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Like many of the state’s most colorful tales, the story of Texas’ Big Bertha and a decades-long rivalry over the biggest drums in college football began with the bravado of a wealthy oilman.

In 1954, Longhorn Band benefactor Col. D. Harold “Dry Hole” Byrd, a man who had earned an unfortunate nickname for drilling wells that produced nothing before eventually making a fortune in the East Texas oilfield, directed UT band director Moton Crockett to procure the largest drum he could find.

Like Byrd, Crockett started out on his own expedition before striking it big. Really big. His discovery of one of the largest drums in the world languishing in an Indiana warehouse and his subsequent acquisition rekindled one of the great off-field rivalries in sports history between Purdue and Texas.

Purdue had the World’s Largest Drum. Texas had Big Bertha. Both claimed to be the biggest, with Purdue claiming its dimensions were a “trade secret,” willfully and somewhat fancifully obscuring the real dimensions to keep the mystery alive.

But on Oct. 15, Texas declared an emphatic victory when the Longhorn Band introduced Big Bertha II, a worthy successor to their 100-year-old gargantuan bass drum. Bertha II — an even Bigger Bertha — was unveiled to the world during a centennial celebration for its predecessor, announced at a hefty 9 ½ feet tall and 55 inches wide.

The Longhorns issued a press release headlined: “Big Bertha II, Largest Bass Drum in the World, Debuted at Texas-Iowa State Game.” Texas’ drum was larger than the World’s Largest Drum. It was larger than Missouri’s Big Mo, introduced in 2012 (which, incidentally, was the Rodney Dangerfield of drums, dwarfing both of them at 9 feet tall and 54 inches wide, but never really claiming a spot in the debate).

Obviously, Bertha II is a booming source of pride for Longhorn Band director Cliff Croomes, himself a former snare drummer in the Texas band.

“Absolutely,” Croomes said. “When we say everything’s bigger in Texas, we mean it. Texas had the tallest drum and Purdue had the widest drum. There was a claim to be made on both sides. And that has now been settled with Big Bertha II being both taller and wider than either of those drums.”

Bertha II’s surprise debut was a blow to a rivalry a century in the making, reverberating since 1921, when Purdue’s band director, Paul Spotts Emrick, enlisted the Leedy Manufacturing Company in Indianapolis, Indiana, to build a drum of “impossible proportions” according to newspaper reports. The result was a behemoth known as the World’s Largest Drum, about 8 feet tall and 48 inches wide, at a cost of $800. The drum made its debut when Purdue visited the University of Chicago for a Big Ten game pitting the Boilermakers against legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg and the Maroons.

But as is the case in college football, there’s always a booster looking to do something bigger and better for their school’s bragging rights. A Chicago alum, Carl D. Greenleaf, who was the president of a rival Indiana music company, C.G. Conn, Ltd., had a son named Leland who played in the university band. He embarked on a plan to build a bigger drum for the Maroon Marching Band. In 1922, Big Bertha was born, named for a famed German howitzer from World War I. Much like at Purdue, it became a huge attraction at football games and parades.

So how did Texas enter the mix? It involves a saga that began with Chicago dropping football and leaving the Big Ten in 1939, the drum being mothballed in storage in the stadium that eventually became the home of the Manhattan Project experiments by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, the architect of the atomic bomb, leading to concerns the drum could’ve been radioactive.

“There’s no evidence that the drum was any more contaminated than anything else that was stored in that stadium,” said J.P. Kirksey, Texas’ Bertha historian, who noted that it eventually passed a Geiger test.

The drum was ultimately abandoned back at C.G. Conn before Texas rescued it.

As Texas celebrated its new showpiece, the drum debate went from regional to national. Fans of both schools have bantered back and forth for years, including a planned 1961 fraternity meetup to decide once and for all whose drum was bigger. The Boilermaker contingent arrived in time with their drum while the Longhorns did not, allowing Purdue to claim a mythical title. Meanwhile in 2012, Missouri introduced Big Mo, and Texas band officials even claim to not know much about its dimensions.

Purdue, whose drum is so big that they weren’t able to fit it through the visitors’ tunnel for a game against Notre Dame last year (and weren’t allowed to use the home tunnel to bring it in, raising the Boilermakers’ hackles), didn’t engage on Texas’ new claims. But they did have one message for the new Bigger Bertha, keeping the spirit of petty rivalries alive.

“Tell them our good friends at Notre Dame would love to see it,” said Aaron Yoder, spokesman for the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band.

First, we should note, that there are larger drums that would also not fit in either tunnel at Notre Dame. The Guinness Book of World Records gives that nod to a “traditional Korean CheonGo drum” in Simcheon-Meon, South Korea that is 18 feet, 2 inches in diameter, 19 feet, 6 inches tall and weighs 7 tons. A scientific study, meanwhile, says the largest drum in the universe is actually the magnetic field that surrounds the Earth, calling it a “complicated musical instrument.”

But this debate is about bass drums. Not space magnets or giant Korean bongos. Thus, Purdue won’t be changing the name of their drum anytime soon. It’s all part of the fun. The Boilermakers have long tried to deflect and obscure the actual dimensions of the drum, only giving out measurements when it’s mounted, saying it is over 10 feet tall on its trailer.

“Purdue won’t tell anyone the size of the drum,” said Neil Boumpani of Boumpani Music Co. in Georgia, who built Missouri’s Big Mo as well as a six-foot drum for the Harvard band. “They just keep claiming the biggest drum in the world and they’re full of it — now, especially.”

Hayleigh Columbo knows the truth. In 2013, as a 23-year-old newspaper reporter in Indiana, a city editor named Dave Smith indulged her curiosity about the mystery of the size of the Purdue drum, setting her off on a quest to find out why no one would tell her its size.

“Why are you saying it’s the World’s Biggest Drum if you don’t want to be asked about it?” Columbo said. “It says it on the drum.”

She wrote a story that ran in the Indianapolis Star with the headline, “Purdue’s ‘World’s Largest Drum’ claim a giant exaggeration.” It was meant to be a lighthearted “investigation” to uncover the truth, but Purdue denied her Freedom of Information request for the drum’s dimensions, claiming they were exempt from records that contain “trade secrets.” After using several unusual methods and sources to calculate the size, Smith dispatched her to the Tippecanoe County Public Library, where she found a 1921 newspaper with an article on the front page the day after the drum was unveiled, with it spelling out right there that it was “Seven feet three inches in diameter and three feet nine inches wide.”

She was delighted she had gotten to the bottom of the case. The readers were not.

“We were like, ‘Oh, this is so clever. People are gonna take this in good fun,’ she said. “And that is not … people were so offended by it. Someone made a parody Twitter account of me saying, ‘I enjoy long walks on the beach and slandering universities.’ It got really intense.”

Purdue fans had been playing defense since 1922, when Bertha I was built in Chicago as a challenge to their title. It was tough to go much bigger, because Greenleaf ran into the same issue as Leedy did when trying to build a bigger drum: The “heads,” or the material on the surface of the drum, were made from cow hides at the time, and thus you had to find a cow large enough.

“Our purchasing department made a trip to the Union stock yards of Chicago,” one of the company’s officials told an Illinois newspaper in the 1920s, saying the drum cost $1,100. “[We] spent three days at the stock yards looking over the cattle for these hides, and as the bass drum had two heads, it was necessary to find two just alike. … The skin which was used for the head of this drum measured, when trimmed ready for mounting, 102 inches.”

And yet, the rivalry only lasted for 17 years before Chicago bailed out of major college football and sent the drum packing.

That is, until Crockett set out to fulfill Byrd’s vision of a showpiece for the band, and heard talk of a very large abandoned drum in Elkhart, Indiana. He visited Greenleaf in C.G. Conn’s warehouse later that year — 32 years after Greenleaf had built it — and worked out a blockbuster deal.

“He told me he wanted the largest university in the largest state to have the largest drum in the world,” Crockett wrote in an essay published in a centennial booklet by J.P. Kirksey, a former member of the Longhorn Band and Bertha’s unofficial historian. “He said he couldn’t give it to me. But he could sell it to me — for $1.00. I was happy to pay him the dollar and he wrote out a receipt and gave it to me.”

Crockett rented a U-Haul trailer, covered the drum in a tarp and towed it behind a borrowed 1954 Ford Fairlane all the way back to Austin, a three-day December road trip. The next summer, Crockett restored Bertha, removing the unsightly maroon lettering and replacing it with the Texas seal painted on the original heads.

Bertha became a fixture at Texas, serving the Longhorns from 1955-2022. She was used in John F. Kennedy’s inaugural parade, saw three AP national championships in 1963, 1969 and 2005 and is considered as much a Texas icon as Bevo or the UT Tower.

She was known as “The Sweetheart of the Longhorn Band,” and despite its wooden frame and the wear and tear of being wheeled around, spun on its trailer, and with generations of students wailing on it, she held up for a century. It even survived the original leather heads being slashed after a last-second 7-3 win over Arkansas in 1962 and an accident on I-35 between Austin and Dallas when the vehicle towing Bertha in a trailer was involved in a rollover crash. She emerged unscathed, but future travel was severely limited.

Bertha was forever linked with Crockett, who directed the Longhorn Band from 1950 to 1955 and the Longhorn Alumni Band from 1983-1994. He loved the drum so much, he set up an endowment for care and maintenance and looked after her the rest of his life, until his death in 2019.

“Mr. Crockett paid $19,000 in 2007, sent the drum to Remo Drum Company in California and had it completely restored,” Kirksey said. “I mean, everything on it was redone. A lot of the wood was replaced because it failed and was rotting. Moton’s comment to me was, ‘I want to get her ready for another 100 years.'”

In 2017, Texas reached out to Ramy Antoun, a longtime drummer who had moved to the Austin area from California and was building drums at a studio next to his house. As someone who played drums — he had just finished four years of touring with Seal — and studied the evolution of drum manufacturing, including when the Purdue and Chicago drums were built, he was thrilled to get to work on a piece of history.

But he was worried about what he saw, particularly the exterior wood construction, saying there was “ovaling” of the drum due to the straps pushing it down to hold it on the trailer, causing the wood to flex. While the renovations had given Bertha new life, Antoun was still concerned any crack in the outer shell could cause it to collapse inward, and was most likely to happen in front of 100,000 people during a game.

“I just honestly kept praying that that drum would survive, that nothing could go wrong on the field,” Antoun said. “It could happen any day. If you hit it hard, if you spun it weird. And it could happen on the field. So I told them you might want to look at maybe a new option.”

Antoun started dreaming big of another Bertha. But drums this big don’t come cheap. No one will say what the replacement cost of Bertha II was, but donors saw their “Sweetheart” as a worthwhile cause. The Bertha Centennial Fund was launched to send her off in style.

“Anybody who’s 100 years old deserves to retire,” Croomes said.

In January of this year, Antoun got the official go-ahead to begin building Bertha II. He had fallen in love with Texas in his five years in the hills outside Austin. Antoun’s house and the A&F Drums studio where he built Bertha II are located near Willie Nelson’s ranch, Luck, and are built on plots of land that were formerly owned by Nelson. In addition, Antoun has played drums on a few of Nelson’s studio recordings.

That might’ve been enough to qualify him as an full-fledged Texan. But now, by building the Longhorn Band its new signature showpiece, that’s no longer in doubt.

“I just felt like we really got adopted by Texas,” Antoun said. “We can’t let Texas down. We can’t let Bertha down. We’ve got to do this in a way that this drum will last another 100-plus years.”

Boumpani, who formerly was the Duke band director for many years before creating his own company, says drums this size are extremely difficult to build. Ten years ago, when he got the call to build Big Mo, the only bass drum in the world that approaches the size of Bertha II, he thought it would take him six weeks. He had the shell fabricated from fiberglass, which was an expensive shipping nightmare to keep it from getting bent out of shape. He ended up working it all out, but there was a lot of trial and error, eventually meeting locals who could help him fabricate their own materials, and got the shell painted at an auto body shop.

“It took me close to six months,” Boumpani said. “Everything that could go wrong went wrong.”

Antoun said in the five years since he started working on Bertha, he’d already begun imagining and experimenting with how he’d build a new one, which allowed him to hit the ground running along with his friend Eric Spille of Kentex Metals, a fabrication shop just a bit down the street from him. Together, they studied a video about how Leedy built Purdue’s drum in 1921.

“They talk about their team of engineers that got together. This right here is our team” Spille said, laughing and gesturing to himself and Antoun. “It’s like, ‘Hold my beer. Let’s engineer.'”

First, they developed a proprietary aluminum similar to the materials used on airplanes and rockets for Bertha’s outer shell.

“We chose a quarter-inch aluminum,” Spille said. “If you were to lay a sheet out it’d be four feet wide by 30 feet long. Then wrap it into a circle and that’s inevitably how it became Bertha II’s shell.”

Then Spille built an extremely low-profile trailer that carries the drum, complete with handles as wide as the drum that look like the horns of a Longhorn steer, and a gearbox designed to look like the UT Tower that allows the drum to be rotated on its side to prevent incidents like Purdue’s at Notre Dame.

“Maybe Purdue will call and ask us to build a trolley for their drum so it can go sideways,” Antoun joked.

Luckily, the carriage was low enough that Texas didn’t have to remodel the so-called “Bertha door” in the university’s band hall.

“We’ve got a door that’s 12 feet tall that was built for Big Bertha to fit through,” Croomes said. “Big Bertha is 10 feet. Big Bertha II, is right at 12 feet [on the trailer]. So we were concerned that it wasn’t going to fit in the door. But it clears the door by maybe an inch.”

Boumpani and Antoun both used heads made by Remo, a California company started by drummer Remo Belli, described in his 2016 New York Times obit as “a precocious musician who was credited with developing the first commercially successful synthetic drumheads — saving the hides of countless animals.” The evolution in the materials meant that they could go even bigger than the original drum makers did 100 years ago.

Boumpani said it was a challenge to get Remo to make a head as large as Big Mo’s, at 108 inches, which was the largest they had ever made. Antoun, who was signed to the company as an artist, had to do his own cajoling to get them to go even bigger.

“I told them, ‘It’s time to make history,’ Antoun said. “‘We have an opportunity to create another 100-year-old legacy. You want to be a part of this. I’m telling you, as a friend, as a business I believe in and as the only people in the world that can do it.’ And they figured it out, man.”

At 114 by 55 inches, it’s the largest drum head the company has ever created, a no-doubt signifier it’s the biggest bass drum in the world.

For Spille, who is originally from Kentucky but has been in Texas for more than 20 years, it was a chance for his own love letter to the Lone Star State.

“One of the thrilling things for me is my wife of 24 years graduated from UT,” Spille said. “So up until this point, I really wasn’t that cool, but now I’m a little cooler in her book. “[Bertha I] was Chicago’s drum. This wasn’t 100% meant for Texas,” he added. “This drum was built here in Texas, with Texas connections, built for Texas.”

Aside from being the biggest, Bertha II strikes another claim: It can play the lowest note ever played on a drum. And with a new wireless microphone inside it connected to the stadium speakers (another first), it’s going to shake things up.

“The bigger the diameter, the lower the note. That’s drums,” said Antoun. “If this is the biggest bass drum in the world, then it’s going to be the lowest note. I don’t know what kind of subwoofers they have in that stadium. But it has the ability to break windows. Everybody’s gonna be feeling like there’s an earthquake in there. It’ll rumble.”

Holden Logan, a Longhorn Band member at Texas who is the section leader for “Bertha Crew,” will be the guy doing the rumbling for the TCU game this weekend when he swings away for Bertha II’s first appearance in pregame festivities and during the national anthem.

“It’s just such a cool honor to be in this position when it’s the 100-year anniversary of a drum that has so much history with the school,” Logan said. “I’m only going to get two home games with her but I’m hoping that she’ll make some new memories just like the old Bertha has plenty of memories of her own.”

Bertha I has moved to a permanent home on display in the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame under the north end zone at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

Kirksey, who played in the Longhorn Band in the 1960s and was good friends with Crockett, the man who bought, delivered and maintained Big Bertha I for so many years, is a bit wistful about the old drum being a museum piece.

“I am glad that Mr. Crockett is not alive today just because that was his baby and he would like to have seen that drum used forever and that’s why he paid the money 15 years ago,” Kirksey said. “But that’s all history now. I’m OK with her retirement.”

Even if he still would like to settle one old score.

“[The original] Bertha clearly still is the biggest drum ever built using leather heads,” Kirksey said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that among anybody anywhere except Purdue with their foibles and fakery.”

Croomes is excited for the new era, including that fans can once again see the original Bertha on display.

“We’re extremely happy to have both girls in the family,” he said.

As far as the former champ, Boumpani heard the news last week from a reporter that Big Mo had been eclipsed. As a member of such a small fraternity, he wasn’t disappointed so much as he was excited to know all the details and dimensions, and was impressed that it was fashioned from metal.

But, after his own experience successfully learning to build big drums on the fly — including hand-delivering Harvard’s new drum just 45 minutes before their celebratory concert to unveil it — Boumpani hopes the drum wars never end.

“Maybe somebody will want me to make a bigger one now,” he said. “Tell ’em I’m willing to take the challenge.”

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Hard-throwing rookie Misiorowski going to ASG

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July 12, 2025

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Hard-throwing rookie Misiorowski going to ASG

  • Associated Press

Jul 11, 2025, 11:17 PM ET

Hard-throwing rookie Jacob Misiorowski is a National League All-Star replacement, giving the Milwaukee Brewers right-hander a chance to break Paul Skenes‘ record for the fewest big league appearances before playing in the Midsummer Classic.

Misiorowski was named Friday night to replace Chicago Cubs lefty Matthew Boyd, who will be unavailable for the All-Star Game on Tuesday night in Atlanta because he is scheduled to start Saturday at the New York Yankees.

The 23-year-old Misiorowski has made just five starts for the Brewers, going 4-1 with a 2.81 ERA while averaging 99.3 mph on his fastball, with 89 pitches that have reached 100 mph.

If he pitches at Truist Park, Misiorowski will make it consecutive years for a player to set the mark for fewest big league games before an All-Star showing.

Skenes, the Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander getting ready for his second All-Star appearance, had made 11 starts in the majors when he was chosen as the NL starter for last year’s All-Star Game at Texas. He pitched a scoreless inning.

“I’m speechless,” said a teary-eyed Misiorowski, who said he was given the news a few minutes before the Brewers’ 8-3 victory over Washington. “It’s awesome. It’s very unexpected and it’s an honor.”

Misiorowski is the 30th first-time All-Star and 16th replacement this year. There are now 80 total All-Stars.

“He’s impressive. He’s got some of the best stuff in the game right now, even though he’s a young pitcher,” said Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, who is a starting AL outfielder for his seventh All-Star nod. “He’s going to be a special pitcher in this game for a long time so I think he deserved it and it’s going be pretty cool for him and his family.”

Carlos Rodón, Carlos Estévez and Casey Mize were named replacement pitchers on the AL roster.

The New York Yankees‘ Rodón, an All-Star for the third time in five seasons, will replace teammate Max Fried for Tuesday’s game in Atlanta. Fried will be unavailable because he is scheduled to start Saturday against the Chicago Cubs.

In his final start before the All-Star game, Rodón allowed four hits and struck out eight in eight innings in an 11-0 victory over the Cubs.

“This one’s a little special for me,” said Rodón, an All-Star in 2021 and ’22 who was 3-8 in his first season with the Yankees two years ago before rebounding. “I wasn’t good when I first got here, and I just wanted to prove that I wasn’t to going to give up and just put my best foot forward and try to win as many games as I can.”

The Kansas City Royals‘ Estévez replaces Texas’ Jacob deGrom, who is scheduled to start at Houston on Saturday night. Estévez was a 2023 All-Star when he was with the Los Angeles Angels.

Mize takes the spot held by Boston‘s Garrett Crochet, who is scheduled to start Saturday against Tampa Bay. Mize gives the Tigers six All-Stars, most of any team and tied for the franchise record.

Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia will replace Tampa Bay‘s Brandon Lowe, who went on the injured list with left oblique tightness. The additions of Estévez and Garcia give the Royals four All-Stars, matching their 2024 total.

The Seattle Mariners announced center fielder Julio Rodríguez will not participate, and he was replaced by teammate Randy Arozarena. Rodríguez had been voted onto the AL roster via the players’ ballot. The Mariners, who have five All-Stars, said Rodríguez will use the break to “recuperate, rest and prepare for the second half.”

Arozarena is an All-Star for the second time. He started in left field for the AL two years ago, when he was with Tampa Bay. Arozarena was the runner-up to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the 2023 Home Run Derby.

Rays right-hander Drew Rasmussen, a first-time All-Star, is replacing Angels left-hander Yusei Kikuchi, who is scheduled to start Saturday night at Arizona. Rasmussen is 7-5 with a 2.82 ERA in 18 starts.

San Diego added a third NL All-Star reliever in lefty Adrián Morejón, who replaces Philadelphia starter Zack Wheeler. The Phillies’ right-hander is scheduled to start at San Diego on Saturday night. Morejón entered the weekend with a 1.71 ERA in 45 appearances.

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Midseason grades for all 30 MLB teams: ‘A’ is for Astros, ‘F’ is for …?

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Midseason grades for all 30 MLB teams: 'A' is for Astros, 'F' is for ...?

  • David SchoenfieldJul 9, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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    • Covers MLB for ESPN.com
    • Former deputy editor of Page 2
    • Been with ESPN.com since 1995

We’re past due to hand out some midseason grades, so let’s hand out some midseason grades.

As we pass the 90-game mark in the 2025 MLB season, my team of the first half isn’t the well-rounded Detroit Tigers, who do get our highest grade for owning MLB’s best record, or the explosive Chicago Cubs or Shohei Ohtani‘s Los Angeles Dodgers, but a team most baseball fans love to hate: the Houston Astros. They lost their two best players from last season and their best hitter has been injured — and they’re playing their best baseball since they won the 2022 World Series.

Let’s get to the grades. As always, we’re grading off preseason expectations, factoring in win-loss record and quality of performance, while looking at other positive performances and injuries.

Jump to a team:

AL East: BAL | BOS | NYY | TB | TOR
AL Central: CHW | CLE | DET | KC | MIN
AL West: ATH | HOU | LAA | SEA | TEX

NL East: ATL | MIA | NYM | PHI | WSH
NL Central: CHC | CIN | MIL | PIT | STL
NL West: ARI | COL | LAD | SD | SF

Tarik Skubal is obviously the headline act, but the Tigers are winning with impressive depth across the entire roster.

Javier Baez is putting together a remarkable comeback season after a couple of abysmal years and will become the first player to start an All-Star Game at both shortstop and in the outfield. Former No. 1 overall picks Casey Mize and Spencer Torkelson have put together their own comeback stories, while Riley Greene has matured into one of the game’s top power hitters.

Given their deep well of prospects and contributors at the MLB level, no team is better positioned than the Tigers to add significant help at the trade deadline.

I heard someone refer to them as the Zombie Astros, which feels apropos. Alex Bregman left as a free agent, they traded Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez has been injured and has just three home runs, and the Jose Altuve experiment in left field predictably fizzled.

But here they are, fighting for the best record in the majors and holding a comfortable lead in the AL West. They’re getting star turns from Hunter Brown, Framber Valdez and Jeremy Pena, while the risky decision to start Cam Smith in the majors with very little minor league experience has paid off, as he has now become their cleanup hitter.

If we ignore the COVID-19 season, the Astros look on their way to an eighth straight division title.

This could be at least a half-grade higher based on everything that has gone right: Pete Crow-Armstrong‘s attention-grabbing breakout, Tucker doing everything expected after the big trade, Seiya Suzuki‘s monster power numbers and Matthew Boyd‘s All-Star turn in the rotation. The Cubs are on pace for their most wins since their World Series title season in 2016.

There have been a few hiccups, however, especially in the rotation with Justin Steele‘s season-ending injury and Ben Brown‘s inconsistency, plus rookie third baseman Matt Shaw has scuffled, and the bench has been weak aside from their backup catchers.

Still, this is a powerhouse lineup, and the Cubs will seek to improve their rotation at the deadline.

They just keep winning of late, going from 25-27 and seven games behind the Yankees on May 25 to taking over first place from the slumping Bronx Bombers, a remarkable turnaround over just 36 games. They went 27-9 over a 36-game stretch ending with their eighth win in a row on Sunday.

George Springer‘s recent surge has been fun to watch, a reminder of how good he was at his peak, and Addison Barger has been mashing over the past two months.

Some of the stats don’t add up to the Blue Jays being this good — they’ve barely outscored their opponents — but there might be more offense in the tank from the likes of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a healthy Anthony Santander, and the bullpen, a soft spot, is the easiest area to upgrade.

Their success is best summed up by the fact that Freddy Peralta is their lone All-Star, but they have a whole bunch of players who have contributed between 1 and 2 WAR.

Brandon Woodruff looked good Sunday in his first start in nearly two years, so that could be a huge boost for the second half.

I’m curious to see how Jackson Chourio performs as well. While his counting stats — extra-base hits, RBIs — are fine, his triple-slash line remains below last season, especially his OBP. He had a huge second half in 2024 (.310/.363/.552), and if he does that again, the Brewers could find themselves back in the postseason for the seventh time in eight seasons.

The Rays started off slow, with a losing record through the end of April, but then went 33-22 in May and June to claw back into the AL East race — as the Rays usually do, last year being the recent exception.

Two key performers have been All-Star third baseman Junior Caminero, who has a chance to become just the third player to hit 40 home runs in his age-21 season, and All-Star first baseman Jonathan Aranda.

Due to the league wanting the Rays to play more home games early in the season, the July and August slate will be very road-heavy, so we’ll see how the Rays adapt to a difficult two-month stretch, especially since their pitching isn’t quite as deep as it has been in other seasons.

No, they’re not going to be the greatest team of all time. But they might win 100 games — even though Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki, their huge offseason acquisitions, have combined for just two wins in 10 starts.

The lineup, of course, has been terrific, with Ohtani leading the NL in several categories and Will Smith leading the batting race. By wRC+, it’s been the best offense in Dodgers history.

If they can get some combo of Snell, Sasaki and Tyler Glasnow healthy, plus Ohtani eventually ramped up to a bigger workload on the mound, the Dodgers still loom as World Series favorites.

They are on pace for 95 wins, mainly on the strength of Zack Wheeler, Ranger Suarez and Cristopher Sanchez, who are a combined 23-7 with 11.8 WAR. Jesus Luzardo‘s ERA is bloated due to that two-start stretch when he allowed 20 runs, but he has otherwise been solid as well.

But, overall, it hasn’t always been the smoothest of treks. The bullpen has imploded a few times and the offense has lacked power aside from Kyle Schwarber. Bryce Harper is back after missing three weeks, and they need to get his bat going. Look for some bullpen additions at the trade deadline — and perhaps an outfielder as well.

The Cardinals have been a minor surprise — perhaps even to the Cardinals themselves. St. Louis was viewing this as a rebuilding year of sorts — not that the Cardinals ever hit rock bottom and start completely over. They had a hot May, winning 12 of 13 at one point, but the offense has been fading of late, with those three straight shutout losses to Pittsburgh and six shutout losses since June 25.

The starting rotation doesn’t generate a lot of swing and miss, with both Erick Fedde and Miles Mikolas seeing their ERAs starting to climb. Brendan Donovan is the team’s only All-Star rep, and that kind of sums up this team: solid but without any star power. That might foretell a second-half fade.

All-Star starting pitchers Logan Webb and Robbie Ray, plus a dominant bullpen, have led the way, although after starting 12-4, the Giants have basically been a .500 team for close to three months now. Rafael Devers hasn’t yet ignited the offense since coming over from Boston, and the Giants have lost four 1-0 games.

These final three games at home against the Dodgers before the All-Star break will be a crucial series, as Los Angeles has slowly pulled away in the NL West.

This was an “A-plus” through June 12, when the Mets were 45-24 and owned the best record in baseball, even though Juan Soto hadn’t gotten hot. Soto finally got going in June, but the pitching collapsed, and the Mets went through a disastrous 1-10 stretch.

The rotation injuries have piled up, exacerbating the lack of bullpen depth. Recent games have been started by Justin Hagenman (who had a 6.21 ERA in Triple-A), journeyman reliever Chris Devenski, Paul Blackburn (7.71 ERA) and Frankie Montas, who has had to start even though he’s clearly not throwing the ball well. The Mets need to get the rotation healthy, but also could use more offense from Mark Vientos and their catchers (Francisco Alvarez was demoted to Triple-A).

At times it has felt like Cal Raleigh has been a one-man team with his record-breaking first half. But he will be joined on the All-Star squad by starting pitcher Bryan Woo, closer Andres Munoz and center fielder Julio Rodriguez, who made it on the strength of his defense, as his offense has been a disappointment.

The offense has been one of the best in the majors on the road, but the rotation has been nowhere near as effective as the past couple of seasons, with George Kirby, Logan Gilbert and Bryce Miller all missing time with injuries. They just shut out the Pirates three games in a row, so maybe that will get the rotation on a roll.

They’re just out of the wild-card picture while hanging around .500, so we give them a decent grade since that exceeds preseason expectations. It feels like a little bit of a mirage given their run differential — their record in one-run games (good) versus their record in blowout games (not good) — and various holes across the lineup and pitching staff.

But they’ve done two things to keep them in the race. One, they hit a lot of home runs. Two, they’re the only team in the majors to use just five starting pitchers. The rotation hasn’t been stellar, but it’s been stable.

The Padres are probably fortunate to be where they are, given some of their issues. As expected, the offensive depth has been a problem.

Not as expected, Dylan Cease has struggled while Michael King‘s injury after a strong start has left them without last year’s dynamic 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation (although Nick Pivetta has been one of the best signings of the offseason). Yu Darvish just made his season debut Monday, so hopefully he’ll provide a lift.

The Padres haven’t played well against the better teams, including a 2-5 record against the Dodgers, but they did clean up against the Athletics, Rockies and Pirates, going 16-2 against those three teams.

For now, the Reds are stuck in neutral. Leave out 2022, when they lost 100 games, and it’s otherwise been a string of .500-ish seasons: 31-29 in 2020, 83-79 in 2021, 82-80 in 2023, 77-85 in 2024 and now a similar record so far in 2025.

The hope was that Terry Francona would be a difference-maker. Maybe that will play out down the stretch, but the best hope is to get the rotation clicking on all cylinders at the same time. That means Andrew Abbott continuing his breakout performance, plus getting Hunter Greene healthy again and rookie Chase Burns to live up to the hype after a couple of shaky outings following an impressive MLB debut.

Throw in Nick Lodolo and solid Nick Martinez and Brady Singer, and this group can be good enough to pitch the Reds to their first full-season playoff appearance since 2013.

The Yankees have hit their annual midseason swoon — which has been subject to much intense analysis from their disgruntled fans — and that opening weekend sweep of the Brewers, when the Yankees’ torpedo bats were the big story in baseball, now seems long ago.

Going from seven up to three back in such a short time is a disaster — but not disastrous. Nonetheless, the Yankees will have to do some hard-core self-evaluation heading to the trade deadline.

The offense wasn’t going to be as good as it was in April, when Paul Goldschmidt, Trent Grisham and Ben Rice were all playing over their heads. So, do they need a hitter? Or with Clarke Schmidt now likely joining Gerrit Cole as a Tommy John casualty, do they need a starting pitcher? Or both?

From the book of “things we didn’t expect,” page 547: The Marlins are averaging more runs per game than the Orioles, Padres, Braves and Rangers, to name a few teams. They’re averaging almost as many runs per game as the Mets, and last time we checked, the Marlins weren’t the team to give Soto $765 million.

An eight-game winning streak at the end of June has the Marlins going toe-to-toe with the Braves for third place in the NL East even though the starting rotation has been a mess, with Sandy Alcantara on track to become just the fourth qualified pitcher with an ERA over 7.00.

Heading into the season, I thought that if any team was going to challenge the Dodgers in the NL West, it would be the Diamondbacks. The offense has once again been one of the best in the majors, but the pitching issues have been painful.

After the aggressive move to sign Corbin Burnes, he went down with Tommy John surgery after 11 starts. Meanwhile, Zac Gallen, Eduardo Rodriguez and Brandon Pfaadt each have an ERA on the wrong side of 5.00. Rodriguez was better in June before a shellacking on July 4, while Gallen remains homer-prone, so it’s hard to tell if improvement is on the horizon. Their playoff odds are hovering just under 20%, so there’s a chance, but they need to get red-hot like they did last July and August.

It feels like it has been more soap opera than baseball season in Boston, with the Devers drama finally ending with the shocking trade with the Giants.

If you give added weight that this is the Red Sox, a team that should be operating with the big boys in both budget and aspirations and instead seemed to only want to dump Devers’ contract, then feel free to lower this grade a couple of notches, even if the Red Sox are close in the wild-card standings.

On the field, the heralded rookie trio of Kristian Campbell, Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer hasn’t exactly clicked, with Campbell returning to the minors after posting a .902 OPS in April. A big test will come out of the All-Star break, when they play the Cubs, Phillies, Dodgers, Twins and Astros in a tough 15-game stretch.

After last season’s surprise playoff appearance, it’s been a frustrating 2025 — although I’m not sure this result is necessarily a surprise.

There were concerns about the offense heading into the season and those concerns have proven correct. They were getting no production from their outfield, so they rushed Jac Caglianone to the majors to much hype, but he has struggled and might need a reset back in Triple-A. Even Bobby Witt Jr., as good as he has been (on pace for 7.5 WAR), has seen his OPS drop 140 points.

On the bright side, Kris Bubic emerged as an All-Star starter and Noah Cameron has filled in nicely for the injured Cole Ragans, so maybe they trade a starter for some offense.

Coming off a catastrophic 2024 season, nobody was expecting anything from the White Sox. Indeed, another 121-loss season loomed as a possibility. While they’re on pace to lose 100 again, they’ve at least played more competitive baseball thanks to their pitching.

Rookie starters Shane Smith and Sean Burke have shown promise, while rookie position players Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero and now Colson Montgomery are getting their initial taste of the majors.

There has been the mix of calamity: Luis Robert Jr. has been unproductive and is probably now untradable, and former No. 3 overall pick Andrew Vaughn hit .189 and was traded to the Brewers.

The Twins are one organization that might like a do-over of the past five seasons. It feels like they’ve had the most talent in the division, but all they’ve done is squeeze out one soft division title in 2023. Now, the Tigers have passed them in talent and other factors, such as payroll flexibility.

There’s still time for the Twins to turn things around in 2025, but outside of that wonderful 13-game winning streak, they haven’t played winning baseball.

Overall, it’s been yet another bad season, despite Paul Skenes‘ brilliance. Really, do we talk enough about him? Yes, we do talk about him, but he has a 1.95 ERA through his first 42 career starts. Incredible.

Here’s an amazing thing about baseball. The Pirates are not a good team, but they recently put together one of the best six-game stretches in history. That’s not stretching the description. First, they swept the Mets — a good team — by scores of 9-1, 9-2 and 12-1. Then they swept the Cardinals — a good team — with three shutouts, 7-0, 1-0 and 5-0. They became the first team since at least 1901 to score 43 runs or more and allow four runs or fewer in a six-game stretch. And then they promptly got shut out three games in a row, making them the first to win three straight shutouts and then lose three straight shutouts.

Eighteen of our 28 voters picked them to win the AL West before the season, but it’s looking more and more like the 2023 World Series might be a stone-cold fluke in the middle of a string of losing seasons. That year, nearly everyone in the lineup had a career year at the plate, and the pitching got hot at the right time.

This year’s Rangers, though, have struggled to score runs, and while some have pointed to the offensive environment at Globe Life Field, they’re near the bottom in road OPS as well. It’s been fun seeing Jacob deGrom back at a dominating level, and Nathan Eovaldi should have been an All-Star.

Put it this way: If the Rangers can somehow squeeze into the postseason, you don’t want to face the Rangers in a short series. Indeed, if any team looms as an October upset special, it might be the Rangers.

The Nationals received superlative first-half performances from James Wood and MacKenzie Gore, while CJ Abrams is on the way to his best season. But there remains a lack of overall organizational progress, which finally led to the firings on Sunday of longtime GM Mike Rizzo and longtime manager Dave Martinez. A 7-19 record in June sealed their fate, as the rotation has been bad and the bullpen arguably the worst in baseball.

Until the Nationals figure out how to improve their pitching — or, better yet, find an owner who wants to win — they will be stuck going nowhere.

That fell apart in a hurry. Sunday’s loss was Cleveland’s 10th in a row, a stretch that remarkably included five shutouts. Indeed, the Guardians have now been shut out 11 times; the franchise record in the post-dead-ball-era (since 1920) is 20 shutouts in 1968.

There’s nothing worse than watching a team that can’t score runs, so that tells you how exciting the Guardians have been. Last year, the Guardians hit exceptionally well with runners in scoring position, keeping afloat what was otherwise a mediocre offense. That hasn’t happened in 2025 (trading Josh Naylor didn’t help either). Throw in some predictable regression from the bullpen, and this season looks lost.

We can’t give this a complete failing grade due to the emergence of All-Star shortstop Jacob Wilson (the Athletics’ first All-Star starter since Josh Donaldson in 2014) and slugging first baseman Nick Kurtz, who have a chance to finish 1-2 in the Rookie of the Year voting. Plus, we have Denzel Clarke‘s circus catches in center field.

But otherwise? Ugh. The Sacramento gamble already looks like a disaster, three months into a three-year stay. The team is drawing well below Sutter Health Park’s 14,000-seat capacity, with many recent games drawing under 10,000 fans. Luis Severino bashed the small crowds and the lack of air-conditioning.

The A’s had a groundbreaking ceremony for their new park in Vegas, renting heavy construction equipment as background props. Maybe they should have spent that money on more pitching help.

Based on preseason expectations, the Braves have clearly been the biggest disappointment in the National League — fighting the Orioles for most disappointing overall.

What’s gone wrong? They haven’t scored runs, as the offense continues its remarkable fade from a record-setting performance just two seasons ago. The collapses of Michael Harris II and Ozzie Albies lead the way, with lack of production at shortstop and left field playing a big role as well. Closer Raisel Iglesias has struggled, and the team is 11-22 in one-run games. Spencer Strider hasn’t yet reached his pre-injury level and Reynaldo Lopez made just one start before going down.

The Braves haven’t missed the playoffs since 2017, but that run is clearly in jeopardy.

The Orioles have a similar record to the Braves but have played much worse, including losses of 24-2, 19-5, 15-3 and two separate 9-0 shutouts.

They will spend the trade deadline dealing away as many of their impending free agents as possible, and then do a lot of soul-searching heading into the offseason. After making the playoffs in 2023 and 2024, will this season just be a blip? While the pitching struggles aren’t necessarily a big surprise, what has happened to the offense? Are some of their young players prospects or suspects?

After two months of Cleveland Spiders-level baseball, it would be easy to make fun of the Rockies. Especially since they recently announced Walker Monfort — son of the owner — was promoted to executive VP and will replace outgoing president and COO Greg Feasel.

On the other hand, the Rockies are doing something right: They just drew 121,000 for a three-game series against the White Sox.

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White Sox unveil Buehrle statue: ‘Well-deserved’

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July 12, 2025

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White Sox unveil Buehrle statue: 'Well-deserved'

  • Jesse RogersJul 11, 2025, 09:12 PM ET

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      Jesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.

CHICAGO — Former White Sox lefty Mark Buehrle was forever immortalized inside Rate Field as the team unveiled a statue in his honor Friday.

Buehrle, 46, played 16 years in the majors, including the first 12 with the White Sox, who he helped win a World Series in 2005. He won 214 games and pitched 200 innings or more in 14 consecutive seasons from 2001 to 2014.

“I can’t put it into words,” Buehrle said after the unveiling. “You don’t play the game for any of this. You never think of number retirements or statues. I can’t even wrap my head around it. It doesn’t make sense.”

The statue is an action shot of him throwing a pitch.

His wife and kids were in attendance and helped pull off the cover to unveil the statue while his 2005 teammates looked on. The event kicked off a weekend reunion for the World Series team which went 11-1 in the postseason, beating the Houston Astros in four games to take home the title.

Buehrle was a five-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove winner, finishing fifth in Cy Young voting in 2005.

“Well-deserved,” former right fielder Jermaine Dye said of the statue. “Great teammate. Great leader. Definitely someone you want on a ballclub to lead a pitching staff.”

The White Sox rotation — led by Buehrle — threw four complete games in the ALCS against the Boston Red Sox in 2005, missing a fifth complete game by two-thirds of an inning. It’s an unheard of accomplishment in today’s game since starters infrequently go the distance.

Besides being an innings-eater on the mound, Buehrle was a fast worker — a favorite trait of his catcher, A.J Pierzynski. And he wasn’t someone who threw a lot of different pitches. He caught it and threw it without much input from behind the plate.

“He was fast,” Pierzynski said. “We had Jermaine Dye calling pitches from right field some games. We did come crazy things you wouldn’t recommend to people to do nowadays.”

Buehrle is a notoriously low-key guy who hates the spotlight but even he was moved by the team’s decision to honor him with a statue, which joins former slugger Harold Baines in the right-field concourse.

“I joked with him when I saw him,” Dye said. “I told him ‘Man it takes you getting a statue to get you out of the house.'”

Buehrle added: “I was literally nervous as can be today. This is not my comfort zone but by no means am I taking it lightly. This is incredible.”

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