‘An out in three pitches’: What the rest of MLB can learn from the Royals’ old-school rotation
-
Bradford Doolittle
WHEN A TEAM finds a successful strategy in pro sports, it has long been the expectation that its competition will shift toward that strategy. The typical refrain: “It’s a copycat league.”
If that’s the case in Major League Baseball, shouldn’t the replicating felines be conducting thorough investigations of last season’s Kansas City Royals?
The 2024 Royals were a historically remarkable team. Kansas City won 30 more games than it did in 2023. If you prorate every past team to a 162-game season for comparison, the Royals authored just the 14th year-over-year leap of at least 30 wins since 1901. It was just the fourth such leap in the three decades since the advent of the wild card. Kansas City joined the 1946 Boston Red Sox and the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays as the only teams to improve by at least 30 games, then go on to win more than one game in the playoffs.
How could such a thing possibly happen? It’s not as if the Royals were like the 2022 Baltimore Orioles — another 30-win leaper — who turned the corner after years of topping the prospect rankings. Entering the season, the prospect mavens remained very much down on the Royals’ system. Yet they broke out anyway. Wouldn’t the answer to this particular “how” question have some repercussions on baseball’s hypercompetitive, eager-to-innovate landscape?
The answers have a lot to do with the fading status of the starting pitcher — and how, when it comes to managing a rotation, there’s more than one way worth copying.
THEY TRIED. THAT’S what you heard so often about Kansas City’s success. It’s true. Despite losing 106 games the season before, the Royals went about building the best 26-man roster they could, displaying an aggression during free agency that surprised everyone. They tried, sure, but they also tried in a very specific way.
The sexy part of the Royals’ breakout was the amazing-but-expected rise of star shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. But the Royals scored only 59 more runs in 2024 than the season before. The rocket fuel for the turnaround came on the other side of the ball, where K.C. slashed 215 runs off of its 28th-ranked runs allowed total of 2023.
While the bullpen performed better, the rotation accounted for most of this, cutting its collective ERA from 5.17 to 3.76. The group didn’t have a Paul Skenes ascend to the majors, nor did it have a high-profile international addition. The Royals did introduce two solid veteran free agents to the group in Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha.
“We felt like we had a lot of holes to fill and everything in this game starts and ends with starting pitching,” Royals GM J.J. Picollo told ESPN during the team’s hot start last year. “So that was clearly the No. 1 objective, trying to secure two starting pitchers.”
That’s an old-school statement, the type of thing baseball execs have been saying for eons. Still, while Lugo and Wacha had good enough track records that Kansas City was far from their only option, between them they had accounted for one All-Star appearance (Wacha in 2015) over 19 combined big-league campaigns. It’s not the kind of thing that takes a team from 106 losses to playing the New York Yankees in October.
But it did. The Royals did play into October, and everything did begin with those two signings. Lugo (16-9, 3.00 ERA over 206⅔ innings, second in AL Cy Young balloting) and Wacha (13-8, 3.35 ERA, 166⅔ innings) were outstanding. Just as important, though, were the downhill effects of their dual arrival.
“Wacha and Lugo are great,” said the budding ace the Royals already had in their deck, fireballing lefty Cole Ragans. “They are two great guys who you look up to and try to understand how they go about their game.”
Well, how do they go about their games?
The most important statistic about the Kansas City rotation might simply have been 908 — the number of innings the Royals got from their starting pitchers. That total ranked second in the majors behind Seattle, but 95% of that figure came from K.C.’s five most-used starters, the highest percentage in the majors. Lugo led the way with an AL-leading 836 batters faced.
“Lugo threw 206 innings, I think, last year,” Ragans said, correctly. “That’s where you want to be. The goal is 200 innings. You just watch him, how he goes about his business, how he thinks about pitching. He knows he can get swing-and-miss when he needs it, but he’s trying to get guys off balance and get some weak contact.”
Lugo led the way, but his approach was Kansas City’s approach — even for Ragans, who has elite swing-and-miss ability. These aren’t new ideas, but they felt kind of like it during a season when pitcher injuries — and the widespread focus on max-effort pitching that likely contributes to them — dominated the headlines. The Royals simply did not participate in that narrative.
With five core starters — Lugo, Wacha, Ragans, Brady Singer (now with the Cincinnati Reds) and Alec Marsh — doing most of the work, the Royals’ rotation still managed to work deeper into games than any other team in an era of two-times-through-the-order starters. Some facts:
• Royals starters faced 23.4 batters per outing, most in the majors, making the trip into the third time through the order a standard, not a rarity.
• Kansas City tied for third in quality starts (76), which of course entails going at least six innings in an outing.
• The Royals’ starters threw just 16.2 pitches per frame, ranking 23rd in the majors.
• The Royals ranked 21st in total payroll, but 14th in payroll allotted for starting pitchers. Their core five starters accounted for 30.7% of the outpay, the second-largest percentage allocated for that group in the majors, behind Toronto (34.4%).
• Of the Royals’ 86 wins, 58 resulted in winning decisions for a core-five starter, the highest total in the majors.
• The core five started 151 of the Royals’ 162 games, another big-league-leading total.
Obviously, a lot has to go your way for this to happen. It’s not as if the Royals have figured out how to sidestep pitching injuries. But this was all very much by design, not just in roster construction, but in terms of game-by-game, inning-by-inning, pitch-by-pitch approach.
Call it a season approach, rather than a game approach. To achieve maximum results over 162 games, don’t leave it all out there in any one situation with a barrage of 100 mph fastballs and a focus on the strikeout column. Much of it has to do with managing effort, not the easiest skill to learn in the era of Statcast and Rapsodo, but it’s one even the game’s best strikeout pitchers can hone over time.
“It’s trying to rein in when somebody steps in there,” said the Texas Rangers‘ Jacob deGrom, a two-time Cy Young winner with a career strikeout rate of 11 whiffs per nine innings. Yet, after a string of injury-plagued seasons, deGrom is focused on easing up on the throttle. “When somebody steps in, it’s go time. But you have to trust that your stuff plays at maybe not 100% effort. There’s a lot of times you’ll actually locate the ball better. So it can be a plus in both ways, health wise, and maybe some location stuff.”
These are lessons taken to heart by the newest member of the Royals’ rotation, lefty Kris Bubic, who is transitioning back to starting pitching after Kansas City traded Singer over the winter.
“I don’t want to say pitching to contact,” Bubic said. “But we’re not relying on velocity. We’re relying on change of speeds, throwing a lot of strikes.”
This sentiment is borne out in the data. The Royals’ starters ranked in the middle of the pack in terms of average velocity, with Ragans’ ability to crack 100 with his four-seamer leading the way, so it’s not like they were a bunch of Jamie Moyers. But the Royals’ reliance on softer stuff resulted in the second-highest aggregate spin rate among rotations.
Forget the radar. Get in, get out.
“There’s always a philosophy of ‘an out in three pitches,'” Bubic said, repeating it like a mantra. “You want a guy out on three pitches. You want a guy out on three pitches. You just continue that attacking mindset.”
THIS WINTER’S TOP free agent starting pitchers had plenty of suitors. Based on data from Roster Resources at FanGraphs, we can estimate that about $1.38 billion in committed salary went to free agent starters — highlighted by nine-figure commitments for Max Fried, Corbin Burnes and Blake Snell.
After the Royals’ success in 2024, you might have expected a bit more activity from baseball’s also-rans and low-revenue teams, which saw how the right couple of rotation additions can not just infuse the win column but can paper over an organization’s lack of depth.
Yet it was mostly the usual suspects doing all of that spending. Teams that finished .500 or better last year accounted for 78% of the collective rotation investment. If you look at it from a revenue standpoint, the 12 highest-grossing teams (or 40% of the league) accounted for 58% of the spending on starters.
There were exceptions in the Athletics and Los Angeles Angels. The low-ish revenue Arizona Diamondbacks doled out $210 million for Burnes. Still, by and large, there wasn’t a deluge of teams following in the Royals’ path. Ranking eighth in spending on starters were the Royals themselves, who committed $58 million to bring back Wacha and Michael Lorenzen.
If you love the traditional models of starting pitching, this might be disappointing. As we’ve alluded to, while the Royals didn’t reinvent the rotation wheel, they did at least show us that some of the old ways can still work. But so, too, do the new ways.
Case in point: If the Royals took a season approach to running their rotation, other teams won with a game-based approach — and none more so than the Milwaukee Brewers.
“We don’t have the firepower to give up one game, you know?” said Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy, the reigning National League Manager of the Year. “I mean, we just don’t. We’re not built that way.”
The Brewers have been one of baseball’s great innovators for years now, but much of their recent run of success has been due to a foundation of starting pitching, led by Burnes, Brandon Woodruff and Freddy Peralta. But Burnes was traded before last season and Woodruff was recovering from a shoulder injury.
Still, the revamped Brewers won 93 games and the NL Central title, and they did it by winning one game at a time in about the most anti-Royals way possible.
Only three teams used fewer starters than the Royals’ nine, but only two clubs used more than the Brewers’ 17. Only three teams got fewer rotation innings than Milwaukee, and only six teams saw their starters throw more pitches per inning.
Instead of riding a group of old-school starters and preserving them as much as possible for the long haul, the Brewers improvised their way along, day after day. And it worked.
“Of course, we want the length,” said Milwaukee pitching coach Chris Hook. “But that’s not necessarily how you put 27 outs together.”
In terms of managing effort, this approach focuses a starting pitcher in that he doesn’t have to worry about the later innings, as starters once did. Still, the notion of managing effort at all might be an individual pitcher thing, as opposed to an explicit message from an organization. Brewers starter Aaron Civale has spent his career taking a tour of some of baseball’s most cutting-edge pitching programs, moving from Cleveland to Tampa Bay to Milwaukee.
“I’ve never been instructed to not have the foot on the gas,” Civale said. “I’ve also never been instructed to have my foot on the gas. I think that if you’re a competitor and you’re at this level, you’re going pitch to pitch, and you’re trying to win that moment versus the hitter. And the hitter is doing the same thing.”
In a sense, the Brewers maintained that kind of postseason mindset from the first pitch on Opening Day. Worry about getting the win today. Then worry about tomorrow.
“It’d be great to have five dudes,” Hook said, “but I don’t think that’s the norm. Throughout the league, it’s not the norm. For us even more so, because we do things a little different in how we construct a roster.”
That roster construction works because of Milwaukee’s ability to consistently build deep, dominant bullpens, often with the considerable help of pitchers who have struggled in other organizations. It also involves finding what former manager Craig Counsell always called “out getters” — pitchers who fill a variety of roles from short, high-leverage spots to multi-inning stints in the middle of winnable games.
“It’s about winning the F’ing game tonight,” Hook said. “That’s basically Murph’s mantra, and I think that’s how we play the system.”
EVERYTHING WENT RIGHT for the Royals’ rotation in 2024, just as pretty much everything went right for the Brewers’ bullpen, at least once closer Devin Williams returned from injury. The teams went about it very differently but ultimately both approaches paid off in postseason appearances.
Now they are running it back, trying to repeat dynamics that are so hard to pin down. Can the Royals get 151 starts from five starting pitchers? Can the Brewers continue to spin almost every bullpen arm they acquire into high-leverage gold, especially after trading Williams to the Yankees in December?
Both teams pursued a bit more rotation/bullpen balance. The Royals made the bold move of moving Singer in his prime in order to acquire a much-needed leadoff hitter in Jonathan India. They also bolstered a bullpen that was spotty for much of 2024, having added high-leverage fireballers Lucas Erceg, Hunter Harvey and Carlos Estevez since the middle of last season.
Still, the investment to bring back Wacha and Lorenzen, and the decision to move Bubic to the rotation after a highly successful campaign as a reliever, shows that starting pitching very much remains the focus in Kansas City.
“You want to take that baton,” said Bubic, who added a second slider in order to diversify his arsenal in a way that will allow him to navigate opposing lineups as many times as possible. “They pass that baton to you and you want to fulfill those same expectations: Make a quality start, pitching deep into games.”
The Brewers, meanwhile, committed just $5.25 million in new salary to its rotation, the bulk of that coming late in the spring when veteran Jose Quintana signed after strangely lingering on the free agent market all winter. They also acquired starter Nestor Cortes in the Williams deal. But Milwaukee will remain unlikely to climb high on the leaderboard for rotation innings.
Maybe the Royals’ turnaround didn’t spur a neoclassic movement in starting pitching, but at least they showed that a season approach can still work. Insomuch as that’s the case, some of the old ways live on. But every new season is a blank slate.
“The starters carrying those innings, going deep into those games, was immensely important last year,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “I don’t know how to predict it going forward.”
The NHL’s board of governors and the NHLPA’s membership have ratified a new collective bargaining agreement. The current CBA runs through the end of the 2025-26 season, with the new one carrying through the end of the 2029-30 season.
While the continuation of labor peace is the most important development for a league that has endured multiple work stoppages this millennium, there are a number of wrinkles that are noteworthy to fans.
ESPN reporters Ryan S. Clark, Kristen Shilton and Greg Wyshynski break it all down for you here:
Draft recap: All 224 picks
Grades for all 32 teams
Winners and losers
When does this new CBA take effect?
The new NHL CBA is set to begin on Sept. 16, 2026 and runs through Sept. 15, 2030. Including the coming season, that gives the NHL five years of labor peace, and would make the fastest both sides have reached an extension in Gary Bettman’s tenure as NHL commissioner.
It’s also the first major negotiation for NHLPA head Marty Walsh, who stepped into the executive director role in 2023 — Shilton
What are the big differences in the new CBA compared to the current one?
There are a few major headlines from the new CBA.
First are the schedule changes: the league will move to an 84-game regular season, with a shortened preseason (a maximum of four games), so each team is still able to play every opponent while divisional rivals have four games against one another every other season.
There will also be alterations to contract lengths, going to a maximum seven-year deal instead of the current eight-year mark; right now, a player can re-sign for eight years with his own team or seven with another in free agency, while the new CBA stipulates it’ll be seven or six years, respectively.
Deferred salaries will also be on the way out. And there will be a new position established for a team’s full-time emergency backup goaltender — or EBUG — where that player can practice and travel with the team.
The CBA also contains updated language on long-term injured reserve and how it can be used, particularly when it comes to adding players from LTIR to the roster for the postseason — Shilton
What’s the motivation for an 84-game season?
The new CBA expands the regular season to 84 games and reduces the exhibition season to four games per team. Players with 100 games played in their NHL careers can play in a maximum of two exhibition games. Players who competed in at least 50 games in the previous season will have a maximum of 13 days of training camp.
The NHL had an 84-game season from 1992 to 1994, when the league and NHLPA agreed to add two neutral-site games to every team’s schedule. But since 1995-96, every full NHL regular season has been 82 games.
For at least the past four years, the league has had internal discussions about adding two games to the schedule while decreasing the preseason. The current CBA restricted teams from playing more than 82 games, so expansion of the regular season required collective bargaining.
There was a functional motivation behind the increase in games: Currently, each team plays either three or four games against divisional opponents, for a total of 26 games; they play three games against non-divisional teams within their own conference, for a total of 24 games; and they play two games, home and away, against opponents from the other conference for a total of 32 games. Adding two games would allow teams to even out their divisional schedule, while swapping in two regular-season games — with regular-season crowd sizes and prices — for two exhibition games.
The reduction of the preseason would also give the NHL the chance to start the regular season earlier, perhaps in the last week of September. Obviously, given the grind of the current regular season and the playoffs, there’s concern about wear and tear on the players with two additional games. But the reduction of training camp and the exhibition season was appealing to players, and they signed off on the 84-game season in the new CBA. — Wyshynski
1:49
Why Mitch Marner is a great fit for Vegas
Greg Wyshynski reports on Mitch Marner getting traded from the Maple Leafs to the Golden Knights.
How do the new long-term injured reserve rules work?
The practice of teams using long-term injured reserve (LTIR) to create late-season salary cap space — only to have the injured player return for the first game of the playoffs after sitting out game No. 82 of the regular season — tracks back to 2015. That’s when the Chicago Blackhawks used an injured Patrick Kane‘s salary cap space to add players at the trade deadline. Kane returned for the start of the first round, and eventually won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP in their Stanley Cup win.
Since then, the NHL has seen teams such as the Tampa Bay Lightning (Nikita Kucherov 2020-21), Vegas Golden Knights (Mark Stone, 2023), Florida Panthers (Matthew Tkachuk, 2024) also use LTIR to their advantage en route to Stanley Cup wins.
The NHL has investigated each occurrence of teams using LTIR and then having players return for the playoffs, finding nothing actionable — although the league is currently investigating the Edmonton Oilers use of LTIR for Evander Kane, who sat out the regular season and returned in the first round of the most recent postseason.
Last year, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said that if “the majority” of general managers wanted a change to this practice, the NHL would consider it. Some players weren’t happy about the salary cap loophole.
Ron Hainsey, NHLPA assistant executive director, said during the Stanley Cup Final that players have expressed concern at different times “either public or privately” about misuse of long-term injured reserve. He said that the NHL made closing that loophole “a priority for them” in labor talks.
Under the new CBA, the total salary and bonuses for “a player or players” that have replaced a player on LTIR may not exceed the amount of total salary and bonuses of the player they are replacing. For example: In 2024, the Golden Knights put winger Stone and his $9.5 million salary on LTIR, given that he was out because of a lacerated spleen. The Golden Knights added $10.8 million in salary to their cap before the trade deadline in defenseman Noah Hanifin and forwards Tomas Hertl and Anthony Mantha.
But the bigger tweak to the LTIR rule states that “the average amounts of such replacement player(s) may not exceed the prior season’s average league salary.” According to PuckPedia, the average player salary last season was $3,817,293, for example.
The CBA does allow an exception to these LTIR rules, with NHL and NHLPA approval, based on how much time the injured player is likely to miss. Teams can exceed these “average amounts,” but the injured player would be ineligible to return that season or in the postseason.
But the NHL and NHLPA doubled-down on discouraging teams from abusing LTIR to go over the salary cap in the Stanley Cup playoffs by establishing “playoff cap counting” for the first time. — Wyshynski
What is ‘playoff cap counting’ and how will it affect the postseason?
In 2021, the Carolina Hurricanes lost to Tampa Bay in the Eastern Conference playoffs. That’s when defenseman Dougie Hamilton famously lamented that his team fell to a Lightning squad “that’s $18 million over the cap or whatever they are,” as Tampa Bay used Kucherov’s LTIR space in the regular season before he returned for the playoffs.
Even more famously, Kucherov wore a T-shirt that read “$18M OVER THE CAP” during their Stanley Cup championship celebration.
The NHL and NHLPA have attempted to put an end to this creative accounting — in combination with the new LTIR rules in the regular season — through a new CBA provision called “playoff cap counting.”
By 3 p.m. local time or five hours before a playoff game — whatever is earlier — teams will submit a roster of 18 players and two goaltenders to NHL Central Registry. There will be a “playoff playing roster averaged club salary” calculated for that roster that must be under the “upper limit” of the salary cap for that team. The “averaged club salary” is the sum of the face value averaged amounts of the player salary and bonuses for that season for each player on the roster, and all amounts charged to the team’s salary cap.
Teams can make changes to their rosters after that day’s deadline, provided they’ve cleared it with NHL Central Registry.
1:54
How Aaron Ekblad, Panthers benefit from staying together
Greg Wyshynski reports on Aaron Ekblad signing a new deal that keeps him with the Panthers for eight more years.
The “upper limit” for an individual team is the leaguewide salary cap ceiling minus any cap penalties for contract buyouts; 35-plus players or players with one-way contracts demoted to the minor leagues; retained salary in trades; cap recapture penalties; or contract grievance settlements.
The cap compliance is only for the players participating in a given postseason game. As one NHL player agent told ESPN: “You can have $130 million in salaries on your total roster once the playoffs start, but the 18 players and two goalies that are on the ice must be cap-compliant.”
These rules will be in effect for the first two seasons of the new CBA (2026-28). After that, either the NHL or the NHLPA can reopen this section of the CBA for “good faith discussions about the concerns that led to the election to reopen and whether these rules could be modified in a manner that would effectively address such concerns.”
If there’s no resolution of those concerns, the “playoff cap counting” will remain in place for the 2028-29 season. — Wyshynski
Did the NHL CBA make neck guards mandatory?
Professional leagues around the world have adjusted their player equipment protection standards since Adam Johnson’s death in October 2023. Johnson, 29, was playing for the Nottingham Panthers of England’s Elite Ice Hockey League when he suffered a neck laceration from an opponent’s skate blade.
The AHL mandated cut-resistant neck protection for players and officials for the 2024-25 season. The IIHF did the same for international tournaments, while USA Hockey required all players under the age of 18 to wear them.
Now, the NHL and NHLPA have adjusted their standards for neck protection in the new CBA.
Beginning with the 2026-27 season, players who have zero games of NHL experience will be required to wear “cut-resistant protection on the neck area with a minimum cut level protection score of A5.” The ANSI/ISEA 105-2016 Standard rates neck guards on a scale from A1 to A9, and players are encouraged to seek out neck protection that’s better than the minimal requirement.
Players with NHL experience prior to the 2026-27 season will not be required to wear neck protection. — Wyshynski
What’s the new player dress code?
The NHL and NHLPA agreed that teams will no longer be permitted “to propose any rules concerning player dress code.”
Under the previous CBA, the NHL was the only North American major men’s pro sports league with a dress code specified through collective bargaining. Exhibit 14, Rule 5 read: “Players are required to wear jackets, ties and dress pants to all Club games and while traveling to and from such games unless otherwise specified by the Head Coach or General Manager.”
That rule was deleted in the new CBA.
The only requirement now for players is that they “dress in a manner that is consistent with contemporary fashion norms.”
Sorry, boys: No toga parties on game days. — Wyshynski
Does the new CBA cover the Olympics beyond 2026?
Yes. The NHL and NHLPA have committed to participate in the 2030 Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held in the French Alps. As usual, the commitment is ” subject to negotiation of terms acceptable to each of the NHL, NHLPA, IIHF and/or IOC.”
And as we saw with the 2022 Beijing Games, having a commitment in the CBA doesn’t guarantee NHL players on Olympic ice. — Wyshynski
Did the NHL end three-team salary retention trades?
It has become an NHL trade deadline tradition. One team retains salary on a player so he can fit under another team’s salary cap. But to make the trade happen, those teams invite a third team to the table to retain even more of that salary to make it work.
Like when the Lightning acquired old friend Yanni Gourde from the Seattle Kraken last season. Gourde made $5,166,667 against the cap. Seattle traded him to Detroit for defenseman Kyle Aucoin, and the Kraken retained $2,583,334 in salary. The Red Wings then retained $1,291,667 of Gourde’s salary in sending him to Tampa Bay for a fourth-round pick, allowing the Lightning to fit him under their cap.
Though the NHL will still allow retained salary transactions, there’s now a mandatory waiting period until that player’s salary can be retained in a second transaction. A second retained salary transaction may not occur within 75 regular-season days of the first retained salary transaction.
Days outside of the regular-season schedule do not count toward the required 75 regular-season days, and therefore the restriction might span multiple seasons, according to the CBA. — Wyshynski
Can players now endorse alcoholic beverages?
Yes. The previous CBA banned players from any endorsement or sponsorship of alcoholic beverages. That has been taken out of the new CBA. If only Bob Beers were still playing …
While players remain prohibited from any endorsement or sponsorship of tobacco products, a carryover from the previous CBA, they’re also banned from endorsement or sponsorship of “cannabis (including CBD) products.” — Wyshynski
What are the new parameters for Emergency Goaltender Replacement?
The NHL is making things official with the emergency backup goaltender (EBUG) position.
In the past, that third goalie spot went to someone hanging out in the arena during a game, ready to jump in for either team if both of their own goaltenders were injured or fell ill during the course of play. Basically, it was a guy in street clothes holding onto the dream of holding down an NHL crease.
Now, the league has given permanent status to the EBUG role. That player will travel with and practice for only one club. But there are rules involved in their employment.
This CBA designates that to serve as a team’s emergency goaltender replacement, the individual cannot have played an NHL game under an NHL contract, appeared in more than 80 professional hockey games, have been in professional hockey within the previous three seasons, have a contractual obligation that would prevent them from fulfilling their role as the EBUG or be on the reserve or restricted free agent list of an NHL club.
Teams must submit one designated EBUG 48 hours before the NHL regular season starts. During the season, teams can declare that player 24 hours before a game. — Shilton
What’s the deal with eliminating deferred salaries?
The new CBA will prohibit teams from brokering deferred salary arrangements, meaning players will be paid in full during the contract term lengths. This is meant to save players from financial uncertainty and makes for simplified contract structures with the club.
There are examples of players who had enormous signing bonuses paid up front or had structured their deals to include significant payouts when they ended. Both tactics could serve to lower an individual’s cap hit over the life of a deal. Now that won’t be an option for teams or players to use in negotiations. — Shilton
What’s different about contract lengths?
Starting under the new CBA, the maximum length of a player contract will go from eight years to seven years if he’s re-signing with the same club, and down to just six years (from the current seven) if he signs with a new team.
So, for example, a player coming off his three-year, entry-level contract could re-sign only with that same team for up to seven years, and he’ll become an unrestricted free agent sooner than the current agreement would allow.
This could benefit teams that have signed players to long-term contracts that didn’t age well (for whatever reason) as they won’t be tied as long to that decision. And for players, it can help preserve some of their prime years if they want to move on following a potential 10 (rather than 11) maximum seasons with one club. — Shilton
What does the new league minimum salary look like? How does it compare to the other men’s professional leagues?
Under the new CBA, the minimum salary for an NHL player will rise from $775,000 to $1 million by the end of the four-year agreement. Although gradual, it is a significant rise for a league in which the salary cap presents more challenges compared to its counterparts.
For example, the NHL will see its salary cap rise to $95.5 million in 2025-26, compared to that of the NFL in which Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott’s highest three-year average is $61.6 million.
So how does the new NHL minimum salary upon the CBA’s completion compare to its counterparts in the Big 4?
The NBA league minimum for the 2025-26 season is $1.4 million for a rookie, while players with more than 10 years can earn beyond $3.997 million in a league that has a maximum of 15 roster spots
The NFL, which has a 53-player roster, has a league minimum of $840,000 for rookies in 2025, while a veteran with more than seven years will earn $1.255 million.
MLB’s CBA, which expires after the 2026 season, has the minimum salary for the 2025 season set at $760,000, and that figure increases to $780,000 next season. — Clark
Is this Gary Bettman’s final CBA as commissioner?
Possibly. The Athletic reported in January that the board of governors had begun planning for Bettman’s eventual retirement “in a couple of years,” while starting the process to find his successor.
Bettman became the NHL’s first commissioner in 1993, and has the distinction of being the longest-serving commissioner among the four major men’s professional leagues in North America. He is also the oldest. Bettman turned 73 in June, while contemporaries Roger Goodell, Rob Manfred and Adam Silver are all in their early- to mid-60s.
That’s not to suggest he couldn’t remain in place. There is a precedent of commissioners across those leagues who remained in those respective roles into their 70s. Ford Frick, who served as the third commissioner of MLB, was 71 when he stepped down in 1965. There are more recent examples than Frick, as former NBA commissioner David Stern stepping down in 2014 when he was 71, and former MLB commissioner Bud Selig stepped down in 2015 at age 80. — Clark
-
Eli Lederman
Georgia beat Florida and Texas to its second five-star pledge in the 2026 class on Saturday with a commitment from tight end Kaiden Prothro, the No. 19 overall prospect in the 2026 ESPN 300.
Prothro, a 6-foot-7, 210-pound recruit from Bowdon, Georgia, is ESPN’s No. 2 overall tight end and viewed as one of the top pass catchers at any position in the current class. A priority in-state target for coach Kirby Smart, Prothro took official visits to Auburn, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Texas before narrowing his recruitment to the Bulldogs, Gators and Longhorns last month.
He announced his commitment to Georgia in a ceremony at Bowdon High School, where Prothro has hauled in 89 passes for 2,034 yards and 35 touchdowns over the past two seasons.
Prothro arrives as the Bulldogs’ 17th ESPN 300 pledge in an incoming recruiting class that sits at No. 2 in ESPN’s latest class rankings for the cycle, joining quarterback Jared Curtis (No. 6 overall) as the program’s second five-star commit in 2026. He now stands as the top-ranked member of a growing Georgia pass-catcher class that also includes four-star wide receivers Brady Marchese (No. 62) and Ryan Mosley (No. 120) and three-star Craig Dandridge.
The Bulldogs, who produced six NFL draft picks at tight ends from 2019-24, have forged a reputation for developing top tight end talent under Smart and assistant coach Todd Hartley. Georgia signed ESPN’s top two tight end prospects — Elyiss Williams and Ethan Barbour — in the 2025 class, and Prothro now follows four-stars Brayden Fogle (No. 142 overall) and Lincoln Keyes (No. 238) as the program’s third tight end pledge in 2026.
Those arrivals, along with eligibility beyond 2025 for current Georgia tight ends Lawson Luckie and Jaden Reddell, could make for a crowded tight end room when Prothro steps on campus next year.
However, Prothro is expected to distinguish himself at the college level as a versatile downfield option capable of creating mismatches with a unique blend of size, speed and physicality in the mold of former two-time All-America Georgia tight end Brock Bowers. His father Clarence told ESPN that Georgia intends to utilize Prothro across roles, including flex tight end and jumbo receiver, and said scheme fit was a key driving factor in his son’s decision.
A three-time state football champion, Prothro caught 33 passes for 831 yards and 13 touchdowns as a sophomore in 2023. He eclipsed 1,200-yards in his junior campaign last fall, closing 2024 with 56 receptions (21.4 yards per catch) and 22 receiving touchdowns en route to a 13-2 finish and a third consecutive state championship. Prothro is also an All-Region baseball player and was credited with 20.7 points and 16.5 rebounds per game in his junior basketball season.
-
Dave Wilson
Trinity University said on Friday night that 8-year-old Kellyanne Lytal, the daughter of Tigers offensive coordinator Wade Lytal, was confirmed dead after being missing since the Guadalupe River floods hit the Texas Hill Country last week.
Kellyanne was one of the girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp in Hunt, Texas. Officials have said 27 campers and counselors died in the floodwaters that rapidly swamped the campground.
“Our entire community grieves with the Lytal family, to whom we extend our deepest sympathies and unwavering support,” Trinity University said on social media. “We know this loss will be felt across our campus and beyond.”
Trinity is a Division III program in San Antonio, Texas. For many Texans, summer camps in the Hill Country are a rite of passage, and Wade Lytal, a 2009 graduate of Trinity who played offensive line for the Tigers, posted last Sunday that Kellyanne was missing from the camp, located about 85 miles away from their San Antonio home, after the storm. He included a video of her singing in her Christmas pageant.
Asking for all prayers for a miracle for my baby girl Kellyanne. She is still one of the Mystic Campers who is unaccounted for. I’ll never forget when she told me she had a lead solo in the Christmas Pageant. She is absolutely fearless. pic.twitter.com/prz7FkPtLr
— TUFB Coach_Lytal (@CoachLytal) July 6, 2025
KSAT-TV in San Antonio reported that Trinity head coach Jerheme Urban, along with several players, had been among the searchers in the flood-ravaged areas.
Lytal and his wife, Malorie, have another young daughter, Emmalynn.
“She was kind, fearless, silly, compassionate, and a loving friend to everyone,” the Lytal family said about Kellyanne in a statement to Fox Digital. “Even though she was taken from us way too early, we thank God for the eight magical years we got to share with her. Our family wants to thank everyone for their prayers and support during this difficult time. We are forever grateful for the men and women who are assisting in the Search and Rescue efforts.”
By Friday night, the disaster’s death toll had grown to 129 with more than 160 missing.
The Texas floods were a topic of discussion at Big 12 media days this week in Frisco, Texas, with TCU coach Sonny Dykes and players wearing green ribbons in Camp Mystic’s honor and Baylor coach Dave Aranda and Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire speaking about how difficult it has been to process the tragedy.
“Just so affected by that as a parent,” Aranda said. “It’s a parent’s worst nightmare, and it’s beyond tragedy. The last couple days, I have just really been struggling with that. My wife and I have been just keeping up with it and I just wanted to say that, you know, my heart is broken and the girls and the families affected are in my thoughts.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike