‘I love October’: Why Bryce Harper is built for the postseason spotlight
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
PHILADELPHIA — Inside Bryce Harper‘s basement on a recent Saturday morning, his son wanted dad to watch his Hot Wheels races, and his daughter was hungry and needed a bagel, and the baby had just unleashed a volcanic spit-up on him for the second time in five minutes, and amid the chaos, the calls for his attention, the tugs in every direction, Harper exuded calm. Considering the environment in which Harper plies his trade — 40,000 people bleating, praying and exhorting him to carry the Philadelphia Phillies back to Major League Baseball’s mountaintop — the smaller audience posed no problem.
Harper swiped the regurgitation off his hoodie, snagged a plate full of breakfast, cheered for the orange car with the racing stripe and, when those duties were completed, sank into the couch and trained his eyes on the TV broadcasting “College GameDay.” He’s a die-hard college football fan — a logo for Ohio State, where his wife, Kayla, played soccer, adorned his sweatshirt — and its return, as much as the leaves changing colors, signaled to Harper a new season and the arrival of his favorite month.
“I love October,” Harper said. It’s football and Halloween and his birthday, yes, but they’re all secondary to him getting another crack at fulfilling his purpose. That’s how Harper sees it at least. Everything he is — someone ripe to be chewed up and spit out by the machine that makes sports stars but instead met the hype — prepares him for October, equips him with the intellectual and emotional and spiritual tools to match the physical capabilities that were never in question.
All of it converges again Saturday, when the Phillies host the New York Mets in Game 1 of the National League Division Series at Citizens Bank Park. It will mark Harper’s 50th career postseason game, 30 of them coming the past two seasons, when he has been the best playoff performer in the game. First in hits, first in home runs, first in runs, first in OPS. They’re not just numbers that reflect the Phillies’ success. They are the engine for it.
“When opponents hear his name being called over the PA and they hear the walkup music and they see him walking to the plate, their heart starts fluttering,” Phillies leadoff hitter Kyle Schwarber said. “We all laugh about it, right? But everyone always thinks that something cool’s going to happen. We all think that because he’s proven it.”
Harper’s reverence in the baseball world has been hard-earned. He has lived an inimitable baseball life: a pre-social media celebrity at 15 years old who dropped out of high school to play junior college baseball, proved worthy enough to go No. 1 overall in the draft at 17 years old, reached the major leagues at 19, won an MVP at 22, did it again at 28 and now, on the cusp of his 32nd birthday, is missing only one thing from his Hall of Fame résumé.
The Phillies were two games from a World Series title in 2022. Their return engagement last season flamed out in the NL Championship Series against Arizona. Now they are loaded: the bats, the gloves, the starters, the bullpen — as well-rounded a team as exists in this baseball landscape suffused with parity. And he is the one to whom his teammates turn for the big hit, the big moment, because he has shown he’s worthy of it.
“He’s actively looking for the situation. He wants it,” said Trea Turner, his teammate with the Washington Nationals who followed him in signing a $300-million-plus free agent deal with Philadelphia. “I think everybody wants to be the hero, but I think he’s a notch above that in the sense that he desires it. And I don’t think you can teach that. I’ve heard him say before that some people are scared to be great, and that’s obviously not him. He wants to be great.”
In baseball, greatness is forged in the everyday grind, and with a game to be played, daddy day care time wound to an end. Harper’s 5-year-old son, Krew, asked if he’d see Harper in the clubhouse after the game, and Harper answered affirmatively, as long as the Phillies won. His 3-year-old daughter, Brooklyn, accompanied Krew outside to sit on the brick ledge as Harper pulled his truck out of the garage and backed out of the driveway. They smiled and waved and sent him off to another day of work, another day closer to October, to the moments he spends the entire regular-season waiting for.
“Your heart’s beating, racing a little bit, and you’ve got the butterflies, and especially Game 1, man,” Harper said. “You go into Game 1 in the NLCS or the NLDS, and you’re sitting there, and the planes are flying over, and the anthem’s going, and you’re like, damn, dude. It feels like Opening Day again. And I think that’s a cool thing, too. It’s a clean slate.
“You have a good year, you have a bad year, you have the worst year of your career — I couldn’t care less about what you did during the season. Does not matter. Because if you have a great 11 games, then you’re going to be remembered for that. You’re not going to be remembered for the year that you had. You’re not going to be remembered for anything else. That’s what you’re going to be remembered for. Remembered forever.”
ON THE 15-MINUTE ride from Harper’s suburban New Jersey home to the ballpark, he can’t stop talking about Philadelphia. He has spent nearly as many years here (six) as he did in Washington (seven), and Harper remains as smitten with the city as ever. When he signed a 13-year, $330 million contract with the Phillies, Harper vowed not to be a carpetbagger. So he roots for the Birds and Sixers and Flyers. He wears cleats and headbands festooned with the Wawa logo. The only thing that would make him more Philly is naming a child “Jawn.” And as much as he wants a championship for himself, he regards it as a communal act, a giveback for the embrace fans bestow upon him.
“At the end of the day, they want to see us win,” Harper said. “And if we’re winning, they’re winning. They can sit there and go, screw you to Boston, screw you to New York, screw you to L.A. They have that demeanor. That’s just how they are. They can hold it over their buddy’s head in New York or Boston because we beat ’em that week. You know how sports are, man.
“That’s the coolest thing about being here and being part of it, and you don’t fully understand it until you’re here. It takes a different mindset to play in this place. And I wanted to do it.”
This place turns into something else in October. The sun sets and the air turns crisp, and all of the negative connotations of past Philadelphia fandom — battery chucking and booing Santa — have evolved into a civilized version of mania. “October baseball here is a performance,” Phillies outfielder Nick Castellanos said.
There are sing-alongs. (“October is a crazy, crazy time here,” said Phillies second baseman Bryson Stott, whose grand slam in the immediate aftermath of the whole stadium feting him with his walkup song became a signature moment of last postseason. It has become — and Philadelphians might scoff at this, but it’s true — almost wholesome.
And yet it’s still a horror show for visitors. The decibel levels, whether the constant din or peak madness, are unmatched in baseball, though that really happened only years after Harper’s arrival.
The Phillies had booked six consecutive losing seasons when they signed him. The turnaround wasn’t immediate. They were 81-81 in Harper’s first season, didn’t make the playoffs in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign and missed again at 82-80 the next year. Before the 2022 season, they signed Schwarber, and that September, the Eagles’ home opener on Monday night aligned with a Phillies off day. A group, including Harper and Schwarber, went to the game and came away inspired. This is what the Bank can sound like. This is energy we need to arouse. They won their first six postseason games at the Bank in October 2022, and they won their first five last year. This year, their 54-27 record at the Bank was the best home mark in MLB.
That’s why Harper pulled into the parking lot before that Saturday game in September and couldn’t wait to go to work.
“I love it. I get here, and it’s so calming for me,” Harper said. “There’s nothing that irritates me. It’s just baseball. I’m a Philadelphia Phillie. I love it. Every day.”
“Calming is not the word a normal person would use,” Stott said. “But he knows this is home now, and this is where he is going to be. And I think that’s just a calming presence, even though the surrounding noise and fans and cheers is not calm at all.”
“When those moments come in the postseason or late in the year, there’s nothing like it,” Harper said. “I feel like there’s times where it’s in slow motion and I feel like the — I don’t know. It’s hard to explain because I’ve been playing baseball for a long time, and I’ve had those moments since I was 10, 11, 12 years old of slowing the game down.
“After 23, 24 years of competitive baseball, since I was 7 years old, I still love every part of the competitiveness.”
HARPER IS NOT exaggerating. His formative years were spent in youth travel baseball, where he traversed the country on weekends as a baseball mercenary for different elite teams. An enormous child, already 6-foot-1 and 170 pounds at 12, Harper unleashed a fastball that touched 80 mph and a swing that crushed home runs. Baby fat covered Harper’s face in the same way his beard does now, both ringing a mischievous grin he looses around teammates.
In 2005, Harper joined a team from Colorado at the Triple Crown World Series in Steamboat Springs. In the gold-medal game, he pitched the final inning with the crowd “screaming and yelling and saying things to a 12-year-old kid that you probably shouldn’t say.” This was three years before he graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, and they still knew who he was.
“So I ended up getting the outs,” Harper said. “We win the game, and I came off the field, and I was bawling, crying because the situation was just so intense. I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t upset. It was just a pure adrenaline rush of emotion. And I loved it. I loved all those opportunities. I loved all those moments. I loved the feeling of that.”
The Bryce Harper who finds calm in chaos — this is where he was built. During a childhood of being berated, doubted, questioned, derided. Harper’s capacity to ignore nonsense and process magnitude emerged early enough in his life that by the time he was 15 years old, everything that typically pollutes the mind of a teenaged baseball player no longer applied to him. He strode into showcase events knowing he was the best player there. He turned competition into fans. When Harper was 15, Castellanos, now his Phillies teammate, saw him at an event at Florida International University. With one swing, Harper converted him. “I can hit ’em,” Castellanos said. “I hit ’em farther than all my friends. But damn. I can’t hit it that far.”
A year later, they were teammates on the under-18 U.S. national team that won gold at the Pan Am Games in Venezuela. A few months after that, Harper dropped out of high school, earned his GED and enrolled at a local junior college, all in an effort to get draft eligible a year early. He hit 31 home runs in 66 games, was the slam dunk top pick and signed with the Nationals for $9.9 million. Harper spent a year in the minor leagues, joined the Nationals in May 2012 and finished the season with the most wins above replacement on a 98-win team that captured the NL East crown. Harper had no business being as good as he was.
“It’s the same thing,” Turner said, “with LeBron [James]. They’re so good at such a young age and then it’s kind of expected of you, but when they’re good people and it doesn’t go to their head — that’s the more impressive part. There’s so many things that could have gone wrong, and it’s a really negative way of thinking about it. But, I mean, think about how many things that people do at 19, 20 that are just stupid.”
Not everything went right immediately. Over the first four games of Harper’s first postseason, the 2012 division series against St. Louis, he went 1-for-18 with six strikeouts. Then in the decisive Game 5, he tripled in the first inning to stake Washington a 1-0 lead, homered in the third off starter Adam Wainwright to extend the lead to 3-0 and saw all those years of preparation beginning to translate in October.
“That was kind of like, man, I can do this,” Harper said. “The moment’s not too big, obviously. It was kind of a stepping stone. And then each year after that, it got better.”
Two years after that infamous 2012 season in which the Nationals shut down Stephen Strasburg for the postseason and surrendered a six-run lead in the division series’ deciding game, Washington again faltered in the playoffs, blowing home-field advantage in a division series loss to eventual World Series champion San Francisco. Harper was the only National who hit, launching three home runs. Two more division series losses ended his time in Washington without a single series win, and it was only the year after Harper left that the Nationals made an improbable run to a World Series victory.
In Philadelphia, Harper found the best version of himself. Consider what is widely regarded as the best at-bat of his life, in Game 5 of the 2022 NLCS, against Padres closer Robert Suarez. Before he left the dugout to hit in the eighth inning, Harper looked at hitting coach Kevin Long and told him: “I’m going to go deep here.” Attempting the herculean task of ignoring everything percolating in the air at the Bank, Harper called multiple timeouts before the first pitch was even thrown.
“You rewatch that at-bat, and it’s incredibly impressive,” Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham said. “There’s no one else. It’s just him and a dance with the pitcher. It’s literally what it looks like. There’s no distraction. There’s no nothing. It looks like there’s not even a thought. It’s just he’s completely wrapped up in this moment, in this game with this guy on the mound with a lot of belief.”
Suarez believed for a reason. His fastball was sizzling. First 96 mph and fouled off. Then 97 for a ball. Then 98 and 100 and 99 foul, foul, foul. Next came the moment. Finally Suarez thought he had Harper cheating fastball and uncorked a changeup. Not any old changeup but a diabolical 91 mph dirtseeker that would have induced swings and misses from the vast majority of professional hitters, and Harper instead watched it go by.
On the next pitch, a 99 mph sinker dotted on the outside corner, Harper unleashed what announcer Joe Davis called “the swing of his life.” Seven pitches into the most consequential at-bat of his career, he hammered the final one to the opposite field for a home run.
“That’s what great hitters do,” Cotham said. “They just find a way, and you never know why they did it or were they sitting on it, but to me, it’s wrapped up in the game, being one with the game and in this dance — truly part of this thing.”
Schwarber is perhaps the closest facsimile in the Phillies’ clubhouse to Harper in terms of his reverence of the postseason, and its imminence awakens something within him.
“The biggest thing is allowing the game to slow down,” Schwarber said. “Because if you can tick back everything when it’s the most important moment of that game, slow everything down, take the noise out, realize that the pitcher’s out there and recognize his heart rate’s going, too, you’re just putting yourself in a better position.”
Schwarber leaned back and grinned. Nobody gets paid in October, Schwarber said, and he’s right: Even if players do receive playoff shares that, for the championship-winning team, can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, their full paychecks stop at the end of the regular season.
“So you’re going out there for one reason,” Schwarber said. “It’s just the purest form of baseball that can be played.”
CHAMPIONSHIP WINDOWS CLOSE quickly. It’s a lesson the Philadelphia Phillies learned the last time they won a championship in 2008. They ran it back one too many times, and a half-decade-long collapse followed. That it led them to Harper — to this time when baseball in Philadelphia feels so damn alive — offers some solace. But it’s also a cautionary tale understood by Harper, who studies the rhythms and history of sports with the assiduousness of a scholar.
Harper aspires to play until he’s 42 years old — another decade, and beyond his contract, which expires when he is 39. That’s because he wants as many opportunities as possible at winning; he can’t forget how Dan Marino made the Super Bowl in his first season, lost and never got back. Schwarber and catcher J.T. Realmuto are free agents after next season, and in 2026, the Phillies are set to pay almost $160 million to six players — Harper, Turner, Castellanos and pitchers Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola and Taijuan Walker — whose average age then will be 33.8.
It’s why getting on track before October arrived this year was so imperative for Harper. Heading into that September Saturday, he hadn’t homered in 30 games, the second-longest streak of his career. The surging Mets jumped out to a 4-0 lead that day, Sept. 14. Harper finally homered in the fourth inning to cut the deficit to 4-1, and two innings later, he blasted a two-run shot to further erode a lead that the Mets eventually would blow in a loss to the Phillies. After the game, Krew and Brooklyn came into the locker room, just like daddy promised, and all of the responsibilities in his life, the things that matter, were aligning in his place of calm.
“And I feel that, right?” he said. “I want to carry this team. With the guys that we have, I don’t have to, obviously. I have to play Bryce Harper baseball. They need me to do that, but that’s all year. That’s not just the postseason. That’s every day. That’s a Saturday against the Mets in September, right?”
Never, during the homerless drought, did Harper panic. Even before the two homers, his swing felt fine, and by the end of the season, his numbers aligned almost perfectly with recent seasons: .285/.373/.525 with 30 home runs, 87 RBIs and a career-high 42 doubles. He has learned not to chase results, lest he fall out of whack mechanically. More than that, it’s a good lesson for the postseason ahead, when the starting pitching is always better and the relief arms significantly so and hitters face a choice. He tries to teach this to the Phillies’ younger players, just as veterans, such as Jayson Werth with Washington, and coaches, such as Joe Dillon in Philadelphia, taught him.
“We always talked about really good players doing bad in the postseason,” Harper said. “It happens because they start chasing or they’re not taking their walks or they don’t have the confidence in the ability of the guy behind them. When you start playing for things that are bigger than you — playing for your team — all that stuff goes out the door.”
“No offense to 162 games,” Schwarber said. “You play 162 games to the end. And then nothing matters except winning a baseball game. And this isn’t about how many home runs you hit. This isn’t about how many RBIs you have. This isn’t what your batting average is. This is about trying to find a way to win a baseball game. And that’s why the best baseball games are in the postseason. When you put special players in environments that are going to be like that, you’re going to see a really good version of that player. Don’t get me wrong. There’s some people who get put in those scenarios and can’t handle it.”
Harper refuses to let himself be anything less than the best version of that player, aware that to be ready for the moment takes more than work or commitment or desire or any other bare-minimum elements. Harper wants to constantly evolve, a difficult threshold when you’re 31 and it’s not as easy to stay in shape as it once was and the baby is puking on you and you’ve got to wake up and jump in the godforsaken cool tub again.
“It’s 39 degrees and I do it for three minutes,” Harper said. “It’s the hardest thing I do all day. I’m not kidding. I sit there and I contemplate my life every single time. I try to get in there and I scream and yell at myself inside, and I’m just like, all right, get in. And so I get in, it’s three minutes and I’m out.”
Pain is gain, and so many of Harper’s days consist of the minuscule rituals or customs he has adopted to maintain his health. The Phillies cannot afford to lose him, so he tailors his life toward ensuring that will not happen. Harper does not eat anything with artificial dyes or seed oils. All of his bread and pasta is homemade. When he’s on the road, he consumes only meat and fruit. He loves Pilates. He arrives at the stadium about four hours before the game instead of the 6½ that used to be his standard and goes right into the trainer’s room to meet up with the Phillies’ massage therapist for a 30-minute calming treatment.
And his body feels like it did when he was a kid and invincible. He’s at 216 or 217 pounds, somewhere between his ESPN the Magazine Body Issue weight (203) and the most yoked version of himself (240). This, he’d like to believe, is his championship weight, perfect to carry him through the postseason, when he’ll take his walks and shorten up his swing to avoid strikeouts and tiptoe the razor-thin line between aggressive and excessive on the basepaths. He will call home runs and hit them, and he will sing along with fans that he, too, is A-O, A-OK. He will do everything he can to represent Philadelphia while knowing that the greatest way to represent Philadelphia is by winning.
“Your superstar players have to show up,” Harper said, and for him, the superstar, that’s what this is really about. It’s the intersection of the calmness with the chaos, the comfort that 40,000 raucous souls are screaming and the contentment in not hearing a single one of them. It is Philadelphia, and it is October, and it is 11 wins away from forever.
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
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Bill Connelly
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.
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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