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WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Denny Hamlin never had a chance to race for the win at Watkins Glen after he was caught up in an opening-lap wreck that knocked fellow playoff driver Ryan Blaney out of the race.

Hamlin recovered to later gain a stage point, but he eventually spun and the nose of his Toyota tagged the wall. He finished 23rd and was dumped to 13th in the NASCAR playoff standings, six points behind Ty Gibbs on the postseason cutoff line.

Not ideal for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver, though his familiar bravado hasn’t waned as NASCAR heads to Bristol Motor Speedway for the final first-round playoff race.

“I feel like we can go there and win,” Hamlin said. “We are going to an oval, back to a normal track. We can control our own destiny there.”

Hamlin, who has 54 career wins, should feel confident about his chances at Bristol. He has won in back-to-back years at the track and has four career wins on the 0.533-mile oval.

That should put the drivers around him fighting for a spot in the field of 12 on edge.

Four drivers will be cut from the field Saturday night. Joey Logano won the playoff opener Atlanta Motor Speedway to earn a spot in the second round. Chris Buescher spoiled the playoff party with a win Sunday at Watkins Glen International, leading a string of five non-playoff drivers to the finish.

Hamlin, NASCAR Cup Series champions Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr., and Harrison Burton are in the bottom four. Christopher Bell finished 14th at the Glen and holds a comfortable 46-point edge in the standings.

“It wasn’t pretty how we got there, but we got there and now we can go to Bristol and relax a little bit more,” Bell said.

Watkins Glen was a disaster for most of the playoff field. Chase Briscoe was the highest finisher among the 16 drivers, in sixth place. At least 11 playoff drivers ran into some sort of issue, including a rough scene late in the race where Keselowski and William Byron crashed battling for position. Byron’s Chevrolet landed on top of Keselowski’s Ford with six laps left in the scheduled 90-lap race.

Ten playoff drivers were dumped into the bottom 21 finishers.

Briscoe rocks

No playoff driver had a better bump in the standings than Briscoe. The Stewart-Hass Racing driver, trying to win the team a title in its final season, entered the Glen in 16th and 21 points below the cutline. His sixth-place finish jolted him to 11th and six points ahead of the cutline.

Briscoe, who won at Darlington to clinch a playoff spot, has never finished better than 13th in five career Cup races at Bristol.

“I don’t consider ourselves to be an underdog,” Briscoe said. “Some people might’ve already written us off, but for myself and our entire race team, we all feel like we can win it all. That’s probably crazy from a guy who didn’t look like he was even going to be a part of it, but the way we look at it is if we can win the Southern 500, we can win probably any race throughout the entire season.”

Briscoe, who is signed to drive for Joe Gibbs Racing next season, has reveled in the pressure in the final days of the SHR program that won NASCAR titles with Tony Stewart in 2011 and Kevin Harvick in 2014.

“No other team can compare to what we’re going through, and no other team has the emotions that we do, so I think that’s what makes us so scary,” he said. “We have a lot on our shoulders and there’s a lot of pride that comes along with that. We’re just a unique race team right now.”

Fading champs

Truex, the 2017 champion, has had a farewell season to forget as he heads toward retirement without a victory. The JGR driver was 20th at the Glen and is 15th in the standings, 14 points below the cutline. He has never won at Bristol in 37 starts.

Keselowski has one win this season — he earned another as an owner with Buescher at RFK Racing — and was collected in that late crash Sunday. He finished 26th, enough to dump him from 12 points behind Ty Gibbs for 12th.

The 2012 champion, Keselowski has three Bristol wins (2011, 2012, 2020).

Blaney argued his race team should have been allowed to try to repair his Ford on pit road after the first-lap wreck. His car instead was towed to the garage and his race was over. Last season’s Cup champion, Blaney, is still in a solid spot, in eighth place with a 29-point edge. He has never won at Bristol.

Final say

The complete picture: Logano is in the second round with his Atlanta win. Bell, Austin Cindric, Alex Bowman, Daniel Suarez, Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, Blaney, Kyle Larson, Byron, Briscoe and Gibbs make up the rest of the field of 12.

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Sources: Red Sox deal Devers to Giants in stunner

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Sources: Red Sox deal Devers to Giants in stunner

The San Francisco Giants are acquiring All-Star slugger Rafael Devers from the Boston Red Sox, sources confirmed to ESPN’s Jeff Passan on Sunday evening.

The Giants are sending starter Jordan Hicks and 23-year-old lefty Kyle Harrison, among others, to Boston in exchange, sources said.

Devers, 28, is in just the second season of a 10-year, $313.5 million contract he signed to stay in Boston in January 2023, however his relationship with the team suffered a significant blow after the star third baseman was reportedly blindsided by a move to designated hitter in the spring.

Tensions flared again last month after Devers refused an offer from the team to move him to first base after starting first baseman Triston Casas was ruled out for the season with a knee injury.

It reached a point where Red Sox owner John Henry met with the disgruntled star, making a rare trip to meet the team on the road and smooth things over after Devers’ pointed comments about the request to switch positions again.

Hicks and Harrison give a pitching-starved Red Sox team more depth on their staff while Devers provides a huge boost to a middling Giants offense.

Devers has more than 200 career home runs to his name and has a .894 OPS for Boston this season.

The deal was first reported by Fansided.

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Ohtani’s pitching return might be coming soon

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Ohtani's pitching return might be coming soon

Shohei Ohtani‘s pitching debut for the Los Angeles Dodgers might be quickly approaching.

Manager Dave Roberts told reporters Sunday that Ohtani would throw another simulated game in the coming days that could “potentially” be his last one, and a source told ESPN’s Buster Olney that Ohtani should join the Dodgers’ rotation “sooner rather than later,” potentially within the week.

Ohtani took a big step forward during his most recent simulated game at Petco Park on Tuesday, throwing 44 pitches over the course of three innings against a couple of lower-level minor league players. Ohtani’s fastball reached the mid- to upper-90s, and he exhibited good command of his off-speed pitches in what amounted to his third time facing hitters. Afterward, Roberts said there was a “north of zero” chance Ohtani could join the rotation before the All-Star break.

Because of his two-way designation, the Dodgers can carry Ohtani as an extra pitcher, which means he can throw two to three innings and have someone pitch after him as a piggyback starter. At this point, it seems that is the Dodgers’ plan.

The Dodgers’ pitching staff has again been plagued by injury, with 14 pitchers on the injured list, including four starting pitchers the team was heavily counting on for 2025 — Blake Snell, Tony Gonsolin, Roki Sasaki and Tyler Glasnow.

If Ohtani returns in July — the likely outcome at this point — he will be 22 months removed from a second repair of his ulnar collateral ligament.

The update isn’t as optimistic for Sasaki. He paused his throwing program and is set for a lengthy layoff. Sasaki has not pitched in a game since May 9 and is not part of the team’s long-term pitching plans this season.

“I think that’s what the mindset should be,” Roberts said. “Being thrust into this environment certainly was a big undertaking for him, and now you layer in the health part and the fact he’s a starting pitcher, knowing what the build-up [required to return] entails … I think that’s the prudent way to go about it.”

Sasaki, 23, went 1-1 with a 4.72 ERA in eight starts after joining the Dodgers from the Pacific League’s Chuba Lotte Marines, averaging less than 4⅓ innings per start. He walked 22 and struck out 24 in 34⅓ innings, and his fastball averaged 95.7 mph, down 3-4 mph from his average in Japan.

Roberts said Sasaki was pain free when he resumed throwing in early June, but the pitcher was shut down after feeling discomfort this past week. Sasaki recently received a cortisone injection in the shoulder; Roberts said no further scans are planned.

“I don’t think it’s pain,” Roberts said. “I don’t know if it’s discomfort, if it’s tightness, if he’s just not feeling strong, whatever the adjective you want to use. That’s more of a question for Roki, as far as the sensation he’s feeling.

“He’s just not feeling like he can ramp it up, and we’re not going to push him to do something he doesn’t feel good about right now.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Judge 1-for-12 as NY swept: Got to swing at strikes

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Judge 1-for-12 as NY swept: Got to swing at strikes

BOSTON — Aaron Judge blamed himself for swinging at pitches outside the strike zone as the New York Yankees were swept in a three-game series against the Boston Red Sox.

“You got to swing at strikes,” Judge said after going 1-for-12 in the series, which Boston completed with a 2-0 victory on Sunday.

Judge struck out three or more times in three straight games for only the third time in his major league career.

“That usually helps any hitter when you swing at strikes,” Judge added. “Definitely some pitches off the edge or off the edge in, you know, taking some hacks just trying to make something happen.”

Judge had a tying solo homer in the opener Friday night but struck out nine times as the Yankees were swept in a series for the first time this season.

New York scored only four runs in the three games, matching its fewest in a three-game series at Fenway Park, on June 20-22, 1916 and on Sept. 28-30, 1922.

“It’s very hard,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said of facing Judge. “He’s so good at what he does. We used our fastballs in the right spots, we got some swing and misses.”

“Throughout the years we’ve been aggressive with him,” Cora added. “Sometimes he gets us, sometimes we do a good job with that. It’s always fun to compete against the best, and, to me, he’s the best in the business right now.”

Judge’s major league-leading average dipped to .378.

“I don’t think much of it,” teammate Ben Rice said. “If I could have that guy hitting every single at-bat even if he’s not at his best, I would do it. I’m sure he’ll bounce back. He’ll be all right.”

Judge faced Garrett Whitlock with two on in the eighth Sunday and bounced into an inning-ending double play.

“He’s one of the greatest hitters in the world,” Whitlock said. “It’s special to watch him play and everything. We tried to execute and had some execution this weekend.”

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