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Royce Lewis‘ father, William, sat near the back of the family section behind home plate and could only shake his head. “He would do something like that,” he told himself. Derek Falvey, the Minnesota Twins‘ president of baseball operations, turned to his 7-year-old son Jack, wearing a cream-colored Royce Lewis jersey gifted to him for these playoffs, and found himself at a loss for words.

“If you write that as a fiction story,” Falvey later said, “everyone would say that’s too much fantasy. ‘That’s not real. That can’t be real.’ You would think it’s fake.”

Twenty-four hours before he became a certified Twins legend, hitting the two home runs that set the tone in the victory that ended an unprecedented 18-game postseason losing streak, Lewis didn’t even know if he would play.

Another ailment was threatening to keep him off the field for Game 1 of the Twins’ wild-card series against the Toronto Blue Jays. This time it was a hamstring strain that had popped up in September — which followed the oblique strain from midseason, which followed the ACL tear from last year, which followed the ACL tear from the year before that.

When he returned in time to homer in each of his first two postseason plate appearances and electrify a desperate Target Field crowd, his mom swore that fate was at play.

“We’re big believers in ‘things happen for a reason,'” Cindy Lewis said in a phone conversation. “But there’s also a part of it that, everything Royce has endured to this point, early in his career, with both ACL surgeries and then the oblique, all these little hiccups along the way — he genuinely realizes how quickly the game that he loves so much can be taken away from you.”

Lewis is a rookie at 24, limited to designated hitter, but the Twins — coming off the franchise’s first playoff-round victory in 21 years and getting ready to host the Houston Astros on Tuesday afternoon in Game 3 of an American League Division Series tied at 1-1 — are rallying around him.

He’s approaching it with gratitude.

“This is my dream, right?” Lewis said. “I think it’s a lot of very young kids’ dreams to play in the big leagues. I just want to be that person that shows I don’t take it for granted. I have fun doing it, even on a quote-unquote bad day at the plate or whatever it may be, your team loses. It’s so special to be part of this game. This game has given me everything in my life. It’s really taught me how to be a great human being, and I feel like I’m a much better person because of it.”

It was that type of outlook that first drew the Twins to Lewis when they possessed the No. 1 overall pick in a 2017 draft with no clear-cut headliner. Falvey had been hired the prior October and needed to distinguish among a group that included Lewis, Hunter Greene, Brendan McKay and Kyle Wright, four highly touted prospects with similarly high ceilings.

Projecting amateurs is a task that befuddles even the most cutting-edge organizations. They’re measuring not just how certain tools will translate several levels higher but trying to decipher important character traits from young men who are not yet fully formed — how they’ll make adjustments, how they’ll handle pressure, how they’ll overcome adversity. It’s an inexact science littered with land mines and biases.

But something resonated with Falvey and other key members of the Twins’ front office when they sat down with Lewis and his parents. They noticed unshakable confidence but also unbridled optimism. There was eagerness and persistence, but also curiosity. Lewis kept asking those who had watched him closely for ways to improve, displaying uncommon understanding and maturity for a high school player in that setting. If anybody could shoulder the expectations of going No. 1 overall, the Twins thought, it was Lewis.

“I can’t sit here and tell you we met up and I was like, ‘Oh my god, this kid’s going to power through anything he ever faces in the world,'” Falvey said. “But I will say this — when you think about what is at the root, or the foundation, of somebody who has perseverance, you can pick up pretty early on around their mindset, the way they think about challenges, the way they want to get better. What we saw in the draft was a kid who was eager to get better.”

Lewis, who has gone 4-for-15 with three home runs and three walks in these playoffs, was bursting with talent early in his minor league career. But he was noticeably raw. He committed 41 errors in 225 minor league games from 2018 to 2019, all of them at shortstop, and struggled offensively through most of the latter season. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the minor leagues in 2020, then Lewis tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee for the first time in February of 2021, missing the entirety of the ensuing season. He returned to the field in April of 2022, as a 23-year-old without any competitive at-bats in a stretch of nearly 30 months, and hit everywhere he played, batting .313/.405/.534 in 34 Triple-A games and .300/.317/.550 in 12 major league games. Then came his biggest setback yet.

Falvey was in his Target Field suite on the afternoon of May 29, 2022, when Lewis ranged toward the center-field wall, made a leaping catch up against it and crumpled to the ground immediately thereafter, grabbing at the same right knee that had just endured an arduous rehab. Falvey’s stomach, he said, “was at my throat.” He immediately took the elevator down to the clubhouse and was told by doctors that, though additional imaging was needed, a re-tear of the ACL was likely.

“I got emotional,” Falvey said. “I could feel it.”

Falvey walked into the clubhouse and found Lewis sitting on a chair, his body slightly turned. The patented smile was gone, replaced by a distant, vacant look. Falvey hugged him. He told him they were going to figure it out and that there was a path and that the team would be with him every step of the way. Twelve days later, after multiple evaluations determined that another surgery was necessary, Falvey noticed a completely different mindset. Lewis kept talking about how he would benefit from the familiarity of the rehab process and how he had already proved that he could handle major league pitching. Rather than get bogged down by the toll of another long recovery and the uncertainty that would follow, Lewis seemed eager to attack it all.

“He just doesn’t believe the bad is coming,” Falvey said. “We’re all naturally inclined sometimes to feel that potential negativity in our world, and Royce is just like, ‘Nope, there’s good ahead. It’s coming in some way, shape or form.’ He’s the most positive, optimistic believer that I’ve probably ever been around in baseball.”

Lewis comes from a family of athletes. His mother was a collegiate softball player. His father played football and baseball through junior college, then spent 30 years working in the food industry and now co-owns The Winery, an upscale restaurant with three locations in Southern California, one of which hosted the Twins’ front office leading up to the 2017 draft. William believes Lewis’ positivity stems partly from watching him work.

“In our business, when it’s easy it’s still hard,” William said. “That’s what people don’t understand — the restaurant business is hard when it looks easy to everybody else, and then when it’s five or 10 times harder and we have to roll up our sleeves, we just keep plugging away and doing it, staying in a positive light. I don’t know how; that’s just my personality. And hopefully he takes some of that from me.”

When Lewis returned 11 months after his second ACL tear, he slashed .333/.364/.452 as a major leaguer in the month of June. After an oblique strain kept him out from the start of July until the middle of August, he OPS’d .992 in 32 games, including a record-breaking stretch of four grand slams in 18 games. His emergence came a little later and was a lot more staggered than expected, but it has been just as impactful as anybody could have anticipated.

In a 70-game regular-season sample spread out over 17 months, Lewis slashed .307/.364/.549 with 17 home runs and 57 RBIs. On a rate basis, his 2.9 FanGraphs wins above replacement would add up to 6.7 over a full season. It’s the same total Atlanta Braves first baseman Matt Olson contributed this year — even though Lewis has adjusted to new positions, overcome a litany of injuries and only just begun to understand what it’s like to be a major leaguer.

LaTroy Hawkins, the former Twins reliever and current special assistant who scouted top amateurs leading up to the 2017 draft, likes to say Lewis’ potential has been “delayed, not denied.”

His path was exceedingly rocky, but the Twins still see the same star-level player they projected out six years ago.

“I think we’ve learned our lesson about trying to limit anything on Royce,” Falvey said. “Wherever he wants to take it, he’s going to put his work in. Obviously the game is going to respond and he’s going to have to make adjustments and respond to what pitchers are doing and the way they’re trying to attack him. But he’s shown already that he can persist through that.”

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Is it the coach or the program? Ranking CFB coaches while factoring in expectations

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Is it the coach or the program? Ranking CFB coaches while factoring in expectations

Back in May, ESPN’s team of college football reporters voted on the sport’s best coaches for 2025. The results were about as you would expect: Start with the three active guys who have most recently won national titles (Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Ohio State’s Ryan Day, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney), move on to guys with recent top-five finishes or national title game appearances (Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman, Texas’ Steve Sarkisian, Oregon’s Dan Lanning, Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, Penn State’s James Franklin), then squeeze in a couple of long-term overachievers at the end (Utah’s Kyle Whittingham, Iowa State’s Matt Campbell).

The rankings made plenty of sense, but I couldn’t help but notice that the top eight coaches on the list all work for some of the richest, most well-supported programs in the country. There are some epic pressures associated with leading these programs — just ask Day — but there are also major advantages. It might only take a good head coach to do great things in those jobs, while at programs with smaller alumni bases or lesser historic track records, it might take a great coach to do merely good things. They’re such different jobs that it’s almost impossible to even know how to compare the performance of, say, Matt Campbell to Steve Sarkisian. Could Campbell have led Texas to back-to-back CFP semifinals? Could Sark have brought ISU its first two AP top-15 finishes?

The May rankings made me want to see if there were a way to apply stats to the conversation. If you think about it, we’re basically measuring two things when we’re gauging coach performance: overall quality and quality relative to the expectations of the job. I thought it would be fun to come up with a blend of those two things and see what the results told us.

Performance versus expectation

Gauging overall performance is easy enough. You could simply look at win percentage, and it would tell you quite a bit. From 2015 to 2024, the active coaches with the best FBS win percentages (minimum 30 games) were Day (.870), Lanning (.854), Swinney (.850) and Smart (.847). All ranked high in the May rankings. I tend to want to get fancy and use my SP+ ratings whenever possible, and they tell a similar tale. Looking at average SP+ ratings for the past decade, the top active coaches are Day (30.4), Smart (27.0), Lanning (22.3), Swinney (21.9), Franklin (20.3) and Freeman (19.0). They’re all in the May top 10 too.

Again, though, all of those coaches are employed by college football royalty. (Granted, Swinney gets bonus points for helping Clemson turn into college football royalty, but still.) Isn’t it more impressive to win 11 regular-season games at Indiana, as Curt Cignetti did in 2024, than to go 10-4 like Swinney did? Isn’t it probably harder to finish 12th in SP+ at SMU, as Rhett Lashlee did in 2024, than to finish fifth like Franklin did?

I’ve begun to incorporate teams’ performance against long-term averages into my preseason SP+ projections, and it seems we could use a very similar concept to evaluate coach performances. For each year someone is a head coach, we could compare his team’s SP+ rating for that season to the school’s average from the 20 previous years. (If the school is newer to FBS and doesn’t have a 20-year average, we can use whatever average exists to date. And for a program’s first FBS season, we can simply compare the team’s SP+ rating to the overall average for first-year programs.)

By this method, the 10 best single-season coaching performances of the past 20 years include Art Briles at Baylor in 2013-14, Jim Harbaugh at Stanford in 2010, Mark Mangino at Kansas in 2007, Bobby Petrino at Louisville in 2006, Greg Schiano at Rutgers in 2006 and Jamey Chadwell at Coastal Carolina in 2020 — legendary seasons of overachievement — plus perhaps lesser-remembered performances such as Gary Andersen at Utah State in 2012, Matt Wells at Utah State in 2018 and Brian Kelly at Cincinnati in 2007.

As far as single-season overachievement goes, that’s a pretty good list. And if we look at a longer-term sample — coaches who have led FBS programs for at least nine of the past 20 years — here are the 15 best performance versus baseline averages.

(Note: I’m looking only at performances within the past 20 years, so Nick Saban’s work at LSU (2000-04) or Michigan State (1995-99), for instance, isn’t included. I also went with nine years instead of 10 so Smart’s current nine-year run at Georgia could be included in the sample.)

Best performance vs. historic baseline averages for the past 20 years (min. nine seasons):

1. Chris Petersen, Boise State (2006-13) and Washington (2014-19): +12.8 points above historic baseline

2. Art Briles, Houston (2005-07) and Baylor (2008-15): +12.8

3. Gary Pinkel, Missouri (2005-15): +12.5

4. Nick Saban, Alabama (2007-23): +10.7

5. Jeff Monken, Army (2014-24): +10.3

6. Willie Fritz, Georgia Southern (2014-15), Tulane (2016-23) and Houston (2024): +10.0

7. Lance Leipold, Buffalo (2015-20) and Kansas (2021-24): +9.5

8. Bobby Petrino, Louisville (2005-06), Arkansas (2008-11), Western Kentucky (2013) and Louisville (2014-18): +9.5

9. Gary Patterson, TCU (2005-21): +8.6

10. Jim Harbaugh, Stanford (2007-10) and Michigan (2015-23): +8.5

11. Blake Anderson, Arkansas State (2014-20) and Utah State (2021-23): +8.5

12. Steve Spurrier, South Carolina (2005-15): +8.2

13. Greg Schiano, Rutgers (2005-11 and 2020-24): +7.8

14. Jeff Brohm, Western Kentucky (2014-16), Purdue (2017-22) and Louisville (2023-24): +7.7

15. David Cutcliffe, Duke (2008-21): +7.7

If we are looking for pure overachievement and aren’t in the mood to reward coaches for winning at schools that always win, this is again a pretty good list. Petersen was spectacular at both Boise State and Washington, while Briles, Pinkel, Monken and Patterson all won big at schools that hadn’t won big in quite a while. (Monken, in fact, is still winning big.) Blake Anderson’s presence surprised me, but most of the names here are extremely well regarded. And Saban’s presence at No. 4, despite coaching at one of the bluest of blue-blood programs, is a pretty good indicator of just how special his reign at Alabama was.

Still, looking only at performance against expectations obviously sells coaches like Saban and Smart short. Saban is probably the best head coach in the sport’s history but ranks only fourth on the above list. Meanwhile, Smart has overachieved by only 6.0 points above the historic baseline in his nine seasons at Georgia thanks to the high bar predecessor Mark Richt set. But he has also won two national titles, overcoming Georgia’s history of falling just short and at least briefly surpassing Saban as well. If our goal is to measure coaching prowess, we need to account for raw quality too.


The best coaches of the past 20 years

If we combine raw SP+ averages with this performance versus baseline average, we can come up with a pretty decent overall coach rating. We can debate the weights involved, but here’s what an overall rating looks like if we use 60% performance versus baseline and 40% SP+ average:

I always like to say that numbers make great starting points for a conversation, and this is a pretty good starting point. Anyone reading this would probably tweak this list to suit their own preferences, and while it probably isn’t surprising that Pinkel is in the top 20, seeing him fourth, ahead of Meyer, Harbaugh and others, is a bit jarring. (I promise that this Mizzou alum didn’t put his finger on the scales.) Regardless, this is a fun mix of guys who won big at big schools and guys who won pretty big at pretty big schools. That was the goal of the exercise.

Maybe the most confusing coach in this top 20 is Dabo Swinney. Clemson had enjoyed just one AP top-five finish in its history before he took over 16 years ago, and he has led the Tigers to 2 national titles, 6 top-five finishes and 7 CFP appearances. And while they haven’t had a true, title-caliber team in a few years, they’ve still won two of the past three ACC crowns. How is he only 10th?

The main culprit for Swinney’s lower-than-expected ranking is his recent performance — it has been inferior to both national title standards and his standards. Since we’re using a team’s performance against 20-year averages, a lot of this rating is basically comparing Swinney to himself, and he hasn’t quite measured up of late.

From 2012 to 2020, Swinney’s average rating was an incredible 17.0, which would have ranked second to only Saban on the list above. But his average over the past four seasons is only 3.6.

Part of what made Saban so impressive was how long he managed to clear the bar he himself was setting in Tuscaloosa. Per SP+, his best team was his 14th — the 2020 team that won his sixth and final title at Bama. While Swinney was basically matching Saban’s standard 12 years into their respective tenures, Saban continued at a particularly high level for at least three more years while Swinney fell off the pace.

Comparing Saban, Swinney and Smart year by year, we see that Smart was hitting Saban-esque levels seven seasons into his tenure, but his rating has fallen off each of the past two seasons. Even Saban slipped starting in Year 15, even though he still had nearly the best program in the sport for a couple more years.


The best coaches of 2025

Six of the top seven coaches on the list above are either retired or coaching in the NFL now, so let’s focus our gaze specifically on the guys who will be leading college teams out onto the field in 2025. Using the same 20-year sample as above — which cuts off the tenure of Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz but includes everything else — here’s how the current crop of FBS head coaches has performed at the FBS level. We’ll break this into two samples: the guys who have coached for at least four years in this sample and the guys who have coached between one and three years.

Our May top 10 list featured eight guys who have been head coaches for at least four years; all eight are represented on this list, including four of the top five. (Sarkisian has averaged a 13.8 rating over the past two seasons, which is a top-five level, but his overall run as head coach at Washington, USC and Texas has featured a number of ups and downs.)

Maybe the name that jumps out the most above is Josh Heupel. I think anyone would consider him a very good coach (he’s 37-15 overall), but he doesn’t exactly draw any “best in the game?” hype. He benefited from a positive situation at UCF, where he inherited a rising program from Scott Frost in 2019 and produced big ratings in his first couple of years on the job. But his average rating at Tennessee has been a solid 14.0 as well; the Volunteers had been up and down for years, but he has produced four top-20 SP+ ratings in a row and two top-10s in the past three years. He might not be getting the credit he deserves for that.

All in all, I enjoy this list. We’ve got mostly predictable names at the top, we’ve got some oldies but (mostly) goodies spread throughout, and we’ve got room for up-and-comers like Jeff Traylor too. This 60-40 approach probably doesn’t give enough respect to the Chris Creightons of the world — the Eastern Michigan coach has overachieved against EMU’s baseline by 7.2 points per season, which is a fantastic average, but at such a hard job, his Eagles have still averaged only a minus-14.4 SP+ rating during his tenure. Still, this is a mostly solid approach.

Now let’s talk about some small-sample all-stars.

Four of the top six of this list coached in the College Football Playoff last season, and while the guys ranked fifth and sixth made our May top 10 list, the guys who won big at SMU and Indiana, not Oregon and Notre Dame, take priority here. I was honestly floored that Curt Cignetti didn’t make our top 10 list; he led James Madison to one of the best FBS debuts ever, going 19-4 in 2022-23, then he moved to Bloomington and led Indiana — INDIANA! — to 11 wins in his first season there.

On this list, however, Rhett Lashlee tops even Cignetti. I’m not sure we’ve talked enough about the job he has done at SMU. He, too, inherited a rising program, as Sonny Dykes had done some of the nitty-gritty work in getting the Mustangs back on their feet (with help from an offensive coordinator named Rhett Lashlee). SMU hadn’t produced a top-50 ranking since 1985 before Dykes did so for three straight seasons (2019-21). But after holding steady in his first year replacing Dykes, Lashlee’s program has ignited: 12-2 and 24th in SP+ in 2023, then 11-3 and 12th in 2024. Looking specifically at the 2021-24 range, as the game has undergone so much change, Lashlee’s 16.8 average rating ranks second overall, behind only Smart (18.0) and ahead of Kiffin (15.1), Cignetti (15.0), Odom (15.0), Heupel (14.0) and Day (13.9).

Along with quite a few others here, Lashlee made my 2024 list of 30 coaches who would define the next decade; he’d definitely still be on the list — along with new additions like GJ Kinne and perhaps Fran Brown — if I remade that list today.

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It’s MLB Home Run Derby Day! Predictions, live updates and takeaways

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It's MLB Home Run Derby Day! Predictions, live updates and takeaways

It’s 2025 MLB All-Star Home Run Derby day in Atlanta!

Some of the most dynamic home run hitters in baseball will be taking aim at the Truist Park stands on Monday (8 p.m. ET on ESPN) in one of the most anticipated events of the summer.

While the prospect of a back-to-back champion is out of the picture — 2024 winner Teoscar Hernandez is not a part of this year’s field — a number of exciting stars will be taking the field, including Atlanta’s own Matt Olson, who replaced Ronald Acuna Jr. just three days before the event. Will Olson make a run in front of his home crowd? Will Cal Raleigh show off the power that led to 38 home runs in the first half? Or will one of the younger participants take the title?

We have your one-stop shop for everything Derby related, from predictions to live updates once we get underway to analysis and takeaways at the night’s end.


MLB Home Run Derby field

Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners (38 home runs in 2025)
James Wood, Washington Nationals (24)
Junior Caminero, Tampa Bay Rays (23)
Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins (21)
Brent Rooker, Athletics (20)
Matt Olson, Atlanta Braves (17)
Jazz Chisholm Jr., New York Yankees (17)
Oneil Cruz, Pittsburgh Pirates (16)


Live updates


Who is going to win the Derby and who will be the runner-up?

Jeff Passan: Raleigh. His swing is perfect for the Derby: He leads MLB this season in both pull percentage and fly ball percentage, so it’s not as if he needs to recalibrate it to succeed. He has also become a prolific hitter from the right side this season — 16 home runs in 102 at-bats — and his ability to switch between right- and left-handed pitching offers a potential advantage. No switch-hitter (or catcher for that matter) has won a Home Run Derby. The Big Dumper is primed to be the first, beating Buxton in the finals.

Alden Gonzalez: Cruz. He might be wildly inconsistent at this point in his career, but he is perfect for the Derby — young enough to possess the stamina required for a taxing event that could become exhausting in the Atlanta heat; left-handed, in a ballpark where the ball carries out better to right field; and, most importantly, capable of hitting balls at incomprehensible velocities. Raleigh will put on a good show from both sides of the plate but will come in second.

Buster Olney: Olson. He is effectively pinch-hitting for Acuna, and because he received word in the past 72 hours of his participation, he hasn’t had the practice rounds that the other competitors have been going through. But he’s the only person in this group who has done the Derby before, which means he has experienced the accelerated pace, adrenaline and push of the crowd.

His pitcher, Eddie Perez, knows something about performing in a full stadium in Atlanta. And, as Olson acknowledged in a conversation Sunday, the park generally favors left-handed hitters because of the larger distances that right-handed hitters must cover in left field.

Jesse Rogers: Olson. Home-field advantage will mean something this year as hitting in 90-plus degree heat and humidity will be an extra challenge in Atlanta. Olson understands that and can pace himself accordingly. Plus, he was a late addition. He has got nothing to lose. He’ll outlast the young bucks in the field. And I’m not putting Raleigh any lower than second — his first half screams that he’ll be in the finals against Olson.

Jorge Castillo: Wood. His mammoth power isn’t disputed — he can jack baseballs to all fields. But the slight defect in his power package is that he doesn’t hit the ball in the air nearly as often as a typical slugger. Wood ranks 126th out of 155 qualified hitters across the majors in fly ball percentage. And he still has swatted 24 home runs this season. So, in an event where he’s going to do everything he can to lift baseballs, hitting fly balls won’t be an issue, and Wood is going to show off that gigantic power en route to a victory over Cruz in the finals.


Who will hit the longest home run of the night — and how far?

Passan: Cruz hits the ball harder than anyone in baseball history. He’s the choice here, at 493 feet.

Gonzalez: If you exclude the Coors Field version, there have been just six Statcast-era Derby home runs that have traveled 497-plus feet. They were compiled by two men: Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. James Wood — all 6-foot-7, 234 pounds of him — will become the third.

Olney: James Wood has the easy Stanton- and Judge-type power, and he will clear the Chophouse with the longest homer. Let’s say 497 feet.

Rogers: Hopefully he doesn’t injure himself doing it, but Buxton will break out his massive strength and crush a ball at least 505 feet. I don’t see him advancing far in the event, but for one swing, he’ll own the night.

Castillo: Cruz hits baseballs hard and far. He’ll crush a few bombs, and one will reach an even 500 feet.


Who is the one slugger fans will know much better after the Derby?

Passan: Buxton capped his first half with a cycle on Saturday, and he’ll carry that into the Derby, where he will remind the world why he was baseball’s No. 1 prospect in 2015. Buxton’s talent has never been in question, just his health. And with his body feeling right, he has the opportunity to put on a show fans won’t soon forget.

Olney: Caminero isn’t a big name and wasn’t a high-end prospect like Wood was earlier in his career. Just 3½ years ago, Caminero was dealt to the Rays by the Cleveland Guardians in a relatively minor November trade for pitcher Tobias Myers. But since then, he has refined his ability to cover inside pitches and is blossoming this year into a player with ridiculous power. He won’t win the Derby, but he’ll open some eyes.


What’s the one moment we’ll all be talking about long after this Derby ends?

Gonzalez: The incredible distances and velocities that will be reached, particularly by Wood, Cruz, Caminero, Raleigh and Buxton. The hot, humid weather at Truist Park will only aid the mind-blowing power that will be on display Monday night.

Rogers: The exhaustion on the hitter’s faces, swinging for home run after home run in the heat and humidity of Hot-lanta!

Castillo: Cruz’s 500-foot blast and a bunch of other lasers he hits in the first two rounds before running out of gas in the finals.

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Report: Sternberg to sell Rays for $1.7 billion

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Report: Sternberg to sell Rays for .7 billion

Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg has agreed in principle to a $1.7 billion deal to sell the franchise to a group led by a Florida-based developer Patrick Zalupski, according to a report from The Athletic.

The deal is reportedly expected to be closed as early as September and will keep the franchise in the area, with Zalupski, a homebuilder in Jacksonville, having a strong preference to land in Tampa rather than St. Petersburg.

Sternberg bought the Rays in 2004 for $200 million.

According to Zalupski’s online bio, he is the founder, president and CEO of Dream Finders Homes. The company was founded in December 2008 and closed on 27 homes in Jacksonville the following year. Now, with an expanded footprint to many parts of the United States, Dream Finders has closed on more than 31,100 homes since its founding.

He also is a member of the board of trustees at the University of Florida.

The new ownership group also reportedly includes Bill Cosgrove, the CEO of Union Home Mortgage, and Ken Babby, owner of the Akron RubberDucks and Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, both minor-league teams.

A year ago, Sternberg had a deal in place to build a new stadium in the Historic Gas Plant District, a reimagined recreational, retail and residential district in St. Petersburg to replace Tropicana Field.

However, after Hurricane Milton shredded the roof of the stadium last October, forcing the Rays into temporary quarters, Sternberg changed his tune, saying the team would have to bear excess costs that were not in the budget.

“After careful deliberation, we have concluded we cannot move forward with the new ballpark and development project at this moment,” Sternberg said in a statement in March. “A series of events beginning in October that no one could have anticipated led to this difficult decision.”

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and some other owners began in March to privately push Sternberg to sell the franchise, The Athletic reported.

It is unclear what Zalupski’s group, if it ultimately goes through with the purchase and is approved by MLB owners, will do for a permanent stadium.

The Rays are playing at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, located at the site of the New York Yankees‘ spring training facility and home of their Single-A Tampa Tarpons.

Field Level Media contributed to this report.

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