WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Martin Truex Jr. was the highest-qualifying playoff driver among the 16 in the field for Sunday’s Cup race at Watkins Glen International, a needed boost for the 2017 NASCAR champion who needs a win to guarantee himself a spot in the next round.
Truex was one of only five playoff drivers to crack the top 10 in starting order Saturday at the 2.45-mile road course. Alex Bowman was fourth and Austin Cindric fifth. Joey Logano, who advanced to the next round after last weekend’s win at Atlanta, was seventh and Daniel Suarez eighth.
Ross Chastain posted a top speed of 122.279 mph to win the pole, leading a top 10 that included road-course aces Shane Van Gisbergen and AJ Allmendinger trying their best to play postseason spoiler.
Watkins Glen is the second race of the playoffs, and the field will be cut to 12 following next week’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Brad Keselowski, Harrison Burton, Truex and Chase Briscoe are at the bottom four of the playoff standings and are essentially in win-or-else mode. Ryan Blaney, Christopher Bell and Tyler Reddick should feel safe above the cutoff line. The other eight drivers need strong points outings — or a win, of course — to remain in the field of 12.
Keselowski starts 28th and Burton starts 33rd among the 38 drivers in Sunday’s race.
Led by Chastain, Chevrolet put five drivers in the top 10, Ford had four and Truex was the lone Toyota.
Truex is winless in his final full season in NASCAR, and the Joe Gibbs Racing driver understood the challenges ahead as he entered Sunday in 15th in the playoff field and 19 points below the cutoff.
“You call it a slump. Great players get in slumps in other sports, and that is what I feel like it is,” Truex said. “I feel like we are doing a lot of good things We have lot of speed and put ourselves in position, we just have to put it all together. Some days I make mistakes, some days the team makes mistakes, some days, last week, we got caught up in an accident. There has been a lot of that. Just have to put it together on one day and hopefully that is this weekend.”
ARLINGTON, Texas — Veteran right-hander Jesse Chavez has agreed to a minor league contract that includes an invitation to spring training with the Texas Rangers, the team that drafted the 41-year-old pitcher nearly 23 years ago.
The Rangers also on Monday signed right-hander David Buchanan, outfielder Cody Thomas and catcher Chad Wallach to minor league deals with invitations to big league spring training.
Chavez was 2-2 with a 3.13 ERA in 46 games last season for Atlanta. He has a 51-65 record with a 4.25 ERA in 653 career games (85 starts) over 17 seasons with nine different teams. He was a World Series champion in 2021 with the Braves.
Texas took Chavez in the 42nd round of the 2002 amateur draft, and traded him four years later to Pittsburgh, where he made his big league debut in 2008.
He was 6-6 with a 4.58 ERA in 96 games (nine starts) for the Rangers from 2018-20. He signed with Texas as a free agent before the 2018 season, was traded to the Chicago Cubs later that summer and then re-signed with Texas in free agency before the 2019 season.
The 35-year-old Buchanan made one relief appearance for Cincinnati last season, his first MLB game since 36 starts for Philadelphia from 2014-15 until pitching three seasons in Japan and four in Korea.
Wallach hit seven home runs in 65 games for the Los Angeles Angels in 2023, and spent all of last season with their Triple-A team. Thomas, a left-handed hitter who played in 29 games for Oakland in 2022 and 2023, hit .263 with two homers and 19 RBI in 79 games in Japan last year.
ARLINGTON, Texas — The Texas Rangers have created a new company to oversee production and distribution of their game broadcasts.
The MLB team on Monday unveiled the Rangers Sports Media & Entertainment Company. That company will include the new Rangers Sports Network (RSN) and the existing REV Entertainment that is the team’s official sports and entertainment partner and official booking agent for events at its current and former stadiums.
“One of the main goals when seeking solutions for Rangers television broadcasts was to give fans more access to our games,” Rangers majority owner Ray Davis said. “We determined that the best path toward providing our fans with more options is to handle many of the broadcast obligations in-house.”
The Rangers earlier this month entered into a multiyear agreement with A Parent Media Co. Inc. (APMC) to stream Rangers regional games directly to consumers on the Victory+ service starting this year. The team said then that service, which will cost $100 to access games for a full season, was the first step in providing multiple viewing options after several seasons of access issues, but still hasn’t revealed details about additional options.
Formation of the Rangers Sports Network comes before the anticipation of deals for local TV rights to have games air through traditional cable providers along with some limited over-the-air broadcasts. The Rangers have more than 16 million households in their broadcast territory over parts of five states.
Neil Leibman, who is part of the team’s ownership group, will be chairman of the Rangers Sports Media & Entertainment Company, relinquishing his previous team responsibilities as COO and president of business operations. Jim Cochrane, a 28-year veteran of the Rangers front office, was promoted to executive vice president and chief business officer.
The Rangers previously had their regional broadcasts on Bally Sports Southwest, part of the financially troubled Diamond Sports Group that went through a bankruptcy reorganization. The team’s deal with Diamond expired at the end of last season. Bally Sports Southwest was not available through some cable companies and many popular streaming platforms.
BALTIMORE — The Baltimore Orioles agreed to terms with Dylan Carlson on a $975,000, one-year contract Monday, a couple of months after the outfielder was non-tendered by the Tampa Bay Rays.
Carlson was a first-round draft pick in 2016 by the St. Louis Cardinals, and he hit 18 home runs in his first full season in 2021. Since then, however, he’s hit only 16.
Carlson hit .209 with three home runs and 25 RBIs in 96 games for the Cardinals and Rays in 2024, but at age 26 the switch-hitter may still have some upside and can play all three outfield spots.