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Kyle Bonagura, ESPN Staff WriterSep 17, 2024, 07:00 AM ET
Close- Covers college football.
- Joined ESPN in 2014.
- Attended Washington State University.
LATE WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould touched down at Los Angeles International Airport after a chaotic few days. For months, she had worked to help the league’s remaining two schools — Oregon State and Washington State — position themselves for the future, and things were finally falling into place.
When she arrived at baggage claim, Gould received confirmation via email that the Pac-12 board had unanimously approved official applications for conference membership from Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State, which had been submitted earlier in the day.
For the 35-year collegiate sports veteran and someone who had spent the bulk of the past 25 years affiliated with the Pac-12, it was hard to contain her excitement. Since stepping into the role in February, it was not always clear if the conference had a future, and now this ensured it would.
“We have a real opportunity to write a new story for the future and the new Pac-12,” Gould told ESPN the next day.
The Pac-12’s expansion efforts had been going on for weeks, but it wasn’t until early last week that all parties felt confident the moves were going to happen. By that point, the general framework of the new-look conference was agreed upon, and it became a matter of hammering out the details.
With university presidents and legal teams involved, the four Mountain West athletic directors remained in constant contact.
“Those conversations were being had multiple times a day, morning, noon and night,” Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey said. “We were together in terms of jumping on calls and just talking through the what-if scenarios and potential opportunities that could exist and concerns and those type of things.”
Any concerns were outweighed by the potential of building something new. These schools had invested in their athletic department and football programs for years in preparation for this kind of opportunity, and while this wasn’t the same as joining the Pac-12 before its collapse, they strongly felt this move offered a better future than what they had in the Mountain West.
Those athletic directors’ counterparts around the conference were left in the dark, and when the news leaked late Wednesday night, several administrators at other Mountain West schools were caught off guard.
“There were some things after the fact that became more clear,” one Mountain West school administrator told ESPN. “Like certain people from those four schools not being present at meetings or generally unresponsive. It makes sense now, but we had no sense this was coming.”
For over a year, Oregon State and Washington State operated in the wilderness without a clear picture of what was ahead. During that time, they battled the departing schools — and absentee commissioner George Kliavkoff — in court for the Pac-12 assets and operational control. They chased television deals on their own, came to a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West in football, joined the West Coast Conference as affiliate members in other sports for two years and saw major leadership changes at the conference and institutional levels, with Gould replacing Kliavkoff and Anne McCoy replacing Pat Chun as the athletics director at WSU in March. Pac-12 staffing shrunk from about 190 at its peak to a skeleton crew of just over 30.
ESPN spoke with nearly two dozen sources familiar with the process to reveal how the Pac-12 emerged from that uncertainty and what comes next.
ON THE EVENING of July 10, at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, the Pac-12 hosted “After Hours with the Beavs & Cougs.” The room was down the hall from where the United States men’s Olympic basketball team was headquartered in advance of the Paris games, and the hotel was also the designated media lodging for the Big 12 media days that wrapped up earlier in the day.
With only two schools, it didn’t make sense to hold a full-fledged media day. But with so many media members and others in the college athletics industry already in Vegas, the conference saw a chance to create some buzz with a more intimate gathering. The two head football coaches, OSU’s Trent Bray and WSU’s Jake Dickert, made the rounds. As did the two mascots, Benny and Butch. In the wake of the conference’s collapse the previous summer, though, there was also a somber tone.
After around 45 minutes of mingling, Gould addressed the room of about 100 people.
“This is supposed to be a fun night, and that’s why it looks different, it feels different,” she said. “We want you all to let your hair down and have a good time. … We have a bar in the back. Yes, we are drinking tonight during this event, and I would venture to say that if anyone has earned the right to drink, it’s the Pac-12.”
Always a great time After Dark
More to come from tonight’s After Hours with the Beavs & Cougs! pic.twitter.com/JAc8Xd7W4g
— Pac-12 Conference (@pac12) July 11, 2024
The line killed, but no one left the Bellagio that night with a better understanding about what the future looked like. If anything, there was a growing sense in Las Vegas that OSU and WSU were being backed into the Mountain West and Gould’s role would be to spend the next two years tending to the dying embers of a conference with over a century of history.
If the Pac-12 were to survive, multiple industry sources presumed to ESPN at the time, it would likely have to come through a so-called reverse merger with the Mountain West. In that scenario, the Mountain West would have added OSU and WSU, continued to be operated by its current leadership — including commissioner Gloria Nevarez — and adopt the Pac-12 branding. That was never the preferred outcome of OSU and WSU, however, and over the past two months, Gould — as she was tasked to do when she was hired in February — worked to secure an outcome more favorable for the two schools.
On the same day the Pac-12 held its “After Hours” event, Nevarez kicked off her conference’s media day across town at the Circa Resort and Casino with a state of the conference address. She spoke confidently about the future of the conference and its strength and positioning.
“In this environment, our mantra is to be proactive and strategic to best position ourselves to navigate the future of college athletics,” Nevarez said. “Certainly transformation has hit [college athletics] pretty big in the last couple of years, and more is on its way, no doubt.”
To that end, Nevarez touted a presidential initiative intended to help the conference in the era of college realignment: a process known as “threatcasting.” The conference retained the help of Brian David Johnson, who Nevarez described as an “internationally renowned threatcaster.”
Johnson serves as the director of the Threatcasting Lab at Arizona State, which states it strives to “provide a wide range of organizations and institutions actionable models to not only comprehend these possible futures but to a means to identify, track, disrupt, mitigate and recover from them as well.”
“He worked with us to model all the different futures in and around the college athletic space,” Nevarez said. “He’s providing us signals and wavefinders so that we have early detection for the more dire outcomes.”
To industry veterans, though, the need to hire an expert to outline the biggest threat to the Mountain West was puzzling. Oregon State and Washington State had already spelled out in a lawsuit for control of the Pac-12 filed last year their desire to rebuild the conference, in part, with conference assets. No other scenario that could threaten the Mountain West was remotely more plausible.
The Mountain West, sources said, felt protected by its bylaws and a poaching fee included in a football scheduling agreement it signed with the Pac-12 in December. To leave the conference, a school is required to pay roughly $18 million with two years of notice and $36 million with a one-year notice. And if the Pac-12 accepted a Mountain West school as a new member, the Pac-12 would be required to pay a $10 million fee, with escalators of $500k more for each additional school. (The four-school fee for Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State is $43 million.)
When the conferences signed the scheduling agreement in early December that added six Mountain West opponents for OSU and WSU this season, the Mountain West was operating from a position of strength and required a $14 million payment from the Pac-12. OSU and WSU needed a quick solution to fill their 2024 football schedules, and they were still fighting an appeal from the 10 departing Pac-12 members of a superior court ruling that granted them control of the conference. Even if the departing schools’ appeal failed — which it later did — there wasn’t a great sense of what the remaining assets would be.
Even so, when the scheduling agreement was announced, it included an instructive comment from Oregon State athletics director Scott Barnes: “We are still focused on re-building the Pac-12.”
At the time, the idea that in less than a year the Pac-12 would be willing to pay roughly $115 million for one-third of the Mountain West seemed unrealistic. For Mountain West leadership, that remained the case in July.
“We have a mutual desire to extend that relationship [with the Pac-12] and we’re currently in discussions about year two,” Nevarez said in her address in Las Vegas. “But for the time being, we’re really excited about playing them.”
In an interview with ESPN the next day, Nevarez reaffirmed her belief that a deal to extend the scheduling agreement with the Pac-12 would get done. The contract included an Aug. 1 date to open a window in which the conferences could execute a second year, she said, adding she was hopeful they could come to an agreement before then.
“We just have to connect, sign some docs and go,” she said.
IN DECEMBER, WHEN the scheduling agreement was signed, Kliavkoff was still technically the commissioner of the Pac-12. He would remain in the role until February, but after Oregon and Washington walked away from a media rights deal he put together with Apple on Aug. 4 — ensuring the conference’s collapse — Kliavkoff was mostly checked out.
With Oregon and Washington headed to the Big Ten, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah quickly followed Colorado to the Big 12. A month later, California and Stanford completed a move to the ACC, leaving OSU and WSU behind.
“Not only did it go down to two, but it felt like we didn’t have leadership,” Barnes told ESPN last month. “So [former WSU athletic director] Pat Chun and myself felt like we were co-commissioners for several months until Teresa was hired. We just didn’t feel like we had the support.”
It went so far that Kliavkoff was named in the lawsuit the two schools filed against the Pac-12 for operational control.
“It felt like he paid more attention to the teams that were exiting and placating the teams exiting than the two that were remaining,” Barnes said. “Why? It’s beyond me. I don’t know, but we literally fought for ourselves and in certain instances [Kliavkoff] came to the table late, but right out of the gate, I feel very strongly that he was advocating behind the scenes or elsewhere for the teams that were leaving and that we were not seeing a leader that was stepping up and helping protect our future the way that I believe a capable leadership should.”
When Gould was elevated from deputy commissioner to replace Kliavkoff in February, Barnes felt they had someone who was genuinely invested in helping their cause. Unlike Kliavkoff, who had no background in college sports when he was named commissioner in July 2021, Gould had worked her way up the ranks over the past 35 years.
Before being hired as the conference’s deputy commissioner in 2018, Gould was the interim athletics director at UC Davis, spent 14 years in various roles in the athletic department at Cal and had another eight years prior at the West Coast Conference, where she was an associate commissioner.
“Yeah, it’s been refreshing,” Barnes said. “I feel like we know we have a partner that is looking out for our best interests and one that has the leadership capacity to execute on the things that we prioritize, and she has done a fabulous job and just her short few months that she’s been here.”
After Gould was hired, the schools’ goal of rebuilding the Pac-12 wasn’t the primary focus. Both schools felt they belonged in a power conference, with their peers of the past 100 years.
“When I got this job, I had a lot of people kind of in the background cheering me on going, ‘We can’t wait to see you rebuild the Pac-12,'” Gould told ESPN two weeks ago. “I’ve been in this league for 25 years. There’s certainly a lot of nostalgia around that idea, but that’s not what I was hired to do. What I was hired to do is figure out a future conference path for these two institutions that achieves the guiding principles we’ve agreed on.”
(The leadership structure changed again in March, when Chun left for rival Washington. He was replaced on an interim basis by McCoy, the school’s senior deputy AD, who was named to the job on a permanent basis in June.)
After OSU and WSU’s desire to join the Big 12 was firmly rebuffed, sources said, they gamed out possible scenarios that could come in the wake of various rulings in the four lawsuits related to Clemson and Florida State’s attempts to exit the ACC. None of those amounted to more than a gamble, and didn’t fit their timeline.
WHEN TALKS ABOUT extending the scheduling agreement started a few weeks after media day, little progress was made. The Mountain West overestimated how vulnerable the Pac-12 was from a negotiating position and asked for more than the $14 million it received last year, with the Pac-12 countering with less than half that.
“We just never could really seem to gain a lot of traction for year two so that everybody felt really good about it,” McCoy told ESPN at the Apple Cup on Saturday. “I think, and I can’t speak for the Mountain West, but I know from the Pac-12, in our perspective, it just seemed like we always were just so far apart in what we thought should happen.”
Unlike when the initial deal was signed with Kliavkoff in charge, OSU and WSU were now in control of the Pac-12 assets — they secured roughly $250 million when the departures were finalized — and had more time to make alternative scheduling plans for 2025. When it became clear the Sept. 1 deadline to extend the agreement would pass, the Pac-12 became more serious about attempting a true rebuild.
Much of the vetting of potential candidates and outreach was handled by Navigate, a private sports consulting firm, sources said. The Pac-12 would be willing to help fund the exit fees, the schools were told, which took away the primary risk factor. Had the four been required to come up with a combined $72 million on their own, it would have been much more difficult to justify the jump — especially without a firm understanding of what kind of media deal the new-look conference could command.
The schools also knew to expect the Mountain West to attempt to withhold media rights distributions for departing schools over the next two years — roughly $5 million per school, per year — as it did when BYU, TCU and Utah all left in 2011. It’s unclear what the total cost will be to the schools and Pac-12 to the Mountain West when the dust settles.
“There is a lot of negotiation that still needs to happen between the Pac-12 and the Mountain West and among the various schools on what that exit is going to look like, what scheduling alliances are going to look like and all sorts of different details,” Colorado State president Amy Parson said. “We have some time on that. We’re playing out the Mountain West all of next year and into the following. We will not have those details pinned down for some time.
“We are grateful to the Pac-12 that they’re investing in the four schools who are leaving the Mountain West in a way that makes us feel comfortable that we’re going to come out strong and ready to really compete at that level. But a lot of details [to get figured out] going forward.”
For years, the teams at the top of the Mountain West in terms of investment had grown tired of the bottom third’s inability to keep up, which contributed to the appeal of this model as opposed to adding OSU and WSU to the Mountain West, sources said.
Another theory that had been floating around since last year is the possibility that nine Mountain West schools could vote to dissolve the conference, freeing them up to move to the Pac-12 together without being required to pay exit fees. It was a possibility that received some informal discussion, a source said, but it never progressed to the point where anyone seriously considered pushing for it.
Once the Pac-12 fully committed to the rebuild, things moved quickly. Last Monday, there was a growing sentiment among stakeholders on both sides that it was likely to happen, and by Tuesday it was nearly a done deal. On Wednesday, the four schools all formally applied for membership, which required approval of the four-person Pac-12 board — made up of the presidents and athletics directors at OSU and WSU.
Nevarez caught wind of the possibility early last week, sources said, but the departing schools did not communicate their intention to leave before the deals were done.
With six schools, the Pac-12 still has to add at least two more by July 1, 2026, and there is not a firm timeline for when those additions will be made.
“I would like to move as swiftly as we can,” Barnes said. “Sort of the old John Wooden adage, ‘Be quick, but don’t hurry,’ in that regard. We don’t have any limitations on who we may visit with and we’ll move as quickly and thoroughly as we can. On the other side of that certainly is a chance to go out to market for a new media deal.”
The conference is expected to explore options in the American Athletic Conference — namely Tulane and Memphis — but it’s too early to say what the true appetite will be. Without a significant increase in their current media deal — AAC schools receive about $7 million annually — it becomes tougher to justify the added logistical hurdles of playing in a conference with a larger footprint, especially as a geographic outlier.
There is a good chance additional Mountain West schools could eventually find their way to the Pac-12. UNLV, for example, was a surprising omission this round for many industry sources given its relatively similar profile to the four departing schools, but the conference was steadfast in starting with this group.
“I can’t say I’m surprised [UNLV was not included] because I was pleased with the configuration, and actually the metrics and the metrics spoke to the decision-making process, and I and they were very, very objective in that sense,” San Diego State president Adela de la Torre said. “So in my mind, I think it was the best four that were selected.”
TWO DAYS AFTER the announcement, Washington State capped off the week with a victory in the Apple Cup against Washington at Lumen Field in Seattle. The Cougars’ goal-stand with 1:12 left to preserve the 24-19 win ignited a memorable celebration that started in the field and carried into the locker room and, for coach Jake Dickert, the postgame news conference.
To Dickert, the conference news was a welcome development, but what happens next, he said, is more important.
“This is the critical point for Washington State athletics right now. What are we going to do to invest in the future?” he said. “We let some new teams in, we have an opportunity to stay ahead of the curve to compete for championships if we want to invest, right?
“I don’t get my check from Washington State athletics. I get it from Washington State University. The university needs to invest in the athletics program and this football team every step of the way. That’s exactly what it’s going to take and you’re going to see more days just like this, but where we’re currently at is not enough so we’re putting in a big picture. If you can’t be proud of what the Cougs are doing right now, I can’t really help you.”
It’s a similar perspective at the conference level in that the developments from last week are important, but only foundational in nature.
“The outreach and the outpouring of people that are not only cheering us on saying, ‘This is awesome, we’re so excited about this,’ has been really significant,” Gould said. “And I think it just supports what I already knew, which is that people really care about the Pac-12 and about the brand and about it continuing long into the future.”
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Sports
‘It ain’t over yet’: Why Mookie Betts was dead set on returning to shortstop
Published
8 hours agoon
February 23, 2025By
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Alden GonzalezFeb 21, 2025, 08:00 AM ET
Close- ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Sometime around mid-August last year, Mookie Betts convened with the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ coaches. He had taken stock of what transpired while he rehabbed a broken wrist, surveyed his team’s roster and accepted what had become plainly obvious: He needed to return to right field.
For the better part of five months, Betts had immersed himself in the painstaking task of learning shortstop in the midst of a major league season. It was a process that humbled him but also invigorated him, one he had desperately wanted to see through. On the day he gave it up, Chris Woodward, at that point an adviser who had intermittently helped guide Betts through the transition, sought him out. He shook Betts’ hand, told him how much he respected his efforts and thanked him for the work.
“Oh, it ain’t over yet,” Betts responded. “For now it’s over, but we’re going to win the World Series, and then I’m coming back.”
Woodward, now the Dodgers’ full-time first-base coach and infield instructor, recalled that conversation from the team’s spring training complex at Camelback Ranch last week and smiled while thinking about how those words had come to fruition. The Dodgers captured a championship last fall, then promptly determined that Betts, the perennial Gold Glove outfielder heading into his age-32 season, would be the every-day shortstop on one of the most talented baseball teams ever assembled.
From November to February, Betts visited high school and collegiate infields throughout the L.A. area on an almost daily basis in an effort to solidify the details of a transition he did not have time to truly prepare for last season.
Pedro Montero, one of the Dodgers’ video coordinators, placed an iPad onto a tripod and aimed its camera in Betts’ direction while he repeatedly pelted baseballs into the ground with a fungo bat, then sent Woodward the clips to review from his home in Arizona. The three spoke almost daily.
By the time Betts arrived in spring training, Woodward noticed a “night and day” difference from one year to the next. But he still acknowledges the difficulty of what Betts is undertaking, and he noted that meaningful games will ultimately serve as the truest arbiter.
The Dodgers have praised Betts for an act they described as unselfish, one that paved the way for both Teoscar Hernandez and Michael Conforto to join their corner outfield and thus strengthen their lineup. Betts himself has said his move to shortstop is a function of doing “what I feel like is best for the team.” But it’s also clear that shouldering that burden — and all the second-guessing and scrutiny that will accompany it — is something he wants.
He wants to be challenged. He wants to prove everybody wrong. He wants to bolster his legacy.
“Mookie wants to be the best player in baseball, and I don’t see why he wouldn’t want that,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think if you play shortstop, with his bat, that gives him a better chance.”
ONLY 21 PLAYERS since 1900 have registered 100 career games in right field and 100 career games at shortstop, according to ESPN Research. It’s a list compiled mostly of lifelong utility men. The only one among them who came close to following Betts’ path might have been Tony Womack, an every-day right fielder in his age-29 season and an every-day shortstop in the three years that followed. But Womack had logged plenty of professional shortstop experience before then.
Through his first 12 years in professional baseball, Betts accumulated just 13 starts at shortstop, all of them in rookie ball and Low-A from 2011 to 2012. His path — as a no-doubt Hall of Famer and nine-time Gold Glove right fielder who will switch to possibly the sport’s most demanding position in his 30s — is largely without precedent. And yet the overwhelming sense around the Dodgers is that if anyone can pull it off, it’s him.
“Mookie’s different,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “I think this kind of challenge is really fun for him. I think he just really enjoys it. He’s had to put in a lot of hard work — a lot of work that people haven’t seen — but I just think he’s such a different guy when it comes to the challenge of it that he’s really enjoying it. When you look at how he approaches it, he’s having so much fun trying to get as good as he can be. There’s not really any question in anyone’s mind here that he’s going to be a very good defensive shortstop.”
Betts entered the 2024 season as the primary second baseman, a position to which he had long sought a return, but transitioned to shortstop on March 8, 12 days before the Dodgers would open their season from South Korea, after throwing issues began to plague Gavin Lux. Almost every day for the next three months, Betts put himself through a rigorous pregame routine alongside teammate Miguel Rojas and third-base coach Dino Ebel in an effort to survive at the position.
The metrics were unfavorable, scouts were generally unimpressed and traditional statistics painted an unflattering picture — all of which was to be expected. Simply put, Betts did not have the reps. He hadn’t spent significant time at shortstop since he was a teenager at Overton High School in Nashville, Tennessee. He was attempting to cram years of experience through every level of professional baseball into the space allotted to him before each game, a task that proved impossible.
Betts committed nine errors during his time at shortstop, eight of them the result of errant throws. He often lacked the proper footwork to put himself in the best position to throw accurately across the diamond, but the Dodgers were impressed by how quickly he seemed to grasp other aspects of the position that seemed more difficult for others — pre-pitch timing, range, completion of difficult plays.
Shortly after the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees to win their first full-season championship since 1988, Betts sat down with Dodgers coaches and executives and expressed his belief that, if given the proper time, he would figure it out. And so it was.
“If Mook really wants to do something, he’s going to do everything he can to be an elite, elite shortstop,” Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said. “I’m not going to bet against that guy.”
THE FIRST TASK was determining what type of shortstop Betts would be. Woodward consulted with Ryan Goins, the current Los Angeles Angels infield coach who is one of Betts’ best friends. The two agreed that he should play “downhill,” attacking the baseball, making more one-handed plays and throwing largely on the run, a style that fit better for a transitioning outfielder.
During a prior stint on the Dodgers’ coaching staff, Woodward — the former Texas Rangers manager who rejoined the Dodgers staff after Los Angeles’ previous first-base coach, Clayton McCullough, became the Miami Marlins‘ manager in the offseason — implemented the same style with Corey Seager, who was widely deemed too tall to remain a shortstop.
“He doesn’t love the old-school, right-left, two-hands, make-sure-you-get-in-front-of-the-ball type of thing,” Woodward said of Betts. “It doesn’t make sense to him. And I don’t coach that way. I want them to be athletic, like the best athlete they can possibly be, so that way they can use their lower half, get into their legs, get proper direction through the baseball to line to first. And that’s what Mookie’s really good at.”
Dodger Stadium underwent a major renovation of its clubhouse space over the offseason, making the field unusable and turning Montero and Betts into nomads. From the second week of November through the first week of February, the two trained at Crespi Carmelite High School near Betts’ home in Encino, California, then Sierra Canyon, Los Angeles Valley College and, finally, Loyola High.
For a handful of days around New Year’s, Betts flew to Austin, Texas, to get tutelage from Troy Tulowitzki, the five-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove Award winner whose mechanics Betts was drawn to. In early January, when wildfires spread through the L.A. area, Betts flew to Glendale, Arizona, to train with Woodward in person.
Mostly, though, it was Montero as the eyes and ears on the ground and Woodward as the adviser from afar. Their sessions normally lasted about two hours in the morning, evolving from three days a week to five and continually ramping up in intensity. The goal for the first two months was to hone the footwork skills required to make a variety of different throws, but also to give Betts plenty of reps on every ground ball imaginable.
When January came, Betts began to carve out a detailed, efficient routine that would keep him from overworking when the games began. It accounted for every situation, included backup scenarios for uncontrollable events — when it rained, when there wasn’t enough time, when pregame batting practice stretched too long — and was designed to help Betts hold up. What was once hundreds of ground balls was pared down to somewhere in the neighborhood of 35, but everything was accounted for.
LAST YEAR, BETTS’ throws were especially difficult for Freddie Freeman to catch at first base, often cutting or sailing or darting. But when Freeman joined Betts in spring training, he noticed crisp throws that consistently arrived with backspin and almost always hit the designated target. Betts was doing a better job of getting his legs under him on batted balls hit in a multitude of directions. Also, Rojas said, he “found his slot.”
“Technically, talking about playing shortstop, finding your slot is very important because you’re throwing the ball from a different position than when you throw it from right field,” Rojas explained. “You’re not throwing the ball from way over the top or on the bottom. So he’s finding a slot that is going to work for him. He’s understanding now that you need a slot to throw the ball to first base, you need a slot to throw the ball to second base, you need a slot to throw the ball home and from the side.”
Dodgers super-utility player Enrique Hernandez has noticed a “more loose” Betts at shortstop this spring. Roberts said Betts is “two grades better” than he was last year, before a sprained left wrist placed him on the injured list on June 17 and prematurely ended his first attempt. Before reporting to spring training, Betts described himself as “a completely new person over there.”
“But we’ll see,” he added.
The games will be the real test. At that point, Woodward said, it’ll largely come down to trusting the work he has put in over the past four months. Betts is famously hard on himself, and so Woodward has made it a point to remind him that, as long as his process is sound, imperfection is acceptable.
“This is dirt,” Woodward will often tell him. “This isn’t perfect.”
The Dodgers certainly don’t need Betts to be their shortstop. If it doesn’t work out, he can easily slide back to second base. Rojas, the superior defender whose offensive production prompted Betts’ return to right field last season, can fill in on at least a part-time basis. So can Tommy Edman, who at this point will probably split his time between center field and second base, and so might Hyeseong Kim, the 26-year-old middle infielder who was signed out of South Korea this offseason.
But it’s clear Betts wants to give it another shot.
As Roberts acknowledged, “He certainly felt he had unfinished business.”
Sports
Tigers’ Baddoo to miss start of regular season
Published
1 day agoon
February 22, 2025By
admin
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Associated Press
Feb 21, 2025, 02:33 PM ET
LAKELAND, Fla. — Detroit Tigers outfielder Akil Baddoo had surgery to repair a broken bone in his right hand and will miss the start of the regular season.
Manager A.J. Hinch said Friday that Baddoo had more tests done after some continued wrist soreness since the start of spring training. Those tests revealed the hamate hook fracture in his right hand that was surgically repaired Thursday.
Baddoo, 26, who has been with the Tigers since 2021, is at spring training as a non-roster player. He was designated for assignment in December after Detroit signed veteran right-hander Alex Cobb to a $15 million, one-year contract. Baddoo cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A Toledo.
Cobb is expected to miss the start of the season after an injection to treat hip inflammation that developed as the right-hander was throwing at the start of camp. He has had hip surgery twice.
Baddoo hit .137 with two homers and five RBIs in 31 games last season. The left-hander has a .226 career average with 28 homers and 103 RBI in 340 games.
After the Tigers acquired him from Minnesota in the Rule 5 draft at the winter meetings in December 2020, Baddoo hit .259 with 13 homers, 55 RBIs, 18 stolen bases and a .330 on-base percentage in 124 games as a rookie in 2021. Those are all career bests.
Baddoo went into camp in a crowded outfield. The six outfielders on Detroit’s 40-man roster include three other left-handed hitters (Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter and Parker Meadows) and switch-hitter Wenceel Pérez. The other outfielders are right-handers Matt Vierling and Justyn-Henry Malloy.
Sports
Dodgers’ Miller has no fracture after liner scare
Published
1 day agoon
February 22, 2025By
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Associated Press
Feb 21, 2025, 04:25 PM ET
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Bobby Miller still had a bit of a headache but slept fine and felt much better a day after getting hit on the head by a line drive, manager Dave Roberts said Friday.
Roberts said he had spoken with Miller, who was still in concussion protocol after getting struck by a 105.5 mph liner hit by Chicago Cubs first baseman Michael Busch in the first game of spring training Thursday.
The manager said Miller indicated that there was no fracture or any significant bruising.
“He said in his words, ‘I have a hard head.’ He was certainly in good spirits,” Roberts said.
Miller immediately fell to the ground while holding his head, but quickly got up on his knees as medical staff rushed onto the field. The 25-year-old right-hander was able to walk off the field on his own.
“He feels very confident that he can kind of pick up his throwing program soon,” said Roberts, who was unsure of that timing. “But he’s just got to keep going through the concussion protocol just to make sure that we stay on the right track.”
Miller entered spring training in the mix for a spot in the starting rotation. He had a 2-4 record with an 8.52 ERA over 13 starts last season, after going 11-4 with a 3.76 in 22 starts as a rookie in 2023.
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