even though his client is a defenseman, the statistical projections for him were higher than forwards of a similar age who were given long-term deals.
“We never thought a bridge deal was a possibility,” the agent said. “He accomplished enough at the point where we felt we could get some term there. In fact, the team wanted to go longer term and they felt very confident in my client’s value. They wanted to lock him up for as long as they could.”
So why not go longer if the team is willing? The agent explained how signing a deal of at least six years means his client will be around 29 or 30 when it comes time for his next contract. He would be young enough to sign one more large deal before having to worry about age being used against him.
While signing a long-term contract yields life-changing wealth and security, there is another factor to consider. Over time, the market almost surely will go up.
“While we felt good about the total dollar number,” the agent said, “we did not want to chase every last dollar on this contract knowing the landscape will rise.”
Consider the contracts signed by that second wave of young defensemen. Heiskanen signed first on an eight-year deal worth $8.45 million annually on July 17, 2021. Makar signed a week later for six years at $9 million annually. Hughes signed Oct. 1, 2021 for six years at $7.85 million annually while Fox, who still had a year left on his entry-level contract, signed a month later for seven years at $9.5 million annually.
The fourth agent who spoke with ESPN alluded to how those deals would lay the foundation for the next group of defensemen, which includes Dahlin, Drysdale and Seider.
“Makar is at $9 million and teams will say, ‘Are you better than Makar?'” the agent said. “That is what teams will say in negotiations. A [young] defenseman can come along and make $10 million and not be better than Makar or Werenski or Josi. It’s not a function of that player being better, but more how the market is moving.”
Doughty and Karlson are proof that teams are willing to sign a defenseman to a contract worth at least $10 million annually. But Doughty started making $11 million in the 2019-20 season. By that point, he had already won a Norris, two Stanley Cups and was a four-time All-Star. Karlsson’s new deal went into effect that season, and it saw him earn $11.5 million after he won two Norris Trophies and was a five-time All-Star.
What is the likelihood that a team would be willing to give a player who is either 21 or 22 that kind of money? Especially if they do not have a Norris or a Stanley Cup?
“There will be a moment,” one of the agents said. “It’s going to be about the percentage of the cap by that point. I am really hopeful and bullish with where the NHL is. I am hoping in 10 years the cap has gone up significantly. In other sports, there are other young players who make $10 million a year and we don’t blink an eye. The way the game is played and the way offense has to be created from the back end, defensemen will continue to be more and more important.”
As the prominence of these players continues to rise, what does that mean for the Norris Trophy going forward? Pietrangelo said it has changed from the days of Chris Pronger, who won the Hart Memorial Trophy and the Norris in the 1999-2000 season. He said Pronger didn’t need to score 90 points to win the Norris because he had a physical style that made him impactful in every area of the game.
For the record, Pronger scored a career-high 14 goals and a career-high 62 points while averaging more than 30 minutes per game that season. He would have led the league in ice time by nearly four full minutes if he hit those numbers during the 2021-22 season. Pronger’s 14 goals would have been tied for seventh among defensemen while his 62 points would have been ninth.
Makar said it feels like the Norris balloting today leans more toward offensive defensemen. That, in turn, places those with fewer points but consistently strong defensive efforts at a disadvantage.
“It’s almost like you need an extra award for the most all-around guys,” Makar said. “For me, it’s rounding out that game and making sure I can be an option for my team and be up for those individual things. But at the end of the day, there has to be a ‘both sides of the game’ award. There has to be.”
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Best slugger, best game … badonkadonk of the year?! Jeff Passan’s 2025 MLB season awards
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2 hours agoon
September 24, 2025By
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With another two months until votes for the Most Valuable Players, Cy Young Award winners and Rookies of the Year are revealed, now seems the perfect time for a far wider-ranging set of honors for Major League Baseball’s 2025 season.
The third annual Passan Awards aim to celebrate the most enjoyable elements of a season and recognize that even those who aren’t the best of the best deserve acknowledgment. Certainly, the winners are talented, but the players favored to win the MVP awards for the second straight season, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, will not get this hardware. Instead, the first award honors a player for his anatomy.
Badonkadonk of the Year: Cal Raleigh
As if it could be anyone else.
Ball knowers understood who Raleigh was entering the 2025 season: the best catcher in MLB, a switch-hitting, Platinum Glove-winning, home-run-punishing hero with the most appropriate (and inappropriate) nickname in baseball — the Big Dumper, for his lower half putting the maximus in gluteus.
This, though? A superstar turn in which the Seattle Mariners‘ best player passes Hall of Famers such as Mickey Mantle and Ken Griffey Jr. in the record books? A seasonlong run in which he keeps pace with Aaron Judge, the best hitter in the world still at the peak of his powers, in the American League MVP race? A legitimate shot at becoming only the seventh player in MLB history to hit 60 or more home runs in a season?
Look hard enough and it makes sense. A season like Raleigh’s 2025 necessitates playing every day, which, at a position where 120 games is the norm, is almost impossible. Well, Raleigh has sat out three games this year. Amid all his responsibilities as a catcher, he has taken a right-handed swing that was the weaker of the two and honed it into a stroke as powerful as his left-handed wallop.
The confluence of it all in Raleigh’s age-28 season has thrust the Mariners to the precipice of their first AL West title since 2001 and put Raleigh on a pedestal alongside Judge. Raleigh’s case for MVP is strong. He has got the numbers to back up the narrative, which could be very compelling for voters: the game’s 2025 home run king, playing its most important position, carries the franchise with which he signed a long-term extension to the postseason while the star in the Bronx, already a two-time AL MVP winner, doesn’t do anything different from what he typically does.
Of course, just maintaining his status quo is actually a pretty good case for Judge, considering his OPS exceeds Raleigh’s by nearly 175 points. But that’s for MVP voters to decide. The case of the best badonkadonk is open and shut. From the city that gave the world Sir Mix-A-Lot comes version 2.0: bigger, better, dumpier.
None of this is new for Schwarber, the 32-year-old who has spent the past four seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies as the National League’s three-true-outcomes demigod. Schwarber is third in the NL in walks (behind Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani), second in strikeouts (behind James Wood), and tied with Ohtani for the lead with 53 home runs. Beyond the seasonlong compilation of gaudy numbers, though, are the moments that have appended “of the year” onto the slugger label he long ago earned.
When NL manager Dave Roberts needed hitters for the All-Star Game swing-off — a truncated Home Run Derby that would break the game’s 6-6 tie — of course he chose Schwarber, who whacked three home runs on three swings and secured the win. If anyone in the sport was poised to go on a single-game heater and pummel four home runs, he was near, if not at, the top of the list for that, too — and did so Aug. 28.
Schwarber is the archetypal slugger. He will have some rough at-bats, and his slumps will be uglier than most because of his propensity to strike out. But when he gets hot, there’s nothing like it: the compact stroke, the innate power, and the symbiosis between him and the electric crowds at Citizens Bank Park converge to create a monster of which pitchers want no part.
Even though the team doesn’t have ace Zack Wheeler and All-Star shortstop Trea Turner because of injuries, Schwarber stabilized the Phillies and kept them from sliding down the standings alongside the New York Mets. Schwarber’s impending free agency will grow into a heated bidding war because he is as beloved as he is good, and he’s very, very good.
In the meantime, because he is a designated hitter with a mediocre batting average, Schwarber will not receive the MVP love he deserves. So, consider this a way of honoring Schwarber: king of the sluggers, ready to light up another October.
Base Thief of the Year: Juan Soto
Of all the unbelievable things to happen in the 2025 season — the no-way-that-can-be-true, how-did-that-happen, you-got-to-be-kidding-me facts — this is unquestionably the wildest: Juan Soto leads MLB in stolen bases in the second half.
Seriously, Juan Soto. The $765 million man. In 58 games since the All-Star break, Soto has 24 stolen bases — four more than runner-up Jazz Chisholm Jr. This season, Soto has swiped 35, nearly triple his previous career high of a dozen set in 2019 and 2023. And it’s not as if Soto is leaving all kinds of outs on the basepaths; he has been caught just four times this season (though three of those are in September).
Soto hits home runs with regularity (42 this season, 19 in the second half). He has the best eye in the game. Stolen bases, though? The guy who ranks 503rd out of 571 qualified players in sprint speed? The one who takes more than 4½ seconds to go from home to first base?
It’s just further proof that ripping bags, in this era of larger bases and limited pickoff moves for pitchers, is no longer the sole domain of the speedy. With a little bit of know-how and gumption, anyone can become a base stealer. Josh Naylor, the Mariners’ burly first baseman, is fourth in MLB in the second half with 17 — one ahead of Tampa Bay rookie Chandler Simpson, one of the fastest runners in the big leagues. Miami rookie catcher Agustin Ramirez, who is also objectively slow, has stolen more bases since the All-Star break than Bobby Witt Jr., Jose Ramirez, Fernando Tatis Jr., Julio Rodriguez and Elly De La Cruz.
The new rules have led to remarkable seasons: Ronald Acuna Jr.’s 40/70 year in 2023 and Ohtani’s 50/50 campaign last year. As unprecedented as each was, they’d have been likelier bets than Soto threatening to become just the seventh player to go 40/40. That he’s at 30/30 already — alongside Chisholm, Jose Ramirez and Corbin Carroll — is remarkable enough.
Credit is due in plenty of places. To Mets baserunning coach Antoan Richardson, whose work with Soto encouraged him to study the craft of stealing a base and trust his instincts. To the Mets’ late-season ruin that made every base seem that much more important. Most of all, to Soto, who, after signing the richest contract in professional sports history, refused to pigeonhole himself as someone defined by patience and pop and actively sought his most well-rounded incarnation yet.
Best Player You Still Know Nothing About: Geraldo Perdomo
Who were the five best every-day players in baseball this year? There are three locks: Raleigh, Judge and Ohtani. After that, it’s a matter of preference. Want a masher? Schwarber or Soto would qualify. Prefer an all-around player? Witt is a good choice at No. 4; Jose Ramirez always warrants consideration; and, had he not gotten hurt, Turner would have been firmly in the mix.
Consider, however, the case of Perdomo, the Arizona Diamondbacks‘ 25-year-old shortstop. As easily as Perdomo’s bonanza 2025 can be summed up with wins above replacement — his 6.9 via FanGraphs ranks behind only the three locks and Witt, and Perdomo’s 6.8 via Baseball-Reference comes in third behind only Judge and Raleigh — his statistics get even more interesting upon a granular look. Here are Perdomo’s numbers, followed by their MLB rank out of 144 qualified hitters:
Batting average: .289 (13th)
On-base percentage: .391 (5th)
Slugging percentage: .462 (47th)
Runs: 96 (13th)
RBIs: 97 (14th)
Strikeout rate: 10.9% (8th)
Walk rate: 13.4% (14th)
Stolen bases: 26 (19th)
Games played: 155 (8th)
And that’s to say nothing of Perdomo playing the second-most-important position in baseball at a high level. He is not Witt defensively, but Perdomo is always on the field — his 1,363 innings is the most at shortstop in the majors this season — and, outside of the occasional throwing mishap, eminently reliable.
Take it all into account and it adds up to a legitimate case for Perdomo to join the game’s luminaries. He is neither the most well-known star on the Diamondbacks (Carroll) nor even in his own middle infield (Ketel Marte). And that’s fine. The numbers tell his story. And it’s one worth knowing.
Individual Performance of the Year: Nick Kurtz
Since the turn of the 20th century, a period that comprises around 4 million individual games played by position players, there have been:
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Nine games with a player scoring six runs
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21 games with a player hitting four homers
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81 games in which batters went 6-for-6
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170 games with a player having at least eight RBIs
And only one game with all four.
That belongs to A’s rookie first baseman Kurtz, who, three months after his major league debut, turned in arguably the greatest game by a hitter. Facing the Houston Astros on July 25, Kurtz, 22, started with a single in the first inning, followed with a home run in the second, doubled off the top of the wall in left field two innings after that, and finished homer, homer, homer in his final three at-bats.
The home runs came off four pitchers: starter Ryan Gusto, relievers Nick Hernandez and Kaleb Ort, and utility man Cooper Hummel, whose 77.6 mph meatball went over the short porch in left field at Daikin Park. Five of Kurtz’s six hits that night went to the opposite field, a testament to his lethal bat that should win him unanimous American League Rookie of the Year honors and will land him on plenty of AL MVP ballots.
Kurtz finished the game with 19 total bases, tying a record that has long belonged to Shawn Green, whose line was almost identical to Kurtz’s: a single, a double and four home runs with six runs — but only seven RBIs. Yes, all four of Green’s homers came off big league pitchers, and he did it at Miller Park, a tougher place in 2002 to hit homers than Daikin in 2025.
When trying to adjudicate a winner, every factor counts. But for argument’s sake, let’s say Kurtz’s game was better than Green’s because of that additional RBI. Was it superior to Ohtani’s last September in which he went 6-for-6 with a single, 2 doubles, 3 home runs, 10 RBIs and a pair of stolen bases — and in that same game he became the first player with at least 50 homers and 50 steals in a season? It’s difficult to argue with the historical nature of Ohtani’s game. Context should matter, and to do something never conceived of before 2024 adds a delicious narrative flourish to Ohtani’s performance.
If Kurtz’s game isn’t the best, it’s certainly among the top five. And in the year of the four-homer game — there have been an MLB-high three this season, with Schwarber and Eugenio Suarez joining the party — none compared to Kurtz’s.
The average major league fastball ticked up another 0.2 mph this year, all the way to 94.4 mph, more than 3 mph harder than when the league began tracking pitch data in 2007. Pitch velocity is a marker not only for where the game is now but where it’s going. And where it has gone is featuring a starting pitcher with a slider nearly as fast as a league-average heater.
Misiorowski, the Milwaukee Brewers‘ rookie right-handed starter, is a walking outlier. At 6-foot-7, he is taller than all but 18 of the 868 players who have thrown a pitch this season, and at under 200 pounds, his slender body and its elasticity stretch the bounds of what a pitcher should look like. What they create is magic.
Though the 23-year-old’s triple-digit fastball generates the most oohs and ahhs, his slider induces the most gawking. Misiorowski’s slider averages 94.1 mph. He has thrown 85 of them at least 95 mph this season — a full 10-plus mph over the rest of the league’s average. He got Mookie Betts swinging on a 97.4 mph slider in August. It was the full-count version of the pitch he delivered at 95.5 mph against Willi Castro on June 20, though, that earned this award.
It wasn’t just the velocity or pitch shape that was most impressive. It was the swing Misiorowski induced. Castro just wanted to get on base. Hell, he just wanted to make contact. Instead, he got this:
HE BROKE HIS ANKLES@Jmisiorowski9 pic.twitter.com/bWG3UkzCae
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) June 21, 2025
That right there — the velocity, the late movement, the pitch shape — is an evolutionary slider. For all the pitchers who have made 90-plus mph sliders a regular thing, Misiorowski essentially said: “Thank you for walking so I could run.” Castro did not simply swing and miss. He got pretzeled. Misiorowski punctuated it with a celebratory twirl off the mound. The visual only amped up Miz Mania, which peaked when, barely 25 innings into his career, MLB named him an All-Star replacement.
Since then, the league has caught up to Misiorowski. The plan is for him to pitch out of the bullpen in the postseason, though injuries to the Brewers’ pitching staff — the best team in MLB this year — could change that. Whether he’s a starter or a reliever, Misiorowski can unleash the sort of pitch previously seen only in dreams — or, as Castro will attest, nightmares.
Put together two teams like the Pirates and Rockies and the possibilities are endless. Most of those possibilities, of course, are offensive — and not in the run-scoring sort of way. The baseball gods’ sense of humor reveals itself at the oddest times, though, and when the teams met at Coors Field the day after the trade deadline, they partook in the most madcap, rollicking affair of the 2025 season.
That day had already offered a Game of the Year candidate: Miami’s 13-12 victory over the New York Yankees, who blew a five-run lead in the seventh inning, recaptured it in the top of the ninth and got walked off in the bottom. The notion that the Pirates and Rockies would one-up that was unlikely, but then the beauty of baseball is as much in the unexpected as it is the known.
It started as any game at Coors can: with a nine-run top of the first inning, matching the run support the Pirates had given Paul Skenes in his previous nine starts combined. Pittsburgh, facing Antonio Senzatela, started single, single, single, single, grand slam, single, walk before Jared Triolo grounded into a double play. The Pirates followed single, walk, home run, single, single, then finally closed the frame when their 14th batter, Oneil Cruz, struck out.
The Rockies chipped away — a run in the first, three more in the third. The middle innings were chaos. Three for the Pirates in the top of the fourth, two for the Rockies in the bottom. Three more for the Pirates in the top of the fifth, four for the Rockies in the bottom. After a run in the sixth, Pittsburgh held a 16-10 lead and carried it into the eighth inning, when the Rockies scored a pair.
The bottom of the ninth beckoned. Pittsburgh had traded its closer, David Bednar, to the Yankees the previous day and called on Dennis Santana, who came into the game having allowed seven runs in 46⅓ innings. He struck out Ezequiel Tovar for the first out. Then, the madness of the day peaked. A Hunter Goodman home run. A Jordan Beck walk. A Warming Bernabel triple. A Thairo Estrada single. And, finally, a Brenton Doyle walk-off homer to left-center field.
Final: Rockies 17, Pirates 16.
In the modern era, only 20 games featured more runs than the Pirates and Rockies — the two lowest-scoring teams in 2025 — put up that day. Just two of those were decided by one run. Neither ended on a walk-off, let alone a walk-off homer.
Baseball is funny like that. Even two last-place teams that have combined for more than 200 losses this season can face off and emerge with something unforgettable.
The Chicken-and-Beer Award for Most Staggering Collapse: New York Mets
Note: This could wind up including the Detroit Tigers, whose lead over the Cleveland Guardians — 15½ games on July 8, 12½ on Aug. 25 — has almost evaporated. If Cleveland surpasses Detroit in the AL Central, consider the Tigers compatriots in ignominy with New York.
For now, the dishonor belongs alone to the Mets, who on June 12 won their sixth consecutive game to extend their major-league-best record to 45-24. Queens felt like the center of the baseball universe. Soto wasn’t even hitting up to his standard, yet the Mets were still bludgeoning opponents enough that they held the best expected winning percentage along with the top record.
Since then, the Mets have the same record as the White Sox: 35-52. Not only have they frittered away what was then a 5½-game advantage over Philadelphia atop the NL East, they’ve fallen out of the first, second and third wild cards, too. As of today, they are on the outside of the postseason looking in.
The Mets haven’t flamed out in one spectacular blaze. It has been a slow burn, a consistent degradation of quality, gradual and raw. It’s everywhere. An inconsistent lineup. A bad bullpen. A starting rotation that buoyed them over the first 69 games disappeared, through injury and ineffectiveness, to the point that New York is now relying on three rookie starters, all of whom the team preferred to keep in the minor leagues until next year.
Now, Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong and Brandon Sproat are fundamental parts of any salvage job the Mets hope to hatch. And that is the most damning indictment of all: a $340 million team, left to rely on a group of young players to rescue the franchise from its self-inflicted depths. Attempts in the middle of the season to turn things around, as they did in making an NLCS run last year, didn’t work. Adding reliever Ryan Helsley and outfielder Cedric Mullins at the trade deadline didn’t, either.
This collapse isn’t the 1964 Phillies or even the 2011 Red Sox, whose pitching staff habitually ate fried chicken and drank beer in the clubhouse during games, even as the team’s nine-game advantage in September evaporated. At least that was the equivalent of a Band-Aid being ripped off. This has been interminable, a stark reminder that for all the Mets have going for them — the richest owner in the game, plenty of talent, excellent resources — they’re still the Mets, professional purveyors of pain.
There were plenty of choices. Soto’s contract is an all-timer. Max Fried has been everything the Yankees needed. And there was no shortage of trade options, from the blockbusters (Kyle Tucker to the Cubs, Rafael Devers to the Giants) to the deadline stunners (Mason Miller to the Padres, Carlos Correa back to the Astros).
In terms of sheer impact, though, the Red Sox’s December acquisition of Crochet is unbeatable. And it’s among the most infrequent of trades, too: one in which both parties emerge elated. Without Crochet, 26, headlining the rotation, Boston isn’t sniffing a playoff spot. Not only did the Red Sox think enough of him to give up four players who had yet to make their major league debut, but during spring training, they kept Crochet from reaching free agency next winter with a six-year, $170 million contract extension even though the left-hander had never thrown 150 innings in a season.
Boston’s faith was well-founded. Crochet leads MLB in strikeouts and the AL in innings pitched. He has faced 788 batters this year, and they are hitting .220/.268/.360 against him. And with a 17-5 record and 2.69 ERA, he has positioned himself as the likely runner-up behind Tarik Skubal in AL Cy Young voting.
All was not lost for Chicago. The four players the White Sox got back in the deal are all doing well, too. Kyle Teel has been exceptional and looks like a future All-Star at catcher. Chase Meidroth gives the White Sox a high-on-base, low-strikeout threat at either middle-infield position. Wikelman Gonzalez is becoming a reliable big league bullpen option. And Braden Montgomery, a switch-hitting center fielder, is already up to Double-A.
Trades don’t work out more often than they do. (Just ask the Mets.) But on the day this deal was consummated, the industry response liked it for each side. The White Sox weren’t willing to commit to a Crochet extension and wanted to avoid injury or ineffectiveness cratering his value, and in Boston, they found a team desperate enough to offload an immense amount of talent. Year 1 of a deal that included a combined 30 years of club control is too early to name definitive winners and losers. So for now, it’s an easy call: the rare win-win.
The Tickle Me Elmo Award: Torpedo Bats
Remember the torpedo bat? It was going to revolutionize baseball. The first weekend of the season, with a lineup full of hitters using the bat that looked like nothing MLB had ever seen, the Yankees hit 15 home runs — against the Brewers, who since have been among the best teams in baseball at home run prevention.
The concept was simple: MLB allows the redistribution of wood weight as long as the bat stays within specified parameters, so why not take the mass that typically is toward the end of the barrel and create a new shape that better suits individual hitters? After the Yankees’ home run barrage, the torpedo bat became baseball’s version of Tickle Me Elmo, Furby and Cabbage Patch Kids: the must-have toy of the moment.
Well, the moment passed. Torpedoes certainly remain in circulation — Raleigh uses a different model from each side of the plate — and are not going anywhere. But the notion that half the league would switch bat models ignored the realities that (A) baseball players are creatures of habit and (B) the torpedo doesn’t suit the significant number of players who hit the ball more toward the end of the bat.
And that’s fine. Not every piece of technology is meant for every consumer. The takeaway from torpedo bats isn’t that they are a failure because they haven’t taken over the market, nor is it that they are a success because the best home run hitter of 2025 uses them. It’s that the game is full of curious people who aren’t afraid to build a new mousetrap. That’s how a game that has been around for 150 years evolves. And that’s a perfectly good thing.
Thing we’ll still be talking about in 50 years: The Colorado Rockies’ run differential
Maybe Raleigh hits 60. Or Judge continues his spate of all-time-elite seasons, giving this one greater context. Perhaps there’s a surprise World Series winner. It is baseball, which means trying to predict the next 50 minutes, let alone the next 50 years, is a fool’s errand.
But in the modern era, which comprises every season since 1900, never before has there been a team as good at giving up runs while being as bad at scoring them as the Rockies. There have been thousands of baseball teams in the game’s history. None has a worse run differential than Colorado’s minus-404 (and counting).
That is not just hard to do. It has been, to this point, impossible. Getting outscored by more than 2½ runs per game is the domain of teams in the 1800s. (The 1899 Cleveland Spiders yielded an astounding 723 runs more than they scored in 154 games.) And yet, here are the Rockies, whose ignominy won’t launch them past the White Sox for the most losses in a modern season but will place them atop record books with a minuscule likelihood of being supplanted.
The numbers are quite simple. Colorado has scored just 584 runs, fewer than any team except Pittsburgh, which has an offense that includes a single player (Spencer Horwitz) with an adjusted OPS above league average. Colorado has allowed 988, the most in the big leagues by more than 125 runs. And the heretofore mythical minus-404 differential, seen as an impossible wall to breach, has crumbled, felled by an organizational ineptitude that has grown uglier annually since 2019. Even the all-time-bad teams — the 1932 Red Sox (43-111, minus-345), the 2023 A’s (50-112, minus-339) and the 2003 Tigers (43-119, minus-337) — look at these Rockies and say: You are awful.
So, yeah. It’s not the kind of record worthy of celebrating or shouting from the mountaintops. It’s just one strong enough to stand the test of time, even if it takes another 100 years to break it.
Sports
Skubal, Tigers collapse; caught by Guardians
Published
3 hours agoon
September 24, 2025By
admin
-
Jesse RogersSep 23, 2025, 11:44 PM ET
Close- Jesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.
CLEVELAND — It happened fast. And without a ball even leaving the infield. The Detroit Tigers took a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the sixth inning in a crucial game against the Cleveland Guardians on Tuesday only to see their ace fall apart on the mound in several different and dramatic ways.
“We did a lot of uncharacteristic things, and it’s hurting us,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said after the Tigers’ 5-2 loss.
First, Tarik Skubal tried to flip a bunted ball through his legs with his back to first base, only to see it sail over teammate Spencer Torkelson‘s head, putting runners on second and third. It was the second of two consecutive bunts by the Guardians, who came into the night trailing the Tigers by just one game after being down as many as 10½ on Sept. 1.
After a third bunt in the inning went awry — Skubal’s 99 mph fastball struck designated hitter David Fry in the face, and Fry had to be carted off — Skubal threw a wild pitch and then balked. Both of those led to runs.
Game. Set. Match. The Tigers have been caught in the American League Central.
“There’s some frustration,” Skubal said. “Losing isn’t fun, and we’ve been losing a lot.”
Hinch added: “He chose to do the emergency flip [through his legs], which is not easy to do and didn’t produce a good play. That is an example of an uncharacteristic mistake piling up on us at the worst time.”
That’s an understatement. The AL’s best team in the first half has fallen hard, losing seven in a row. Not only did the Guardians catch Detroit in the standings, but they also secured the tiebreaker, in case the teams match records when the regular season ends later this weekend. Nothing is going right for the Tigers.
“We didn’t play our game tonight,” catcher Dillon Dingler said. “I know that’s redundant to say over the last two weeks.
“We’ve been this way for a couple series now. We definitely feel some of the pressure. We have to eliminate it. We have to find ways to stay loose and home in on what we have to do and go out there and do it.”
The Tigers played that part of being loose before the series opener: Skubal was working on his crossword puzzle, others were playing pingpong, while Hinch was advocating a positive perspective. Who wouldn’t want to be playing meaningful games and control their own destiny, he opined in the dugout several hours before first pitch. But then the game started, and a win once again slipped through their hands.
And if those sixth-inning miscues weren’t enough, the Tigers also struck out 19 times. That tied a franchise record for Cleveland pitchers.
“They won the strike zone on both sides tonight,” Hinch said. “They dominated tonight. We didn’t.”
The days are running dangerously low for Detroit to turn things around. Cleveland has all the momentum. Playing at home didn’t help the Tigers last week, nor did a change of scenery Tuesday with their ace on the mound. But they still control their destiny even though their future is as muddied as ever. A wild-card berth or perhaps a stunning ouster altogether from the postseason are growing possibilities.
“Have to show up tomorrow and win a baseball game,” outfielder Riley Greene said. “We believe in each other. We have to play better baseball and we have to win. That’s what it comes down to.”
Sports
Cubs’ Horton exits after 3 IP ‘as a precaution’
Published
5 hours agoon
September 24, 2025By
admin
-
Bradford DoolittleSep 23, 2025, 09:58 PM ET
Close- MLB writer and analyst for ESPN.com
- Former NBA writer and analyst for ESPN.com
- Been with ESPN since 2013
CHICAGO — Right-hander Cade Horton was removed after three innings of his start in the Chicago Cubs‘ game against the New York Mets on Tuesday because of back tightness. The club said Horton was removed “as a precaution” after throwing just 29 pitches.
Horton, a leading NL Rookie of the Year candidate, allowed a leadoff homer to New York’s Francisco Lindor but settled down and looked sharp for the remainder of his short outing. Horton allowed two hits, struck out two and departed with the Cubs leading 5-1.
After the Cubs extended the advantage to 6-1, New York rallied against the Chicago bullpen, scoring five unearned runs against Michael Soroka to tie the game and later grabbing the lead in a matchup with playoff implications for both clubs.
Horton, 24, is 11-4 on the season with a 2.67 ERA over 118 innings. The win total leads all rookie pitchers and the ERA leads rookies who have logged at least 100 innings.
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