‘I’m surprised it wasn’t 101-100:’ How one 1990 game showed the future of college football
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Dave Wilson, ESPN Staff Writer
ON NOV. 3, 1990, all hell broke loose in the Astrodome.
The TCU Horned Frogs and Houston Cougars combined to make history, stunning the college football world in a shootout that defied belief, with Houston ultimately prevailing, 56-35. Seven NCAA records were set, including a combined 1,563 yards of offense and the most combined passing yards in a game (1,253). There were 13 touchdown drives, with the longest one clocking in at 1:39. As in 99 seconds.
The game drew just 25,725 fans and aired on tape delay at 12:30 a.m. the next day on a regional network called Home Sports Entertainment. Yet, 33 years later, its legacy will be felt in the Cougars’ first Big 12 game, which reunites Houston and TCU in college football’s highest levels for the first time since the Southwest Conference dissolved after the 1995 season.
The game became national news with highlights across the country showing footballs flying left and right, more akin to a tennis match than a football game in that era. That’s what happens when a backup quarterback making his first start, TCU’s Matt Vogler, throws for 690 yards and his opponent, David Klingler, adds 563 and seven touchdowns.
Sonny Dykes, then a baseball player at Texas Tech, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Hal Mumme, then the coach at miniscule Iowa Wesleyan, watched TCU coach Jim Wacker’s weekly show to see what he was up to, jealous of the yardage they piled up.
“Maybe we’re not crazy after all,” Mumme told his offensive coordinator, Mike Leach, as they continued trying to light up scoreboards of their own, with a sophomore receiver named Dana Holgorsen catching passes in their newly christened Air Raid scheme.
Dykes said this week the game was one that piqued his interest in coaching football, despite not playing in college. He grew up in the SWC era while his dad, Spike Dykes, was the head coach at Texas Tech. In the 1986 season, Spike’s first year as the Red Raiders’ coach, Houston averaged 96.6 passing yards per game under Bill Yeoman, the pioneer of the famed veer option rushing attack, while Wacker, a veer acolyte himself, and TCU averaged 109.6. Just four years later, this was a seismic shift.
“I had just never seen anything like it before, in particular two Texas teams,” Sonny Dykes said. “I just remember thinking, ‘Man, if this is what the future looks like, I’m pretty excited about it.'”
Dykes went all in. The record for the combined quarterbacks’ yardage stood until 2014, when it was broken by Washington State’s Connor Halliday (734) and Cal’s Jared Goff (527) for a total of 1,261 yards. The two coaches in that one: Leach and Dykes. In 2016, it was broken again by Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes (734) and Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield (545), both with Air Raid playcallers, Kliff Kingsbury and Lincoln Riley, who played when Leach and Dykes were coaching in Lubbock.
Bob DeBesse, TCU’s offensive coordinator in 1990, who’s now the head coach at Grapevine High School in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, says that long-ago game still feels current.
“It was a glimpse into the future,” DeBesse said. “But who would have ever guessed the future would look like it does?”
JOHN JENKINS ALWAYS believed football should look like it does. He’s a cocky, enigmatic, secretive mad scientist of a coach and the architect of Houston’s version of the run ‘n’ shoot. He coached alongside run ‘n’ shoot guru Mouse Davis for the Houston Gamblers of the USFL, then was promoted to replace Davis as offensive coordinator and got to work tweaking the scheme. In his first game as a playcaller, he rallied the Gamblers and quarterback Jim Kelly from a 33-13 deficit with eight minutes left in the game to a 34-33 win that Sports Illustrated called “The Greatest Game Never Seen” because it also wasn’t televised.
By the time he got to UH in 1987, as offensive coordinator for Jack Pardee, the Cougars were in trouble. In Yeoman’s last season in 1986, the Cougars finished 1-11 and were under NCAA investigation, as much of the SWC was in this era. Jenkins said there was even talk of dropping football.
“The Astrodome was no longer an Eighth Wonder of the World; nobody cared anymore and they didn’t want to see that,” Jenkins said. “Jack Pardee asked me to go talk to half a dozen boosters and I told them, ‘Hey, wait a minute, don’t even think about dropping football at this school. You have no idea what’s fixin’ to happen.’ I’d heard them all — [Baylor’s] Grant Teaff and [Texas’] David McWilliams and Spike and everybody, R.C. [Slocum at Texas A&M], all those guys talking piling up bodies for a 2-yard gain. They have no idea what’s fixin’ to hit them. There’s gonna be some nosebleeds up in the upper deck with balls flying through the air.”
By 1989, Jenkins was right. The Cougars scored 53.5 points a game. They averaged 511 passing yards and 625 total yards (both still NCAA records), culminating in a Heisman Trophy for Andre Ware. Manny Hazard caught a record 142 passes. Chuck Weatherspoon averaged a record 9.6 yards per carry. Houston topped the 60-point mark five times that year, including scoring 95 against SMU and rolling up 1,021 yards of offense (also still a record, as you might guess). Again, nobody saw it, because the Cougars were banned from television because they were on a third NCAA probation because of an estimated 250 recruiting violations at the end of the 25-year Yeoman era, according to the NCAA.
Wacker too had realized that to keep up at TCU, he was going to have to ditch the veer. A few years prior, he installed the “triple shoot,” a variation of the run ‘n’ shoot that utilized more tight ends and backs. Before Leach’s Air Raid offense at Texas Tech made Big 12 teams keep pace, Jenkins was already doing it.
This caught the eye of Stephen Shipley, a highly recruited receiver from East Texas. Shipley has his own deep connections to the evolution of football in the state. He’s the uncle of Jordan and Jaxson Shipley, the former Texas Longhorns wide receivers. But in the late 1980s, his high school, Lindale, was throwing the ball more than most Texas schools did, thanks to the talented Shipley and a strong-armed quarterback named Pat Mahomes. As in the former major leaguer and father of the reigning Super Bowl MVP.
“I remember getting calls from OU and A&M and my first response was, ‘Heck no, I’m not coming to block for your running backs,'” Shipley said. “I wanted to catch the ball. That was the main reason I went to TCU. I knew they had the sanctions, limited scholarships, and it was going to be a tough road, but it was a chance to be a part of the change of the game.”
After the 1989 season, Pardee was hired as the coach of the Houston Oilers (where he unleashed the same offensive assault with Warren Moon across town), and Jenkins succeeded him at U of H as head coach. As his own boss, Jenkins could be as brash as he wanted, like when he unleashed Klingler to throw 11 touchdowns against Eastern Washington that season. When Houston and TCU finally met in Nov. 1990, the Southwest Conference, the laboratory that gave us the Wishbone and the Veer, now saw two dueling all-out aerial attacks.
Marc Dove, TCU’s defensive coordinator at the time, had worked for Emory Bellard, the inventor of the wishbone alongside Jenkins — who was his linebackers coach — at Mississippi State, and said the run ‘n’ shoot was much more challenging to defend. So when it came time to face his old friend Jenkins and Klingler, he knew he had his work cut out for him.
“We tried about everything and found not much of anything that worked,” Dove said of devising schemes to beat the run ‘n’ shoot.
When it came time to face Houston in 1990, Dove tried to mix up coverages, but was also aggressive. Klingler threw four interceptions, though Jenkins said some were bobbled passes and weren’t on him. Still, the machine wasn’t up to Jenkins’ standards at times.
“The expectation was perfection, we expected to score on every play. I remember coming off the field after a five-play drive and Jenks would be pissed, saying ‘What are we doing out there? What’s taking us so long to score?'” Klingler said, laughing. “He was just as frustrated as he could be, because we left three or four touchdowns on the field in five plays and he’d had just about enough of watching it.”
Vogler, meanwhile, was under fire the entire game. Jenkins didn’t believe the backup could stand up to the pressure, so he instructed his defensive coordinator, Larry Coyer, to blitz him relentlessly.
“Oh, [Coyer] was nervous as hell,” Jenkins said. “They all are, all those defensive guys. They always worry like hell, they’re going to get burned on a blitz. Hey, in my opinion, we were ready to go and did not think they could hold up and match us score for score.”
But Vogler did. He stood in there and kept throwing it over the top, including an 80-yard touchdown to Cedric Jackson and an 88-yard score to Kyle McPherson in the first half alone. Klingler, meanwhile, threw four touchdowns passes in the first half as Houston took a 28-14 lead.
“I can remember we’re starting to run off the field at halftime and we crossed paths,” Dove said of his friend Jenkins and Coyer, who he also knew well. “I said, ‘You’re gonna get me fired, John!’ He said, ‘Well, that’s the way it goes.’ And then Coyer said, ‘You’re doing better than me!'”
Vogler rallied TCU with a big third quarter, tying the score at 28-28 with a 9-yard TD to Shipley.
“They blitzed more than anybody I’ve ever seen in my life,” Vogler said. “We were shocked, like, ‘Guys, it’s not working. We’re dropping 88-yard bombs on you because you’re blitzing. Keep doing it and we’ll keep doing this and we’ll just see whoever shakes out with the most points.’ That’s pretty much what happened.”
Klingler and Houston, however, rolled from there, including two touchdown passes to Marcus Grant, who was being covered by TCU’s Larry Brown, the future Super Bowl MVP for the Dallas Cowboys. Grant’s final line: 3 catches, 103 yards, 3 touchdowns.
“I don’t remember what the score was,” Dove said, being reminded it was 56-34. “I’m surprised it wasn’t 101-100.”
There was zero reason to expect this result. Vogler had arrived at TCU because Auburn was put on probation and players could transfer. He was looking for a home, but Auburn was on the quarters system and most schools had already begun classes. He knew some coaches at TCU through his family, so he flew in, arrived on the final day of enrollment, and was running the scout team a week later, backing up Leon Clay.
After Clay was injured, Vogler came into the Houston game with no touchdowns and three interceptions on the year. He finished his first start by going 44-of-79 (an NCAA record for attempts) for 690 yards, five touchdowns and two interceptions. The Frogs finished with five 100-yard receivers, each of whom caught a touchdown.
“The stars have got to be aligned to have that many yards passing and that much explosiveness on both sides of the ball,” DeBesse said. “Larry Coyer went on to become a highly successful defensive coordinator in the NFL for years, but when we shook hands at the end of that game, I’ll never forget the bewildered look on his face. All he said was, ‘What the hell just happened?’ I’ll never forget that. I think we all kind of felt a little bit of that.”
KLINGLER COMPLETED 36 of 53 passes for 563 with 7 TDs and 4 interceptions. Hazard caught 13 for 164. Weatherspoon, the 5-foot-7, 230-pound human wrecking ball, had 17 carries for 178 yards and a TD and caught 6 passes for 92 yards and 2 TDs.
“We would throw about 300 passes a day every practice,” Klingler said. “Game day was like a day off. When you look back on that day, and even the day that I threw for 716 yards against Arizona State, I went 40 for 70. I mean, I missed 30 passes. So it was really actually a pretty bad day. But what we did, we did so well that you could miss 30 times and still put up ridiculous numbers.”
Vogler said the Frogs were not prepared for a four-hour game, missed their flight and had to charter a plane home. In addition to those 79 pass attempts, he had 15 of the Frogs’ 21 carries. He said he spent the flight back to Fort Worth lying in the aisle, with an IV in his arm.
“I was cramping, my legs were locking up and I was dehydrated,” Vogler said. “It was an event, man, and I just got home and went straight to bed. I don’t think most of us woke up until midday the next day.”
Klingler, meanwhile, says he didn’t see the big deal.
“Oh, we would’ve played them in a doubleheader,” he said, laughing.
In a presocial media era, with no television, most of the country found out about the donnybrook the next morning in their local newspapers. Jenkins said that’s when the calls started.
“When Matt registered those kinds of numbers and still got beat by three touchdowns, people started asking, ‘What in the world is going on down there?'” he said.
Dykes said he was always fascinated by Jenkins. Mumme said he started out as a run ‘n’ shoot coach, and has spoken at clinics with Jenkins for decades. But they all agree that nobody knows exactly how Jenkins did it, because his offense is complicated, with receivers automatically converting routes on every play based on coverage, and quarterbacks who have to be in sync. Jenkins was notoriously secretive, rebuffing any attempts to come study what he did, including from Joe Paterno who called to say his quarterbacks kept showing him highlights of Houston and he wanted to know more.
“[Jenkins] was ahead of his time for sure. He was the offensive guru in college football. Not only could nobody figure it out, he didn’t let anybody figure it out,” DeBesse said. “He’s very secretive about what he was doing.”
Klingler agreed.
“You’d have a better chance to get something out of a Russian spy,” Klingler said. “I don’t know that anybody today is doing what he was doing — or has any idea what he was doing. That’s the problem. Me and my brother [Jimmy, who followed him as the Houston starter], Andre [Ware] and Jenks are probably the four guys that know what we were doing, and it’ll probably die with us.”
The Southwest Conference was hobbled by infighting and NCAA punishment, mostly affecting recruiting by any school not named Texas or Texas A&M. After a magical 10-1 season in 1990, with a loss only to Texas, Jenkins suffered through two 4-7 seasons and was forced to resign. Wacker finished 7-4 in 1991, but didn’t make a bowl game. He departed for Minnesota. Both programs suffered in the aftermath. Houston won four games over the next three seasons under Kim Helton. TCU went 13-20-1 in the same span under Pat Sullivan.
A Big 12 matchup marks a new era in the rivalry, with two coaches in Holgorsen and Dykes who are students of games like these.
“When I was a sophomore and junior in college I actually went to several clinics to hear John speak and take notes,” Dykes said. “John had his way, his belief of doing things and that had a huge impact on the Air Raid. The shovel passes and the screens that run ‘n’ shoot teams threw were a big part of the early Air Raid scheme. Football is all about six degrees of separation and there’s piles of influence everywhere. All of our philosophies got shaped by people and events that we didn’t really even know would have an impact on the way we think and what we do as a result.”
The 1990 game, a split-second in the grand scheme of football’s history, made a lasting impression. On Saturday night, the Coogs and Frogs will be pitching it around again in a game that means something.
“Houston finally gets to compete with major college competition again, and they open up with TCU to start with,” Jenkins said. “How about that? What a joy to see that again.”
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David Schoenfield
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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Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — The Yankees designated two-time batting champion DJ LeMahieu for assignment Wednesday, presumably ending the infielder’s seven-year tenure with the organization despite being owed $22 million through next season.
“Tough decisions,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said. “In the end, it ultimately comes down to how this roster sits and what’s best. You want to provide your manager with enough chess moves to deal with on a day-in and day-out basis in-game.”
Manager Aaron Boone explained that the move resulted from “an evolving conversation” in recent days that included multiple meetings with LeMahieu, a respected veteran in the Yankees’ clubhouse.
It comes a day after Boone announced that Jazz Chisholm Jr. would shift back to playing second base every day from third base, bumping LeMahieu from the team’s everyday second baseman to a bench role. Boone acknowledged LeMahieu took the demotion “not necessarily great” but emphasized that LeMahieu did not ask for his release.
“It’s been a tough couple of days,” Boone said. “Some hard conversations. And then ultimately coming to this decision, conclusion, obviously not easy for [who’s] been a great player. He’s done a lot of great things for this organization. So, difficult, but at the end [we] feel like this is the right thing to do at this time.”
LeMahieu, who turns 37 on Sunday, batted .266 with a .674 OPS in 45 games this season after starting the season on the injured list with a strained calf. He has been better since June 1, hitting .310 with a .754 OPS in 96 plate appearances as the Yankees’ primary second baseman, but Cashman ultimately decided the production wasn’t enough to offset his defensive liabilities.
The Yankees signed LeMahieu to a six-year, $90 million contract before the 2021 season — fresh off LeMahieu hitting .364 during the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign to become the first player to win a batting title in both leagues in the modern era — envisioning him as an everyday utility player bouncing between infield positions.
LeMahieu made 36 of his 55 starts last season at third base before going on the injured list in early September with a right hip impingement for the remainder of the year. That injury, according to Cashman, inhibited LeMahieu’s ability to play third base, and led to LeMahieu informing him that he couldn’t physically handle playing the position anymore.
“He was always just sharing that the recovery was really difficult,” Cashman said. “The physical toll on him to tee up at that position was a problem and so therefore that position is a problem.”
The limitation was cemented during spring training when LeMahieu strained his left calf in his first Grapefruit League game playing third base, forcing the Yankees to conclude that LeMahieu was no longer an option at the position. He only played second base in his nine rehab games before making his season debut May 13 as a second baseman with Chisholm on the injured list with an oblique strain.
Three weeks later, Chisholm, who started the season as the team’s everyday second baseman, came off the injured list to play third base despite LeMahieu’s range at second base being glaringly limited. Chisholm, who feels most comfortable at second base, accepted the assignment and returned to third base, a position he picked up last season after the Yankees acquired him from the Miami Marlins at the trade deadline through the World Series.
The calculus changed Sunday when Chisholm, with the Yankees in the midst of a six-game losing streak, told reporters that he hurt his shoulder making a throw from third base three weeks earlier and the injury impacted his throwing. Two days later, Chisholm, who had made three throwing errors in his final four starts at third base, was the Yankees’ starting second baseman again.
With Chisholm, an All-Star this season, stationed at second base, former MVPs Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger entrenched at first base and Giancarlo Stanton occupying the DH spot, playing time would have been sparse for LeMahieu.
Factoring in that the Yankees’ options at third base behind Oswald Peraza, who is also the team’s backup shortstop, would have been catcher J.C. Escarra, Cashman determined that LeMahieu’s presence hampered the team’s flexibility to an extent that would have handcuffed Boone’s in-game decision-making. Infielder Jorbit Vivas, a light-hitting versatile defender, was called up from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to replace LeMahieu on the roster.
“I wouldn’t say he’s unwilling to still make the attempt and maybe spell over there,” Cashman said of LeMahieu. “But it was something that he was without sharing that was steering clear of to the extent he could.
“Because, again, like anything else, he’s got a lot of pride. He’s a great player. He wants to contribute to the team. He loves this team. He loves this organization. But he felt that was an avenue that was no longer a realistic avenue and that kind of ties our hands a little bit more moving forward.”
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