ESPN MLB insider Author of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports”
PHILADELPHIA — The New York Mets exist for the moments that make those of lesser stock and constitution crumble. The late innings are their playground, the comeback their wheelhouse, and no matter how many times they pull off this magic trick, the prestige won’t be any less impressive.
The latest came early Saturday evening, in Game 1 of the National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies. Feckless and shut out for seven innings, the Mets turned the eighth into death by a half-dozen cuts for the Phillies, dropping five runs and silencing Citizens Bank Park in an eventual 6-2 victory that stole home-field advantage in the five-game series and continued New York’s charmed week.
It’s an enchanted season, really, but over the most recent six-day stretch, the Mets used eighth- and ninth-inning comebacks to clinch a playoff spot, won the deciding game in their wild-card series with a ninth-inning rebirth and blitzed a pair of All-Star Phillies relievers to secure the latest win.
“This is something that we’ve done throughout the year,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “When we’re clicking as a team offensively, there’s so many things that we do. We put the ball in play, we use the whole field and we’re not thinking too big. And we did it today again.”
All of it started after Phillies ace Zack Wheeler left following a brilliant seven-inning outing. Over 111 pitches, Wheeler generated a career-high 30 swing-and-misses and limited the Mets to one hit and no runs. When Wheeler was pulled before the eighth, manager Rob Thomson took comfort in having a well-rested bullpen, with the second-seeded Phillies having last played before the calendar turned to October.
He turned to right-hander Jeff Hoffman, who got ahead of Francisco Alvarez 0-1 before he roped a single. Hoffman was ahead of Francisco Lindor 0-2 before throwing four straight balls. He was ahead of Mark Vientos 0-2 and left up a slider that Vientos yanked to left to score the Mets’ first run and tie the game at 1. In came left-hander Matt Strahm, who was ahead of Brandon Nimmo 0-2 and couldn’t sneak a fastball by him. Another single put the Mets ahead 2-1.
Pete Alonso, the hero from the wild-card series comeback against the Brewers, fought back from an 0-2 count to drive in a run with a sacrifice fly. Jose Iglesias turned an 0-2 count — and seven consecutive foul balls that followed it — into a single. And J.D. Martinez followed with another single and Starling Marte another sacrifice fly to make it 5-1.
“I feel like we’ve been playing playoff baseball for three or four weeks now,” Nimmo said. “Our season has depended on it. We’ve been doing that for a while now, and just trying to focus on whatever gets the job done and whatever gets us a W at the end of the day. When you’re only down one run, you’re able to think small and try to push that one run across, and then just keep doing it. I thought what we did, you could put on a highlight reel. This is just good baseball without hitting a home run.”
The Mets, Martinez said, are “stubborn” in their approach. And it’s the sort of thing, he said, that can lead to innings like the six-run flurry against Atlanta in Game 161 or the four-run ambush of Game 3 against the Brewers.
“Don’t think with the pitcher, don’t guess,” Martinez said. “Just lock in with the approach and stick to it. Live and die by it. You went up there with a plan for a reason. It’s easy to go, boom, boom, and all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Oh, my god. Abandoned plan.'”
Lindor, the Mets’ leader, noticed himself falling into that trap during his plate appearance in the eighth. He had hit the go-ahead, ninth-inning home run in Game 161 when down a run, and the Mets were there again. He swung at an 0-2 slider in the dirt and just got a piece of it to stay alive.
“For one second, I had a feeling of, ‘Let me get this done,'” Lindor said. “And then I kept on hearing the guys and I found myself thinking, ‘Hey, just pass the baton. Don’t try to do nothing crazy.’ Everybody had that mentality throughout the whole inning. Nobody was trying to be bigger in the moment. Everybody was just trying to embrace what was happening.”
What’s happening is a team that was once 24-35 is now two wins from its first NL Championship Series since 2015. And it happened in a game that started as poorly as it could. After Wheeler carved through the Mets in the first inning on 11 pitches, New York starter Kodai Senga, pitching in the major leagues for the first time since July 29, allowed a home run to Kyle Schwarber on his third pitch.
Senga settled down and looked good over two innings, and the Mets’ bullpen — bulk man David Peterson and right-handers Reed Garrett and Phil Maton — matched Wheeler zero for zero. Only when Wheeler left did the Phillies’ night crumble, prompting questions about whether the layoff hindered their relief pitchers.
“I don’t think so,” Thomson said. “They pitched on Wednesday, and they threw the ball fairly well. I’d have to look at the tape. It’s probably about execution and leaving some pitches in the middle of the zone. The walk to Lindor didn’t help, that’s for sure.”
It was simply one moment in an inning of pain for a Phillies team that in its last meeting with the Mets dropped two of three games and squandered an otherworldly start from Wheeler. In Game 2 on Sunday, the Mets will return to a normal pitching plan, starting Luis Severino, while the Phillies will counter with Cristopher Sanchez, whose numbers at the Bank this season have been the best of any starter on the team.
“It’s not going to work out all the time,” Nimmo said. “And that’s a reality. And you have to be OK with that in baseball, but you hope over the long term it’s going to work out. And so right now when you have games like Atlanta, you have games like Milwaukee, it makes you believe in yourself even more.”
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
NEW YORK — Giancarlo Stanton, one of the first known adopters of the torpedo bat, declined Tuesday to say whether he believes using it last season caused the tendon ailments in both elbows that forced him to begin this season on the injured list.
Last month, Stanton alluded to “bat adjustments” he made last season as a possible reason for the epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow, he’s dealing with.
“You’re not going to get the story you’re looking for,” Stanton said. “So, if that’s what you guys want, that ain’t going to happen.”
Stanton said he will continue using the torpedo bat when he returns from injury. The 35-year-old New York Yankees slugger, who has undergone multiple rounds of platelet-rich plasma injections to treat his elbows, shared during spring training that season-ending surgery on both elbows was a possibility. But he has progressed enough to recently begin hitting off a Trajekt — a pitching robot that simulates any pitcher’s windup, arm angle and arsenal. However, he still wouldn’t define his return as “close.”
He said he will first have to go on a minor league rehab assignment at an unknown date for an unknown period. It won’t start in the next week, he added.
“This is very unique,” Stanton said. “I definitely haven’t missed a full spring before. So, it just depends on my timing, really, how fast I get to feel comfortable in the box versus live pitching.”
While the craze of the torpedo bat (also known as the bowling pin bat) has swept the baseball world since it was revealed Saturday — while the Yankees were blasting nine home runs against the Milwaukee Brewers — that a few members of the Yankees were using one, the modified bat already had quietly spread throughout the majors in 2024. Both Stanton and former Yankees catcher Jose Trevino, now with the Cincinnati Reds, were among players who used the bats last season after being introduced to the concept by Aaron Leanhardt, an MIT-educated physicist and former minor league hitting coordinator for the organization.
Stanton explained he has changed bats before. He said he has usually adjusted the length. Sometimes, he opts for lighter bats at the end of the long season. In the past, when knuckleballers were more common in the majors, he’d opt for heavier lumber.
Last year, he said he simply chose his usual bat but with a different barrel after experimenting with a few models.
“I mean, it makes a lot of sense,” Stanton said. “But it’s, like, why hasn’t anyone thought of it in 100-plus years? So, it’s explained simply and then you try it and as long as it’s comfortable in your hands [it works]. We’re creatures of habit, so the bat’s got to feel kind of like a glove or an extension of your arm.”
Stanton went on to lead the majors with an average bat velocity of 81.2 mph — nearly 3 mph ahead of the competition. He had a rebound, but not spectacular, regular season in which he batted .233 with 27 home runs and a .773 OPS before clubbing seven home runs in 14 playoff games.
“It’s not like [it was] unreal all of a sudden for me,” Stanton said.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone described the torpedo bats “as the evolution of equipment” comparable to getting fitted for new golf clubs. He said the organization is not pushing players to use them and insisted the science is more complicated than just picking a bat with a different barrel.
“There’s a lot more to it than, ‘I’ll take the torpedo bat on the shelf over there — 34 [inches], 32 [ounces],'” Boone said. “Our guys are way more invested in it than that. And really personalized, really work with our players in creating this stuff. But it’s equipment evolving.”
As players around the majors order torpedo bats in droves after the Yankees’ barrage over the weekend — they clubbed a record-tying 13 homers in two games against the Brewers — Boone alluded to the notion that, though everyone is aware of the concept, not every organization can optimize its usage.
“You’re trying to just, where you can on the margins, move the needle a little bit,” Boone said. “And that’s really all you’re going to do. I don’t think this is some revelation to where we’re going to be; it’s not related to the weekend that we had, for example. Like, I don’t think it’s that. Maybe in some cases, for some players, it may help them incrementally. That’s how I view it.”
Eovaldi struck out eight and walked none in his fifth career complete game. The right-hander threw 99 pitches, 70 for strikes.
It was Eovaldi’s first shutout since April 29, 2023, against the Yankees and just the third of his career. He became the first Ranger with multiple career shutouts with no walks in the past 30 seasons, according to ESPN Research.
“I feel like, by the fifth or sixth inning, that my pitch count was down, and I feel like we had a really good game plan going into it,” Eovaldi said in his on-field postgame interview on Victory+. “I thought [Texas catcher Kyle Higashioka] called a great game. We were on the same page throughout the entire game.”
In the first inning, Wyatt Langford homered for Texas against Carson Spiers (0-1), and that proved to be all Eovaldi needed. A day after Cincinnati collected 14 hits in a 14-3 victory in the series opener, Eovaldi (1-0) silenced the lineup.
“We needed it, these bats are still quiet,” Texas manager Bruce Bochy said of his starter’s outing. “It took a well-pitched game like that. What a game.”
The Reds put the tying run on second with two out in the ninth, but Eovaldi retired Elly De La Cruz on a grounder to first.
“He’s as good as I have seen as far as a pitcher performing under pressure,” Bochy said. “He is so good. He’s a pro out there. He wants to be out there.”
Eovaldi retired his first 12 batters, including five straight strikeouts during one stretch. Gavin Lux hit a leadoff single in the fifth for Cincinnati’s first baserunner.
“I think it was the first-pitch strikes,” Eovaldi said, when asked what made him so efficient. “But also, the off-speed pitches. I was able to get some quick outs, and I didn’t really have many deep counts. … And not walking guys helps.”
Spiers gave up three hits in six innings in his season debut. He struck out five and walked two for the Reds, who fell to 2-3.
The Rangers moved to 4-2, and Langford has been at the center of it all. He now has two home runs in six games to begin the season. In 2024, it took him until the 29th game of the season to homer for the first time. Langford hit 16 homers in 134 games last season during his rookie year.
Eli Lederman covers college football and recruiting for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2024 after covering the University of Oklahoma for Sellout Crowd and the Tulsa World.
USC secured the commitment of former Oregon defensive tackle pledge Tomuhini Topui on Tuesday, a source told ESPN, handing the Trojans their latest recruiting victory in the 2026 cycle over the Big Ten rival Ducks.
Topui, ESPN’s No. 3 defensive tackle and No. 72 overall recruit in the 2026 class, spent five and half months committed to Oregon before pulling his pledge from the program on March 27. Topui attended USC’s initial spring camp practice that afternoon, and seven days later the 6-foot-4, 295-pound defender gave the Trojans his pledge to become the sixth ESPN 300 defender in the program’s 2026 class.
Topui’s commitment gives USC its 10th ESPN 300 pledge this cycle — more than any other program nationally — and pulls a fourth top-100 recruit into the impressive defensive class the Trojans are building this spring. Alongside Topui, USC’s defensive class includes in-state cornerbacks R.J. Sermons (No. 26 in ESPN Junior 300) and Brandon Lockhart (No. 77); four-star outside linebacker Xavier Griffin (No. 27) out of Gainesville, Georgia; and two more defensive line pledges between Jaimeon Winfield (No. 143) and Simote Katoanga (No. 174).
The Trojans are working to reestablish their local recruiting presence in the 2026 class under newly hired general manager Chad Bowden. Topui not only gives the Trojans their 11th in-state commit in the cycle, but his pledge represents a potentially important step toward revamping the program’s pipeline to perennial local powerhouse Mater Dei High School, too.
Topui will enter his senior season this fall at Mater Dei, the program that has produced a long line of USC stars including Matt Leinart, Matt Barkley and Amon-Ra St. Brown. However, if Topui ultimately signs with the program later this year, he’ll mark the Trojans’ first Mater Dei signee since the 2022 cycle, when USC pulled three top-300 prospects — Domani Jackson, Raleek Brown and C.J. Williams — from the high school program based in Santa Ana, California.
Topui’s flip to the Trojans also adds another layer to a recruiting rivalry rekindling between USC and Oregon in the 2026 cycle.
Tuesday’s commitment comes less than two months after coach Lincoln Riley and the Trojans flipped four-star Oregon quarterback pledge Jonas Williams, ESPN’s No. 2 dual-threat quarterback in 2026. USC is expected to continue targeting several Ducks commits this spring, including four-star offensive tackle Kodi Greene, another top prospect out of Mater Dei.