Of mullets and men: Grayson McCall’s chance to rewrite his ending at NC State
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
RALEIGH, N.C. — It was a late December morning, more or less like any other for Grayson McCall, except on this day, he awoke with the urge to destroy something beautiful.
A couple weeks earlier, he had committed to NC State after spending five years at Coastal Carolina, saddling up for one last rodeo as a college football quarterback at a bigger school, on a bigger stage. That lit the fuse.
For the past few years — effectively as long as anyone outside of his hometown of Indian Trail, North Carolina, had known him — McCall was branded as the swaggering, rollicking, beach bum quarterback of an upstart team from (just outside) Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He won games (32 in 40 starts) and threw touchdowns (87) and, as he noted in slightly more colorful language during the high-flying 2020 season when Coastal was 11-0 and ranked inside the top 10, he was Chanticleer teal through and through.
More than all of that, however, the one thing everyone knew about McCall was this: He sported a glorious, luxurious, cascading mullet.
The front was a precisely quaffed billboard for handling business. In the back, a flowing, wild mane that instantly informed the world that this guy knew how to party.
It was his calling card, but on this morning, McCall was ready to reinvent himself.
“I just chopped it off,” McCall said. “I FaceTimed my mom leaving the barbershop, and she’s like, ‘What the hell happened?'”
McCall was almost entirely ignored as a recruit, then his 2020 season catapulted him to stardom on the national stage. For the next four years, he existed as both a football player (a three-time Sun Belt Player of the Year) and as a brand (college football’s favorite blue-collar underdog). But after a nearly career-ending injury in 2023, he figured he needed a new challenge with a new team, one he could help propel to new heights.
And, he needed a haircut.
McCall’s mom, Lisa Kottyan, wasn’t the only one horrified by this new clean-cut look.
McCall had the mullet for his official visit to NC State in early December. When he arrived back on campus in January, quarterbacks coach Kurt Roper didn’t recognize him.
Center Zeke Correll, who’d transferred from Notre Dame, met McCall for the first time on that visit, too. It was what sold him on his new quarterback.
“The first thing I noticed was the mullet,” Correll said, “and I was like, this is a guy I can play with.”
The world’s loss, however, was McCall’s catharsis.
This year, he decided, he’d debut the new Grayson McCall: older, wiser, more appreciative of how rare it is to script the right ending.
“And everything I’ve heard since,” McCall said, “is ‘Where’s the mullet?'”
MCCALL PLAYED HIGH school football at Porter Ridge, where head coach Michael Hertz ran the triple option. McCall put up good numbers, mostly with his legs, but lived in the shadow of more heavily recruited quarterbacks in the area like Sam Howell and Garrett Shrader.
Coastal Carolina, which didn’t become an FBS program until 2017, wasn’t in the business of landing elite recruits, and in McCall, coach Jamey Chadwell saw a tough quarterback with a good skill set who already knew the basic contours of his option scheme.
“I won’t tell you we knew all along, but had the tools to be pretty good,” said Chadwell, now the head coach at Liberty. “Where we were surprised is, he threw the ball really well.”
McCall redshirted the 2019 season, but by the summer of 2020, he’d blossomed — and so had the mullet.
The COVID-19 lockdowns led to a lot of bad hairstyles, and a few Coastal veterans decided the mullet would make for good team bonding — meaning any aspiring QB1 had to do his part.
“I wouldn’t say we required it,” linebacker Silas Kelly said. “Strongly encouraged.”
The Chanticleers, who were picked to finish last in the Sun Belt in 2020, opened the season with an upset win on the road against Kansas. McCall had won the starting job just four days earlier, but he had already delivered the school’s biggest win as an FBS program.
A month later, McCall and the Chants knocked off No. 16 Louisiana. From there, they just kept winning and McCall’s legend kept growing.
There’s a play from Coastal Carolina’s otherwise forgettable 51-0 win over Georgia State in 2020 that secured McCall’s mythical status. McCall rolled out to his left, forcing the edge rusher to either cover the running back or converge on the quarterback. The defender — 6-2, 260 pounds — engaged McCall, who tossed wide to his tailback, then swung the defensive end to the ground like a rag doll.
For any defender worth his salt, it was humiliating.
For McCall, it was the moment he became a social media celebrity, with the clip going viral.
“When your quarterback is out there hip-tossing D-linemen,” said former Coastal linebacker Teddy Gallagher, “everyone starts to believe in him. He’s a dude. He’s tough as nails.”
By early December, Coastal Carolina was 9-0, ranked No. 14 in the country, and after a series of unlikely pandemic-related twists, a showdown with fellow Cinderella BYU — ranked eighth nationally — was cobbled together with just a few days’ notice. The game was branded as “Mormons vs. Mullets” and ESPN’s “College GameDay” was on campus. BYU was a heavy favorite, but McCall helped engineer a 13-play touchdown drive in the fourth quarter that keyed a 22-17 win for Team Mullet.
Coastal finished the year 11-0 before falling to Liberty in the FBC Mortgage Cure Bowl, and McCall’s final stat line was otherworldly: 26 touchdown passes, three interceptions and more than 3,000 yards of total offense in just 11 games.
Over the next two seasons, he was just as good — 51 touchdown passes and five interceptions in 2021 and 2022.
It had all been easy — “always sunshine and rainbows,” McCall said. But then Chadwell left to take the Liberty job, and suddenly McCall realized he might be better off in the transfer portal.
“It seemed like I was taking a call from every school in the country,” he said.
Only, he couldn’t walk away from Coastal.
He doesn’t regret staying, he said, but the story didn’t have a happy ending.
THE FIRST THING McCall remembers is laying splayed on the turf, surrounded by teammates.
It was Oct. 21, 2023, in Jonesboro, Arkansas. McCall had just scrambled out of the pocket, darted downfield and slid for a first down. An Arkansas State defender dove at him anyway, his helmet catching McCall under the chin. McCall’s head whipped back and hit the turf.
McCall had concussions before, but he’d never blacked out. This time, he had no recollection of the play.
Instead, he remembers in vague snippets the confusion, the neck brace, the stretcher, the ambulance.
“When I really acknowledged myself, we were going to the hospital,” he said. “It was a scary time.”
He spent a night in an Arkansas hospital before returning home. None of his family members had traveled for the game, but they met with doctors a few days later. The news was not good.
The doctor called it a traumatic brain injury.
The family went to lunch afterward, and Grayson was quiet. It was his dad, Jody, who spoke up first.
“This is about your health and your life and not football,” he said. “You need to really think about what’s best for you to move forward in life.”
Grayson played his first football game when he was 5, and though no one was keeping score, Jody remembers Grayson diving for a runner’s flag on the final play of the game and missing.
Grayson was quiet in the backseat of his dad’s truck on the ride home.
“You alright?” Jody asked.
“No,” Grayson replied.
His dad gave him a pat and reminded him that no one wins every game.
Grayson looked up with tears welling in his eyes.
“But if I’d just gotten his flag,” he said.
“That’s when I knew,” Jody said. “This kid is die-hard.”
Now, 16 years later, the kid was considering life after football.
“My whole world was crashing down,” McCall said. “I love this game so much. But it’s a game and there’s more to life than playing football.”
McCall sat out the rest of the season, though he attended every Coastal practice and game, including the Chants’ bowl game in December. By that point, the medical reports were more encouraging. McCall was given the OK to return to the field.
Facing a possible end to his career had changed him though, and he finally felt ready to leave Coastal. This time, however, the pool of portal suitors was thin — Baylor, UCF, a few others.
But the first coach he heard from, on the day he entered the portal, was NC State’s Dave Doeren.
“You want to come home?” he asked McCall, selling him on playing in North Carolina.
McCall did.
“When can you get here?” Doeren asked.
MCCALL SURVEYED THE defense and saw a blitz coming, so he flipped the protection and shifted one of his receivers. He took the snap, and the pressure arrived instantly — a zero blitz from NC State defensive coordinator Tony Gibson, who’d been trying to fluster the new quarterback throughout fall camp.
McCall sidestepped a defender, set his feet and unleashed a dart for a touchdown.
In the aftermath, McCall calmly turned around, feigned exhaustion and grinned at his coach.
“Wow,” he said. “I really had to play quarterback there.”
This is what Doeren loves about McCall. He’s a veteran who knows the job inside and out. But he also has a swagger to the way he plays, the way he carries himself that’s infectious.
“I think I’m the guy that, if I come in every day with that confidence and swagger and aura — it’s very contagious and guys will follow it,” McCall said. “And then we have 100 dudes on this football team that are full of confidence that want to go whip the guy in front of them on every play. And if we take that mindset into every week, I don’t think there’s a team in the country that could play with us.”
One of McCall’s first orders of business upon arrival in Raleigh was to start feeding his O-line.
“Steaks,” Correll said. “That won my heart over right away.”
Tight end Justin Joly remembers McCall taking him out for hot chicken in the spring. On the drive home, McCall spotted a makeshift shop selling fireworks on the side of the road. He looked at Joly, a fellow transfer, and smiled: “Why not?” he said. They set them off that night to great fanfare.
“He’s just a joy to be around,” Joly said.
The response to the practice touchdown also was a subtle nod to all the criticism that still swirls around McCall. Coming out of high school, he was pegged as an option quarterback, and so he was ignored. Five years later, after a mediocre half-season outside of Chadwell’s option system, the same criticism applied.
“If you truthfully watched every play from the last four years, you wouldn’t say that,” McCall said. “But it was kind of like [Chadwell] leaving. We won 30 games in three years, and everyone in the country should want him. And the same for me. Instead, it was like ‘I don’t know if we take a chance on this guy. Is he a system quarterback or can he get the job done?'”
For NC State, that doubt feels familiar. The Pack have been ranked in six of the past seven seasons, reaching as high as No. 10 nationally, but haven’t finished better than 20th. It’s a program that has won nine games in four of the past seven years, but has hit 10 wins just once in its history — 22 years ago. It’s a charter member of the ACC, but it hasn’t won a conference championship since 1979.
“You just have to walk over hot coals until they’re not hot anymore, and then you have the scars to prove it,” Doeren said. “That’s life, and I believe when you do that, you create karma.”
Maybe it was that karma that led McCall to NC State, a place where a chip on the shoulder is a part of the uniform.
“He fits that mold,” offensive lineman Anthony Belton said. “As a team, we just feel NC State’s always second or third. We’ve got that sense of like, they’re trying to little bro us again. We’ve got to keep proving people wrong.”
Proving people wrong is nearly as much a part of the McCall brand as the flowing locks.
“The mantra and the culture here matches up with how I want to play football,” McCall said. “Tough, blue-collar guys that work their asses off and want to win a lot of football games.
“I’m the guy that can lead these guys to where we want to go.”
MCCALL GOT HIS first tattoo after that miraculous 2020 season. It’s on his right leg, an image of three crosses with “Proverbs 5:6” underneath. The Bible verse is about understanding the future — that it is both malleable and unknowable. If there’s a lesson to be learned from McCall’s story, that’s it.
He was once an overlooked recruit, then a fan favorite. He gave all of himself to football, then he saw it nearly taken away. He was first wary of a fresh start, then he demanded one.
He’s come to appreciate what he can control about his story and what he can’t.
The rest of his right leg is a testament to the journey: A Chanticleer logo, his jersey number, an outline of North Carolina with his hometown highlighted, an ace of hearts with the reminder, “Bet on yourself.” If NC State wins an ACC championship this year, he’s promised to add a wolf tattoo, too.
On the front of his leg is an image his roommate designed last year. It’s a sword splitting the words “faith” and “fear,” one atop the other, because that’s how he sees the world. Faith above fear, always.
McCall has faith in this team. The Wolfpack believe he’s the man who can lead them to unprecedented heights. Fate has not ascribed the outcome for the overlooked QB or the “little brother” team, and so they can still keep reaching toward their goal.
McCall isn’t thinking as much about the future now though. Nor is he trying to outrun the past. He’s in a place of balance and, he’s come to realize, he looks a lot better in that place with a mullet.
“Some people think it’s a superstition now,” McCall said, “but I embrace it. When everyone thinks of that 2020 season and my personality and how I play on the football field, it’s, ‘He’s a tough dude with a mullet who loves football.'”
The hairdo is not quite back to its former greatness — the business side more corporate casual, the party side a mere cocktail hour. It’s a work in progress. Then again, so is McCall. So is NC State. The future malleable and unknowable.
“My journey’s been crazy,” McCall said. “But ultimately, I’m healthy, and I’m just so excited to be here with this staff and these players and to be playing football again.”
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Buster Olney
For months, as the standoff between Rafael Devers and the Boston Red Sox played out publicly, Boston fans never really booed their designated hitter. This probably would’ve come as a surprise to others who’ve lived through that charming experience, including Hall of Famer Ted Williams, who once spat at a hostile Fenway Park crowd, and Roger Clemens (even before he pitched for their rival).
Rather, Red Sox fans almost uniformly cheered Devers, all the way to the ignominious end of his time in Boston on Sunday. Hours after hitting another home run against the New York Yankees, he was summoned from the club’s traveling party and told he’d been dealt to the opposite coast. That fans never fully aimed animus at Devers despite his refusal to do what generations of stars have done — embrace change for the larger good of the team; in this case, changing positions from third base to first — says much more about their distrust of Red Sox leadership than about Devers or Red Sox Nation going soft.
That skepticism spilled out in talk radio, tweets and texts in the hours following the Devers trade, the reaction angry and cynical. “They’re not even a real organization anymore,” one longtime New Englander and Red Sox fan wrote to me. “Here we go again,” another texted. “First Mookie. Then Xander. Now Raffy.”
These kinds of responses will grow exponentially if Boston flounders over the next few weeks. The Red Sox had won eight of their past 10 games when the deal went down — including five of six against the first-place Yankees — and just when the dysfunctional team actually began functioning on the field, they traded their best hitter.
But this is an uproar five-plus years in the making. The 2020 trade of Mookie Betts, a homegrown star, has become the prism through which every Red Sox decision is seen. John Henry has been the most successful owner in baseball over the past quarter century, winning four championships, and yet he is viewed by much of the team’s fan base as a cheap and uninterested proprietor who uses the Red Sox cash machine to fund his other sports hobbies.
Craig Breslow, the head of baseball operations for the Red Sox, defended the trade when he spoke with reporters Monday, saying, “This is in no way signifying a waving of the white flag on 2025. We are as committed as we were six months ago to putting a winning team on the field, to competing for the division and making a deep postseason run.”
Breslow spoke as if the effort to win would continue. But a lot of Boston fans believe the leadership stopped prioritizing on-field success after the 2018 championship, with the failed effort to retain Betts a turning point. When Red Sox ownership interviewed candidates to replace former head of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski in 2019, it was made clear to Chaim Bloom (who eventually got the job) and others that he would be expected to trade Betts. After Betts was dealt to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Alex Verdugo, Connor Wong and Jeter Downs, the Red Sox have largely abdicated their place as a baseball power. And Betts’ new team has more World Series titles (two) than the Red Sox have winning seasons (one) since the trade.
The fans’ protest of the Devers deal largely diverged from the industry view. A lot of rival officials thought that the Red Sox did well in ridding themselves of a one-dimensional star with an expensive contract who refused layers of requests to change, receiving four players from the San Francisco Giants in return, including talented lefty Kyle Harrison. “WTF were the Giants doing taking on that whole contract?” one executive asked rhetorically, via text. “Oh my god. That deal will not end well.”
Another executive said that he thought that on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being terrible, management’s handling of the Devers situation was a six. “They made mistakes,” he said. “Devers’ handling of this was a 10 out of 10 in how bad it was.”
Regardless of Devers’ handling of the situation, it’s clear that the Red Sox have some work to do in filling the role he leaves.
“[The Red Sox] did well in this trade, for the long term,” one exec said. “But they are going to miss him. You’re not going to replace a hitter like Devers.”
What matters now for the Red Sox is what they do next. After trading Betts, they largely shifted into a mode of rebuilding uncommon for a big-market team, a choice which drove the fan base into its current cynicism. At trade deadlines in recent years, the Red Sox have either retreated or failed to add. The onus is on Breslow and Henry to add, even if that means taking on payroll and expending resources. The fans don’t believe leadership actually cares about winning, and the only way the Red Sox can change that is to win.
In order to do that, the Red Sox organization needs to take the lessons that can be learned from how this situation played out and apply them moving forward. And Devers himself should do the same.
His frustration and unwillingness to work with the team had been clear since the Red Sox signed All-Star Alex Bregman in February, with Devers saying he was promised third base when he agreed to his $313.5 million deal in January of 2023, a claim rival evaluators view dubiously.
“Who could ever promise something like that?” one executive said. “Things change so fast — injuries, players coming and going. You don’t get deeded a position for life.”
Even when it became clear that a move to first would help the Red Sox incorporate young players such as Roman Anthony, Devers declined. As he gets settled with the Giants, he has an opportunity to be more open-minded, to work with his new team, rather than at the expense of others.
As for Breslow, he needs to hear the feedback that is coming from all corners of the franchise: His interpersonal skills are poor. In his 1½ years with the Red Sox, Breslow has failed to build a relationship with the team’s most important player. He has to talk more with others, connect more — because when he doesn’t build those relationships, what festers in the vacuum of conversation is the sort of communication decline that developed with Devers.
And it’s not only Devers: What others in the organization say is that Breslow’s presence is wooden and ineffective, a problem highlighted by an incident on a Zoom call with staffers last month. According to sources, a longtime scout, Carl Moesche, assumed that his voice could not be heard on the call and said out loud, “Thanks, Bres, you f—ing stiff.” Moesche was subsequently fired, but Breslow needs to recognize that Moesche’s view reflects that of other Red Sox employees, and that’s an enormous problem.
Red Sox manager Alex Cora needs to recognize that in the Devers drama, he was ineffective. He has a longstanding relationship of care and respect with Devers, but as rival executives note, what good was that relationship to the organization, really, when Cora couldn’t get Devers to do what he, Breslow and Henry needed him to do? Only Cora and Devers know what was said between them, but whether Cora chose to play good cop to Breslow’s bad cop or he felt it best to support Devers rather than take him on, it didn’t work.
And as much as anything, Henry must do some self-reflection: He must recognize that it was his original sin that put Boston in this situation. He chose not to pay his best and most dynamic player what he was worth, subjecting the franchise to the Betts tax that it continues to pay over and over. Because they didn’t sign Betts, the Red Sox gave into the pressure from frustrated fans in their negotiations with Devers, agreeing to a deal that concerned some in the franchise given doubts about Devers’ ability to lead and whether he was destined to become an overpaid designated hitter.
Henry needs to do what he did not do with Betts and Jon Lester and Xander Bogaerts and Chris Sale and others: keep the best stars. Pay to keep the next Yaz, the next Ortiz. Maybe that’s Roman Anthony, maybe it’s Marcelo Mayer, maybe it’s Jarren Duran. As Philadelphia Phillies owner John Middleton said last year, fans don’t care about an owner’s bottom line. They care about winning. Henry needs to demonstrate, once and for all, that’s his priority, as well.
Every week, we gather a panel of our MLB experts to rank every team based on a combination of what we’ve seen so far and what we knew going into the season. Those power rankings look at teams as a whole — both at the plate and in the field.
But, how different would those rankings be if we were to look only at major league offenses?
We’ve seen a number of offensive explosions so far in the 2025 season — from torpedo bats taking the league by storm on opening weekend thanks to the Yankees’ barrage of home runs to Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani each putting together yet another all-time campaign at the plate.
The latest offensive shake-up came in the form of a blockbuster trade, with the Red Sox sending All-Star slugger Rafael Devers to the Giants in a deal that reverberated around the league. How did it impact the two teams’ offensive outlooks?
Our MLB power rankers came together to sort baseball’s lineups based on what they’ve seen so far and where teams currently stand. We also asked ESPN MLB experts Jeff Passan, David Schoenfield and Bradford Doolittle to break down the top 10 offenses in baseball, from each team’s catalyst to the lineup’s biggest weakness.
Top 10 lineups
Why it’s so fearsome: You start with the second-best hitter in the world in Shohei Ohtani, add in the National League’s leading hitter for average in Freddie Freeman and the NL’s OBP leader in Will Smith, mix in Mookie Betts, and finish with power up and down the lineup — and you might have the best lineup in Dodgers history. Indeed, their current wRC+ of 124 would be the highest in franchise history. There is just no room for opposing pitchers to breathe, and the Dodgers have a nice balance of left- and right-handed hitters who make it difficult for opposing managers to optimize their bullpen matchups.
One weakness: Michael Conforto has been a big disappointment as a free agent, hitting .170 with only four home runs while playing nearly every game so far. The bench was weak to start the season, but the Dodgers jettisoned longtime veterans Chris Taylor and Austin Barnes and called up Hyeseong Kim and top prospect Dalton Rushing. Kim has been outstanding, hitting .382 in his first 30 games, while Rushing has played sparingly as the backup catcher.
Player who makes it all click: As the leadoff hitter, Ohtani’s presence sets the tone from the first pitch of the game — and he already has hit seven first-inning home runs in 2025. With 73 runs in the Dodgers’ first 72 games (he sat out two of them), Ohtani is on pace for a remarkable 164 runs scored, which has been topped only twice since 1900 — once each by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. (They also each have the only other seasons with at least 160 runs scored.) With Ohtani making his 2025 pitching debut Monday, we’ll see if that affects his offense, but it didn’t during his final season with the Angels in 2023 when he posted a 1.066 OPS while pitching. — Schoenfield
Why it’s so fearsome: The Yankees homer more than any team in the American League. They walk more than any team in all of MLB. They don’t strike out excessively. They punish fastballs. Judge, the best hitter in baseball, anchors their lineup. Seven other regulars are slugging at least .428 in an environment where the leaguewide slug is under .400. There are 100 more reasons the Yankees’ lineup induces such anxiety in opposing pitchers, but it can be encapsulated this way: It’s a lineup without a real weak link, filled with professional hitters who take quality at-bats, at a time when so few make that a priority.
One weakness: Calling this a weakness is a stretch, because the most important point about the Yankees’ lineup is that it doesn’t have a weakness, but they have been worse with runners in scoring position than in situations without runners on second or third. The Marlins have more home runs with players in scoring position than the Yankees. New York’s slugging percentage in such situations dips from .451 to .407 — good for 13th in MLB. It’s also 140 points below the Dodgers’ mark. But fear not: Slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who epitomized clutch for the Yankees last postseason, is back after sitting out the season’s first 2½ months. As if the rich need to get any richer.
Player who makes it all click: What, were you expecting J.C. Escarra? The answer, of course, is Judge, the two-time AL MVP whose combination of power and plate discipline is gifting the Yankees another potential all-time season. It’s not simply the .378 batting average — which is 56 points higher than his career best — or the resplendent home runs he hits, to left and center and right, making the whole field his playground. Even after a miserable series against the Red Sox over the weekend, there is an expectation that Judge will rebound because he hits the ball so hard and so consistently makes contact. The Yankees without Judge are good; the Yankees with him are undeniable. — Passan
Why it’s so fearsome: The lineup depth has been ridiculous, and that trait has been even more stark since Matt Shaw returned from an early-season demotion and began contributing. The Cubs’ collective OPS from spots seven through nine in the batting order is more than 50 points better than the second-best team. Some of that stems from Pete Crow-Armstrong hitting seventh early on, but Chicago has maintained its top-to-bottom consistency all season. This keeps the plate full for run-producers Crow-Armstrong, Kyle Tucker and Seiya Suzuki.
One weakness: The Cubs have been good at just about everything that goes with producing runs. They rank in the top 10 in all three slash categories, are fifth in homers and second in steals. You really have to squint to find a weakness. You can point to a big disparity in road production (.808 OPS) compared to what the Cubs have done at Wrigley Field (.702 OPS). But that too might even out as the weather factors in Chicago work more consistently in favor of hitters.
Player who makes it all click: Crow-Armstrong might be the Cubs’ best MVP candidate, but Tucker is the best hitter and the best exemplar of Chicago’s good-at-everything attack. Tucker leads the team in runs created and OPS+, and though he’s not Crow-Armstrong on the bases, he has swiped 18 of 19 bags. None of this is out of scale with Tucker’s track record. This is who he is — except maybe a little better, as he has walked more than he has struck out. If Tucker’s power bat heats up with the summer weather, look out. — Doolittle
Why it’s so fearsome: The Diamondbacks do a little bit of everything. They already have two 20-homer hitters in Corbin Carroll and Eugenio Suarez, plus Ketel Marte, who sat out a month because of injury but could still reach 30 home runs. They are fourth in the majors in walks and fifth in on-base percentage, so they get on base. Geraldo Perdomo has been a solid contributor the past two seasons but has added some power. He has more walks than strikeouts and has already established a career high in RBIs, adding depth. Josh Naylor is hitting around .300 while replacing Christian Walker’s production at first base.
One weakness: Center fielder Alek Thomas is the only regular with a below-average OPS+, and even then, he’s not awful. The bench is a little thin beyond Tim Tawa and Randal Grichuk, as backup catcher Jose Herrera has provided little offense. The Diamondbacks’ biggest potential weakness is their struggle against left-handed pitchers. (They have an OPS more than 100 points lower than against right-handers.) Carroll, Naylor and the switch-hitting Marte have each been significantly better against righties.
Player who makes it all click: As explosive as Carroll has been at the top of the order, Marte is the team’s best all-around hitter. Like Perdomo, he has more walks than strikeouts, making him a tough out with his ability to put the ball in play and also take free passes. He has the power (36 home runs in 2024) to clear the bases, but he also excels as a baserunner and can have Naylor and Suarez drive him in. When the Diamondbacks reached the World Series in 2023, Marte was the offensive leader, hitting .329/.380/.534 that postseason. — Schoenfield
Why it’s so fearsome: The Mets’ lineup runs sneaky deep, boasts a combination of average and power, and has the fourth-lowest strikeout rate in the major leagues. Low strikeouts often equate to decent batting averages, but the Venn diagram with contact orientation and power is sparsely populated. Beyond the overall numbers, the Mets’ lineup is packed with stars: Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor and the team’s best hitter this season, Pete Alonso. A resurgent Jeff McNeil deepens a group that hasn’t received quite the expected output from Soto. He’s starting to find his rhythm, though, and once that happens, the Mets are bound to be even better.
One weakness: Considering the Mets have multiple options at third base, the quest for an internal solution isn’t banking on the fortunes of a single player. It could be Mark Vientos, the postseason star last year who’s set to begin a rehab assignment next week after a disappointing start to the season. It could be Brett Baty, who has shown plenty of power but still sports a .267 on-base percentage. It could be Ronny Mauricio, the rookie whose pop — and allergy to getting on base — is similar to Baty’s. Regardless of who it is, manager Carlos Mendoza has time to figure out how to maneuver his lineup so that other offensive holes at catcher and center field (when Jeff McNeil isn’t playing there) aren’t nearly as glaring.
Player who makes it all click: The Mets have been clicking without the best version of Soto, so it’s no surprise that in the past 16 games — in which Soto has hit .333/.507/.685 with five home runs — they have scored at least four runs 15 times. As good as New York is without Soto performing, he is their double-click — the catalyzer who brings about action. Even at his lowest points this season, he was managing to get on base, and that’s what makes Soto such a transformative player: His floor is extremely high. When he’s feeling his swing and unleashing shots to all fields, he’s capable of reaching a ceiling higher than all but a handful of hitters in the game. — Passan
Why it’s so fearsome: The Phillies have veterans with big names who have all been productive hitters at various points in their careers — although not necessarily in 2025. Kyle Schwarber has been the lynchpin so far, moved out of the leadoff spot and leading the team in home runs, runs scored and RBIs. Trea Turner is having his best season since joining the Phillies in 2023, with a .364 OBP that would be his highest since 2021. Alec Bohm has been on his usual roller coaster — homerless in April but hitting .331 with seven home runs since the beginning of May.
One weakness: Catcher J.T. Realmuto has carried a huge workload through the years but is now 34 years old and showing some signs of age with career lows in batting average, slugging and OPS. Bryson Stott was an above-average hitter in 2023 before dipping last season, and he has been even worse in 2025 with an OPS+ of just 75. Part-time center fielder Johan Rojas provides speed and defense, but not much offense, and as usual, the bench is pretty weak. Yes, that’s more than one weakness.
Player who makes it all click: As important as it is to have Turner getting on base, this lineup will always revolve around Bryce Harper and his ability to go on hot stretches. He hasn’t had one yet this season and is currently on the injured list because of a right wrist injury. His .446 slugging percentage and .814 OPS are his lowest since 2016. Harper has always been an outlier of sorts — he ranks in the second percentile in swing-and-miss rate in 2025 but in the 67th percentile in strikeout rate — so these aren’t necessarily signs of a decline. Philly just needs him to get hot once he returns. — Schoenfield
Why it’s so fearsome: It’s not. That’s the thing about the Tigers. One gander at their lineup cards — manager AJ Hinch has used 60 different variations over 71 games — and it doesn’t exactly strike fear. And yet that’s the beauty of the 2025 Tigers: They’re managing to score oodles of runs without a single hitter sporting a slugging percentage higher than .500. It’s not like the Tigers are particularly good at avoiding the strikeout (24th in MLB) or taking walks (18th). They don’t hit home runs in bunches (10th) or steal bases at all (30th). They’re simply solid, almost from top to bottom, replete with enough hitters who are league average or better to cobble together runs.
One weakness: The strikeouts are problematic — and a third of Detroit’s regulars struggle to counterbalance them with walks. Kerry Carpenter (52 strikeouts, seven walks), super-utility man Javier Baez (48 strikeouts, eight walks) and catcher Dillon Dingler (56 strikeouts, five walks) constitute one-third of players in all of MLB with at least 48 punchouts and fewer than 10 walks. Riley Greene’s 93 strikeouts lead MLB. And in the postseason, where the pitching gets better and every out is valuable, giving away at-bats by swinging and missing too much is a distinct no-no. Even with the strikeouts, the Tigers won’t be an easy out in October. But among the teams with legitimate playoff aspirations, only Boston punches out more, and it’s the sort of thing that could haunt Detroit.
Player who makes it all click: There isn’t one player, per se. One night it might be outfielder Greene, and another one first baseman Spencer Torkelson, and sometimes outfielder Carpenter, and maybe even infielder Zach McKinstry or outfielder Wenceel Perez. But if there’s one player whose skills differ from his teammates’ and set the table, it’s second baseman Gleyber Torres. Operating on a one-year deal, Torres has been the Tigers’ most consistent hitter this season, getting on base at a .377 clip and walking more than he strikes out. He exemplifies Detroit’s lineup — its team, really — in that nothing he does is particularly sexy but it’s unquestionably effective. — Passan
Why it’s so fearsome: “Fearsome” might be a stretch, but after a horrible April (.656 OPS), the Blue Jays did follow up with a strong May (.785 OPS). June has so far split the difference (.709 OPS), so maybe that’s the true level here, which makes this more of a league-average offense — and, indeed, that’s where the Jays currently stand in runs per game. But there is potential for more here, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Anthony Santander, Bo Bichette and Andres Gimenez all capable of more offense than they’ve offered so far.
One weakness: Power. George Springer leads the team with 10 home runs, and the Jays have been outhomered by their opponents 99-70. Left field has been a problem all season, as seven different players have started there, combining to hit .223 with only four home runs. Gimenez was acquired for his defense at second base, but he has been a flop at the plate, hitting .212/.291/.327 with four home runs (and that’s after homering three times in the first five games). Lately, he has even been benched against left-handers.
Player who makes it all click: The $500 million man is hitting more like a $50 million man right now (.275/.375/.414, eight home runs) — but when he’s hot, the offense runs through him. Guerrero had a monster season in 2021 — but that was the year the Jays played more than half of their games in minor league parks because of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Guerrero had a 1.418 OPS in their spring training park and a 1.180 OPS in Buffalo (and a .935 at Rogers Centre). He was great again last season — thanks to a .342 BABIP. This season, it’s back down to .299, right around his career mark, but even that doesn’t explain the decline in power. The Jays need Guerrero to start mashing. — Schoenfield
9. Athletics
Why it’s so fearsome: They hit home runs and they hit for average, ranking in the top 10 in the majors in both categories. Jacob Wilson has been the breakout star with a .362 average in his rookie season, Brent Rooker is on his way to a third straight 30-homer season, Lawrence Butler is heating up and looking like the hitter he was in the second half of 2024, and rookie first baseman Nick Kurtz has also added another power bat to the lineup (after a slow start, he has hit .286 with six home runs in his past 11 games). What we don’t fully know yet, based on a small sample size, is how Sutter Health Park is helping. The A’s have hit for a higher average at home (.268 to .240) but have hit more home runs on the road (53 in 38 games compared to 39 in 36 games at home).
One weakness: JJ Bleday had a solid 2024 season, with 20 home runs and a 120 OPS+ in 159 games, but struggled out of the gate in 2025, earning a short demotion to Triple-A. Rookie Denzel Clarke replaced him, and though he has been a defensive wunderkind, he has been overmatched at the plate, hitting .209 with 34 strikeouts and one walk. Overall, the A’s rank 29th in the majors in OPS from their center fielders, ahead of only the Guardians.
Player who makes it all click: Wilson has been amazing, showcasing rare bat-to-ball skills with only 18 strikeouts in 289 plate appearances. The big surprise has been the 23 extra-base hits, including eight home runs, after going homerless in 92 at-bats during last season’s call-up. He has also been drawing a few more walks after beginning the season without one in his first 22 games, so his OBP is over .400. Now that he appears entrenched in the No. 2 spot, he’s going to give the middle of the order a lot of RBI opportunities. — Schoenfield
Why it’s so fearsome: In the Cardinals’ case, the fear factor is probably pointed in the wrong direction — as in their own fear of regression. I suspect their ranking is more a product of what they’ve done than what they are likely to do going forward. Ultimately, a team like the Braves, or even the reshuffled Giants or Red Sox, might be better placed here — but you never know. It’s a lineup with batting average and baserunning as the standout traits. The average part of it can be a house of cards — no pun intended — but the underlying expected stats backstop St. Louis’ offense so far.
One weakness: Only six clubs have a lower secondary average than the Cardinals — mostly a who’s who of the worst offenses in the majors. Secondary traits tend to be more stable than BABIP-related indicators, so St. Louis will need to continue to churn out its admirable strikeout and line-drive rates — a good formula for an average-based offense. But if the average falls, the Cardinals don’t draw enough walks or mash enough homers to make up the difference.
Player who makes it all click: Brendan Donovan‘s career year serves as an avatar for what the St. Louis offense is all about. He leads the Redbirds in runs created, and because he’s doing that while mostly playing in the middle of the infield (which boosts positional value), he’s far and away the team leader in offensive bWAR. The question is will it last? On one hand, even though Donovan has a career BABIP of .319, his 2025-to-date figure of .355 is going to be tough to maintain. On the other hand, Donovan’s 31% line drive rate is tied for second in the NL with teammate Willson Contreras. — Doolittle
Teams 11-30
11. Boston Red Sox
12. Seattle Mariners
13. San Francisco Giants
14. Atlanta Braves
15. Tampa Bay Rays
16. San Diego Padres
17. Cincinnati Reds
18. Minnesota Twins
19. Houston Astros
20. Baltimore Orioles
21. Milwaukee Brewers
22. Los Angeles Angels
23. Washington Nationals
24. Cleveland Guardians
25. Texas Rangers
26. Kansas City Royals
27. Miami Marlins
28. Chicago White Sox
29. Pittsburgh Pirates
30. Colorado Rockies
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