Miami Marlins GM Kim Ng’s journey to the postseason
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Xuan Thai, ESPN Senior Writer
MIAMI — Down a brightly lit hallway that leads to a section of luxury suites at the Miami Marlins‘ stadium, where each room is filled with fans cheering on the home team, the door to the last suite is closed. Inside sits Kim Ng. No entourage, no buddies from college, no staff checking in. With a laptop, an iPad and a water bottle, the Marlins’ general manager sits with the lights off, watching the game alone.
It’s just before the MLB All-Star break, and second baseman Luis Arraez is chasing a .400 batting average, a feat not accomplished at the July break since 1999. It was Ng who traded for Arraez in her first full season without Derek Jeter in the Marlins’ front office. Already, there are whispers that the team could reach its first full-season postseason in 20 years.
I walk into the suite and attempt to break the ice, recounting a quote attributed to Ng’s mother about the “return on investment” of a University of Chicago degree and Ng’s decision to take an unpaid internship with an MLB team. I can relate. I tell her how my father once asked about the “cost-benefit analysis” of my decision to stop practicing law to take an unpaid internship at a cable news network. Aren’t Asian parents funny that way, I ask? She kindly laughs, perhaps more out of courtesy than comedy. I quickly pivot to baseball.
Ng’s journey to this place has been well chronicled — more than 30 years of management and executive experience that includes stints with MLB, the Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, and the New York Yankees, with whom she won three World Series. She’s often included on those “most powerful women in sports” lists, and has grown accustomed to answering the inevitable questions about the “first” and “only” career labels — the first and only woman hired as general manager of a men’s major pro sports team in North America, the first East Asian American to do it in baseball.
It can be lonely being the first and only, and it’s clear those are things she doesn’t like to discuss. Less than three years into her first GM job, she’d much rather talk about baseball, the team and the “culture of winning” she’s trying to cultivate — to focus on anything other than her own story. It’s hard to break through. Over the course of several interviews this past regular season, Ng sticks to her talking points.
When we meet again three months later, with just six games left in the regular season, Ng is once again having a first-and-only moment. This time she’s in a Citi Field box for visiting general managers, and the Marlins are in close pursuit of a National League wild-card spot. Winning a series against the New York Mets would feel particularly fitting for the GM who grew up playing stickball on the streets of Queens. But it also could help Ng become the first and only female GM to lead a team to the postseason.
To be on the brink of a playoff spot is an accomplishment for any GM. For Ng, who is cautious by nature, this requires focus.
“It definitely hit me around the All-Star break when the team was sitting in a very good position,” she says. “Now we’re down to the last week and it’s starting to hit again, that you’re realizing that you’re just in a great position to do things that you’ve wanted to do for a really long time, and that is get to the postseason. And I’ve been there before with some of my other clubs, but certainly not in this chair. And that obviously makes this different.”
She says she’s tried to avoid feeling stress up to this point.
“Now,” she says, “I’m allowing myself to stress a little bit.”
This is a big admission. She knows that her reactions could affect the rest of the organization, and wants to keep things positive in the clubhouse.
“For a while,” she says, “I was playing the same playlist over and over, as I went into work every day and I was playing it in my suite each night during the game. Probably just to divert my attention from being so stressed.”
I ask, “What’s on this playlist?”
“Oh, yeah,” she says, laughing, “You’re not getting that out of me!”
After opening the second half of the season on an eight-game losing streak, the Marlins dipped below .500 in late August and appeared headed for another disappointing end. But series wins against the Washington Nationals, the Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies, plus a sweep of the Atlanta Braves, helped them finish 84-77 in the regular season. They clinched a wild-card spot with a win Saturday in Pittsburgh, where Ng joined the celebration on the field.
The Marlins are playoff-bound in a full season for the first time since 2003, when they went on to beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. (The Marlins reached the playoffs during the pandemic-shortened postseason in 2020.) They open play Tuesday at Philadelphia (8 p.m. ET on ESPN).
For Ng, who is 54, getting to this historic moment started in 1990, three years before the Marlins became an expansion team. She’d graduated from the University of Chicago and joined the Chicago White Sox as an intern. The White Sox hired her full-time the next year and by 1995 had promoted her to assistant director of baseball operations. When she became an assistant GM of the Yankees in 1998, she was the second youngest person ever in that role at the time.
It would take another two decades for her to land a GM job. Publicly, she remained upbeat when asked about that. She’s joked that she was always a bridesmaid. Today, she acknowledges that some of those GM interviews were more performative than purposeful.
I ask how she dealt with the frustration, how she kept going after a half dozen or so attempts to advance.
She says she’s been asked that question often, and that the answer has been, and will always be, “What am I supposed to do, quit?”
“You just keep trying,” she says. “And it was incredibly frustrating, there’s no doubt about that. But you just keep at it.”
Joe Torre, who worked with Ng during their time with the Yankees and Dodgers and was her boss in the MLB offices, is more blunt, saying some of those teams just “checked a box.”
“I just think that they just never wanted to pull the trigger. Nobody had the courage to do it,” Torre says. “There’d be teams that would call me about interviewing her. And I said, ‘It’s all well and good, but just don’t do it just to cover your ass. I mean, you have to be serious.'”
After years of disappointments for her, another former Yankee, Derek Jeter, made the move. As chief executive and a minority owner of the Marlins, Jeter was known as an advocate for diversity in baseball. Jeter, who declined an ESPN interview request, called Torre when the Marlins first considered Ng for the job.
“[Jeter] had called me about her, and the one thing he said to me because he knows, he said, ‘Just tell Kim I’m not checking a box here. I’m seriously interested in her ability to do this job,'” Torre recalls.
The Marlins named her GM in November 2020.
“When she came in, she inherited almost the entirety of the front office,” says longtime Marlins assistant GM Brian Chattin. “She kind of walked into already an organizational dynamic that had been operating for a few years, which is challenging to do, to come in the leadership role and inherit everyone.”
There were no wholesale firings of front-office staff during Ng’s first two seasons. Ng reported to Jeter, who reported to majority owner Bruce Sherman. The executives in place were largely Jeter’s team, and like Ng, several were former Yankees.
According to some with knowledge of her time with the Marlins, many of the people she worked with continued to look to Jeter for guidance or approval. Ng had one position she could fill in her first months — team travel director. A year later, in January 2022, she brought in her first big hire, Stan Conte, as senior director of medical services. They’d worked together in Los Angeles, and his job was to overhaul the Marlins’ medical unit.
When Ng first approached Conte, who resigned as the Dodgers’ vice president of medical services in 2015, he was living in Arizona with no intention of returning to baseball full-time. As Conte recalls it, he was less than enthusiastic when Ng called.
“I said, ‘No, I don’t want to help. I want to be retired,'” Conte recalls.
He says Ng wasn’t having it. Eventually, he relented.
“This is part of her personality,” Conte says. “She’s very politely in a lot of different ways, wears you down and you don’t even know it’s happening. She isn’t who you think she is, and she does that on purpose. She’s methodical, attentive and deliberate.”
When Jeter left the Marlins in February 2022, again there were no wholesale firings of front office staff, but positions did open up and Ng took the opportunity to make methodical and deliberate moves. To create what she calls “the culture of winning.”
Longtime manager and former Yankees great Don Mattingly left after the 2022 season. The opening allowed Ng to bring in first-time manager Skip Schumaker, who at the time was a bench coach for the St. Louis Cardinals. A major league player for 11 seasons, Schumaker won a World Series with the Cardinals in 2011.
“She definitely took a chance on me, that’s for sure, being a rookie manager. I’m grateful for that,” Schumaker says. “I think she did a really good job of acquiring a staff that also knows what winning looks like and holds people accountable.”
She brought in another assistant GM, Oz Ocampo, from the Houston Astros. Ocampo is known for his expertise in scouting international talent. He was instrumental in bringing in key players to help the Astros win three World Series.
During the interview process, Ocampo says, he needed to figure out whether the Marlins were as committed to winning as he was.
“The history of the Marlins was that they would win and then they would disband the team and then they would be followed by long periods of losing,” he says. “And I don’t tolerate losing very well, and neither does Kim and neither does Skip.”
She also took hold of key player decisions. After trading for Arraez before the start of the 2023 season, she was criticized by some observers for sacrificing too much talent to acquire the hitter. This season, Arraez chased .400 for half the season and has become a driving force on the team.
Before the Aug. 1 trade deadline, Ng knew what the team needed. Those in the room recall the day in awe.
“The trade deadline this year, unbelievable. I was in that room all day long from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and everyone had different opinions, but she knew exactly what she wanted,” Conte says. “What she needed was runs, and she went out and scouted the right people and got them.”
She brought in infielders Josh Bell and Jake Burger. Perhaps just as important, she let go of those in the organization who were not on board with her vision. One of those was Gary Denbo, vice president of player development and an early Jeter hire.
But she also kept people who were put in place before her, and gave everyone a chance to prove themselves. Mel Stottlemyre Jr. has been the team’s pitching coach since 2018. He is one of the few coaches to stay through the changes.
Junior, as he is called by those who know him well, always suspected Ng would become a GM. His father — the late Mel Stottlemyre, a legendary pitcher and coach — told him she would some day.
“I remember when my pops was alive and still working with the Yankees,” Stottlemyre Jr. says. “He mentioned Ng’s name to me, and he talked about the toughness within her. And he finished his conversation and said that this woman was going to be a GM.
“And for him to say that, and then for me to go to work for her in what is her first job?” Stottlemyre Jr. points to goosebumps on his arm.
“Full circle,” I add. He nods. We let it sink in.
I bring up that moment with Ng. She pauses, too.
“When Mel told me the story, it surprised me because I definitely was not there making my mark,” she says. “That wasn’t my personality either, but it was certainly humbling to hear it for sure.”
Not yet three years into being a GM, Ng’s impact on baseball remains undeniable. At an MLB “Take the Field” event, a program designed to promote women working in baseball this past December, Ng gave the keynote address.
“Kim walks up and [my friends] are like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s Kim! That’s Kim!'” says Jennifer Brann, a 25-year-old Marlins data analyst whose friends were eager for an introduction. “People see her as like a larger-than-life figure. I think that she’s more popular than some of the [players] sometimes.”
Ng is aware she’s a role model, which also kept her going through all those GM interviews over the years.
Over the course of our interviews, I’m almost apologetic for asking what it means to be a woman in baseball. It is the year 2023, after all. But Ng is a woman and Asian American, like me, and those facts still matter. Visibility matters.
“Given my understanding of where I was in the universe, and that a lot of people looked up to me, whether it was women in the industry or young women wanting to get in the industry,” she explains. “You just never wanted to just fade off into nowhere. That wasn’t really an option.”
When Burger joined the team in August, his younger sister, Ellie Burger, retweeted a post the third baseman shared in November 2020, celebrating Ng’s historic hire. He tweeted that his sister, who always wanted to be a GM, now saw it was possible for a woman to have the top job. I asked Ellie what Ng’s role as GM means to her.
“It was just kind of breathtaking and wow, it actually happened.” Ellie says. “It was at like 52 [years old] she got hired as GM, and you take a Theo Epstein, for example, who gets hired at 28. And it’s like, why is there this difference? This is long overdue, but finally there’s movement.”
Eve Rosenbaum, a former MLB intern who worked for Ng and is now an assistant GM with the Baltimore Orioles, says Ng has huge weight on her shoulders.
“I think once one team hired a woman and then everyone can sort of exhale and say, ‘OK. Oh look, it happens,'” Rosenbaum says. “And, ‘Oh, look, she’s doing a good job,’ and then everyone else feels more comfortable to be the next person to hire a woman to lead their baseball ops department.”
Still, Ng is somewhat surprised to hear that her colleagues describe her as collaborative, kind, deliberative and smart.
“That’s the external, but the internal is quite a bit different,” Ng says. “It’s interesting that that’s the way they perceive me.”
“What’s the internal?” I ask.
“Very competitive, doesn’t quit,” Ng says, reflecting on her journey, but adding she wonders whether she “should let my personality come out a little more.”
Ng can be guarded about what she says, and careful about how she presents. But the few who know her well say she is fiery, too.
“It would annoy me when writers would ask [if I wanted to be GM]. Because are you asking the guys that? If you’re not asking the guys that, then don’t ask me that,” Ng says, slightly agitated. She rarely gets animated during our interviews. “[Are you asking] because I shouldn’t have that ambition, or it would be odd if I did have that ambition?”
It’s early September, and on this day, I’m back in Ng’s box at the Marlins’ stadium, in the dark, watching what is undeniably a sloppy game. The Marlins are losing badly to the Dodgers. Suddenly, a ball boy mistakes a ball in fair play for a foul ball and costs the Marlins a run. I react in disbelief. Ng is silent.
“Do you wish the game was already over?” I ask.
“Yeah, like five innings ago,” she says wryly.
In nearly every interview with Ng and those in the organization, the phrase “culture of winning” appears. Shortly after sitting down next to her, she says she wants to revisit the “culture of winning” idea again. She doesn’t think she explained it very well the last time we spoke.
“The culture of winning means the process and the preparation,” Ng explains. She then goes into detail about playing smarter baseball. Surprisingly, she says this night’s 10-0 rout by the Dodgers is not disappointing.
“This is execution. And sometimes you just don’t execute,” she says. “Physical mistakes happen. But last year, we might’ve thrown to a wrong base. That is not acceptable. That’s a mental mistake. That’s the mistake you have to learn from.
“We’ve been much better this year. And those are the signs of improvement and building that foundation.”
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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge make up the pinnacle of their profession, baseball’s two biggest stars representing its two most prestigious franchises. Their meeting in last month’s World Series solidified it — and their latest honor commemorated it.
Ohtani and Judge captured the Most Valuable Player Awards in their respective leagues on Thursday, both doing so unanimously. Ohtani won his third in four years, all of them coming by unanimous vote. Judge’s second — which comes two years after he edged Ohtani for the American League honor with a home-run-record-breaking season — came on the heels of one of the best offensive performances in baseball history.
And yet the exploits of Judge’s season somehow paled in comparison to what his counterpart accomplished over the past 12 months.
In that time, Ohtani signed an unprecedented $700 million contract, became the first 50/50 player in baseball history, helped his Los Angeles Dodgers defeat Judge’s New York Yankees for the championship and ultimately became the first full-time designated hitter to win an MVP — all while rehabbing a second major elbow surgery that prevented him from pitching.
“I’m very happy, obviously, to win the award,” Ohtani, speaking through an interpreter, said on a conference call. “My goal was to be able to pitch and contribute offensively, and the fact that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pitch this season just made me focus more on my offensive game. Fortunately, I was able to produce and get this award, which is very humbling.”
Ohtani became the 12th player to win three MVPs and the second to do so within his first seven seasons, joining Stan Musial, according to ESPN Research. Before Ohtani, Frank Robinson was the only player to win the award in both leagues (1961 NL, 1966 AL).
Ohtani led the National League in homers (54), RBIs (130) and OPS (1.036) while adding 59 stolen bases — 33 more than his previous career high. His first season as a Dodger began with his longtime interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, being indicted for stealing millions from Ohtani in a betting scandal and ended in World Series victory, a fitting capstone to Ohtani’s first trip to the playoffs. In between, Ohtani set the Dodgers’ single-season record for home runs, stole more bases than any Japanese-born player in baseball history, became the first DH to lead his league in wins above replacement and joined Ty Cobb as the only player to finish within the top two in the majors in both homers and steals.
Before Ohtani, nobody had ever won multiple MVPs unanimously, let alone three.
“Obviously I moved to a new league and everything’s been kind of a new experience,” Ohtani said. “There’s so many great players in the National League, obviously, and to be able to win the award unanimously is a great feeling. I’m very proud of that. Hopefully in the upcoming seasons I’ll continue to be able to perform to this high level.”
Judge and Ohtani each captured all 30 first-place votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor finished second to Ohtani with 23 second-place votes and Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte finished third, earning five second-place votes. In the AL, Bobby Witt Jr., the Kansas City Royals’ young superstar shortstop, received all 30 second-place votes. Juan Soto, the high-profile free agent who spent all season batting in front of Judge in the Bronx, finished third.
Judge led the majors in homers (58), RBIs (144), OPS (1.159) and FanGraphs wins above replacement (11.2) in a 2024 season that saw the 6-foot-7, 282-pound slugger spend most of his time in center field and lead the Yankees to a pennant. Judge’s 223 adjusted OPS was the highest among right-handed hitters since 1900, according to ESPN Research. He became the third player with at least 50 homers and an adjusted OPS of 200 or more, joining Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds.
Judge is the seventh Yankee to win multiple MVPs, joining Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Alex Rodriguez and Roger Maris. Before Judge, Mantle’s 1956 season was the only one in Yankees history to yield a unanimous MVP vote.
Since his first full season in 2017, when he was voted AL Rookie of the Year and finished second in MVP voting, Judge leads the majors in FanGraphs wins above replacement (51.4), weighted runs created plus (176), slugging percentage (.611) and home runs (311) despite sitting out significant time in three of those eight seasons. He broke the AL home run record in 2022, going deep 62 times, but he was better in practically every other offensive category in 2024, slashing .322/.458/.701 despite a brutal first month.
“March and April were not my friend this year,” Judge, who did not take part in the standard BBWAA conference call, told MLB Network. “It’s a long season. You’re going to go through some ups, you’re going to go through some downs. It’s just about leaning on your teammates, your family and just putting in the work. I think that’s what it comes down to — just keep putting in the work and things are going to change. You can’t mope. You can’t feel sorry for yourself. Especially in New York — nobody’s going to feel sorry for you.”
Of Judge’s 58 home runs in 2024, a whopping 23 gave his team the lead. But his season ended in bitter fashion, with Judge going 4-for-18 in the World Series and making a key error — dropping a fly ball to help set up what became a five-run fifth inning — in the decisive Game 5 on Oct. 30.
Six days later, Ohtani underwent surgery to repair a labrum tear in his left, non-throwing shoulder, the result of an injury he sustained on an attempted steal in Game 2 of the World Series. Ohtani has since removed the stitches from his surgically repaired shoulder and is focusing on range-of-motion exercises in the early stages of his ramp-up.
“The goal is to be ready for Opening Day. That includes hitting and pitching,” Ohtani said. “But we are kind of taking our time, obviously. We want to make sure that I’m healthy first; we’re not going to rush anything.”
It wasn’t until his fourth season in the big leagues that Ohtani emerged as a two-way force. He came over from Japan and made nine starts for the Los Angeles Angels before sustaining a tear in his ulnar collateral ligament that ultimately led to Tommy John surgery in 2018, restricting him to DH for most of his first two years. The 2021 season — coming off a brutal showing in the COVID-shortened 2020 season — was the start of a historic three-year stretch in which Ohtani produced a .964 OPS with 124 homers and 57 stolen bases, and also a 2.84 ERA and 542 strikeouts in 428⅓ innings.
A second UCL repair followed, preventing Ohtani from pitching beyond August 2023. It did not prevent another dream-like season. Ohtani dismissed outsized pressure, focused on becoming a better base stealer and produced some of the season’s most memorable moments even before hoisting the World Series trophy. He hit a walk-off grand slam to join the 40/40 club and put together one of history’s best single-game performances — with three home runs, two steals and 10 RBIs in Miami on Sept. 19 — to reach the 50/50 mark and solidify his first postseason berth.
Ohtani is unquestionably at the top of the sport.
Judge is up there, too.
“When I hear that, I think people are coming for the spot,” Judge told MLB Network. “You got to keep putting in the work.”
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Ryan S. Clark
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Kristen Shilton
Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin is expected to miss the next four to six weeks after sustaining a fractured left fibula, the team announced Thursday.
And thus, the Great 8’s pursuit of the all-time NHL record for goals, currently held by Wayne Gretzky, is now paused. Ovechkin currently has 868 goals and is chasing down Gretzky’s 894.
Meanwhile, the Capitals are in second place in the Metropolitan Division, just a point off the pace of the Carolina Hurricanes, with the season nearly at the quarter mark.
What exactly is the injury? How will the Capitals be impacted on the ice and in the dressing room? Here’s what we know now, and what comes next.
What do we know about his injury?
Ovechkin has missed only 35 games due to injury in his entire 20-season career. That is an astounding mark on its own and highlights the veteran’s overall durability. Even his teammates were shocked that Ovechkin could be sidelined for such a stretch.
“Everyone’s bummed out,” said winger Tom Wilson, an Ovechkin teammate since 2013. “We were sitting there saying, ‘This is weird. Like, it’s unbelievable that he’s actually hurt.’ It’s one of those things where like, he’s going to miss games? I’ve been around a long time, and it’s new to me.”
That’s what made Ovechkin’s shin-on-shin collision against Utah so tough to see — immediately it looked bad. Ovechkin sported a walking boot out of the arena that night, and now the Capitals have confirmed it’s a fibula fracture. Those can be difficult to come back from. Jake DeBrusk, for example, fractured his fibula in the 2023 Winter Classic, and it was more than six weeks before the Boston Bruins even began cautiously working him back into the lineup.
There will be a physical and mental component to Ovechkin’s recovery; the fibula itself has to heal, and then he has to be confident in going back on the ice, taking contact, cutting on his edges and trusting the work he has put into strengthening his muscles again. At 39 years old, that won’t be easy. — Shilton
What does this mean for his chase of Wayne Gretzky’s record?
Before the injury, Ovechkin was on pace to score what would have been a career-high 68 goals this season. He is 26 goals shy of tying the record, and he would have surpassed Gretzky in either late December or early January if he kept scoring at that pace.
But now? The earliest he could return to the Capitals’ lineup would be Dec. 20 against the Carolina Hurricanes, while the six-week end of the window means he would return Jan. 2 versus the Minnesota Wild, with the NHL’s Christmas break splitting the difference. If he returns by Dec. 20, he will have missed 13 games, whereas the Jan. 2 return date pushes that figure to 18 games — a difference of five games. It would leave him with 51 games remaining if he returns by Dec. 20 or 43 games should he come back after the New Year.
In either event, he has more than half of the regular season left to break the record. But it also comes with the realization that to break the record, he would have to score 0.49 goals per game if he comes back Dec. 20, with that number rising to 0.58 goals per game if he returns Jan. 2. If he doesn’t hit those rates, we are looking at the start of the 2025-26 season to break Gretzky’s record. — Clark
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How will the Capitals be impacted on the ice?
In a word? Immensely. Losing its top goal scorer for more than four weeks is a challenge for any team. But when it’s someone who was on pace to score nearly 70 goals, on a team that leads the NHL with 4.33 goals per game? That just further amplifies what Ovechkin’s absence will mean to the Caps.
It’s possible that Capitals coach Spencer Carbery could turn to a top line that features Connor McMichael at left wing, centered by Pierre-Luc Dubois with Wilson at right wing. That would leave the Caps with Dylan Strome anchoring a second line with Andrew Mangiapane and Aliaksei Protas, which appeared to be their setup before Thursday’s game against the Colorado Avalanche.
Even though Ovechkin leads them in goals, the Caps have received significant contributions from a pair of homegrown talents in McMichael and Protas. McMichael entered Thursday second on the team with 12 goals, while Protas was third with seven.
That said, a player the Capitals would love to see step up is Dubois. He has been productive — he has 12 points in 18 games. It’s just that he has scored only one goal this season — a jarring number considering he has been a four-time 20-goal scorer in his career. — Clark
What about the emotional element?
Every single player in the dressing room has been invested in Ovechkin’s quest to break Gretzky’s record, and they’ve thrived off helping him inch closer to history. Will Ovechkin’s absence leave an intangible void? Especially if seeing him have such a tremendous start to the season — and be on the pace he was to hit Gretzky’s mark — was a boost for this overachieving Washington team? It’s certainly something to consider, and perhaps some of the Capitals already are.
“You know when goal scorers start scoring, it’s dangerous,” said John Carlson, who has been teammates with Ovechkin since 2009. “We see him coming to the rink every day, we know what’s at stake. You never want anyone to get injured, but there’s a lot to it, and certainly he was playing his best hockey in years.”
It will fall on Washington’s leadership group now to ensure there’s no hangover related to Ovechkin’s injury, and to instill belief that not only can the Capitals continue to be a contender without him, but that their overall sense of purpose on the season doesn’t take any sort of hit, either. — Shilton
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Eli Lederman, ESPN Staff Writer
Five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood, the No. 1 prospect in the 2025 ESPN 300 recruiting rankings, has flipped his commitment from LSU to Michigan, he confirmed on social media Thursday.
Underwood announced the news with a video posted to Instagram with the caption “Hometown Hero.”
Underwood, a 6-foot-4, 210-pounder from Belleville, Michigan, is the top pocket passer in the class. With his flip, he becomes the highest-rated offensive commit in Michigan program history and the top prospect in Sherrone Moore’s inaugural recruiting class, which currently sits at No. 14 in ESPN’s team rankings for the 2025 cycle.
YES SIR ! #GoBlue🔵 The Best players in Michigan go to Michigan ! #ProcessoverPrize25
— Sherrone Moore (@Coach_SMoore) November 21, 2024
Underwood’s move comes as the latest piece of seismic quarterback movement atop the 2025 class ahead of the start of the early signing period Dec. 4. Five-star quarterback Julian Lewis decommitted from USC on Nov. 17 and subsequently pledged to Colorado earlier Thursday.
Committed to LSU since Jan. 6, Underwood remained the crown jewel of Brian Kelly’s 2025 class over the past 10 months. Yet Michigan remained in contact with Underwood throughout his senior season at Belleville High School — situated less than 30 minutes from Michigan Stadium.
The Wolverines intensified their pursuit of Underwood over the past two months, with sources telling ESPN that the program stepped up with a competitive NIL package. The Oct. 30 decommitment of four-star quarterback commit Carter Smith (No. 155 in the ESPN 300) from the Wolverines heightened the buzz around a potential flip by Underwood.
Michigan secures a potentially program-defining quarterback and one of the most significant pledges in program history less than 12 months after Moore replaced Jim Harbaugh after the Wolverines claimed the 2023 national championship.
If Underwood signs with the Wolverines on Dec. 4, he will be the first No. 1 recruit to join Michigan since the program inked defensive tackle Rashan Gary in 2016.
Underwood also would join Gary and defensive backs Jabrill Peppers (2014 class) and Dax Hill (2019) as the only five-star prospects to land in Ann Arbor since 2006, per ESPN rankings.
He will mark the Wolverines’ highest-ranked quarterback pledge since Michigan landed Ryan Mallett (No. 12) in the class of 2007.
Whether Underwood is prepared to take over as the starter in 2025, his commitment brings critical stability to the quarterback position in Ann Arbor as Moore closes a turbulent first season.
Michigan has struggled to identify a replacement for national title-winning quarterback J.J. McCarthy in 2024, bouncing between Davis Warren, Alex Orji and Jack Tuttle across a 5-5 start this fall. Warren and Orji hold eligibility beyond this season, as does former 2024 four-star quarterback prospect Jadyn Davis.
Michigan also holds a commitment from four-star quarterback Brady Hart in the 2026 cycle.
A composed passer with speed to test opposing defenses in the open field, Underwood has spent the past four years as one of the nation’s most coveted prospects, ranked ahead of top quarterbacks Lewis, Tavien St. Clair (Ohio State) and Keelon Russell (Alabama) in the 2025 ESPN 300.
Underwood burst onto the national scene in 2021, when he threw for 2,888 yards and 39 touchdowns in his freshman season at Belleville. He led the Tigers to back-to-back state titles in his first two seasons under center, then earned Michigan Gatorade Player of the Year honors as a junior in 2023, when he completed 64.8% of his passes for 3,329 yards and 44 touchdowns while guiding Belleville to a third consecutive state title game appearance.
With only one regular-season loss since September 2021, Underwood and Belleville entered the state playoffs this month as favorites to claim the program’s third state championship in four years.
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