Orion Kerkering embodies the historic, chaotic Phillies
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Hallie Grossman, ESPN Staff Writer
ORION KERKERING CAST a furtive glance around the clubhouse. His teammates — this lot of Philadelphia Phillies who had been his teammates for a grand total of three weeks — were consumed with the work ahead of dispatching the Braves in Game 4 to clinch the National League Division Series, or just otherwise engaged in pregame rituals, and they paid him no mind. He tugged open the plastic bag and double-checked its contents. Satisfied, he squirreled it away in his locker for safekeeping. His time, and the time for the contents of that bag, was coming.
The fact that these teammates were his teammates was silly. That this locker was his locker, illogical. That the contents of that bag, which he had commissioned barely 12 hours ago, were his to commission at all, downright asinine. Six months ago, he took the mound in Low-A ball in Clearwater, Florida. Low-A! And here he was, suiting up in Philadelphia. In the majors. In October. (Philadelphia! The majors! October!)
So roughly four hours later — with the Atlanta Braves duly dispatched and the NLDS safely clinched — when he nudged his clubhouse neighbor and fellow bullpen mate, Jeff Hoffman, smiled with an air of mischief and told him, “Hey, man, look at this,” well, it made as much sense as anything else in this nonsensical year.
The way Hoffman tells it, Kerkering giggled almost like a grade-schooler at what he had done. Fittingly, perhaps, since he’s only 22 and not that far removed from grade school. (He was in grade school, in fact — just 9 years old — when his now-teammate and Phillies closer, Craig Kimbrel, made his major league debut in 2010.)
Hoffman smiled back at Kerkering. “Wow,” he told him. Atta boy, he almost said, which is also fitting. Because Orion Kerkering, a Phillie for 20 days, had made a T-shirt commemorating that sentiment exactly.
In maroon, against a powder blue backdrop on the front: “ATTA BOY HARPER”
On the back: “HE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO HEAR IT”
With help from a college friend and Philadelphia local who made the shirt on about a half day’s notice, Kerkering had memorialized Orlando Arcia, the Brave who launched a thousand Bryce Harper stare-downs. Specifically, the Atlanta shortstop’s dig and subsequent about-face at Harper’s Game 2-ending baserunning blunder. And Hoffman loved it.
“When you win, you can do whatever you want,” Hoffman says. “At least that’s how we look at it here.”
And the Phillies did win, with a hint of bedlam and utter lack of orthodoxy, as is their wont. So with the clubhouse draped in celebratory plastic and geysers of celebratory Budweiser arcing through the air, Kerkering finally put on his shirt. Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm double-fisted a pair of beer bottles and poured them all over it. Kerkering paid it forward, dousing Kyle Schwarber with the beer he’s barely old enough to drink legally.
His path to this beer bath was a little frenzied and more than a little unexpected — which on this particular team, with this particular group of players, somehow feels just right.
The Phillies simply do not do normal. They send the unlikeliest leadoff hitter in baseball to the plate; Schwarber is shaped like a fire hydrant and on many nights, either fires moon shots into the Philadelphia evening or whiffs entirely. Their lineup can boggle the mind; Nick Castellanos, their $100 million slugger, has mostly taken up residence in the 7-hole for over a month now. They can launch (and launch and launch) home runs all the way to the Delaware River, but can forget, for seeming eternities, how to make bat meet ball with runners in scoring position. And they can look like a very good team for 162 games, only to hulk out when the calendar flips to October and there’s a nip in the air.
They are perfectly imperfect. A chaotic mess. A beautiful symphony.
Orion Kerkering — and his chaotic, symphonic climb to the highest level of baseball — fits right in.
PERHAPS IT SHOULD be no surprise, then, that by the seventh inning of Game 1 in the National League Championship Series, a healthy number of Phillies fans and armchair Toppers the Philadelphia region wide were agitating to replace their ace with a pitcher they hadn’t heard of three weeks before.
Starter Zack Wheeler had, by and large, breezed through six innings against the Arizona Diamondbacks, helped steward a 5-2 Phillies lead, then handed the ball to the bullpen. And though Kerkering did not get the nod that night, the clamor was still a dizzying turn of events for a man who currently calls a hotel in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard home.
He’s living out of a suitcase he packed last month, with enough clothes — some shirts, some pants; “I’m not a big stylish guy,” he says — for the final week of the Reading Fightin Phils‘ season, plus a sightseeing trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, with his girlfriend. They pushed back their plans when he got the call to head to Triple-A — then that pushback got pushed back when, four nights and one game into his stint with the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, he got summoned to Philadelphia on a late-September Friday around noon. He had planned to get a haircut that afternoon; instead, he battled midday traffic from Allentown to Philadelphia, dropped his belongings at the hotel, then hightailed it to Citizens Bank Park in case he needed to pitch that night. (He didn’t, but would two days later.)
Since that Friday when his fall turned topsy-turvy, Kerkering has made:
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His major league debut, on Sept. 24, a 1-2-3 eighth inning against the Mets.
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His postseason debut 10 days later, a 1-2-3 eighth inning against the Marlins.
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His NLDS debut three days after that, a 1-2-3 seventh inning against the Braves’ historically potent offense.
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His NLCS debut a week after that. He allowed one hit, served three strikeouts and looked generally filthy in the ninth inning to close out Arizona in a 10-0 laugher.
Kerkering’s swift ascension to these playoffs makes a meteor’s pace seem glacial. To wit: Since 1992, according to Stats Perform, he’s just the second player to pitch in Low-A, High-A, Double-A, Triple-A and the major league postseason.
And though he finally looked the part of a rookie by the heart of the NLCS — he gave up three straight hits and the game-tying run in the Phillies’ Game 3 loss; he delivered a bases-loaded walk before closing out the seventh inning in Game 4 — Kerkering swears he has never been cowed by the moment or the enormity of what he has done since late September. Instead, shell shock took hold when he passed a Bryce Harper or a Kyle Schwarber or a Trea Turner. Or a Nick Castellanos or Aaron Nola or Zack Wheeler. He rattles off what feels like half the roster, recounting how he’d see them in the clubhouse, realize they were his teammates, then laugh to himself about it all. “A little-kid kind of moment,” he says, a bit sheepishly, now that the bewilderment has faded and he’s a seasoned veteran of 20-plus days.
Which is pretty much what his teammates make him out to be, on the mound at least — a seasoned veteran — a distinction they also say he comes by honestly.
“If I had his stuff, I’d be pretty mellow too,” says pitcher Michael Lorenzen. “I’m telling you. It’s that good.”
A popular refrain, by all counts. J.T. Realmuto, Philadelphia’s longtime catcher, heard it early this year, and often.
“To be honest, I’ve been hearing about him and his stuff since May,” he says. “Every time I asked any minor league coach, ‘Hey, what do we have coming?’ He was the first one they always mentioned.”
So is it enough, his devastating slider and the aura of inevitability that trails in that slider’s wake? Can Kerkering be a secret weapon and a fittingly unorthodox puzzle piece for this unorthodox team in the throes of another October run?
“100%,” Lorenzen says. “100%. He’s going to throw a lot of important innings. Everyone’s going to know who he is at the end of this. Everyone will.”
IF EVERYONE DOES know who Kerkering is at the end of this, it’s a tale that’s especially apropos told here. Philadelphia falls hard for chaos to call its own.
One day before he turned Arcia’s words into a fashion statement, he strode into Citizens Bank Park for Game 3 against the Braves wearing someone else’s eloquence.
“If you don’t get it, then get the f— out of Philly,” said Phillies backup catcher Garrett Stubbs, by way of postseason hype video. Stubbs’ exuberance wound up printed on T-shirts. The T-shirts wound up on a table in the clubhouse, up for grabs for interested parties. Kerkering saw them, snagged one for himself — if nothing else, he was still getting by on his two weeks’ worth of clothes, and an extra tee could prove handy. Then, caught up in the team’s emotional roller coaster of a start to the series against the Braves, he figured the Phillies’ first NLDS game at home was a fine time to showcase it.
So what don’t people get, exactly, about Philly? These people who need to get the f— out?
“Just how passionate we are,” Kerkering estimates. We, he says, this Venice, Florida-raised Phillie who has called Philadelphia (or at least a hotel room in Philadelphia) home for a month.
Philadelphia has fallen hard for Kerkering because of his wardrobe choices, his ridiculous slider and his rapid-fire rise to the top of the baseball food chain. And because of his father, Todd, who stumbled into his own bit of viral fame after he was caught on the TV broadcast overcome with emotion during Orion’s regular-season debut.
When the cameras caught Todd choking up, he wasn’t just watching his son take the mound in Philadelphia. He was watching him take the mound when he was 6, and 10, and 14. He was watching him at 7, getting ready for fall ball. Orion’s coach at the time assembled his team and asked the players: “Who can play what position?” Orion’s response was immediate and resolute: “I can play them all.”
Todd is a former Marine and has long tried to pass down the lessons he learned from his service to his son. “Be the silent professional,” he starts. “Be patient. Slow is fast.”
They’re lessons that Orion has not heeded, at least not in his baseball career. But the Marines also taught Todd to maintain a sense of humor, lightheartedness and joy. So he smiled, too, at his son’s willingness to play to the Philly masses with his pointed fashion choices.
Among those Philly masses are a couple of his old Marine Corps friends. They texted him in recent days: “Everyone loves your kid.”
“For right now,” Todd wrote back.
Both Kerkerings, it seems, are quick studies in the art of playing in Philadelphia, and for these Phillies. And all their attendant chaos.
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Bradford Doolittle
Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese-born player to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, falling one vote shy of unanimous selection, and he’ll be joined in the Class of 2025 by starting pitcher CC Sabathia and closer Billy Wagner.
Suzuki, who got 393 of 394 votes in balloting of the Baseball Writers Association of America, would have joined Yankees great Mariano Rivera (2019) as the only unanimous selections. Instead, Suzuki’s 99.746% of the vote is second only to Derek Jeter’s 99.748% (396 of 397 ballots cast in 2020) as the highest plurality for a position player in Hall of Fame voting, per the BBWAA.
“There was a time when I didn’t even get a chance to play in the MLB,” Suzuki told MLB TV. “So what an honor it is to be for me to be here and be a Hall of Famer.”
Suzuki collected 2,542 of his 3,089 career hits as a member of the Seattle Mariners. Before that, he collected 1,278 hits in the Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan, giving him more overall hits (4,367) than Pete Rose, MLB’s all-time leader.
Suzuki did not debut in MLB until he was 27 years old, but he exploded on the scene in 2001 by winning Rookie of the Year and MVP honors in his first season, leading Seattle to a record-tying 116 regular-season wins.
Suzuki and Sabathia finished first and second in 2001 voting for American League Rookie of the year and later were teammates for two seasons with the Yankees.
Sabathia, who won 251 career games, was also on the ballot for the first time. He was the 2007 AL Cy Young winner while with Cleveland and a six-time All-Star. His 3,093 career strikeouts make him one of 19 members of the 3,000-strikeout club. He was named on 86.8% of the ballots
Wagner’s 422 career saves — 225 of which came with the Houston Astros — are the eighth-most in big league history. His selection comes in his 10th and final appearance on the BBWAA ballot, earning 82.5% for the seven-time All-Star.
Just falling short in the balloting was outfielder Carlos Beltran, who was named on 70.3% of ballots, shy of the 75% threshold necessary for election.
Beltran won 1999 AL Rookie of the Year honors while with Kansas City. He went on to make nine All-Star teams and become one of five players in history with at least 400 homers and 300 stolen bases.
A key member and clubhouse leader of the controversial 2017 World Series champion Astros, whose legacy was tainted by a sign-stealing scandal, Beltran’s selection would have bode well for other members of that squad who will be under consideration in the years to come.
Also coming up short was 10-time Gold Glove outfielder Andruw Jones, who was named on 76.2% of the ballots. Jones saw an uptick from last year’s total (61.6%) and still has two more years of ballot eligibility remaining.
PED-associated players on the ballot didn’t make much headway in the balloting. Alex Rodriguez finished with 37.1%, while Manny Ramirez was at 34.3%.
The three BBWAA electees will join Dick Allen and Dave Parker, who were selected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee in December, in being honored at the induction ceremony on July 27 at the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, New York.
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Ryan McGee
ATLANTA — The 2025 edition of the College Football Playoff National Championship game was not about vengeance. It wasn’t about proving people wrong. Nor was it about wadding up a scarlet and gray rag and stuffing it directly into the mouths of the chorale of outside noise.
Bless their hearts, that’s what the Ohio State football team and coaching staff kept telling us. That beating Notre Dame on Monday night and winning the school’s first national title in a decade wasn’t about any of that stuff.
But yeah, it totally was.
“We worked really hard to tune out the outside noise, truly,” confessed Ohio State quarterback Will Howard, words spoken on the field moments after having a national champions T-shirt pulled over his shoulders and punctuated by slaps to those shoulders from his current teammates as well as Buckeyes of days gone by. “But outside noise can also be a great way to bring a team together. You close the doors to the locker room to lock all that out, bunker down together and go to work. That’s what it did for us. I think anyone on this team will tell you that.”
Well, now they will. Finally.
The “it’s not about that” mantra was what the Buckeyes kept repeating, in unison, beginning way back in the summer weeks leading into a campaign when they were voted No. 2 in the nation in both preseason polls. Those expectations were earned in no small part because of a much-hyped offseason, powered by an NIL shopping spree worth $20 million, according to athletic director Ross Bjork, to lure transfers from around the nation.
We were told that, no, it wasn’t about those players justifying their decisions to change teams. Like Howard, who came to Ohio State from Kansas State, and running back Quinshon Judkins, who became a Buckeye after carrying the football at Ole Miss. Both are still viewed as traitors by many at the places they departed. But no, it was never about sending a message that they were right to pack up and move to Columbus.
Yeah, right.
“When people asked me why I left Ole Miss to come here, my answer was always the same: To go somewhere that I could win a national championship,” said Judkins, who scored three of Ohio State’s four touchdowns against the Fighting Irish. He grew up one state over from the site of the CFP title game, 270 miles away in Montgomery, Alabama. “Now, that championship has happened. And I’m not going to lie: To do it back here in the South, in Atlanta, in front of so many people who have known about me all the way back to high school, that makes it even more special.”
We were told that, no, it wasn’t about the all-star coaching staff, including offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, who once served as head coach with the Oregon Ducks, Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers and left the same gig at UCLA to take a demotion at Ohio State. In no way was this winter about proving that Kelly hadn’t lost the edge that once had him hailed as a mastermind of modern football offenses.
Um, OK.
“For me, it feels good to have fun again,” said Kelly, 61, flashing a face-splitter grin rarely seen during his NFL and UCLA tenures. Buckeyes coach Ryan Day, 45, is a Kelly protégé, having been coached by Kelly as a New Hampshire player. Kelly’s playcalling that has been a CFP bulldozer scored touchdowns on Ohio State’s first four drives. “I never forgot how to coach. But maybe I forgot how to have fun at the job.”
“I know this,” Kelly added, laughing. “It’s a lot more fun when you’re moving the football and winning.”
And, man, we were told so many times that in no way was this season or postseason about hitting a reset button on the perception of Day, in his sixth season as the leader of an Ohio State football program that is second to none when it comes to pride but also exceeded by none when it comes to pressure. Day dipped deep from that “Guys, it’s not about me” well on the evening of Nov. 30, after his fourth straight regular-season defeat at the hands of arch nemesis Michigan. When the Buckeyes were awarded an at-large berth in the newly expanded 12-team CFP, he once again implored to anyone who would listen that the narrative of his team’s postseason should be about its destiny rather than the future of the coach.
For a month of CFP games and days, all the way up until Monday’s kickoff, Day reminded us all that none of this was about him. Even though a security detail was assigned to his home in Columbus ever since the Michigan game. Even as the internet was aflame with posts about his job security and memes questioning his choice of beard dyes. Even as, in the days leading into the title game, his wife opened up to a Columbus TV station about the family’s dealings with death threats.
And even as, during the championship game itself, Ohio State’s seemingly insurmountable lead shrank from 31-7 midway through the third quarter to a scant eight points in the closing minutes.
But as the clock finally hit zeroes and the scoreboard read “Ohio State 34, Notre Dame 23” with OSU-colored confetti raining down over the Buckeyes’ heads, the story — as told by the team itself — was indeed suddenly about Day, and his staff, and his players, and their shared personification of the T-shirts and flags worn by so many of their supporters among the 77,660 in attendance: “OHIO AGAINST THE WORLD.”
Even if, for them, sometimes Ohio’s flagship football team found itself up against a not-insignificant percentage of Ohio itself, including the folks who refused to attend the CFP opener in Columbus because they were still mad about the Michigan defeat and no doubt will still consider this natty as having an asterisk because of that same loss.
Because for all of Day & Co.’s talk of this not being about revenge, the truth was revealed on their postgame faces. Their shared expressions of restraint, the ones we’d seen all fall, were instantly replaced by a collective look of relief. Their frowns washed away by Gatorade dumps, revealing the smiles of men who had indeed just sent a message and were finally willing to admit that had been their motivation all along.
You only had to ask. Because, finally, they would answer.
“I feel like, from the start of this thing, we were knocking on the door. But you have to find a way to break through and make it to where we are right now,” said Day, no longer stiff-arming the question but definitely still working to stifle his emotion. “In this day and age, there’s so much noise. Social media. People have to write articles. But when you sign up for this job, when you agree to coach at Ohio State, that’s part of the job.
“I’m a grown-up. I can take it. But the hard part is your family having to live with it. The players you bring in, them having to live with it. Their families. In the end, that’s how you build a football family. Take the stuff that people want to use to tear you apart and try to turn that into something that makes you closer.”
For 3 hours and 20 minutes, the Buckeyes pushed back on Notre Dame with both hands. They also pushed back on those would-be team destroyers and head coach firers. When it was over, they extended one finger in the direction of those same haters. It wasn’t a middle finger, but it was close. It was the finger that soon will be fitted for a national championship ring.
“Ohio State might not be for everybody,” Day added, smiling once again. “But it’s certainly for these guys.”
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Max Olson
Ohio State transfer quarterback Devin Brown has signed with Cal, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.
After winning a national championship with the Buckeyes on Monday night, Ohio State’s No. 2 quarterback is seeking an opportunity to start and will move on to join the Golden Bears. Brown has two more seasons of eligibility.
Brown entered the NCAA transfer portal on Dec. 9 but remained with the team during their College Football Playoff run.
The redshirt sophomore was the No. 81 overall recruit in the ESPN 300 for 2022 and lost a competition with Kyle McCord for Ohio State’s starting job entering the 2023 season. This season, Brown appeared in nine games while backing up Will Howard.
Brown threw for 331 yards with three touchdowns and one interception on 56% passing and rushed for 37 yards and one score over three seasons at Ohio State. He earned one start in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic at the end of the 2023 season but exited with an ankle injury in a 14-3 loss to Missouri.
After losing to the Tigers, Ohio State coach Ryan Day brought in Howard, a Kansas State transfer who guided the program to its first College Football Playoff national championship since 2014. Howard earned offensive MVP honors in the Buckeyes’ 34-23 title game victory over Notre Dame after competing 17-of-21 passes for 231 yards and two touchdowns.
The Buckeyes are losing Howard, Brown and freshman backup Air Noland, who transferred to South Carolina, as they begin preparations to defend their national title in 2025. Julian Sayin, a former five-star recruit, is expected to be the frontrunner in the Buckeyes’ quarterback competition entering his redshirt freshman season.
Brown is joining a Cal team coming off a 6-7 run through its first year in the ACC that must replace starter Fernando Mendoza, who transferred to Indiana. Brown will compete with touted incoming freshman Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, who joined the program after a brief stint at Oregon.
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