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In arguably the most historic day of conference realignment, Oregon and Washington began finalizing a move to join the Big Ten in 2024.

And they may not be the only ones on the move. On the heels of those monumental decisions, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah are in discussions to join the Big 12, joining Colorado in a Pac-12 exodus. If those dominoes fall, it will leave a conference that was formed in 1915 with just four teams and on the verge of extinction.

Today’s moves will have ripple effects far beyond Cal, Oregon State, Stanford and Washington State as the Pac-12’s four remaining schools. Will the Big Ten keep expanding? Is the SEC content to stand pat? What about Florida State and Notre Dame?

ESPN spoke to power brokers throughout the sport to help determine how today’s seismic moves will affect schools in every major conference, plus the College Football Playoff and more.


What does this mean for the remaining Pac-12 teams?

The four schools in the most precarious situations are Cal, Oregon State, Stanford and Washington State, all of which are without a natural landing spot that would ensure their long-term stability.

For the Bay Area schools — Cal and Stanford — the Big Ten has routinely been mentioned as a possible destination, but that was driven more by the idea that Big Ten presidents would be keen on an alignment more for academic reasons. From a media rights value standpoint, though, neither moves the needle in a way that incentivizes invitations in the current landscape. It leaves both very much in survival mode. They both have large athletic departments that rely heavily on TV money to operate and it’s hard to envision a scenario where both don’t end up cutting sports. Do they flirt with independence in football and find a different home for the other sports? Could ACC or Big 12 lifelines materialize? The Mountain West would be thrilled to welcome either school — it obviously makes sense geographically — but the discrepancy in media rights money from what they’re accustomed to would mean wholesale athletic department changes.

Oregon State and Washington State have no leverage and very little prospects of getting bailed out by a power conference. More than Cal and Stanford, OSU and WSU would be cultural fits in the Mountain West. The problem here is that both athletic departments have long operated with the expectation of $30 million or more in TV money and in the MWC, they won’t get anywhere near that. That shortfall would force both schools to essentially reinvent how their athletic departments operate. If they can weather that storm, life in a healthy Mountain West wouldn’t be so bad — both could regularly compete for conference titles in a way that has never been possible in the Pac-12 — but it would represent a drop from major college football and that’s a tough pill to swallow.

“We are disappointed with the recent decisions by some of our Pac-12 peers,” WSU president Kirk Schulz and athletic director Pat Chun said in a statement. “While we had hoped that our membership would remain together, this outcome was always a possibility, and we have been working diligently to determine what is next for Washington State athletics. We’ve prepared for numerous scenarios, including our current situation.” — Kyle Bonagura


Where do things stand with further Big 12 expansion?

Arizona is in the final stages of being admitted to the Big 12, according to sources, but an official move hasn’t been finalized yet. Sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel that Utah and Arizona State applied for formal membership in the Big 12 Friday following the news of Washington and Oregon’s departure. If those three programs join Colorado, the Big 12 will increase to 16 teams.

The Big 12 was aggressive in its pursuit of Arizona as a 14th team, and although Arizona and Arizona State operate under the same Board of Regents, they could have made conference decisions independently. Sources indicated their preference was to stay together.

A 16-team Big 12 would close the gap with the ACC — and possibly put the Big 12 in third place financially behind the Big Ten and SEC. — Heather Dinich


Is the SEC really content to stay at 16 teams?

At SEC media days last month, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said the league is “very attentive to what’s happening around us.”

“Do I think it’s done?” he said in July. “People will say, well, I get to decide that. Right now it appears others are going to decide that before we have to make any decisions.”

Well, here we are — with others having made their decisions.

Sources within the SEC indicate there’s certainly been chatter recently among the athletic directors about adding more teams – simply as a reaction to recent events — but there’s also a reality to the finances component as they ask each other if they’re willing to share revenue with more schools. There are certain sources of income beyond the television money that don’t fluctuate much — like the conference championship games, the baseball tournaments, etc.

The bottom line is, who would they add that’s available and drives value?

Until proven otherwise, the ACC schools like North Carolina, Virginia, Florida State and Clemson are tangled in a legal web that includes a hefty exit fee and grant of rights that extends through 2036.

The SEC will do its homework, but probably won’t be forced into a knee-jerk reaction because the Big Ten just got bigger. Sankey has said repeatedly that geography matters as they consider these things. There is no sense of panic in the SEC.

“My view is we know who we are,” Sankey said at media days. “We’re comfortable as a league. We’re focused on our growth to 16. We’ve restored rivalries. We’re geographically contiguous with the right kind of philosophical alignment, and we can stay at that level of super conference. When you go bigger, there are a whole other set of factors that have to be considered, and I’m not sure I’ve seen those teased out other than in my mind late at night.” — Dinich


Does this change anything for Florida State and its timeline?

Yes. Florida State has been monitoring the events in the Big 12 and Pac-12 closely and understands the realities and dynamics of realignment.

Perhaps now it sees the possibility of the Big Ten expanding to 20 schools, with room for two more. Florida State has been exploring all its options for over a year, but there are key questions. If the Big Ten is interested: 1) How does Florida State figure out paying a $120 million exit fee and 2) come up with a strategy to get out of the grant of rights, which is meant to tie all ACC schools together until the end of their television contract with ESPN in 2036.

Florida State has had both an in-house legal team and an outside legal team study the specific contract language over the course of the last year. This is a document that has never been challenged in court, but one that in all likelihood will be at some point in time. Why? Because the grant of rights not only gives the ACC control over every school’s media rights money, it gives the conference control over their actual media rights — meaning the right to broadcast all home games in all sports.

Florida State may be willing to take the league to court to challenge the grant of rights, but legal battles take time and money — and this is one the ACC will fight, since it wants to keep FSU and believes in the strength of the GOR document. And how attractive will FSU be to other conferences with those legal questions hovering over them?

As for the money, Florida State has hired JPMorgan Chase to look at all their financials, projecting all the way out to 2043, and has also partnered with a private equity firm to help with cash flow.

If there is no landing spot, Florida State wants to get more movement toward an uneven revenue distribution in the ACC that would give them a larger share of the television revenue pie based on what the school believes is its worth to the overall contract. As president Richard McCullough told ESPN earlier this week, “My No. 1 goal is to stay in the ACC, but at some point, it becomes difficult for me to do what I’m supposed to do for athletics at Florida State.”

Presidents have already approved a success initiative model, which would reward on-field success in football and basketball. But shifting revenue distribution based on ratings and media metrics has not gained the traction Florida State believes it warrants. It remains uncertain whether any ACC president is willing to change their mind on that specific issue, especially given how vocal the Seminoles have been about it – both publicly and behind closed doors. — Andrea Adelson


Does this mean anything for Notre Dame?

No, not at this time.

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick has long repeated the same three factors that could contribute to the university’s position as an independent becoming “unsustainable.”

Those include: the loss of a committed broadcast partner; the loss of a fair route into the postseason; or such an adverse financial consequence that would force it to reconsider.

In spite of all of the drama swirling around Notre Dame, nothing has impacted those particular factors. Notre Dame still has a strong partnership with NBC as its broadcast partner that runs through the 2025 season. It recently announced a renewed commitment to Under Armour. It also remains a partial member of the ACC in football and has a contract with the league stating that if the Irish were to relinquish their independence, it would be for the ACC.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said recently at the league’s media days that he knows how much the Irish value their independence. Notre Dame still remains the most valuable property remaining on the Monopoly board – and it’s still not for sale. — Dinich


What does this mean for the Big Ten schedule in 2024?

The “Flex Protect Plus” football schedule model, which the Big Ten had painstakingly put together in anticipation of a 16-team league in 2024, will need to be tweaked but not blown up. The league will not be starting from scratch here.

Many of the same principles will apply for the 18-team model, including the goals of protecting key games and rotating the others. The Big Ten has remained committed to nine-game league schedules, and both Oregon and Washington come from a league that plays nine. Still, the math gets a bit trickier with two more members. Divisions are not expected to be added in the 18-team model. The general philosophy behind the schedule model isn’t expected to change much.

“It comes down to asking the question: ‘What makes us a conference? What makes us feel like we’re really tied together in a meaningful way?'” Big Ten chief operating officer Kerry Kenny told ESPN in June when the 2024 and 2025 schedules were announced. “Playing each other more and not less has some impact.”

The initial 2024/2025 schedules included 11 protected matchups. A 12th is now virtually guaranteed with Washington and Oregon, bitter rivals who have played many memorable games. But the Big Ten “capped” the number at 11, Kenny said, because, “The more protected matchups you’ve included in the model, the less flexibility you had to create a really balanced model for everybody.”

Oregon and Washington will be all-sports additions to the Big Ten next year, but football is the focus now because schedules are done in advance to allow for planning and logistics. — Adam Rittenberg


What is the USC/UCLA reaction to adding two Pacific Time Zone schools?

Some combination of relief and begrudging acceptance. As Chip Kelly pointed out at UCLA practice Friday, as other teams scramble to figure out where they’ll play in the coming years, it’s nice to know where your home will be. Kelly joked that perhaps the Big Ten could put the former Pac-12 teams in a pod and the Big Ten teams in a pod and have the winners play each other at the end of the year, perhaps in the Rose Bowl. If it was up to him, though, he’d scrap the whole thing and start anew.

“I’d be for, we’re all in the same division. Put 60 of us in the same division,” Kelly said. “Do it like the NFL where there’s NFC West, NFC north, NFC south. I think we should all be in, there should be one conference in all college football and then just break it up like they do the professional game. Based on geography. That makes the most sense. There’s your travel question. There’s all those other questions, but no one asks me.”

Given the kind of chess move the jump to the Big Ten was for both L.A. schools and how it upended the sport, there was some expectation that USC and UCLA were going to benefit greatly, not just the influx of money as part of the conference’s new TV deal, but also from a resources and recruiting standpoint too.

Oregon has perhaps been the greatest threat to the Trojans in recent years in terms of adding talent, either through the transfer portal or high school ranks. A jump to one of the premier conferences in the sport, with a chance to play in high-profile games, was going to be a significant recruiting tool in USC’s and UCLA’s favor. Now, Oregon and Washington will be able to sell the same thing to recruits and transfers too.

From a logistics standpoint, I’m sure there are those who will be grateful both L.A. schools will have more than one West Coast conference game to play in every year. UCLA and USC don’t have some storied history playing against Oregon or Washington, but as the Pac-12 crumbles, carrying over some semblance of continuity isn’t the worst scenario either. — Paolo Uggetti


What happens to the Rose Bowl?

Conference realignment didn’t change the Rose Bowl’s storied partnership with the Big Ten and Pac-12 — the College Football Playoff did. Last year’s game between Penn State and Utah was the last, true historic matchup between those leagues. Moving forward, the Rose Bowl has fully integrated with the CFP and will host a semifinal this season, followed by quarterfinals in each of the first two seasons of the 12-team playoff.

The teams in those games will be slotted based on the selection committee’s rankings. While it’s possible there could be a Big Ten team involved by chance, the guaranteed matchup between the two leagues ended when the Nittany Lions beat the Utes. — Dinich


Is the Big Ten done expanding?

Since June 2010, the Big Ten has expanded four times: Nebraska, Rutgers and Maryland, UCLA and UCLA, and now Oregon and Washington. The superconference/consolidation era is clearly here, and it would be surprising if the Big Ten remained at 18 members for very long. The Big Ten could again look to the West Coast for Stanford and Cal, but neither has been overly appealing to the league or its media partners in these last two expansion rounds. What would change going forward?

The likelier scenario has commissioner Tony Petitti looking to the East and the ACC, if the league starts to splinter in the wake of Florida State’s exit-strategy comments this week. North Carolina and Virginia would be primary targets, sources told ESPN. Both are premier public schools and would excite a group of Big Ten presidents and chancellors that still places a premium on “cultural fit.” Florida State would be more of a stretch, and league sources cautioned against an immediate push. But FSU would give the Big Ten a presence in the Southeast, which former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany mentioned would be valuable way back in 2010.

The Big Ten’s ultimate expansion prize remains Notre Dame, and efforts will continue to lure the school into the league. Could longtime ND rival Stanford be dangled as an enticement? Perhaps. The Big Ten will need some patience as Notre Dame doesn’t want to relinquish its independence in football. Perhaps things change when Notre Dame has more administrative changes. Athletic director Jack Swarbrick will step down in 2024, and university president the Rev. John Jenkins turns 70 in December. — Rittenberg


What does this mean for the College Football Playoff?

In the 12-team format, the six highest-ranked conference champions will receive a bid, along with the next six highest-ranked teams.

If there’s no Pac-12 champion because there’s no Pac-12, that’s something that will have to be revisited. What’s awkward about it is Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff is one of the 10 FBS commissioners who makes those decisions, along with Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick.

It was too early following the news for any concrete answers as to if and how the model might change, and how it could impact conference champions. “I certainly understand why people need to ask the question,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock told ESPN. ” The fact is that it’s too soon to say. The CFP management committee and board of managers will discuss the future if and when it becomes appropriate. Of course, none of this will affect the four-team playoff this year.” — Dinich

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Best slugger, best game … badonkadonk of the year?! Jeff Passan’s 2025 MLB season awards

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Best slugger, best game ... badonkadonk of the year?! Jeff Passan's 2025 MLB season awards

With another two months until baseball writers vote for the Most Valuable Players, Cy Young Award winners and Rookies of the Year, 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 season-long 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 whom 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 than 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 season-long 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 Seattle 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 everyday players in baseball this year? There are three locks: Raleigh, Judge and Shohei 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, Ramírez 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 are 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:

  • Nine games with a player scoring six runs

  • 21 games with a player hitting four homers

  • 81 games in which batters went 6-for-6

  • 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 Nick 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 utilityman 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, 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 Misiorowski’s triple-digit fastball generates the most oohs and aahs, 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:

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 pretzel’d. 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 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, and 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, 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. Teel has been exceptional and looks like a future All-Star at catcher. Meidroth gives the White Sox a high-on-base, low-strikeout threat at either middle-infield position. Gonzalez is becoming a reliable big league bullpen option. And 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 sum 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 -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 Rockes, 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, whose offense 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, -345), the 2023 A’s (50-112, -339) and the 2003 Tigers (43-119, -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.

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Braves 2B Albies fractures hamate bone in hand

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Braves 2B Albies fractures hamate bone in hand

ATLANTA — Atlanta Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies left Monday’s game against the Washington Nationals due to a fractured hamate bone in his left hand.

Albies showed discomfort in his wrist after fouling off a pitch in the third inning while batting against Washington right-hander Konnor Pilkington. He stayed in the game for one more pitch before walking toward the dugout and being attended to by Atlanta’s training staff. Nick Allen finished Albies’ at-bat and replaced him at second base at the start of the fourth inning.

“He felt something in there that was an impingement,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said after Atlanta’s 11-5 victory that extended the team’s winning streak to a season-best nine games. “(Head athletic trainer) George (Poulos) said ‘That’s kind of your hamate area.’ It was (on the swing) that he felt it and then (Poulos) said ‘Try and dry swing before you go back up there’ and (Albies) said ‘I need to shut it down.'”

The hamate bone is on the palm side of the hand near the pinky and ring fingers. Albies fractured his left wrist in July 2024 and missed two months.

The 28-year-old Albies has played in all 157 of Atlanta’s games this season. He is batting .240 with 16 home runs and 74 RBIs.

“I hate it for him,” Snitker said. “(Tuesday) will be the first game he’s missed all year. He played a majority (of the season). (He) rallied back and had a really nice year. It’s just one of (those) tough things. It’s not an uncommon injury for hitters.

“This is a different (injury),” Snitker said referring to Albies’ 2024 wrist break. “I’ve seen guys come back from this in a month from those things. Once the calendar turns, he’ll be able to get into his offseason routine and hitting and he’ll be ready to go by spring training.”

Snitker implied that Albies will undergo surgery, although the Braves said Albies is undergoing further testing.

“(Surgery) is usually what they do when they break (the hamate) is (remove) them,” Snitker said. “It’s one of those things there that he won’t (injure) again.”

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With walk-off win, Padres head back to playoffs

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With walk-off win, Padres head back to playoffs

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Padres are headed back to the playoffs for the fourth time in six seasons.

The Padres clinched a playoff berth with a 5-4, 11-inning win against the three-time NL Central champion Milwaukee Brewers on Monday night.

Freddy Fermin, acquired from Kansas City at the trade deadline on July 31, singled in automatic runner Bryce Johnson with one out in the 11th to set off a wild celebration in front of a sellout crowd of 42,371 at Petco Park.

The Padres pulled to within 2½ games of the idle Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West race and 2½ games behind the idle Chicago Cubs in the race for the National League’s first of three wild-card spots.

Manny Machado, shirtless, wearing sunglasses and drenched with beer and champagne, says he feels good about the team’s chances in the playoffs.

“Everything is different. But we’ve got heart,” Machado said. “Everybody wants it. It’s always a challenge. Baseball’s a challenge. It’s hard.”

Fermin was being interviewed when Machado stopped by and poured a shot of tequila into his mouth.

“I believe with this staff we have, we are going to the World Series,” said Fermin, a catcher. “It is very special, this moment. I don’t have words for this moment. Very special. First step, we’ve got to keep rolling this.”

The Padres’ road appears to be tougher than last year, when they swept the Atlanta Braves in a home wild-card series to earn a shot at the rival Dodgers. San Diego led 2-1 before their bats went so cold that they didn’t score in the last 24 innings as they lost the series in five games. The Dodgers went on to win the World Series.

“What this group has done this year, and even last year, to put this into place, and for us to go to the postseason two years in a row for the first time since 2005-06, is truly special,” second baseman Jake Cronenworth said.

If the current standings hold, the Padres would visit the Cubs for a best-of-three wild-card series. The winner would move into the division series against the Brewers, who clinched their third straight division title Sunday and are in the postseason for the seventh time in eight seasons.

It has been an interesting season for the Padres, who led the division for much of April before slipping back as they played .500 ball in May and sub-.500 ball in June. The Dodgers never could open a big lead, but the Padres never could regain the lead, except for brief stretches in August.

A.J. Preller, president of baseball operations and general manager, pulled off a major overhaul at the trade deadline on July 31, acquiring reliever Mason Miller from the Athletics, Fermin from Kansas City and outfielders Ryan O’Hearn and Ramon Laureano from the Orioles.

The Padres became the first big league team to send three relievers to the All-Star Game when Jason Adam, closer Robert Suarez and left-hander Adrian Morejon were selected for the Midsummer Classic. Adam went down because of a season-ending quadriceps injury on Sept. 1.

The Padres were prone to offensive slumps, particularly on the road.

But there were some defensive highlights, including several home run robberies by right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr.

Tatis missed Monday’s clincher because of an undisclosed illness, but Machado included his teammate in the postgame celebration via FaceTime on his phone.

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