
‘When can I play again?’: Inside Bryce Steele’s journey back to football after battling cancer
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David HaleJun 25, 2025, 06:55 AM ET
Close- College football reporter.
- Joined ESPN in 2012.
- Graduate of the University of Delaware.
BEFORE CANCER, BRYCE Steele loved to run.
He became a prized recruit for Boston College as a linebacker, but as a kid, he played receiver, reveling in any chance to put distance between himself and a defender. He was on the high school track team, and he still follows the drills his coaches taught him. When COVID-19 scuttled his senior football season, he’d wake at sunrise most mornings, pop in his earbuds and run a few miles through a nearby park in his hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, taking breaks only to dash off 100 situps or pushups.
After cancer, running was hell.
It was December 2023, just two months removed from his latest cancer surgery, and Steele was determined to rebuild his life, to return to the form that made him one of BC’s best prospects. Instead, he emerged from a hospital bed with nearly a half-dozen incisions twisting around his rib cage “like bullet hole wounds” where chest tubes had been inserted into his abdomen. They’d healed over by the time he started running again, but the scar tissue still burned as he pumped his fists in a wide ellipse with each stride, just the way his track coach had taught.
He could run in quick bursts, but afterward, he’d gasp for air.
“It felt like I was suffocating,” Steele said, “like someone had a bag over my head.”
Still, he kept running, first in short stumbles, then up and down the stairs outside his apartment in Chestnut Hill, then back at practice with the rest of his teammates at Boston College, a little farther and a little faster most days until this spring, when he’d reached something close enough to his old pace to work with the first-team defense again.
“This offseason, I hit it as hard as I possibly could, literally to the point of nearly passing out,” Steele said. “I want it that bad, and any way I can push myself to get back to what I was before, I’ll do it.”
Sometimes when Steele runs, he’s chasing a ghost. He’ll thumb through old highlight videos on his phone and catch a glimpse of the player he was, the player he thinks he should be again if he keeps working.
At times he’s chasing a dream. He has wanted to play football since he was old enough to hold a ball, and though cancer has often clouded that image, he still sees its contours, a little sharper with each stride.
Sometimes, though, it’s as if he’s running in place, caught between gratitude and regret, unsure whether to measure the miles from where he began or the steps left in front of him.
Steele wants to move forward. But cancer is like his shadow.
Still, he believes there’s a life beyond cancer, if he can just outrun it a little while longer.
STEELE STARTED PLAYING football when he was 4 years old, and he fell in love.
“You could just tell the way he planned for his games,” his mother, Nicholle, said. “He’d lay his uniform out the night before a game. He was meticulous.”
At Episcopal High, the boarding school he attended in Virginia, he blossomed into a star. At 6-foot-1, 230 pounds with a relentless work ethic, he had nearly three dozen scholarship offers by his sophomore year, and that summer, he took a bus tour to work out at camps across the Midwest, including at his dream school, Ohio State.
It was during those camps he first sensed something was wrong. He’d deliver a hit on a ball carrier, and it would take a moment or two longer than usual to recover. And there was that cough — a dry, hacking, full-body lurch. It had been nagging him for weeks, and when he went home to Raleigh in July, his mother sent him to urgent care. He was prescribed an antibiotic. When he returned to Episcopal a few weeks later, the cough still hadn’t gone away.
Steele’s parents, Wendell Steele and Nicholle Steele, visited for Episcopal’s season opener in late August. They insisted he see the campus doctor, who sent him for X-rays and an MRI. The family was eating dinner near campus that evening when Nicholle’s phone rang.
“We’re all laughing and joking,” Bryce said, “and immediately her face fell.”
Nicholle stepped outside to talk. When she came back, Bryce said, it was obvious she’d been crying.
Bryce didn’t pry. Instead, Wendell and Nicholle dropped him off at his dorm where he played video games with his roommate, then grabbed his scooter and went for a ride around campus. When he passed by the medical center, he noticed his parents’ SUV in the lot.
Then his phone buzzed.
“We need you to come see the doctor right now,” his mother said.
When he arrived, Bryce found Nicholle doubled over and sobbing. Nicholle still feels guilty for not recognizing the severity of her son’s symptoms earlier, she said, but Bryce was young and a high-performing athlete. Who would think of cancer?
The doctor showed Bryce his chest X-ray, pointing out a dark splotch just beneath his heart. That shouldn’t be there. More tests were needed, but the splotch could be a tumor.
“Can I play tomorrow?” Bryce asked.
The answer was obvious to everyone except him, and when it finally sunk in that he’d miss the game — maybe the season — he broke down.
His parents tried to console him, wrapping their arms around him, but Bryce pushed them away.
“I was angry at the world,” Bryce said. “I heard the term ‘possible cancer,’ but I didn’t care about that. I wanted to play football.”
That night, Bryce went back to his dorm room and said a prayer.
“God,” he asked, “whatever you do, let me play football tomorrow. I don’t care what happens in the future. Just let me play in the game.”
STEELE WAS DIAGNOSED in September 2019 with thymoma, a rare form of cancer — particularly for someone his age — that develops in the thymus gland in the upper chest. From there, things moved fast.
Steele had surgery at Duke Medical Center in North Carolina, where doctors removed a 13-centimeter tumor, then he underwent proton radiation at Georgetown Hospital in Washington, D.C., to avoid chemotherapy. Doctors expected he’d make a full recovery, but they warned that, due to the tumor’s size, there were no guarantees cancerous cells wouldn’t be left behind. He missed his entire junior season, but he kept the diagnosis private. What had been a steady stream of coaches texting and calling dried to a trickle.
Steele ended up with a half-dozen offers he seriously considered. He’d settled on South Carolina, but just weeks before he planned to enroll, head coach Will Muschamp was fired, so Steele reconsidered. That’s when he got a call from Jeff Hafley, who’d first met Steele as Ohio State’s defensive coordinator and was now the head coach at Boston College.
“We knew of his diagnosis, but he fit BC,” Hafley said. “He was made of the right stuff. Smart guy, great person. We recruited him really hard.”
Steele flashed potential as a freshman, then saw his role grow as a sophomore, racking up 51 tackles, a pair of sacks and a forced fumble. But after each season, the cancer came back.
In 2021 and again in 2022, doctors removed a small amount of cancer cells that had shown up on routine scans. The surgeries were relatively minor, and each time, Steele was back at practice within a few weeks.
By the spring of 2023, he was on the brink of a breakthrough.
“The Bryce Steele we knew was coming came that spring,” said Boston College general manager Spencer Dickow. “He’d come into his own and there was a thought for us that he’d be an All-ACC player.”
A few weeks after spring practice ended, Steele went in for a routine scan, where he always approached doctor’s visits pragmatically.
“If I go in here thinking I’m going to walk out fine, and they hit me with cancer, it’ll be that much more emotional,” he said.
So when Steele met his oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in May 2023, he expected bad news.
It was worse than he’d imagined.
THE APPOINTMENT UNFOLDED like the three before. His doctor held out a chest X-ray, and Steele stared at it blankly. Instead of a large mass or scattered cells, however, his doctor pointed out a maze of grim markers.
“This conversation was a little different,” Steele said.
His doctor spoke, and Steele nodded, not fully understanding. Then he asked the same question he’d asked each time before: When can I play again?
“Honestly,” the doctor said, “I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to play again. Not at the capacity you want.”
Steele had two options for treatment. The first, which doctors recommended, involved splitting his sternum and removing cancer cells that had spread throughout the lining of his chest wall, a procedure invasive enough to likely end his football career. The second, riskier alternative was to try chemotherapy, hoping it would kill enough cancer cells to allow for a less invasive procedure that would give Steele a shot to pick up football where he’d left off.
The decision was simple.
Steele’s first chemo session came in July 2023. Given his age and otherwise good health, doctors had recommended a maximum dosage, and as the final drops drained out of the IV, Steele was amazed at how good he felt. As he left the hospital, he texted BC’s then-head strength coach Phil Matusz that he planned to lift with the team the next morning.
“Let’s see how you do overnight,” Matusz replied.
Steele awoke around 1:30 a.m., dizzy and nauseous. He ran to the bathroom vomiting and wrapped himself around his toilet. He spent the next few hours sprawled on the cold bathroom floor with his rottweiler, Remi, curled next to him.
Three days later, Steele was back working out.
“We’d say, ‘Hey Bryce, you don’t have to do this, man,'” Hafley said. “But there’s no stopping him. He’s driven to have no regrets.”
Steele had one more round of chemo in August, and near the end of summer, he returned to Dana Farber for new scans. The news wasn’t encouraging. They showed no significant improvement, his oncologist said. The surgery would be invasive, debilitating and, quite possibly, career-ending.
“I’d have to relearn how to breathe,” he said.
IN THE WAITING room at Dana Farber, just before doctors delivered the grim news of his latest diagnosis, Steele sat alone working on homework, wearing a gray BC T-shirt with his Eagles backpack slung alongside his chair.
It was the backpack that Matt Moran first noticed, pegging Steele as a football player. He was struck by the image of the muscular athlete with Steele’s relaxed demeanor in a place filled with anxiety and fear.
Moran was 54, from Orchard Park, New York, and he was in the late stages of a nearly 10-year battle with renal cell carcinoma. Doctors had just given Matt and his brother, Bill, news that the latest treatment hadn’t worked.
Bill excused himself to collect his emotions, leaving Matt alone in the lobby. When Bill returned, he found Matt chatting with the football player like old friends.
“They’re talking like they’d known each other for 10 years,” Bill said.
They had a lot in common. Matt was a football fan, and one of his good friends had a son on BC’s team. They were both outgoing, making easy conversation. And they both had stared into the abyss of cancer.
Matt left Dana Farber that day knowing his odds of survival were dwindling, but in Steele, he saw hope. He texted Steele that evening, a simple “Nice to meet you, hope the scans went well.” A little while later, he got a reply.
“It was just something polite,” Bill said, “and no mention of his scans. You can kind of guess what that could mean.”
The brothers didn’t want to pry, but their brief encounter had cemented something for Matt. He had always focused on small moments of gratitude and encouraged his brother to do the same.
“I was just so taken by Bryce,” Bill Moran said. “And Matt always said, if you have a chance to send a note to say thank you to someone, you should do it.”
So Bill scrawled out a few pages of appreciation and an offer to be a sounding board if needed, then dropped the letter in the mail. It took weeks to reach Steele, however, and by the time he read it, Matt had died. He was 54.
During the eulogy, Bill talked about Matt’s chance encounter with Steele. It had been a perfect reminder, he said, of Matt’s knack for finding blessings even in the worst of times.
That’s the message Steele found in Bill’s letter, too. As he considered the dark and winding path ahead, he was looking for some inspiration. Bill’s note offered optimism from a stranger he’d met in a hospital waiting room just moments before hearing the worst news of his life.
The letter is now framed, sitting on a mantel inside his front door.
“Any time I’m feeling down,” Steele said, “I look at it, and I’m immediately reminded of who he was.”
Last Christmas, Steele’s girlfriend, Madi Balvin, gifted him a pair of cleats with a phrase from Bill’s letter inscribed on the side, a phrase that has come to define Steele’s journey: “You never used your situation as an excuse, but used it as motivation.”
STEELE’S SURGERY WAS performed on Oct. 3, 2023. It lasted 15½ hours. Afterward, he was unrecognizable.
“He was so pumped full of fluids,” Nicholle said. “He looked like the Michelin Man.”
Steele had been tireless in his workouts leading up to the surgery, theorizing the better he felt going in, the less work he’d have to do afterward, but when Hafley and Dickow saw him just a few days later, they were stunned.
“The Bryce Steele I knew was this 235-pound, rocked-up, whale of a man,” Dickow said. “And I walked in and saw this kid, and I couldn’t believe it.”
During surgery, doctors found the chemotherapy was more successful than initially thought, reducing the scope of the procedure a bit. Still, Steele’s body was ravaged. He’d lost the use of a sizable portion of his diaphragm, making breathing difficult. He spent a week in the ICU, sleeping more than he was awake.
Steele took his first steps just a day or two after surgery. He couldn’t shuffle more than a few feet without losing his breath — “like teaching a baby how to walk,” he said — but nurses encouraged him to keep moving.
He did laps, with chest tubes, a chemo port and IV lines tethered to his wrist, hand and neck, inching his way down the hallway, dragging a caravan of medical tubes and bags in his wake. But he kept going.
“There would be times I’d come into the hospital,” Balvin said, “and he’d be doing laps alone.”
After nearly a month in the hospital, he was allowed to go home. A month later, he was cleared to resume noncontact training at Boston College, to attempt to run again.
Matusz had developed a plan to help Steele rebuild his strength and conditioning metrics while closely monitoring his body’s response, adjusting Steele’s effort as needed, but always looking for small victories.
“I’d tell him, ‘You’ve never done this post-chemo,'” Matusz said. “You could tell the fight never left him.”
Steele met with breathing experts and private physical therapists, nutritionists, speed and agility specialists. He cut out any foods that weren’t optimized for energy or recovery. If he felt the slightest tweak of a muscle, Balvin would book him a deep-tissue massage or time in a cryotherapy chamber. Steele estimates he has spent hundreds of dollars per week on his body since surgery, using his limited NIL income and support from his parents to make the finances work.
At the end of January 2024, Hafley abruptly resigned. Bill O’Brien took over as head coach, and his new strength staff, helmed by Craig Fitzgerald, put a significant emphasis on conditioning. Under the new regime, the Eagles would run — a lot — and Steele wanted to prove he could keep pace.
“At times, I hated it,” Steele said, “but it’s exactly what I needed to teach my body to work with what it had.”
In August, O’Brien gathered the team for an announcement: Steele had been cleared to return to full practices.
“They went nuts,” O’Brien said. “That was a cool moment.”
Steele struggled to hold back tears, but before he snapped on his helmet and jogged onto the field, he had a message for his teammates.
“If you look at me differently,” he said, “I’m going to be pissed off at you.”
What he didn’t say, however, is that he harbored his own doubts. The chemotherapy had wreaked havoc with his focus, and it would be more than a year before he felt the fog begin to lift. He’d be exhausted after chasing down a tailback. He’d deliver a hit, and for a moment, he’d be dazed.
“That was my telltale sign I should not be out there,” he said.
After a handful of snaps in BC’s first two games of 2024, Steele came to a decision: He wasn’t ready to play football yet.
NICHOLLE HAD ALWAYS dreamed of spending Christmas in New York City, and so Boston College’s date with Nebraska in the 2024 Pinstripe Bowl was something of a celebration.
What she’d really come to see, however, was her son, back on the field.
Bryce’s redshirt status allowed him to play in two late-season games and BC’s bowl. He played sparingly against SMU and North Carolina, but the bowl game would be his most game snaps in two years.
In the stands, Nicholle whooped, hollered and cried, and when Bryce made his first tackle, she shouted, “Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.”
“I know the people around me thought I was crazy,” she said.
For Bryce, however, it wasn’t a moment of triumph.
The previous months had been an emotional slog. He’d gone to every BC practice, willed his body to heal through relentless workouts, and he’d attended each Eagles game, stalking the sideline in a jersey and sweatpants without a chance at action.
“He’d come home after games and tell us, ‘I just want to be out there so bad,'” Balvin said.
Steele built a relationship with former BC linebacker Mark Herzlich, a fellow cancer survivor who’d played seven seasons in the NFL, and he talked often with other patients such as Chuck Stravin, a 57-year-old BC alum and a friend of Matt Moran’s. They offered Steele a sounding board.
“I was always goal focused, and I think that’s the hardest thing about cancer,” Stravin said. “Guys like me and guys like Bryce, we’re used to being in control. And cancer takes that all away.”
Eventually, Steele formulated a plan. He afforded himself a few minutes every day to be angry, to let out the frustration, regret and sadness. And then he’d flip the switch.
“Those thoughts aren’t going to make you better,” he said. “Just work. Work until you can’t work anymore.”
When coaches approached him about a return to the field late in the season, he felt almost obligated. He owed it to his coaches, teammates and, most of all, his mother.
“I pushed through a lot for her,” Steele said. “She was always saying she wished she’d gotten cancer instead of me. I knew it had been tough for her, and I really wanted to see her smile.”
By the bowl game in New York, BC’s linebacker room had endured so much attrition, Steele was put into the regular rotation. He played 18 snaps and made two tackles. When he watches that film, however, he doesn’t see a player who’d overcome nearly insurmountable odds. He sees a blurred vision of the player he wants to be.
“Did I feel good enough to play? No,” Steele said. “And I feel like that wasn’t really me out there.”
Who Steele wants to be after so many years battling his way back to the field was still a question though.
When he first had cancer, Steele recovered at Duke Children’s hospital. He’d walk the hallways and peek into the rooms, finding kids no more than 4 or 5. Steele would think, “How lucky am I to have gotten 17 years?”
The last time he had cancer, Steele shared a room with men nearly three times his age, some of whom he still keeps in touch with. They talked about life, faith, hope and death. Steele walked the halls there, too, and he found enough empty beds in once occupied rooms to understand just how closely he’d flirted with the end.
“It made me appreciate being alive, regardless of the pain I was in or not being able to play football with my brothers,” Steele said. “I was grateful to be there at that moment.”
He still feels lucky. He’s still grateful.
Does that mean he must be satisfied, too?
“It’s one thing to look at small victories, but he wants more,” Dickow said. “And it’s tough to deny him, because he’s always beating the odds.”
AFTER THE FIRST day of Boston College’s spring practice in March, Steele came home beaming. He hadn’t been perfect, but he felt reinvigorated
“You could tell he was proud of himself,” Balvin said. “He just had a giddiness about him.”
Steele built his recovery around the football maxim of getting 1% better each day — progress accumulated over time. He is still a half-step slower than he was before cancer, and he might need an extra beat to recover after a big play, but he’s smarter, more refined. He can sniff out a play before the snap, cheat two steps toward a ball carrier’s intended destination, and accomplish the job better than how his body worked previously.
O’Brien said he expected Steele to nab for a starting job in the fall, and his position coaches raved his spring performance was “like night and day” from just a few months before. This, Steele said, was the best he’d felt since the surgery.
The better he felt, however, the more he started to believe he could recapture more of what he’s lost.
On April 26, the final day of the spring transfer portal, Steele announced he was leaving Boston College. He thanked BC, his coaches and teammates for supporting him, but said he also understood how easily an opportunity can slip away. He didn’t want to miss any more.
Steele thought about life before cancer, when the biggest programs in the country wanted him. Wasn’t it only fair that, after all the pain, effort and determination, he should get the chance to script his own ending?
“My mother’s always told me, ‘It’s up to you to achieve your goals,'” Steele said. “Nobody determines your future but you.”
Within a few days, he reconsidered.
If cancer is a journey, Steele thought, the path isn’t supposed to loop back around to the beginning. Cancer took a lot from Steele, but maybe, he thinks, this is what it has given him. There is no ghost to chase. There is only some new version of himself to discover each day.
On April 30, Steele met with O’Brien for the second time in less than a week, asking to return to BC.
Whatever awaited on the other side of the portal was something the old Bryce Steele wanted, he said. He wants to be someone new now, a football player who had cancer but not one defined by it.
“I’ve changed my perspective,” Steele said. “If things don’t work out the way I think they will, I’m just grateful for the opportunity to be back on the field with my teammates. I’m more than just a football player, and it might’ve taken me a while to realize that, but now that I do, it’s made this whole journey a lot easier.”
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The All-Stars who are halfway to history in 2025
Published
9 hours agoon
July 15, 2025By
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This year, the MLB All-Star Game isn’t just a collection of the game’s biggest stars, but a glimpse at baseball history in the making.
The 2025 Midsummer Classic marks the unofficial midway point of some of the greatest seasons the sport has ever seen.
Will Home Run Derby champion Cal Raleigh — aka the Big Dumper — set a new standard for slugging catchers? Will Shohei Ohtani score more runs in a season than any living person has ever seen? Will Aaron Judge … top Aaron Judge?
As Major League Baseball’s best convene in Atlanta, Bradford Doolittle and David Schoenfield break down 11 players who are halfway to history. For each player, ESPN MLB reporters Jorge Castillo and Jesse Rogers asked one of their fellow All-Stars to weigh in on their accomplishments, as they get set to take the field together at Truist Park.
Cal Raleigh: Greatest season for a catcher — ever
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: Well, we can add Home Run Derby champion to the list after Raleigh’s impressive showing Monday night. With 38 home runs through 96 team games, Raleigh is on pace for 64, which would break Judge’s American League record of 62 set in 2022. That’s the big one. There are a whole bunch of other records in play: most home runs by a switch hitter (Mickey Mantle, 54); most home runs by a primary catcher (Salvador Perez, 48); most multihomer games in a season (Raleigh has eight, the record is 11); and even highest catcher WAR in a season (Mike Piazza with 8.7 bWAR, Raleigh is on pace for 8.4; Buster Posey with 9.8 fWAR, Raleigh is on pace for 10.4). In other words, he could have the greatest season ever for a catcher.
How he’s doing it: Raleigh has always been better against right-handed pitching, but he has been absolutely crushing lefties in 2025, hitting .337/.385/.861 with 16 home runs in only 101 at-bats. Overall, he also has been much better against velocity. From 2022 to 2024, he slugged .418 against pitches 93 mph or faster; this year, he’s slugging .664. — Schoenfield
An All-Star’s take: “It’s wild. I mean, he’s having a crazy year and it’s awesome that he’s doing it from behind the plate. And what he’s doing is unbelievable. It’s hard to describe. It’s amazing to see.” — Colorado Rockies catcher Hunter Goodman
Aaron Judge: Most total bases since the Great Depression
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: Judge closed out the first half with a quiet day against the Chicago Cubs but is still on pace to record 435 total bases this season. You could pick any one of a dozen categories in which Judge is on a historic pace, but this simple old-school measure will do just fine. The record is held by Babe Ruth (457 in 1921), so Judge would have to somehow pick up the pace to surpass that. But 435 would still be epic. The last player to reach that number was Jimmie Foxx in 1932.
How he’s doing it: Judge has become more aggressive at the plate without sacrificing contact or power. But it’s not only ball-in-play volume: He’s hitting an incredible .425 when getting the bat on the ball, which fuels his MLB-leading .355 batting average. That BABIP would be the third-highest ever if Judge maintained it, which obviously affects the total bases column. So too does Judge’s intentional walks pace (41). He’d be only the fourth player to top 40. — Doolittle
An All-Star’s take: “He started off hot this year, which normally in years past, he doesn’t start off hot like he did this year. And now you see it. He always finishes strong. I mean, I don’t know what he ends up with. Hopefully he hits like 70 homers. That’d be sick.” — New York Yankees left-hander Carlos Rodon
Shohei Ohtani: One run scored for every game
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: Although his pace has slowed a bit the past couple of weeks, Ohtani has scored 89 runs in 94 games, giving him a chance at a run scored per game. Ohtani had been on pace for 160 runs, which only Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig have done since 1900. He’s still on pace for 150 runs, which only Ted Williams and Jeff Bagwell have done since World War II. The last player with more runs scored than games played, with at least 100 games played: Rickey Henderson in 1985 (146 runs in 143 games). If that’s not enough to impress you, there is the chance for a second straight 50-homer season and a fourth career MVP award. If the latter happens, he’ll join Barry Bonds as the only player with more than three MVP awards.
How he’s doing it: It helps to be a leadoff man with power, as Ohtani leads the National League in both plate appearances and home runs. The first three months, Ohtani also had a great trio hitting behind him in Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith, but his runs scored pace has dropped off in July as he has hit just .175, and Betts and Freeman have also slumped. — Schoenfield
An All-Star’s take: “As his teammate and fellow competitor, to see what he does on both sides of the field, it’s incredible. How much power he has as a hitter. He’s got 30-plus homers already at the break. He’s hitting .300 or whatever. And, yeah, he’s going out there on the mound and throwing 102, striking out the side. And these are his rehab games. He’s not even all the way back yet, full-go yet. It’s incredible to watch. Fortunately, I get to see all the work he puts in every day, which is really cool. It’s really special what he’s doing.” — Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Will Smith
Paul Skenes: Two sub-2.00 ERA seasons before turning 25
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: Skenes’ ERA at the break is an NL-best 2.01. His career mark is 1.98 over 43 starts. There is all kinds of history around this level of stifling run prevention. As it stands, Skenes joins Ed Walsh, Addie Joss and Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown with at least 40 starts and a sub-2.00 career ERA in the AL or NL. If Skenes drops his 2025 number below 2.00, he’d be the 31st pitcher to have two or more sub-2.00 ERA seasons of at least 20 starts. Only two of those pitchers did it by age 23: Walter Johnson and Ed Reulbach, both more than 100 years ago.
How he’s doing it: Skenes’ strikeout rate (9.7 per nine innings) is down 1.8 from last year. Yet his FIP (an NL-best 2.41) is actually better because of his league-best homer rate (0.4 per nine innings). Simply put, Skenes is learning how to manage the pure dominance of his arsenal, revving it up when needed. Skenes is not exactly pitching to contact — his stuff is just too good to not miss a lot of bats — but his pitch efficiency is better, and that’s getting him deeper into games. His style has evolved, but one big thing has remained steady: Nobody can score off him. — Doolittle
An All-Star’s take: “Obviously, the first thing that stands out is his stuff, right? And the second thing you look at is the composure. He’s kind of new to the league and just from watching some of his preparation, his composure on the mound, I feel like that’s what makes him successful. He started to add a couple of new pitches to his arsenal and it’s going to make him tougher. He’s got the military background, so I think that’s where he gets a lot of his discipline and everything from. He’s challenging, but it is fun to compete against him.” — St. Louis Cardinals infielder Brendan Donovan
Tarik Skubal: Top five strikeout-to-walk season of all time
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: Skubal has struck out 9.56 batters for every one he has walked. Only four qualifying pitchers have ever done better: Phil Hughes (11.63, 2014), Bret Saberhagen (11.00, 1994), Cliff Lee (10.28, 2010) and Curt Schilling (9.58, 2002). The leaderboard is dominated by wild-card era pitchers, with its heightened whiff rates. But according to FanGraphs’ plus-statistics, which compare numbers to league averages, Skubal’s index of 368 ranks 18th all time. His mastery works in any era.
How he’s doing it: Skubal has already had two games this season in which he has struck out 13 batters on fewer than 100 pitches. Simply put, his command keeps him in the zone more than any qualifying pitcher (49.7%, per FanGraphs). But it also allows him to pitch outside of it on his terms. To wit: Skubal also leads the majors in inducing swings on pitches out of the zone (37.2%). It’s a lethal combination. — Doolittle
An All-Star’s take: “Even on game days, he’s working before the game like he’s not pitching that day. Even on the off days, he’s at the field doing something. He does a whole routine. I faced him in spring training and was looking for one pitch — when that pitch came, I didn’t hit it. He knows what hitters are looking for.” — Detroit Tigers outfielder Javier Baez
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: Before the 2023 season, there had been only four 40-homer/40-steal seasons in big league history, and the 40/50 club was memberless. Now Crow-Armstrong is on a 42-homer, 46-steal pace at the break. He could join Ronald Acuna Jr. (41 homers, 73 steals in 2023) and Shohei Ohtani (54 homers, 59 steals last season) in one or both clubs, giving us a three-year run of expanding membership. This one would be the most stunning of all. PCA entered the season with 10 homers, 29 steals and an 83 OPS+ in his career. His rise has been flat-out stunning.
How he’s doing it: The steals part of Crow-Armstrong’s game was already there, though he’s picked up the pace in 2025, already matching his 27 steals from last season. Any time he reaches safely, he’s a threat to take an extra base. That is unless he’s trotting around the bags after mashing yet another homer. Crow-Armstrong is hitting the ball harder more often, getting more balls in the air and pulling it more frequently. All of this could explain an isolated power uptick, but nothing really can explain the degree to which PCA has lifted off. — Doolittle
An All-Star’s take: “He’s a much better defender than me. He has a much better arm. He’s a really complete player. I don’t think I would have guessed he would have the power numbers he’s showing this year, but I guess people would have said that about me too. His ability to pull the ball in the air has been the difference for him, I think. He hits the ball so hard, all over the stadium.” — Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll
Junior Caminero: 40 home runs in age-21 season
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: In his first full season in the majors, Caminero enters the All-Star break with 23 home runs in the 97 games the Tampa Bay Rays have played, giving him a season pace of 38. Though he turned 22 earlier this month, Caminero is in his age-21 season, so he can join Eddie Mathews (47 in 1953) and Ronald Acuna Jr. (41 in 2019) as the only players to reach 40 home runs at that age.
How he’s doing it: Caminero has the second-quickest bat in the majors via Statcast’s bat tracking measurements and he uses that bat speed to punish fastballs. He’s slugging .692 against four-seam fastballs — and .793 against four-seam fastballs 95-plus mph. He has received some help from the Rays’ temporary home stadium, George Steinbrenner Field, hitting .316 with 14 home runs at home. That’s worth noting as the Rays will have a road-heavy schedule through the end of August. — Schoenfield
An All-Star’s take: “He’s a special talent. I mean, his bat speed’s insane. I saw him in spring training [with the Rays], basically, but, yeah, he’s a special talent. Hard-working kid. I’m excited to watch him. They’re mature at-bats. He came up, I was hurt during the playoffs in ’23, and I thought he had some of the most mature, calm at-bats I’d seen for a young kid. Especially to come up in the playoffs, he didn’t let the situation get too big. I think he’s going to be here for a long time, a lot of years.” — San Diego Padres (and former Tampa Bay Rays) reliever Jason Adam
Corbin Carroll: 40 home runs, 20 triples, 20 stolen bases
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: The third-year speedster is back in the All-Star Game after failing to be selected last year, and showing again why he’s one of the most exciting players in the majors. He has an outside shot at becoming the first player with 40 home runs, 20 triples and 20 stolen bases in the same season. Yes, that’s a bit of statistical free-for-all, but it displays Carroll’s power, speed and hustle. Those odds were hurt when he sat out a couple of weeks because of a chip fracture in his left wrist, but in his first 79 games, he had 21 home runs, 10 triples and 11 stolen bases. Even if those numbers are out of reach, he could be the third member of the 35/15/20 club, joining Chuck Klein and Willie Mays.
How he’s doing it: We mentioned hustle, because the triples are the key category here, and Carroll is the best triples hitter in the majors in a long time, hitting 10 as a rookie in 2023 and 14 in 2024, leading the NL both seasons. He also has tweaked his swing and is hitting the ball harder this season and hitting it more often in the air, so he should soar past his previous career high of 25 home runs. — Schoenfield
An All-Star’s take: “There is no hole, really. It’s hard to find new ways to get him out. He’s one of the best in baseball. He’s so quick and twitchy. I don’t get many fastballs by him.” — San Francisco Giants right-hander Logan Webb
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: Witt’s doubles pace has ebbed a little, perhaps in part because some of the balls that were swelling his two-bagger column earlier have been leaving the yard of late. Still, Witt is on pace for 53 doubles, which would be the most by an American Leaguer in six years. That number would also challenge Hal McRae’s franchise record of 54 doubles set in 1977. Witt’s overall numbers aren’t quite as spectacular as last season, but he remains a top-five MVP candidate in the AL. Witt hasn’t gone on a true heater yet this season, but MLB pitchers beware: He has come out of the All-Star break in each of the past two seasons and gone on an extended tear.
How he’s doing it: Everything about Witt’s game — durability, aggressiveness, contact, swing plain, speed, home venue — suggests a player who is annually going to rank near the top of the charts in doubles, among many other categories. If only he didn’t hit so many triples and homers. — Doolittle
An All-Star’s take: “I can’t get him out. It’s just a tough at-bat. And [he] plays the game really, really hard. Some of the stars look cool and play it a little bit slower. Bobby is always playing the game really hard. A single is a victory against him, but he’s going to turn it into a double most of the time.” — Detroit Tigers right-hander Casey Mize
Kyle Tucker: 30 home runs, 40 stolen bases, 120 runs scored
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: With 17 home runs, 22 stolen bases and 68 runs scored, Tucker is showing Cubs fans the all-around brilliance that earned him a fourth consecutive All-Star selection. That puts him on pace to join the exclusive club of 30 homers, 40 stolen bases and 120 runs — which has only 11 members (with Bobby Bonds having done it twice). At a minimum, Tucker would love to join the 30/30 club, which he just missed in 2023 with 29 home runs and 30 stolen bases.
How he’s doing it: Tucker’s career high in runs scored is 97, so joining the explosive Cubs offense has helped in that department. So has moving up in the lineup: He has mostly hit second for the Cubs after often hitting fifth for the Houston Astros (at least until last season). He has been a little more aggressive stealing bases to give him a shot at 40, and does it with great success, getting caught only once so far. — Doolittle
An All-Star’s take: “He stays in there against lefties, knows how to use the whole field. And knows what a strike is. He stays in the zone a long time. I got lucky this year. It was the one game he missed. He’s one of the tougher left-handed outs.” — Washington Nationals left-hander MacKenzie Gore
Byron Buxton: The perfect stolen-base season
The most impressive thing he could accomplish: Buxton just hit for the cycle and — knock on wood — he has been healthy so far, so he’s on track for a career high in many categories, including his first 30-homer season. But the fun number: He’s 17-for-17 in stolen-base attempts. Only six players have swiped at least 20 bases in a season without getting caught, with Trea Turner’s 30-for-30 with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2023 the single-season high.
How he’s doing it: Buxton has always been a terrific high percentage base stealer, including a 29-for-30 mark in 2017 and a 90% success rate in his career, but the surprising thing about his 2025 totals is perhaps that he’s even stealing bases at all, given all the injuries in his career. It would be easy for the Minnesota Twins to just shut him down on the basepaths — much like the Los Angeles Angels did years ago with Mike Trout — but the 31-year-old Buxton is running more than he has since he was 23. — Schoenfield
An All-Star’s take: “He’s one of the best players in the game when he’s healthy and when he’s playing out there. I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed from him is that it seems like his internal clock is just at a pace this year. It’s not like it flashes where he’s going crazy and then he’s backing off. It’s consistent. It’s just that consistent heartbeat. It’s like he’s running a marathon at an insane pace. He’s going to run a sub-three-hour marathon or something. He’s cruising along and it’s just fun to watch him play.” — Minnesota Twins right-hander Joe Ryan
Sports
Is it the coach or the program? Ranking CFB coaches while factoring in expectations
Published
12 hours agoon
July 15, 2025By
admin
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Bill ConnellyJul 15, 2025, 07:00 AM ET
Close- Bill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.
Back in May, ESPN’s team of college football reporters voted on the sport’s best coaches for 2025. The results were about as you would expect: Start with the three active guys who have most recently won national titles (Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Ohio State’s Ryan Day, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney), move on to guys with recent top-five finishes or national title game appearances (Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman, Texas’ Steve Sarkisian, Oregon’s Dan Lanning, Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, Penn State’s James Franklin), then squeeze in a couple of long-term overachievers at the end (Utah’s Kyle Whittingham, Iowa State’s Matt Campbell).
The rankings made plenty of sense, but I couldn’t help but notice that the top eight coaches on the list all work for some of the richest, most well-supported programs in the country. There are some epic pressures associated with leading these programs — just ask Day — but there are also major advantages. It might only take a good head coach to do great things in those jobs, while at programs with smaller alumni bases or lesser historic track records, it might take a great coach to do merely good things. They’re such different jobs that it’s almost impossible to even know how to compare the performance of, say, Matt Campbell to Steve Sarkisian. Could Campbell have led Texas to back-to-back CFP semifinals? Could Sark have brought ISU its first two AP top-15 finishes?
The May rankings made me want to see if there were a way to apply stats to the conversation. If you think about it, we’re basically measuring two things when we’re gauging coach performance: overall quality and quality relative to the expectations of the job. I thought it would be fun to come up with a blend of those two things and see what the results told us.
Performance versus expectation
Gauging overall performance is easy enough. You could simply look at win percentage, and it would tell you quite a bit. From 2015 to 2024, the active coaches with the best FBS win percentages (minimum 30 games) were Day (.870), Lanning (.854), Swinney (.850) and Smart (.847). All ranked high in the May rankings. I tend to want to get fancy and use my SP+ ratings whenever possible, and they tell a similar tale. Looking at average SP+ ratings for the past decade, the top active coaches are Day (30.4), Smart (27.0), Lanning (22.3), Swinney (21.9), Franklin (20.3) and Freeman (19.0). They’re all in the May top 10 too.
Again, though, all of those coaches are employed by college football royalty. (Granted, Swinney gets bonus points for helping Clemson turn into college football royalty, but still.) Isn’t it more impressive to win 11 regular-season games at Indiana, as Curt Cignetti did in 2024, than to go 10-4 like Swinney did? Isn’t it probably harder to finish 12th in SP+ at SMU, as Rhett Lashlee did in 2024, than to finish fifth like Franklin did?
I’ve begun to incorporate teams’ performance against long-term averages into my preseason SP+ projections, and it seems we could use a very similar concept to evaluate coach performances. For each year someone is a head coach, we could compare his team’s SP+ rating for that season to the school’s average from the 20 previous years. (If the school is newer to FBS and doesn’t have a 20-year average, we can use whatever average exists to date. And for a program’s first FBS season, we can simply compare the team’s SP+ rating to the overall average for first-year programs.)
By this method, the 10 best single-season coaching performances of the past 20 years include Art Briles at Baylor in 2013-14, Jim Harbaugh at Stanford in 2010, Mark Mangino at Kansas in 2007, Bobby Petrino at Louisville in 2006, Greg Schiano at Rutgers in 2006 and Jamey Chadwell at Coastal Carolina in 2020 — legendary seasons of overachievement — plus perhaps lesser-remembered performances such as Gary Andersen at Utah State in 2012, Matt Wells at Utah State in 2018 and Brian Kelly at Cincinnati in 2007.
As far as single-season overachievement goes, that’s a pretty good list. And if we look at a longer-term sample — coaches who have led FBS programs for at least nine of the past 20 years — here are the 15 best performance versus baseline averages.
(Note: I’m looking only at performances within the past 20 years, so Nick Saban’s work at LSU (2000-04) or Michigan State (1995-99), for instance, isn’t included. I also went with nine years instead of 10 so Smart’s current nine-year run at Georgia could be included in the sample.)
Best performance vs. historic baseline averages for the past 20 years (min. nine seasons):
1. Chris Petersen, Boise State (2006-13) and Washington (2014-19): +12.8 points above historic baseline
2. Art Briles, Houston (2005-07) and Baylor (2008-15): +12.8
3. Gary Pinkel, Missouri (2005-15): +12.5
4. Nick Saban, Alabama (2007-23): +10.7
5. Jeff Monken, Army (2014-24): +10.3
6. Willie Fritz, Georgia Southern (2014-15), Tulane (2016-23) and Houston (2024): +10.0
7. Lance Leipold, Buffalo (2015-20) and Kansas (2021-24): +9.5
8. Bobby Petrino, Louisville (2005-06), Arkansas (2008-11), Western Kentucky (2013) and Louisville (2014-18): +9.5
9. Gary Patterson, TCU (2005-21): +8.6
10. Jim Harbaugh, Stanford (2007-10) and Michigan (2015-23): +8.5
11. Blake Anderson, Arkansas State (2014-20) and Utah State (2021-23): +8.5
12. Steve Spurrier, South Carolina (2005-15): +8.2
13. Greg Schiano, Rutgers (2005-11 and 2020-24): +7.8
14. Jeff Brohm, Western Kentucky (2014-16), Purdue (2017-22) and Louisville (2023-24): +7.7
15. David Cutcliffe, Duke (2008-21): +7.7
If we are looking for pure overachievement and aren’t in the mood to reward coaches for winning at schools that always win, this is again a pretty good list. Petersen was spectacular at both Boise State and Washington, while Briles, Pinkel, Monken and Patterson all won big at schools that hadn’t won big in quite a while. (Monken, in fact, is still winning big.) Blake Anderson’s presence surprised me, but most of the names here are extremely well regarded. And Saban’s presence at No. 4, despite coaching at one of the bluest of blue-blood programs, is a pretty good indicator of just how special his reign at Alabama was.
Still, looking only at performance against expectations obviously sells coaches like Saban and Smart short. Saban is probably the best head coach in the sport’s history but ranks only fourth on the above list. Meanwhile, Smart has overachieved by only 6.0 points above the historic baseline in his nine seasons at Georgia thanks to the high bar predecessor Mark Richt set. But he has also won two national titles, overcoming Georgia’s history of falling just short and at least briefly surpassing Saban as well. If our goal is to measure coaching prowess, we need to account for raw quality too.
The best coaches of the past 20 years
If we combine raw SP+ averages with this performance versus baseline average, we can come up with a pretty decent overall coach rating. We can debate the weights involved, but here’s what an overall rating looks like if we use 60% performance versus baseline and 40% SP+ average:
I always like to say that numbers make great starting points for a conversation, and this is a pretty good starting point. Anyone reading this would probably tweak this list to suit their own preferences, and while it probably isn’t surprising that Pinkel is in the top 20, seeing him fourth, ahead of Meyer, Harbaugh and others, is a bit jarring. (I promise that this Mizzou alum didn’t put his finger on the scales.) Regardless, this is a fun mix of guys who won big at big schools and guys who won pretty big at pretty big schools. That was the goal of the exercise.
Maybe the most confusing coach in this top 20 is Dabo Swinney. Clemson had enjoyed just one AP top-five finish in its history before he took over 16 years ago, and he has led the Tigers to 2 national titles, 6 top-five finishes and 7 CFP appearances. And while they haven’t had a true, title-caliber team in a few years, they’ve still won two of the past three ACC crowns. How is he only 10th?
The main culprit for Swinney’s lower-than-expected ranking is his recent performance — it has been inferior to both national title standards and his standards. Since we’re using a team’s performance against 20-year averages, a lot of this rating is basically comparing Swinney to himself, and he hasn’t quite measured up of late.
From 2012 to 2020, Swinney’s average rating was an incredible 17.0, which would have ranked second to only Saban on the list above. But his average over the past four seasons is only 3.6.
Part of what made Saban so impressive was how long he managed to clear the bar he himself was setting in Tuscaloosa. Per SP+, his best team was his 14th — the 2020 team that won his sixth and final title at Bama. While Swinney was basically matching Saban’s standard 12 years into their respective tenures, Saban continued at a particularly high level for at least three more years while Swinney fell off the pace.
Comparing Saban, Swinney and Smart year by year, we see that Smart was hitting Saban-esque levels seven seasons into his tenure, but his rating has fallen off each of the past two seasons. Even Saban slipped starting in Year 15, even though he still had nearly the best program in the sport for a couple more years.
The best coaches of 2025
Six of the top seven coaches on the list above are either retired or coaching in the NFL now, so let’s focus our gaze specifically on the guys who will be leading college teams out onto the field in 2025. Using the same 20-year sample as above — which cuts off the tenure of Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz but includes everything else — here’s how the current crop of FBS head coaches has performed at the FBS level. We’ll break this into two samples: the guys who have coached for at least four years in this sample and the guys who have coached between one and three years.
Our May top 10 list featured eight guys who have been head coaches for at least four years; all eight are represented on this list, including four of the top five. (Sarkisian has averaged a 13.8 rating over the past two seasons, which is a top-five level, but his overall run as head coach at Washington, USC and Texas has featured a number of ups and downs.)
Maybe the name that jumps out the most above is Josh Heupel. I think anyone would consider him a very good coach (he’s 37-15 overall), but he doesn’t exactly draw any “best in the game?” hype. He benefited from a positive situation at UCF, where he inherited a rising program from Scott Frost in 2019 and produced big ratings in his first couple of years on the job. But his average rating at Tennessee has been a solid 14.0 as well; the Volunteers had been up and down for years, but he has produced four top-20 SP+ ratings in a row and two top-10s in the past three years. He might not be getting the credit he deserves for that.
All in all, I enjoy this list. We’ve got mostly predictable names at the top, we’ve got some oldies but (mostly) goodies spread throughout, and we’ve got room for up-and-comers like Jeff Traylor too. This 60-40 approach probably doesn’t give enough respect to the Chris Creightons of the world — the Eastern Michigan coach has overachieved against EMU’s baseline by 7.2 points per season, which is a fantastic average, but at such a hard job, his Eagles have still averaged only a minus-14.4 SP+ rating during his tenure. Still, this is a mostly solid approach.
Now let’s talk about some small-sample all-stars.
Four of the top six of this list coached in the College Football Playoff last season, and while the guys ranked fifth and sixth made our May top 10 list, the guys who won big at SMU and Indiana, not Oregon and Notre Dame, take priority here. I was honestly floored that Curt Cignetti didn’t make our top 10 list; he led James Madison to one of the best FBS debuts ever, going 19-4 in 2022-23, then he moved to Bloomington and led Indiana — INDIANA! — to 11 wins in his first season there.
On this list, however, Rhett Lashlee tops even Cignetti. I’m not sure we’ve talked enough about the job he has done at SMU. He, too, inherited a rising program, as Sonny Dykes had done some of the nitty-gritty work in getting the Mustangs back on their feet (with help from an offensive coordinator named Rhett Lashlee). SMU hadn’t produced a top-50 ranking since 1985 before Dykes did so for three straight seasons (2019-21). But after holding steady in his first year replacing Dykes, Lashlee’s program has ignited: 12-2 and 24th in SP+ in 2023, then 11-3 and 12th in 2024. Looking specifically at the 2021-24 range, as the game has undergone so much change, Lashlee’s 16.8 average rating ranks second overall, behind only Smart (18.0) and ahead of Kiffin (15.1), Cignetti (15.0), Odom (15.0), Heupel (14.0) and Day (13.9).
Along with quite a few others here, Lashlee made my 2024 list of 30 coaches who would define the next decade; he’d definitely still be on the list — along with new additions like GJ Kinne and perhaps Fran Brown — if I remade that list today.
Sports
It’s MLB Home Run Derby Day! Predictions, live updates and takeaways
Published
1 day agoon
July 15, 2025By
admin
It’s 2025 MLB All-Star Home Run Derby day in Atlanta!
Some of the most dynamic home run hitters in baseball will be taking aim at the Truist Park stands on Monday (8 p.m. ET on ESPN) in one of the most anticipated events of the summer.
While the prospect of a back-to-back champion is out of the picture — 2024 winner Teoscar Hernandez is not a part of this year’s field — a number of exciting stars will be taking the field, including Atlanta’s own Matt Olson, who replaced Ronald Acuna Jr. just three days before the event. Will Olson make a run in front of his home crowd? Will Cal Raleigh show off the power that led to 38 home runs in the first half? Or will one of the younger participants take the title?
We have your one-stop shop for everything Derby related, from predictions to live updates once we get underway to analysis and takeaways at the night’s end.
MLB Home Run Derby field
Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners (38 home runs in 2025)
James Wood, Washington Nationals (24)
Junior Caminero, Tampa Bay Rays (23)
Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins (21)
Brent Rooker, Athletics (20)
Matt Olson, Atlanta Braves (17)
Jazz Chisholm Jr., New York Yankees (17)
Oneil Cruz, Pittsburgh Pirates (16)
Live updates
Who is going to win the Derby and who will be the runner-up?
Jeff Passan: Raleigh. His swing is perfect for the Derby: He leads MLB this season in both pull percentage and fly ball percentage, so it’s not as if he needs to recalibrate it to succeed. He has also become a prolific hitter from the right side this season — 16 home runs in 102 at-bats — and his ability to switch between right- and left-handed pitching offers a potential advantage. No switch-hitter (or catcher for that matter) has won a Home Run Derby. The Big Dumper is primed to be the first, beating Buxton in the finals.
Alden Gonzalez: Cruz. He might be wildly inconsistent at this point in his career, but he is perfect for the Derby — young enough to possess the stamina required for a taxing event that could become exhausting in the Atlanta heat; left-handed, in a ballpark where the ball carries out better to right field; and, most importantly, capable of hitting balls at incomprehensible velocities. Raleigh will put on a good show from both sides of the plate but will come in second.
Buster Olney: Olson. He is effectively pinch-hitting for Acuna, and because he received word in the past 72 hours of his participation, he hasn’t had the practice rounds that the other competitors have been going through. But he’s the only person in this group who has done the Derby before, which means he has experienced the accelerated pace, adrenaline and push of the crowd.
His pitcher, Eddie Perez, knows something about performing in a full stadium in Atlanta. And, as Olson acknowledged in a conversation Sunday, the park generally favors left-handed hitters because of the larger distances that right-handed hitters must cover in left field.
Jesse Rogers: Olson. Home-field advantage will mean something this year as hitting in 90-plus degree heat and humidity will be an extra challenge in Atlanta. Olson understands that and can pace himself accordingly. Plus, he was a late addition. He has got nothing to lose. He’ll outlast the young bucks in the field. And I’m not putting Raleigh any lower than second — his first half screams that he’ll be in the finals against Olson.
Jorge Castillo: Wood. His mammoth power isn’t disputed — he can jack baseballs to all fields. But the slight defect in his power package is that he doesn’t hit the ball in the air nearly as often as a typical slugger. Wood ranks 126th out of 155 qualified hitters across the majors in fly ball percentage. And he still has swatted 24 home runs this season. So, in an event where he’s going to do everything he can to lift baseballs, hitting fly balls won’t be an issue, and Wood is going to show off that gigantic power en route to a victory over Cruz in the finals.
Who will hit the longest home run of the night — and how far?
Passan: Cruz hits the ball harder than anyone in baseball history. He’s the choice here, at 493 feet.
Gonzalez: If you exclude the Coors Field version, there have been just six Statcast-era Derby home runs that have traveled 497-plus feet. They were compiled by two men: Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. James Wood — all 6-foot-7, 234 pounds of him — will become the third.
Olney: James Wood has the easy Stanton- and Judge-type power, and he will clear the Chophouse with the longest homer. Let’s say 497 feet.
Rogers: Hopefully he doesn’t injure himself doing it, but Buxton will break out his massive strength and crush a ball at least 505 feet. I don’t see him advancing far in the event, but for one swing, he’ll own the night.
Castillo: Cruz hits baseballs hard and far. He’ll crush a few bombs, and one will reach an even 500 feet.
Who is the one slugger fans will know much better after the Derby?
Passan: Buxton capped his first half with a cycle on Saturday, and he’ll carry that into the Derby, where he will remind the world why he was baseball’s No. 1 prospect in 2015. Buxton’s talent has never been in question, just his health. And with his body feeling right, he has the opportunity to put on a show fans won’t soon forget.
Olney: Caminero isn’t a big name and wasn’t a high-end prospect like Wood was earlier in his career. Just 3½ years ago, Caminero was dealt to the Rays by the Cleveland Guardians in a relatively minor November trade for pitcher Tobias Myers. But since then, he has refined his ability to cover inside pitches and is blossoming this year into a player with ridiculous power. He won’t win the Derby, but he’ll open some eyes.
What’s the one moment we’ll all be talking about long after this Derby ends?
Gonzalez: The incredible distances and velocities that will be reached, particularly by Wood, Cruz, Caminero, Raleigh and Buxton. The hot, humid weather at Truist Park will only aid the mind-blowing power that will be on display Monday night.
Rogers: The exhaustion on the hitter’s faces, swinging for home run after home run in the heat and humidity of Hot-lanta!
Castillo: Cruz’s 500-foot blast and a bunch of other lasers he hits in the first two rounds before running out of gas in the finals.
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