IT’S A CLEAR and cool Thursday night in the middle of October in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Dan Mullen is here as a media member, a face of ESPN’s college football coverage. He appears on “College Football Final” on Saturdays with host Matt Barrie and analyst Joey Galloway. He is almost three years removed from his head coaching days at Florida.
On Thursday nights, he is Barrie’s color analyst and has developed a reputation for taking part in fun, football-adjacent activities — indulging in different foods with mayo at the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, playing flip cup on “SportsCenter” with Larry Fitzgerald at Pitt, and feeding students barbecue at Georgia Tech. He’s learned how to put on a show. (Full disclosure: ESPN’s Harry Lyles Jr. worked with Dan Mullen on Thursday night broadcasts.)
In this role, he’s still involved in the game he has loved his entire life, but he can’t win or lose on Thursday or Saturday. That’s part of the fun. Every week, coaches are telling him how they think he’s living the life. He gets to be around college football without having the worries of a coach in the transfer portal and NIL era. The game is changing, but that’s not his problem.
Even someone as well-traveled as Mullen is still seeing places around the country for the first time. In 2023, he experienced his first Thursday night in Blacksburg, and one of college football’s great traditions, experiencing Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” before kickoff at Lane Stadium.
Inside Virginia Tech’s facilities, there is a hallway tribute to the Sandman tradition. The day before the 2023 game, Mullen presses a button to play the song, and he begins to jump around as if he’s part of the crowd. He seemed genuinely excited.
Fast forward to this Thursday night in 2024: Mullen is still glowing with anticipation, but it’s becoming increasingly evident that something inside him is missing.
Virginia Tech sports information director Travis Wells picks up the broadcast crew from the alumni center in a cart to ride over to Lane Stadium. Barrie sits next to Wells, with Mullen stationed in the back. As the cart makes its way toward the stadium, many fans yell out for Mullen, calling him “Coach.” He playfully does a royal wave.
When the crew arrives at the stadium, it makes its way up to the club level for a pregame meal. There’s an assortment of barbecue and desserts available, but Mullen sticks with his usual Celsius energy drink. Even as a color analyst, Mullen sticks to a pregame routine, much like he did as a coach.
Conversation among the crew orbits around Mullen’s coaching days, and gets to a place where Mullen is discussing game habits. His mood shifts. He gets a fiery look in his eyes. “It’s in your mind, you sit there and you’re like, I’ll go do the friendly handshake before the game,” he said.
“But I wouldn’t mind punching this guy, knocking him out right here in the middle of the field.”
For as much as Mullen has enjoyed his role outside of the game, it’s abundantly clear that the game isn’t quite the same unless he is immersed in it. There are things he can’t get from an air-conditioned studio or stadium television booth.
It’s why after a few seasons removed from an unpleasant end to his Florida tenure, he couldn’t pass up an offer to become the head coach at UNLV.
IN THE SPRING of 2025, seated in his office at the Fertitta Football Complex on the UNLV campus, Mullen is whole again.
He recalled the first team meeting after being hired. “I walked in front of the team and I said, ‘Boy, I feel like I feel more alive than I felt in the last three years.’ Because that’s who I am, to be in front of that team, talking to the team, coaching football.”
Mullen’s first day back coaching doesn’t look a lot like his last. Las Vegas isn’t Gainesville. As players warm up on this Thursday morning in March, the Las Vegas Sphere is — quite literally — looking on, bright and yellow, with big blinking eyes. Mullen is wearing a red UNLV visor, shades, a red lightweight hoodie with UNLV across the chest, and gray shorts that are above the knee, shorter than he prefers. He’s caked in sunscreen, a good habit picked up during his time coaching Florida.
UNLV athletic director Erick Harper is out at practice in between the two practice fields, looking at what feels like a miracle.
“The number of ADs and others that called me and asked, ‘How the hell did you do that?'” Harper said with a smile about hiring Mullen. “Sometimes you have to sit back and just say, ‘I’m not really sure.'”
Harper’s football program is coming off of the best two seasons in school history under Barry Odom in 2023 and 2024. But when Odom left to take the head coaching job at Purdue, the uncertainty around the future of the program was palpable. This is a team that was a game away from the College Football Playoff back in December. If Harper settled on the wrong coach, all of that progress could have been lost.
But he saw an opportunity with Mullen, whom he met two years prior.
Mullen flew out to Las Vegas to see Alex Smith, whom he coached at Utah, be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame at the Bellagio Resort & Casino on Dec. 10. But at that point, Mullen still didn’t feel that he needed to return to coaching.
“Even late October, when people are starting to fish, November calls start coming in. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it,” Mullen said. “I had a hesitant feeling. And when an opportunity might present itself, I would sit there and I’d say, OK, why would this be a good idea? How I can make this exciting, without feeling no reservation?’ I couldn’t get there.”
Harper knew Mullen would be in town and tried to meet him for dinner, but Mullen had plans. So they ultimately settled on golf the next day.
When Mullen’s wife, Megan, heard of the meeting, Mullen said she asked, “Is this like you helping him hire a coach?” He replied, “Yeah, something like that.”
So what was it about UNLV that got Mullen — who has grappled with many of the newer aspects of college football — back into the game? If Harper had not called, is this even happening?
“No, I wouldn’t have even called,” Mullen said. But, as Harper helped Mullen learn, the job met the needs he had at this point in his career and life.
“The facility here blows away anything that was at Florida when I left. I didn’t want to have to come into a program that you had to build from the ground up. We have a great stadium in Allegiant Stadium. We were a game away from the College Football Playoff last year.
“So when you’re starting to check boxes, you know? Facilities? Check. Stadium? Check. Opportunity to win a championship immediately? Check. Great place to live? Check. Really good schools for my kids, I want my family to grow up here? Check.”
At his first college football practice in three years, Mullen is engaged, rolling out tackling wheels and at times having to evade tackles himself because he’s right in the action.
Longtime NFL assistant Paul Guenther is on his staff, who Mullen knows from his days at Ursinus College where the two lived across the hall from each other. Guenther can see a change in his longtime friend. “I can see a difference in him where he’s enjoying it,” Guenther said. “I know he liked doing the TV and all that stuff, but I can tell he’s happy [to be] back in it.”
Mullen had practice wrapped up with a little time to spare, another good habit he developed, this one doing television.
He addresses the team as planes from Harry Reid International Airport pass overhead. He admits that this first practice was a little scattered, but he’s glad everybody got some reps. They’ll need them. He wants this squad to be conditioned, and to move fast.
“Get the mind right, body right, ready to go for more,” he says. That’s a process he’s personally familiar with.
MULLEN’S EXIT FROM Florida wasn’t the way he wanted his coaching career to end.
The slide began on a third-and-10 against LSU in 2020, with the Gators ranked sixth in the nation. After making a stop late in the fourth quarter to force a punt, cornerback Marco Wilson ripped off Kole Taylor’s size 14 shoe and threw it down the field, drawing multiple flags.
Six plays later, Cade York hit a 57-yard game-winning field goal with 23 seconds remaining. Florida would end up losing to Alabama in the SEC championship the following week and missing the College Football Playoff.
About 11 months later, with Florida at 4-4 after back-to-back losses to unranked LSU and No. 1 Georgia, Mullen held his weekly news conference on a Monday. He was asked a recruiting question, and replied, “We’re in the season now. We’ll do recruiting after the season. When it gets to recruiting time, we can talk about recruiting.”
Mullen was heavily criticized for his response. Lee Davis, Mullen’s chief of staff who has worked with him in some capacity going back to Starkville, takes exception to the response to that quote.
“I’ve worked at two other places since I’ve left him, I know nobody works harder at recruiting than he does. … What he was trying to say — he wanted to talk football that day and didn’t want to talk about recruiting, but people took it as he doesn’t recruit.”
Florida was 5-6 heading into the final week of the 2021 regular season when the university fired Mullen. He was given the option to coach against Florida State; he declined, not wanting to be a distraction to the team. Nine months later, ESPN announced the addition of Mullen to its college football coverage for the 2022 season.
Working in television provided Mullen a healthy distance from the game and allowed him to find his footing again. He was still able to be around and watch the game, but his days weren’t influenced by outcomes. That was fine. He had plenty of time and energy invested in his son Canon’s basketball games and his daughter Breelyn’s cheer events and soccer and basketball games.
As an analyst on the road during the season, Mullen would be involved in two sets of TV production meetings with coaches. They would go over rosters, how their seasons had gone, and discuss expectations for the upcoming Thursday night contest. In many cases, Mullen already knew at least one of the coaches, and when he met young coordinators, he found that many admired him.
“You step back away and say, ‘Hold on. I think maybe he did do some really good things. Was successful at places, possibly.’ And that’s all perception.”
Mullen had a couple of moments during the 2024 season that helped remind him why he got into coaching to begin with. One was the reunion of his 2014 Mississippi State Bulldogs, who were led by Dak Prescott and were ranked No. 1 for much of the season.
“When you get around everybody at one time, you get back around the players, and you sit there and guys’ wives are coming up and like, ‘Hey, you made such an impact on my husband’s life,'” an emotional Mullen said.
“You get there and you’re like, ‘OK, that’s what I got into it all for.’ Alex Smith does his speech, which was unbelievable at the Hall of Fame induction about the impact I made on his life? That’s why I’ve done this. That’s been your calling in life, to try to help young people succeed and improve.”
So, despite how things ended at Florida, Mullen knew he had to get back into the game after he had time to heal.
“Coaching has been my life,” he said. “Football and coaching have been basically my entire life since I was a freshman in high school, with the exception of three years doing TV. You knew you had a purpose and you knew why you do it. And I think hearing those things, it brings you back to the joy of why you did it, the things that were so great about it.
“I don’t like how it finished at Florida. I didn’t want that to be the last page of my book. However, I had to be in the right space for me to continue the story on.”
ALLOWING HIMSELF TIME to reset was one thing for Mullen, accepting the new world of college football was another.
In the three years since Mullen left Florida, college football has continued to evolve after the NCAA eliminated a rule in April 2021 that required transfers to sit out a year at their new university. That same year, it became legal for players to make money through NIL deals.
Being near the game allowed Mullen to better understand what he was getting into. “I think seeing the frustration on [coaches’] faces when we sit in a lot of those meetings … It helped me understand [players leaving your program] that’s going to happen.”
Mullen admitted he still didn’t want anyone to leave his program after spring ball, but conceded it would likely happen.
“The initial feeling … is, ‘How can you do that?’ That’s a five-second feeling that I immediately swallow and say, ‘You got back in understanding that’s the new game.’ It is what it is. Guess what? It gives you an opportunity. I guess if this guy’s going to leave, let’s get on the computer and go find somebody else. It’s not the end of the world. It’s part of the deal.”
“And so it gets you instead of the, ‘Boy. It’s hurting the team, and it’s hurting this.’ It gets you back to why we’re in this. I hope it’s the best decision for the kids.'”
Mullen understands that players are going to consider money, especially given how much of it is involved in college athletics. “They should get a cut of it, and they should have an opportunity to profit when they are profitable.”
But, he added, “Whatever you want to call them — they are getting paid now — student-athletes or not, they’re still college-age kids. Let’s still help continue to give them the guidance. … Let’s not throw out all of the guidance and structure that we’re helping give young people.”
When he decided to take the UNLV job, he knew he needed someone alongside him who had been in the game while he wasn’t, understood him, and was someone he could trust. That’s why, when he was considering the gig, he texted Davis to ask for her commitment as his chief of staff.
Mullen and Davis go back — he gave Davis her first job out of grad school from Alabama, bringing her on as a recruiting assistant at Mississippi State. She worked in Starkville with Mullen until he was hired at Florida, where he brought her to Gainesville as the director of recruiting operations.
It wasn’t long until it was clear that Mullen had found the perfect person for the job.
“He was overwhelmed,” Davis said of Mullen’s early days at UNLV. “And I’m like, ‘Hey, listen, you have two things you got to do right now. You need to hire staff, but you need to hire the right people, because you want a good staff, a staff that fits. And then two, you got to find a quarterback, because that’s the most important. You’re not going to win without a great quarterback.”
Mullen did both, gradually building his staff with both veteran and younger coaches, and nabbing former Virginia quarterback Anthony Colandrea out of the transfer portal, along with former Michigan quarterback Alex Orji.
For as much as the transfer portal can be a pain for coaches, it filled out his quarterback room, and then some. Despite being out of the game for a few years, Mullen was plenty familiar with the talent he could bring in.
“Either calling games, and sitting in studio with every college football game on and having to talk about it, I got to watch a lot of guys play this year. So I knew a lot of the players.”
For example, Mullen called one of Colandrea’s games in 2023, against Louisville.
In some cases, there are guys still playing college football whom Mullen recruited years ago. Outside linebacker Chief Borders played for Mullen at Florida, and had seasons at Nebraska and Pitt, before deciding to finish his career with Mullen in Las Vegas.
Mullen is confident he will make things work at UNLV. He doesn’t need the inherent benefits afforded to coaches at the biggest programs. He coached at Utah when it was in the Mountain West and, before that, at Bowling Green.
“I haven’t just been at schools with unlimited resources,” he said. “So I have to go back and say, ‘Hey, you know what? I was a young offensive coordinator and a quarterback coach and a young offensive mind at one point.’ And Urban Meyer was a young head coach that took a chance on me and said, ‘Let’s get going and see what we can create, yeah?’ So, think that way. We did pretty well for ourselves.”
Harper likens Mullen’s experience and approach to the hospitality industry in Las Vegas.
“It’s constantly reinventing itself, it’s constantly being innovative and creative,” Harper said. “You’re not going to see the same thing every day.”
THE VIEW FROM Dan Mullen’s office is second only to one.
“They tell me that Bill Hornbuckle, president of MGM, is the only one that might have a better office than I do in the city of Las Vegas,” Mullen said.
It’s a stunning view of the Strip. If you’re sitting at his desk, the MGM Grand is at your far left, with the Sphere being the period at the end of the sentence on the right. For a coach who just spent the last few years learning how to put a good show on television, being in this town feels appropriate.
Mullen has happily leaned into the Las Vegas of it all. “It’s a very different vibe than coaching in the SEC,” he said. “It’s a totally different feel.”
He points to the team’s leadership committee. It holds competitions where the first- and second-place team get awards, and the bottom two teams have to do community service to make up for points they missed.
“There’s a lot of schools in the country like, ‘OK, your reward these two weeks is pick a great restaurant in town.’ Well, I mean, basically there’s one or two restaurants they’re going to go to,” Mullen explains.
“Here, guys are at the UFC championship fight. This week, they’re going to David Blaine the illusionist. They’re going to Tao restaurant. They’re going on helicopter tours of the city. You can’t do that other places.”
UNLV couldn’t have their spring game at Allegiant Stadium because of WrestleMania. “The benefit is, our players get to go to WrestleMania. The negative is it’s actually in our stadium,” Mullen laughed, “so we can’t have the spring game that day.”
Mullen views Las Vegas itself as a major selling point in the transfer portal era.
“You’re not going to walk on campus and get a feel that you’re in a Deep South school with lined-up fraternity and sorority houses everywhere. But there’s an awful lot going on in this town that guys are excited about, and there’s a lot for them to do. You’re at a city campus with the city with everything going on. Players think it’s the coolest thing in the world that they get to [feel] like a pro athlete in a big city.”
The setting also takes pressure off a coach who is used to the most pressure that college football has to offer.
“What I’m learning, if you win here, they love you. You are it. If you lose, they just don’t really care, because there’s a bunch of other things for them to go do.”
But just because the pressure isn’t as extreme doesn’t mean Mullen is letting off the gas. He wants to make UNLV football a perennial contender, and he wants to establish a very specific identity that will resonate anywhere.
“I have my normal deal, play with relentless effort, passion for the game, you know, and a team that reaches its potential every day,” Mullen explained.
But there’s an old moniker that Mullen is trying to earn within the football program that won’t just resonate with Las Vegas, but with sports fans across the country.
“If I leave and I go to the East Coast and I say ‘Runnin’ Rebels,’ you know exactly who I’m talking about — everybody does. That is a brand. Unfortunately, it’s a brand that kind of lost its [luster after] the early ’90s with Coach Tark.”
“But there’s no fogginess to who the Runnin’ Rebels are. I want that brand back on the gridiron. You’re going to turn on [the game] and it’s showtime on the football field, you’re going to watch a high-flying offense, a team that’s letting it go, guys having a great time up and down the field, defense that is going to come after you.”
“I want us, in the sports and entertainment capital of the world, to be the best show in town.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not,” Schwarber said.
Ten days after lifting the National League to victory in the first All-Star Game swing-off, Schwarber keeps going deep. He hit a pair of two-run homers Friday night, with the first drive, his milestone hit, starting the comeback from a 2-0 deficit. He got the ball back after it was grabbed by a Phillies fan attending with his friends in Yankee Stadium’s right-center-field seats.
“I saw it on the video and then I see the dude tugging,” Schwarber said. “I’m like: ‘Oh, they all got Philly stuff on.’ That was cool.”
He met the trio after the game, gave an autographed ball to each and exchanged hugs. When he went to get a third ball to autograph, one of the three said he just wanted the potential free agent to re-sign with the Phillies.
“You show up to the field every single day trying to get a win at the end of the day, and I think our fans kind of latch on to that, right?” Schwarber said. “It’s been fantastic these last 3½ years, four years now. The support that we get from our fans and it means a lot to me that, you know, that they attach themselves to our team.”
Schwarber tied it at 2-2 in the fifth against Will Warren when he hit a 413-foot drive on a first-pitch fastball.
After J.T. Realmuto‘s three-run homer off Luke Weaver built a 6-3 lead in a four-run seventh and the Yankees closed within a run in the bottom half, Schwarber sent an Ian Hamilton fastball 380 feet into the right-field seats.
Schwarber reached 1,000 hits with eight more homers than McGwire. Schwarber has 36 homers this year, three shy of major league leader Cal Raleigh, and six homers in seven games since he was voted All-Star MVP. He has 33 multihomer games.
“I don’t know where we’d be without him,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “Comes up with big hit after big hit after big hit. It’s just — it’s amazing.”
Schwarber, 32, is eligible for free agency this fall after completing a four-year, $79 million contract. He homered on all three of his swings in the All-Star Game tiebreaker, and when the second half began, Phillies managing partner John Middleton proclaimed: “We love him. We want to keep him.”
“He’s been an incredible force all season long,” Realmuto said. “What he’s meant to his team, his offense, it’s hard to put in words.”
A World Series champion for the 2016 Chicago Cubs, Schwarber has reached 35 homers in all four seasons with the Phillies. He’s batting .255 with 82 RBIs and a .960 OPS.
He also has almost as many home runs as singles (46).
Schwarber had not been aware he topped McGwire for most homers among 1,000 hits.
“I had no clue. I didn’t even know it was my 1,000th, to be honest with you,” he said.
Nick Kurtz of the Athletics became the first rookie in Major League Baseball history to hit four home runs in a game, part of a spectacular Friday night for the 22-year-old that will go down as one of the greatest offensive displays the sport has seen.
Kurtz also matched the MLB record with 19 total bases in the 15-3 triumph against the Astros in Houston.
“It’s arguably the best game I’ve ever watched from a single player,” Athletics manager Mark Kotsay said. “This kid continues to have jaw-dropping moments.”
Kurtz didn’t make an out all night, going deep in the second, sixth, eighth and ninth innings. He also doubled — a 381-foot drive that would have been out in six major league ballparks — and singled on his 6-for-6 night to equal Shawn Green, who had four homers, six hits and 19 total bases for the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 23, 2002 at Milwaukee.
Kurtz and Green are the only players with six hits in a four-homer game.
“It’s hard to think about this day being kind of real, it still feels like a dream,” Kurtz said in a postgame television interview. “So it’s pretty remarkable. I’m kind of speechless. Don’t really know what to say.”
It was the 20th four-homer game in major league history and second this season. Arizona’s Eugenio Suárez did it on April 26 against Atlanta. No player has ever hit five home runs in a game.
Kurtz finished with eight RBIs and six runs scored.
The 6-foot-5, 22-year-old slugger has 23 homers in 66 games this season. The fourth pick in last year’s amateur draft out of Wake Forest, he made his major league debut April 23 and hit his first homer May 13.
He is the youngest player with a four-homer game. Pat Seerey of the Chicago White Sox was 25 when he homered four times on July 18, 1948.
“This is the first time my godparents have been here, so they probably have to come in the rest of the year,” Kurtz said. “My parents flew in today. They’ve been here a bunch, but it was cool to have some family here for that.”
On Friday, Kurtz homered off each of the Astros’ four pitchers: Ryan Gusto, Nick Hernandez, Kaleb Ort and outfielder Cooper Hummel, who worked the ninth with the game out of hand. His longest drive was his third, a 414-foot solo shot off Ort in the eighth.
For his fourth homer, Kurtz hit an opposite-field line drive to the Crawford Boxes in left field on a 77 mph, 2-0 pitch from Hummel. The three-run shot made it 15-2.
“With a positional player on the mound, I’m just trying to move the ball forward,” Kurtz said. “You don’t want to be the guy that strikes out. That’s only my second at bat ever off a positional player, so I don’t know. Just trying to move the ball forward and get something that I can touch, and I hit another one.”
Kurtz’s double in the fourth inning hit just below the yellow line over the visitor’s bullpen, narrowly missing what would have been a fifth homer.
“Everybody was just like, laughing,” A’s shortstop Jacob Wilson said. “How is he doing it? This is not normal. He’s playing a different sport than us right now. It’s not baseball, it’s just T-ball what he’s doing right now.”
With the baseballs from his last two homers inside a plastic bag at his locker, Kurtz signed scorecards from all four A’s broadcasters and a lineup card. One of the scorecards and a bat were bound for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Kurtz has been the best hitter in the majors in July, ranking first in batting average (.425), on-base percentage (.494), slugging percentage (1.082), runs (22), doubles (13), homers (11) and RBIs (27).
He extended his hitting streak to 12 games, and his 23 home runs are the most for an A’s rookie since Yoenis Céspedes in 2012 and fourth most in franchise history.
Kurtz entered Friday as a -325 favorite at ESPN BET to win American League Rookie of the Year. His odds moved to -2500 after Friday night.
Information from ESPN Research and The Associated Press was used in this report.
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
NEW YORK — The Yankees on Friday acquired third baseman Ryan McMahon from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for minor league pitchers Griffin Herring and Josh Grosz, the teams announced.
The Yankees assumed the remainder of McMahon’s contract, which includes approximately $4.5 million for the rest of 2025 and $32 million over the next two seasons, a source told ESPN.
An All-Star last season, McMahon, 30, was batting .217 with 16 home runs, a .717 OPS and a National League-leading 127 strikeouts in 100 games for Colorado in 2025. After a dreadful start to the season through April, he has been significantly better, with a .246 batting average, 14 home runs and an .804 OPS. He hit home runs in the first two games after the All-Star break and another Tuesday. He is on pace to keep his four-year 20-homer streak alive.
Defensively, McMahon is a Gold Glove-caliber third baseman whose four Outs Above Average is third in the majors this season. He joins a Yankees club that has been marred by sloppy defense. On Wednesday, the Yankees committed four errors against the American East-leading Toronto Blue Jays.
“He has had some ups and downs offensively this year,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said of McMahon. “I know, over the last month, he’s really swinging the bat well, but he’s a presence, and he can really defend over there at third and has for a number of years. So, we’re excited to get him.”
Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suarez, who began Friday with 36 home runs and an MLB-leading 86 RBIs, could be the best hitter moved before the July 31 trade deadline, but the Yankees were not particularly aggressive in pursuing him, a source told ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
Though McMahon’s offensive production resulted in a 92 OPS+, which suggests he has been 8% worse than the average major league hitter this season, he’s still a significant offensive upgrade at third base for New York. The Yankees have had Oswald Peraza, one of the worst hitters in the majors, playing third base nearly every day since the club released DJ LeMahieu, another former Rockies player, earlier this month and moved Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base.
Peraza, though a strong defender, is slashing .147/.208/.237 in 69 games this season. His 24 wRC+ ranks last among the 310 hitters with at least 160 plate appearances this season.
McMahon has played his first eight-plus seasons with the Rockies. They selected him in the second round of the 2013 draft. He debuted four years later and became a regular in 2019. By then, the Rockies were descending to the bottom of the NL West. This year, they’re 26-76 and could finish with the most losses in major league history.
He leaves that environment for New York’s pressure cooker and a club with World Series aspirations, a change the Yankees hope can help McMahon.
“Hopefully, the environment is a great thing for him, that he falls into that and doesn’t have to be the guy,” Boone said. “Go do your thing. Go find the role. But it’s our job — my job, staff, coaches, players — to make sure they’re welcomed and get them as comfortable as possible.”
The price for McMahon — and his team control over the next two seasons — was a pair of pitchers who have not reached Double-A.
Herring, 22, has a 1.71 ERA in 89⅓ innings across 16 starts between Low- and High-A this season. He was a sixth-round pick out of LSU in the 2024 draft.
Grosz, an 11th-round pick in 2023, had a 4.14 ERA in 87 innings over 16 games (15 starts) for High-A Hudson Valley this season.
With third base addressed, the Yankees will seek to acquire pitchers to bolster their rotation and bullpen. Luis Gil‘s return should help. The right-hander, who has been out all season because of a lat injury, made his third rehab start Wednesday. Boone said there’s “a good chance” Gil gets another start in the minors before making his season debut.
