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LOS ANGELES — Late Friday night, minutes after the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers staged a tightly contested, 11-inning game, Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernández was asked if it was indicative of how closely matched these two teams remain. A smile crept in.

“We’re pretty close,” Hernández said, “but I’m always going to say we’re better.”

A mere 38 hours later, Hernández delivered the definitive blow of what seemed like a defining series — a sixth-inning two-run homer that extended a Dodgers lead, propelled Los Angeles to another victory and sealed a three-game sweep over the mighty Braves at Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers overcame the Braves on Friday (final score: 4-3), overwhelmed them Saturday (11-2) and outlasted them Sunday (5-1). Their offense combined for eight homers — all by Shohei Ohtani, Max Muncy and Hernández — and their pitchers held the Braves to six runs and 17 hits in 29 innings.

Asked for his biggest takeaway from this series, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said: “If we pitch well, we can keep any team at bay. With our offense, every game is winnable.”

The Braves arrived in L.A. with the best record in the major leagues and left with the second-best record in the National League East, falling two games behind the Philadelphia Phillies — not to mention one game behind the Dodgers. But the season is young. Sentiments fluctuate. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a reasonable baseball observer who doesn’t still believe the Dodgers and Braves are the two best teams in the NL and perhaps, even after the Braves’ miserable weekend, the entire sport.

So what, exactly, could we glean from their first head-to-head matchup this season? Below is a look at what we learned.


What was the biggest question going into the series? Did either team answer it?

Alden Gonzalez: Heading into the series, it was shocking that the Braves held the best record in the NL even though Ronald Acuña Jr., a unanimous MVP last year, had hit just one home run and had yet to look much like his typical superstar self. Nothing drives this offense quite like Acuña from the leadoff spot. And yet the Braves began the weekend ranked second in the majors — behind only the Dodgers — in OPS, with Acuña’s mark sitting at just .689. I wondered if a series like this was the type that might spark Acuña — and it might have. Acuña homered Friday, then went 3-for-4 with a double in Saturday’s blowout loss. He began the month of May with three consecutive multihit games before an 0-for-3 showing Sunday. If he truly gets hot, this Braves offense will elevate to yet another level.

David Schoenfield: To beat the Dodgers, you have to hold the top of the order in check. The Braves did a reasonably OK job of that on Friday; the Dodgers’ top four hitters — Mookie Betts, Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith — went 3-for-17 with three walks, including an 0-for-5 effort from Betts. After the Braves scored in the top of the 10th, Ohtani tied the game up with a base hit on a soft line drive up the middle in the bottom of the inning — some bad luck for Raisel Iglesias, who made a good pitch, but Ohtani reached out and just poked it past a diving Orlando Arcia. Andy Pages would then win the game for the Dodgers in the bottom of the 11th on a blooper to center field with a 63-mph exit velocity.

Saturday was a different story, though: The Dodgers’ top four went 8-for-18 with two walks, including a home run from Ohtani. Of course, the big story in the 11-2 blowout was Muncy, the No. 5 hitter, blasting three home runs — a reminder that the Dodgers lineup doesn’t necessarily end after Smith. Sunday was the Ohtani show: 4-for-4, 3 RBIs and two home runs, including a two-run blast in the first inning off Max Fried that set the Dodgers on their way to the sweep. So, no, it’s hard to say the Braves did enough to contain Ohtani & Co.


What surprised you the most?

Gonzalez: For as menacing as the top half of the Dodgers’ lineup has been, the bottom half has been sorely lacking — which is why the emergence of Pages has been so important. Pages, a 23-year-old outfield prospect from Cuba, had four hits in Friday’s series opener, including a walk-off single in the 11th inning. He followed that by going 2-for-5 with a home run Saturday. Pages has yet to draw his first walk this season, but he’s OPS’ing .903 in 74 plate appearances. He was looked at as a temporary replacement while Jason Heyward works through a back issue, but given the struggles of Chris Taylor, James Outman and Gavin Lux — they’ve combined for a .153/.247/.203 slash line — Pages has evolved into a crucial contributor.

Schoenfield: Matt Olson‘s struggles at the plate continue. He actually started the season off well, with three doubles on Opening Day and hitting .293 with a .973 OPS through 14 games. He looked primed for another monster season. Instead, je’s hitting a few too many grounders and too many fly balls with too high of a launch angle. After going 1-for-10 in this series, he is 6-for-59 (.102) over his past 18 games with just one double and no home runs.

The good news, though: He should be fine, as it appears he’s hitting into a lot of bad luck. A hard-hit ball is one hit at 95 mph, and Olson remains in the 98th percentile among all hitters in hard-hit rate. Entering Sunday, the MLB average on hard-hit balls was .480, but he has just three hits and a sac fly on his past 23 hard-hit balls. In the previous series against Seattle, Olson got robbed a couple of times on hard-hit balls. Still, seeing him with a sub-.200 average and just three home runs is a surprise.


What was the biggest concern for either team?

Gonzalez: My biggest concern is for opposing pitchers’ ability to tame the top half of the Dodgers’ lineup. The L.A. offense got so much hype heading into this season, and somehow the top of their lineup has exceeded expectations — with the prowess of Betts, Ohtani and Freeman in the first three spots, but also with the continued emergence of Smith and Muncy and Hernández behind him. Betts and Smith didn’t do much this series, but Ohtani homered and Hernandez homered a combined five times, Freeman doubled and tripled Saturday and Muncy registered his first career three-homer game that same night. Keeping them all in check has seemed impossible all season — as the Braves just learned. Betts, Ohtani, Freeman and Smith in particular have combined for a .337/.432/.567 slash line with 18 home runs this year — even though Freeman hasn’t necessarily felt right for most of it. Ridiculous.

Schoenfield: The continued slow starts in the power department for not just Olson but Acuña and Austin Riley, too. Last year, the three averaged a home run every 14.3 at-bats; this year, it’s one every 46.9 at-bats. As a result, the Braves are way down as a team in home runs, averaging exactly one home run per game compared to last year’s onslaught of 1.9 per game. Olson and Riley are striking out about the same rate as last season, so for them that hasn’t been the issue. Acuña, however, has seen his strikeout rate climb from 11.4% last season to 26.8% in 2024 — similar to where he was in 2021-22, when he struck out 23.6% of the time. After a stretch of 13 strikeouts in his five previous games before this series, maybe it’s a good sign that he went 2-for-5 with a home run and just one strikeout Friday and then 3-for-4 with no strikeouts Saturday. (He did, however, go hitless with one walk and one strikeout Sunday.)


Which team is better set up for October?

Gonzalez: The recipe for October success in this era is either highly complex or nonexistent. Last fall provided a glaring example, with the Braves and Dodgers each bounced in the division series by two teams that finished a combined 30 games below them in the standings. Still: If there is a list of ingredients necessary for thriving in the playoffs, it’s premier talent, pitching depth, big-game experience and health. As far as the Dodgers and Braves are concerned — check, check, check and, well, we’ll see. Nonetheless, both teams are clearly built to win a championship.

If I’m forced to pick one, I’m choosing the Braves for something Roberts alluded to this weekend — their string of effective left-handed relievers in A.J. Minter, Aaron Bummer, Dylan Lee and Tyler Matzek. They all have a history of being tough against opposing left-handed hitters, which could be a factor if you’re facing, say, Freeman, Ohtani and Muncy in the late stages of an NLCS. Will it ultimately matter? Who knows. But if there’s one staff built to handle an offense as devastating as the Dodgers’, it’s probably the Braves’.

Schoenfield: Honestly… it’s too early to tell here. I’m old school in believing that two top-flight starters will go a long way in October, and the Dodgers have that in Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Glasnow held the Braves to two runs with 10 strikeouts Friday, and while Yamamoto didn’t pitch in this series, he has a 1.64 ERA since that first-inning disaster against the Padres in Korea. On the other hand, despite the results of this series, the Braves could still match up with the Dodgers in October not only with all those lefty relievers, but with Max Fried and Chris Sale in the rotation. Though Fried has never had much of a platoon split in his career, Sale remains tough on lefties with that wipeout slider (.167 average this season) and that could be trouble for Ohtani, Freeman and Muncy.


What will you be watching for either team moving forward?

Gonzalez: Walker Buehler returns to the Dodgers’ rotation Monday after a 20-month-long rehabilitation from a second Tommy John surgery. Will he be the electric Buehler we remember from the early part of 2022, or some diluted version of that? Perhaps the same can be asked for Bobby Miller, who’s nursing shoulder inflammation but should soon face hitters again and begin his progression in earnest. Clayton Kershaw, who threw his first bullpen session Friday — precisely six months after offseason shoulder surgery — won’t return until sometime in the second half. Glasnow (2.70 ERA and 63 strikeouts in 50 innings this season) and Yamamoto look dominant. But the Dodgers’ success in October could hinge greatly on who follows them.

Schoenfield: The back end of the Braves’ rotation — which looks even more important now with the Phillies off to a hot start (that wasn’t the case the past two seasons, when the Braves ran away with the NL East title). Bryce Elder was an All-Star last season, but he struggled in the second half and is in the rotation only because of Spencer Strider‘s injury. The Dodgers knocked him around for seven runs and three home runs Saturday. Reynaldo Lopez has been terrific so far with a 1.50 ERA through five starts, but let’s see if he can continue to avoid the home runs that plagued him in his previous stints as a starter. Then there’s Sale. Can he make 30 starts, which he hasn’t done since 2017? The Braves might need him to do so to hold off the Phillies.

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2025 college football recruiting rankings update: New No. 1 and top QB

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2025 college football recruiting rankings update: New No. 1 and top QB

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the top quarterbacks in the 2025 class, it’s that they’ve all had their ups and downs on the camp circuit. It’s part of the process.

Game film takes top priority in an evaluation, but a lot of elements make up quarterback evaluation. Film study, camps, combines, Elite 11 performance and personal workouts are all pieces of the puzzle. It’s very important to not make a final assessment on a quarterback based on one average or poor camp performance over three hours on a single afternoon. That’s not fair or responsible.

The Elite 11 is an iconic event, but it’s not necessarily predictive of next-level success. The event does provide one final opportunity for us to evaluate and rank quarterbacks before their senior season. Those evaluations have led to a big change in the updated ESPN 300 rankings. Elsewhere, the spring and summer camp circuit has allowed several players to make moves in the rankings.

Here are the takeaways from the rankings:

Jump to a section:
At the top | QB breakdown
Moving up | New entrants

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Ranking college football’s 40 best 2025 recruiting classes: Ohio State on top

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Ranking college football's 40 best 2025 recruiting classes: Ohio State on top

June not only ushers in warmer temperatures but is also the time when the recruiting trail really heats up with a blitz of commitments as programs hold official visits and run camps.

Ohio State holds onto the No. 1 overall class with a commitment list that includes three five-star prospects including new five-star QB Tavien St. Clair. Georgia, which signed the No. 1 class for the 2024 cycle has surged up the rankings and now sit at No. 2. Recent ESPN 300 in-state defensive additions, like LB Zayden Walker and DE Isaiah Gibson, helped the Bulldogs rise and get back into the race for the top class.

New Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer is easing any concerns that the Crimson Tide might slip in recruiting with the departure of Nick Saban, as DeBoer has led them into the top three of the class rankings. One catalyst in the move up was flipping ESPN 300 QB Keelon Russell from SMU. He is a passer that can make plays with his legs but also can be accurate with a short, compact release and he threw for 3,000 yards and completed 75-percent of his passes as junior.

Built off the foundation of key in-state commitments, Rutgers has shot up the rankings as well sitting inside the top-fifteen. They managed to keep some key prospects close to home including two of New Jersey’s top three rated prospects in receiver Michael Thomas III and linebacker D.J. McClary.

The action in the month of June has reshaped the rankings but with over a hundred ESPN 300 prospects still leading the pack of the undeclared nothing is settled and many changes are still on the horizon.

NEW TEAMS IN: Rutgers, Mississippi State, Michigan, Georgia Tech, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Kentucky, Washington, South Carolina, Stanford, Oklahoma State, Cincinnati, Nebraska, Duke, West Virginia

TEAMS OUT: SMU, North Carolina

coverage:
Recruits to know in 2025 rankings
CFB’s future power rankings
Previewing every conference

ESPN 300 commits: 14
Top offensive prospect: QB Tavien St. Clair
Top defensive prospect: CB Na’eem Offord

Previous ranking: 1

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Want to face Gerrit Cole — between innings? Inside the controversial new tech that could change at-bats forever

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Want to face Gerrit Cole -- between innings? Inside the controversial new tech that could change at-bats forever

The Los Angeles Angels trailed by a run halfway through their May 28 game against the New York Yankees, and Willie Calhoun figured he’d plan ahead. Calhoun, a journeyman outfielder, thought he might be used as a late-game pinch hitter. So he made his way to Angel Stadium’s indoor batting cage and turned on Trajekt Arc, the cutting-edge machine that has quickly become a go-to throughout the industry for its ability to replicate major league pitchers.

Calhoun cued up all of the Yankees’ high-leverage relievers, most of whom he’d never faced, tracking as many pitches as he could over the course of a couple of innings. When he was summoned to face Luke Weaver in the bottom of the eighth, he felt ready. Calhoun took back-to-back changeups for balls, then saw a 91-mph cutter on the inner half and lofted a base hit to right field, a leadoff single that ignited a two-run inning and ultimately gave the Angels a come-from-behind victory.

“I was able to see how it was looking before I got into the box,” Calhoun said. “That machine is nice.”

Trajekt — essentially a pitching robot that can play the video of any pitcher’s windup, then spit out all of his pitches from the appropriate arm angle based on the reams of data available — is now used by 19 major league teams, plus three others in Japan, despite not existing in any form until 2021. This year, the league office has allowed Trajekt to be used in-game, a polarizing decision that has in some ways splintered the industry based on personal interest.

Some hitters, frustrated by an era in which pitchers throw harder and nastier than ever, have celebrated what they consider a rare advancement.

“This is the first piece of technology we’ve had that truly benefits us,” one position player said. “Before this we had nothing.”

Plenty of pitchers disagree, pointing to recent rule changes implemented to create a more hitter-friendly environment, and consider Trajekt an unfair advantage — particularly in-game.

“You wanna have it, fine,” a veteran pitcher said. “But three hours before game time, those machines need to be shut off.”

Trajekt previously required an Internet connection to operate, a violation of Major League Baseball’s sign-stealing policy. Modifying the device so that it could operate offline prompted the league to allow it for in-game use, according to an MLB official. Team executives were notified this past offseason.

“We already allow other pitching machines that replicate pitch characteristics,” Morgan Sword, MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations, wrote in a statement to ESPN, alluding to another, less-involved pitch-replication device called iPitch.

“Once [Trajekt] moved the system offline during games, there was no longer a reason to stand in the way.”

The effects appear to be minimal thus far. Leaguewide batting average sits at .242, the third-lowest mark since 1900, behind only 1968 (the year before the mound was lowered) and 1908 (at the heart of the dead-ball era). But the strikeout rate against relievers is below 23% — 22.9%, to be exact — for the first time in eight years, a subtle decline some have at least partly attributed to the in-game use of Trajekt.

It’s why one of those relievers, Yankees lefty Caleb Ferguson, is adamantly against it.

“It’s impossible for a pitcher to mimic the at-bat,” he said. “We don’t even really get the chance at all to try to have that upper hand where you can come in and face a guy and read the result, see what’s gonna happen if I face whoever. But they could be hitting my fastball for the next three hours? That’s not fair.”

Hitters say they find it helpful, but they’ll also argue it’s not that simple. The machine — four feet deep, six feet wide and, all told, roughly 1,500 pounds — is too bulky to travel with, making it only an option for teams when they’re at home. Hitters largely don’t swing off it in-game, worried that it might make their hands sore by frequently getting jammed against high velocities. Some have said it’s also hard to pick up the baseball’s spin. And because the image it projects is basically a hologram, it’s much more difficult for hitters to time themselves off a pitcher’s arm slot than it would be in real life.


The Trajekt Arc sits on a track, allowing it to move left to right to spit out pitches.


Then there’s the situation at Arizona’s Chase Field, where the indoor batting cage is not big enough for the Trajekts to be stationed any more than 54 feet away from home plate, rendering the machine useless as a timing mechanism and leaving the Arizona Diamondbacks‘ Trajekt Arc to mostly collect dust.

“Ninety-nine [mph] feels like 120 for us,” D-backs outfielder Pavin Smith said near the end of May. “I don’t love it, to be honest. I liked it more in spring training. It was further back, so it felt more realistic. Now every guy looks like he’s twice as good.”

Trajekt, costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 a month and requiring a three-year commitment, is typically set up 56 to 57 feet away to account for pitchers’ average extension. Standard game balls can be used, but players have taken to a softer version of Rawlings’ baseball, the L10 Pro. Unlike iPitch, a stationary two- to three-wheel machine, Trajekt sits on a gantry, allowing it to spit baseballs anywhere from four to seven feet off the ground, and can move left to right along a track.

Teams can input Hawkeye data, which MLB uses to collect in-game metrics, and they can implement information from Rapsodo and Trackman devices, which also catalog metrics, from players’ training sessions. Videos of pitchers’ windups come from the cameras that are stationed behind home plate at every major league ballpark, with teams capable of uploading the videos that correspond to each pitch to project the precise arm slot. Teams only have access to their own data. The more the machine is used, the more accurate it becomes at replicating pitches.


What it’s like to face New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole (well, at least a holographic version of him).


Often, though, hitters are seeing what they believe is the best version of each pitch.

“It really varies,” Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Jason Heyward said. “Some look similar, some don’t. You’re seeing them throw the ball, but I still think it’s completely different in the game because there’s room for error. Pitchers mean to throw a ball here, and they throw it here. They mean to throw it here, and they throw it here, all that kind of stuff. So I think that’s where it’s not very realistic. It’s like video game pinpoint every time. But still — just getting a visual, an idea, of what someone has and how that may come out is cool. It’s helpful, for sure.”

Ten years ago, a teenager named Joshua Pope came up with the concept behind Trajekt while debating his high school friends about how many pitches it would take to get a hit off Marcus Stroman, then the ace of his hometown Toronto Blue Jays. Pope, now 28, wondered why there wasn’t a physical manifestation of all the publicly available pitching data. He attended the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, in part to learn from the mechanical engineering professor, Dr. John McPhee, who developed a hockey slapshot robot. Pope then received a grant of $60,000 Canadian dollars, raised additional financing, built a mock-up and launched the company Trajekt Sports in 2019, becoming its CEO.

During a tutorial at the 2019 winter meetings, Chicago Cubs director of innovation Bobby Basham became intrigued by the ball-inserter technology that allows for gyro spin, a revolutionary advancement that separated Trajekt from any pitching machine that came before it. Basham ultimately became Pope’s first customer, bringing it to the Cubs in the spring of 2021. By 2022, seven teams had it. A year later, it had grown to 12. Now it has spread to nearly two-thirds of the industry.

Pope’s company — co-founded by one-time classmate and current chief technology officer Rowan Ferrabee — now has 15 full-time employees and produces 20 machines a year. Forty of them are in use within MLB, with some teams having as many as six — one on the major league side and one at every minor league affiliate. Some are considering renting additional ones to use out of their academies in the Dominican Republic.

Pope said approximately half the machines are used at regular-season ballparks and the other half are used in the minors. He has heard of Triple-A catchers who use it to get a feel for the stuff thrown by the major league pitchers they’ll catch after getting promoted; pitchers who look at the shape of their own pitches to get a better feel for how they’re seen from the batter’s box; and, notably, teams shuttling prospects through reps against major league pitchers at their spring training complexes to get a baseline for performance.

“Obviously the most exciting ones are when a big-name player is facing a starting pitcher that day and in the first inning they hit a home run because they predicted a slider coming and they leveraged that off Trajekt and got a result,” Pope said. “We have countless anecdotes like that. But I think the more nuanced one, of evaluation and preparing for the game even prior to making it to the big leagues, is also something that we find really exciting, because it gives more opportunity to more people to have a chance at extreme, high-level practice, which is hard to get.

“Players can only throw full speed so often, and their reps are limited in training. And therefore it’s very tough to develop to that next level.”

A spring training ACL tear prevented Rhys Hoskins from playing for the Philadelphia Phillies in 2023. But when the Phillies made a playoff run late into that season, Hoskins held on to faint hopes that he might contribute. His month of October was spent at the team’s spring training facility in Clearwater, Florida, hitting off the Trajekt machine in hopes of getting as acclimated to major league pitching as possible if summoned at a moment’s notice. He began by holding a clicker instead of a bat, pressing a button to indicate swing decisions to help him distinguish balls from strikes, then progressed to full-on hitting, seeing up to 200 pitches a day.

“I felt pretty ready in terms of being in the box from a hitting standpoint in order to join those guys if that’s what the organization decided, mostly because you’re just able to replicate some of the speed of the game,” said Hoskins, now a member of the Milwaukee Brewers. “It’s hard to do that with a BP arm or even a normal machine.”

Hoskins, who ultimately wasn’t activated for last year’s World Series run, now regularly uses Trajekt to track pitches between at-bats when he serves as the designated hitter for home games. He has implored the Brewers’ pitchers to use it themselves to “remind them how nasty they are.” Angels pitching coach Barry Enright recently did that with his starters, bringing them all in to watch their pitches from behind home plate as something of a confidence boost to encourage strike-throwing.

Within the next two years, Pope’s goal is for every major league team to deploy at least one Trajekt Arc. He thinks more pitchers will realize its benefits, but it’s still very much a hitters’ tool. High-speed cameras are used to dissect their mechanics, weighted bats have helped to increase their bat speed, Blast Motion (a sensor placed on the knob of bats) became popular for its instant swing metrics. But a hitter’s best chance of keeping up with contemporary velocity and break, coaches say, is training the eyes by seeing those pitches as often as possible.

Virtual-reality hitting machines developed out of that concept, helping to spawn physical pitch-replicators like iPitch. Trajekt has taken it to another level — adding the visual of an opposing pitcher and the freedom of movement that has made it feel more lifelike.

Some really high-tech machines, tools, toys, don’t really exist on the hitting side,” Hoskins said. “For this to kind of be the first big thing obviously means there’s more coming. There’s always ideas coming; it’s just, ‘How do you execute them?’ But this is a great start.”

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