Jennings, SMU view 2025 season as ‘revenge tour’
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David Hale
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings said he spent the first month of the offseason rewatching game film from his disastrous performance in a playoff loss to Penn State in December.
Jennings was the centerpiece of a 38-10 defeat, throwing three interceptions, including two returned for touchdowns, putting an abrupt halt to a magical first season in the ACC for the Mustangs.
But after immersing himself in the loss, Jennings came away focused on earning some redemption in 2025.
“It was really hard,” said Jennings, who led the Mustangs to a regular-season ACC championship after taking over as SMU’s starter in Week 4. “I watched it over and over and over again. But I feel like I needed that game. Having that adversity and being able to move on, I think that’s going to be a key to this season.”
Jennings said the team views this season as a “revenge tour” after SMU dropped its last two games — a defeat to Clemson on a 56-yard field goal as time expired in the ACC championship game and a run of turnovers that cost it a chance at toppling Penn State.
The lesson from that experience, said safety Isaiah Nwokobia, is that SMU wasn’t outclassed by either opponent.
“I went away from those two games fully believing we can play with anybody in the country,” Nwokobia said. “When we play our brand of football, play our best, there’s nobody in the country we can’t beat.”
If SMU hopes to prove itself on those big stages again in 2025, it will need Jennings to return to the form that made him one of the ACC’s top quarterbacks throughout the regular season. But coach Rhett Lashlee said that, at the end of spring practice, he was concerned Jennings hadn’t quite shaken off the frustrations of the Penn State loss.
Lashlee and quarterbacks coach D’Eriq King sat down with Jennings in April and delivered a simple message: “Just be you.”
“Kevin is such a competitor and such a winner, and he expects a lot of himself,” Lashlee said. “I could feel like he was shouldering a lot of internal disappointment based on how the season ended, and I think he took that harder than he needed to. He didn’t lose any confidence but what you worry about is someone pressing, trying to prove that’s not me all at one time.”
Jennings insists he’s not still carrying that weight, but he is eager to prove some doubters wrong.
“We don’t feel like we did good enough last year,” he said. “It’s definitely a revenge tour to get back to those moments and actually come away with wins.”
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Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — The Yankees are acquiring third baseman Ryan McMahon from the Rockies in exchange for minor league pitchers Griffin Herring and Josh Grosz, sources confirmed to ESPN on Friday.
The Yankees will assume the remainder of 30-year-old McMahon’s contract, which includes approximately $4.5 million for the remainder of 2025 and $32 million over the next two seasons.
An All-Star last season, McMahon was batting .217 with 16 home runs and a .717 OPS in 100 games for Colorado in 2025. He hit home runs in the first two games after the All-Star break and another on Tuesday and is on pace to keep his four-year 20-homer streak alive.
While the production has resulted in a 92 OPS+, which suggests McMahon has been 8% worse than the average major league hitter this season, he still represents a significant offensive upgrade at third base for New York.
The Yankees have had Oswald Peraza, one of the worst hitters in the majors, manning third base nearly every day since the club decided to release DJ LeMahieu, another former Rockies player, earlier this month and move Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base. Peraza, while a strong defender, is slashing .147/.208/.237 in 69 games this season. His 24 wRC+ ranks last among the 310 hitters with at least 160 plate appearances this season.
Defensively, McMahon is a Gold Glove-caliber third baseman whose four Outs Above Average is third in the majors this season. He joins a Yankees club that has been marred by sloppy defense, most recently on Wednesday when it committed four errors in a defensive meltdown against the first-place Toronto Blue Jays.
Herring, 22, has recorded a 1.71 ERA in 89⅓ innings across 16 starts between Low- and High-A this season. He was a sixth-round pick out of LSU in the 2024 draft.
Grosz, an 11th-round pick in 2023, had a 4.14 ERA in 87 innings over 16 games (15 starts) for High-A Hudson Valley this season.
With third base addressed, the Yankees will continue to seek to acquire pitchers to bolster both their rotation and bullpen.
MLB.com first reported on the Yankees trading for McMahon.
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Jorge Castillo
The Mets acquired left-handed reliever Gregory Soto from the Orioles on Friday in exchange for two minor leaguers in what could be the first of multiple moves by New York to bolster its bullpen before the trade deadline Thursday.
The trade, which sent Class A right-hander Wellington Aracena and Double-A right-hander Cameron Foster to Baltimore, gives the Mets a hard-throwing left-hander to complement the club’s only lefty on the roster, Brooks Raley, who returned from Tommy John surgery last week.
Soto, who is 30 and was an All-Star with the Detroit Tigers in 2021 and 2022, has posted a 3.96 ERA with a 27.5% strikeout rate in 45 appearances this season. The Mets will be his fourth team since the 2022 season.
On Monday, Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns plainly signaled that upgrading the bullpen for the stretch run is his top priority.
The need is clear. Injuries and overuse have depleted a relief corps that led the majors in bullpen ERA through May 31. Since June 1, the group has posted 4.52 ERA, good for 23rd in the majors.
Aracena, 20, is 1-1 with a 2.38 ERA in 17 games for St. Lucie. The Orioles said he is one of two pitchers in the minors this season to have thrown at least 60 innings without surrendering a home run.
Foster, 26, is 5-2 with two saves and a 2.97 ERA while pitching at the Double-A and Triple-A levels.
BOSTON — Hundreds of Aramark workers at Fenway Park are on strike and planning to stay out for all of a homestand between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers starting Friday night.
Concession workers had set a deadline of noon Friday for Aramark and Fenway Park to reach an agreement with the Local 26 chapter of the Massachusetts and Rhode Island hotel, casino, airport and food services workers union.
The union went on strike at noon asking for “living wages, guardrails on technology and R-E-S-P-E-C-T!”
With the Red Sox and Dodgers scheduled to start at 7:10 p.m. EDT, union officials had a request for fans attending this homestand with food and beer workers on strike.
“We’re asking you to NOT buy concessions inside the ballpark,” Local 26 wrote on social media. “Tailgate before the games!”
Union workers walked the picket line wearing green T-shirts declaring “FENWAY WORKERS ON STRIKE.” They carried signs in the shape of a baseball proclaiming Local 26.
The Red Sox go out of town Monday with a game that night at Minnesota.
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