
Untold stories of the Air Raid revolution, from pregame hot dogs to Phil Collins photo ops
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Dave Wilson, ESPN Staff WriterOct 5, 2023, 07:00 AM ET
Close- Dave Wilson is an editor for ESPN.com since 2010. He previously worked at The Dallas Morning News, San Diego Union-Tribune and Las Vegas Sun.
Long before the world knew Mike Leach or Dana Holgorsen or any of the other oddballs, eccentrics and revolutionaries of the Air Raid fraternity, Hal Mumme was a high school coach in Copperas Cove, Texas, with a problem.
It was 1986, the NBA and a young superstar had captured the attention of the school’s best athletes. Even Mumme’s own son came home from school one day and announced he wanted to be Michael Jordan.
This was Texas, and most coaches still romanticized the notion that football had to be torture for it to be worthwhile. There was a machismo to the running game, ramming head-on into each other and surviving battles of attrition, with defenses built around big, physical players meant to win those battles.
“My generation’s football coaches fought World War II,” Mumme said, “and they were pretty damn determined to make us relive it every day in practice.”
So Mumme, who had already gone from being the nation’s youngest coordinator at UTEP at 27, was now 31, looking to reboot his career after the Miners’ whole staff had been fired, and he had a wild idea. What if he made football fun? What if he actually used the entire field?
And so the beginnings of the Air Raid were born, 67 miles away from Austin, where just 10 years before, Texas coach Darrell Royal was running the wishbone and repeating his maxim: “Three things can happen to you whenever you throw the football, and two of ’em are bad.” But Mumme, who idolized Royal, realized that the same thing that made the wishbone work, spreading the ball in space to skilled athletes, might work even better as a passing offense. So he went all-in.
A decade later, Mumme burst onto the national scene at Kentucky, walking around on SEC fields, eating hot dogs, wearing flip-flops and listening to Jimmy Buffet before becoming the only UK coach in the past 100 years to beat Alabama. His creation made 5-9 slot receivers superstars and walk-on quarterbacks Heisman winners. Mumme made it possible for Mike Leach, a lawyer from Pepperdine, to become a college football icon, for Lincoln Riley, a Texas Tech walk-on himself from tiny Muleshoe, Texas, to lead two of the most storied programs in history. He made football interesting for unpedigreed coaches who loved the sport, but who would rather write books about Geronimo than sleep in their offices or run the damn ball.
“The Air Raid is not an offense,” TCU coach Sonny Dykes said. “The Air Raid is a way of life.”
“It’s a mentality,” Riley said, “more than a collection of plays.”
These mavericks changed the course of football history and rewrote record books, paving the way for Patrick Mahomes to win two Super Bowls while forcing Bill Belichick and Nick Saban to give into wide-open passing attacks. How they did it was never boring.
Last year, Dykes, a former Mumme assistant at Kentucky, made a historic run to the national title game after a 5-7 season. This year Deion Sanders, who used to pick Mumme’s brain and called Leach for offensive staff recommendations, is using the same wide-open principles at Colorado during its program jump-start, turning his own son, Shedeur, into a Heisman candidate at QB.
With the sport still mourning Leach, the most famous and revered coach in the extended Air Raid family, following his death in December, we set out to find tales from the rise of the game-changing offense that illustrate the methods behind their collective madness.
The test pilot
For every Tim Couch or Kyler Murray or Caleb Williams, the bluest of blue-chip prospects, there are dozens of record-setting Air Raid quarterbacks who were unwanted by anyone else, then ran up the gaudiest of numbers.
Dustin Dewald blazed the trail in Copperas Cove. He was one of those players who got disillusioned with the drudgery of football in the 1980s, so he quit to join the golf team after watching his older brother get pummeled over and over as their QB.
“We got our heads kicked in trying to run the ball down the throats of bigger, more powerful teams, lining up in the Power I with an offensive line that averaged 195 pounds,” Dewald said. “It was just ridiculous. Hal came in and said, ‘All that’s going to change.’ It did. I think it was the first time in 10 years we didn’t have a losing season in Cove.”
Between 1978 and 1985, Cove went 10-69, including two 0-10 seasons. In Mumme’s first year in 1986, the Bulldogs went 5-5. They were still outmanned, but Mumme, who began by using the run and shoot, gave them a shot in every game. Then against district rival Georgetown, the opposing coach, Art Briles, blitzed Mumme relentlessly, making it difficult for more complex plays to develop.
“I decided I was never going to let that happen to me again,” Mumme said, reducing his offense to a collection of short passes and horizontal crossing routes.
Dewald threw the ball more than all but a handful of schools in Texas that year. There had been only two scholarship players in the previous 10 years at Cove, but he signed with Stephen F. Austin. Then, he went through the same cycle, quitting due to boredom and joining the golf team at Tarleton State. There weren’t any college teams he knew of where he could replicate his experience. Until he went home to Cove to visit.
He stopped by the football offices to congratulate Mumme on his new job he’d just landed at a small college, Iowa Wesleyan. By the time he left, Mumme had once again recruited him to play quarterback for a team that was similar to Sanders’ Colorado experiment: IWU was coming off an 0-10 season and had just two players returning.
“We tried to have a team meeting after I got introduced at the press conference and they told me there were going to be 40 guys,” Mumme said. “I walk in, there’s two, and the three that I brought with me. I just gave ’em the same speech I was going to give ’em anyway about working hard in the offseason, and we’re going to win games. One kid just got up and walked out. I guess he decided, ‘This is bulls—, I’m not doing this.’ So we had four.”
Leach was one of only two applicants for Mumme’s offensive coordinator job, and they quickly realized they were kindred spirits. It was a leap of faith: The high school coach took a $20,000 pay cut to try to prove himself in college again. The lawyer who could’ve made $200,000 a year instead was making $12,000, and the golfer took on student-loan debt to go to school in Iowa — where none of them had ever been.
They went 7-4 the next year, then, by 1991, started tinkering and added the up-tempo element where they never huddled and ran plays at a frenetic pace. Opposing teams had never seen anything like it and had no idea how to stop it. In Dewald’s accidental career, he threw for 12,045 yards, 115 TDs and set 25 NAIA records. He threw for 4,418 yards and 45 TDs in 1991, including one game where he set national records with 86 attempts and 61 completions. Leach sent out press releases to national media, coining the name “Air Raid” in the process and building the mystique.
While it may have appeared the gaudy numbers were because of an intricate playbook, it was actually the opposite. There was no playbook at all. The philosophy was making things as barebones as possible.
Don’t practice plays you won’t call in a game. Don’t call plays in a game you don’t practice. Don’t throw to a covered receiver and don’t pass up an open one.
The plays came from LaVell Edwards at BYU, with Mumme saying he’s watched every offensive snap of Edwards’ career. He picked his favorites — four passing and two rushing — that seemed to always work. His practice drills, the real backbone of the Air Raid, according to the coaches, were all about details of that limited set, and were all based on Bill Walsh’s 49ers practices.
So he made every practice consistent and repetitive and drilled until they were mind-numbingly boring. Do it until you can’t screw it up, and let muscle memory win. And if it works, keep doing it. Mumme said he once called the same play 52 times in a game for Dewald.
Decades after helping launch the revolution, Dewald has watched teammates like Bill Bedenbaugh, an Iowa Wesleyan offensive linemen who’s now considered one of the best O-line coaches in the country at Oklahoma, along with Holgorsen, his old IWU wide receiver who’s become another of the sport’s most idiosyncratic coaches, and he finds it amusing that he still understands almost everything they do.
“For years, I would go visit [Leach or Mumme] every year for at least one home game and spend days with them at practice and on the sidelines of games,” Dewald said. “The last time I visited Mike at Washington State, I looked at the script for the game and it was crazy. I actually knew what to do on 90 percent of it — and it was almost 30 years after I stopped playing. Just to see what they’ve all accomplished has been mind-blowing for me, how much it’s changed the game and how successful they’ve all been has been, really, cool to watch.”
It won’t work, until it did
Chris Hatcher is convinced Mumme isn’t the inventor of the Air Raid. He claims the title.
Hatcher signed at Valdosta State to play for Mike Cavan, a former Georgia assistant who had coached under Vince Dooley and was Herschel Walker’s lead recruiter. They were an I-formation team with a few passing concepts.
Mumme arrived at Valdosta after Cavan left for another job and, armed with talent he’d never had before, he initially made the same mistake he criticized other coaches for: He overcomplicated things.
“I don’t care what anybody says, I’m the guy that invented the Air Raid,” Hatcher said. “I was not smart enough to comprehend all this stuff Hal wanted to do. So we had to dummy it way down for me. And then that’s when the Air Raid took off. That is the truth.”
Hatcher learned to appreciate the beauty of perfecting and running an offense so simple that he had a little extra time on his hands, enough to visit a frat party the night before homecoming and leave with a parting gift.
“You didn’t have to be in the film room all night because it didn’t matter what the defense was doing,” Hatcher said. “We were so good at it that you had time to go out and steal a cannon in the evening. It was a legit Civil War cannon, now, too. Let’s not act like it was a little peashooter.”
Hatcher threw for 11,363 yards and 121 touchdowns and set 29 school records. During his senior year in 1994, he led the Blazers to their first postseason berth, advancing to the quarterfinals, and when it was all said and done set 29 VSU passing and total offense records. He won the 1994 Harlon Hill Award, often called the D-II Heisman, as the Blazers went 40-17-1 in his career.
This captured the attention of Kentucky athletic director C.M. Newton, who wanted to match the basketball program pace. He handpicked Mumme, which raised eyebrows among purists who believed such a gimmick offense wouldn’t work in the big, bad SEC. But Kentucky already had a homegrown star quarterback in Tim Couch, albeit one who was last seen losing 65-0 in his first start to Florida — and defensive coordinator Bob Stoops — and attempted just 84 passes over seven games.
First, Mumme enlisted Hatcher, now a graduate assistant, to convince Couch not to transfer. (They went to Hooters and talked it out.) He stuck around, working with Hatcher, who was in charge of getting Mumme’s play scripts prepared for Couch’s wristband. Mumme would say Play 1 or Play 2, and Couch would call what’s on the wristband. Quarterbacks often would check into different plays freely, but in one game, Couch took it to an extreme.
“We get about three or four first downs and Couch ain’t run a play Mumme’s called yet,” Hatcher said. “We go down and score, and the whole time Mumme is on the headsets using a few choice words to me.”
Mumme accused Hatcher, who often changed the play himself when playing for Mumme, of purposely telling Couch not to run Mumme’s calls.
“I can’t believe you’d do this to me,” Mumme said, according to Hatcher. “Then it finally hit me. Couch was using the wristband from the week before, and didn’t change it out. Every play was wrong, and we went down and scored anyway. My point is, when you rep the plays so much, we feel like it doesn’t matter. I can pick me a handful of plays that should work against just about anything you’ll see. I like to say we’re a well-coached backyard football team.”
Couch’s mastery paid off in 1997 when he threw a 26-yard touchdown pass to Craig Yeast in overtime to lead Kentucky to a win over Alabama 40-34. It was Kentucky’s first win over Alabama in 75 years — something the Wildcats haven’t done since. It came just a year after Couch threw for 13 yards (UK had 67 total yards) in an entire game against Stoops’ Florida defense under Steve Spurrier. Couch threw for 348 and 406 yards in the next two meetings. While the Gators ended up pulling away and winning both games handily, it was frustrating for Stoops, and their mentality impressed him.
“I liked how [Leach] and Hal Mumme were over there standing together,” Stoops said. “I took note of the casual nature of the two of them. But they were the most difficult to deal with.”
A little extra mustard
Nothing Mumme did was by accident. He doesn’t dispute any contentions that he and Leach were arrogant.
“There’s no question,” Mumme said. “We always thought we were smarter than everybody else. We always thought we had better ideas than everybody else. And we pretty much did. That’s why everybody’s trying to do it now.”
Mumme could be combative with reporters, and Leach could be aloof. And they weren’t worried about too many other opinions.
“We played Jimmy Buffett during warmups,” said West Virginia coach Neal Brown, who played wide receiver at Kentucky under Mumme. “I don’t know if that gets it going for you.”
“It got me and Mike going,” Mumme said, laughing. “We weren’t worried about anybody else.”
They loved causing a stir or annoying other fans, like when Leach mocked Texas A&M’s Corps of Cadets as head coach at rival Texas Tech.
“How come they get to pretend they are soldiers?” Leach said. “The thing is, they aren’t actually in the military. I ought to have Mike’s Pirate School. The freshmen, all they get is the bandanna. When you’re a senior, you get the sword and skull and crossbones. For homework, we’ll work pirate maneuvers and stuff like that.”
The Aggies were not amused.
Then again, Leach and Mumme were, which was the point. Jeff Allen can testify.
Before Allen became the only staff member that’s been with Nick Saban for his entire Alabama tenure, a trusted confidante and sports medicine guru, he was an assistant trainer at Kentucky — but most importantly, he was Mumme’s hot dog guy.
UK was about to play at LSU in Death Valley, then coached by embattled coach Gerry DiNardo. Mumme marched into the training room on Wednesday with a request that befuddled Allen.
“Hey, during pregame, when I’m talking to DiNardo, I want you to bring me a hot dog,” Mumme said.
Allen didn’t understand. He’d been with him for more than five years at this point, and this was a new one.
“Finally, over the next day or two, I said, ‘Why do you want a hot dog while you’re on the field talking to their head coach?” Allen said, “He said, ‘Because they’re going to be so uptight to begin with. I want to show ’em how carefree and how relaxed I am, and it’s going to make them even more nervous.'”
Mumme was very specific that he wanted mustard on it. He sent a student for the hot dog and was on the field during pregame when he saw Mumme, who he hadn’t talked to yet on the day of the game. He thought, “well here goes nothing,” and headed over.
“I looked at him and said, ‘Coach, here’s your hot dog,’ Allen said. “He looked at me and goes, ‘Oh, thanks Jeff.’ Then he said, ‘Hey, hold on, hold on. Does it have mustard on it?'” Allen assured him it did, all the while playing it straight.
“I can still see DiNardo’s face,” Allen said. “He was like, ‘What in the world is happening here?’ And I swear to you, Hal just stood there talking and eating that hot dog. I walked off and I turned around and I wanted to see it again. And there they are talking and Hal is just chomping on a hotdog right there on the 50-yard line of Tiger Stadium. And our players were seeing it. They were laughing. They were dying during warmups watching it.”
The Wildcats were 0-24 on the road against ranked teams since 1977. They were 9½-point underdogs. They played fast and loose and kicked a walk-off field goal to win at the buzzer 39-36, sealing one of the biggest wins in school history. It led Kentucky to a bid in the Outback Bowl, the first New Year’s Day bowl for the Wildcats since 1952.
“I’m not saying we won that game because of the hot dog,” Allen said. “But I don’t think it hurt.”
The Air Raid goes mainstream
On Dec. 1, 1998, Oklahoma hired Stoops. The Sooners hadn’t had a winning season in six years and were coming off a 12-22 stretch in three years under John Blake. Stoops, then 38, was a hot commodity as a defensive coordinator. Hiring someone to run his offense was his first big decision.
“My initial talks were with Turner Gill, who was at Nebraska at the time,” Stoops said. “That didn’t really work out. And then I got to thinking. … I didn’t know [Leach], but the more I thought about it, the more I referred back to how challenging it was to handle Kentucky. If they can be that good at Kentucky, why couldn’t we be as good or better at Oklahoma? So I went with it.”
It was a bold move. Leach had never been a playcaller, and let’s face it, he was pretty weird.
“I thought Mike was really interesting,” Stoops said. “Mike had a little different way of doing things. But let me tell you something: He was a hell of a leader. He was demanding, as aloof as he might be. He wanted things done a certain way and they damn sure better be done that way or you were going to hear it. He might look laid back, he was demanding, very demanding.”
That was a learning curve for the rest of the staff, who couldn’t figure out if this was all an act, or if Leach was for real.
“It was completely different from anything that any of us had seen in the offensive meeting room,” former Oklahoma assistant and Kansas head coach Mark Mangino said. “It did take time to get used to.”
So did Leach’s personality. The staff was all staying at a hotel in Norman, and somehow Mangino’s room became the center of the action.
“I couldn’t get him out of my room when I was living in the Residence Inn,” Mangino said. “Every night, somebody delivered a couple cases of beer, a box of cigars, and we sat around and called recruits till about 11:30.”
By midnight, everyone was gone. Except Leach.
“Mike used to like to watch those simulcasts of Howard Stern. And those things would run till 4 in the morning. I’m in my bed trying to sleep. And here’s Leach at 3 in the morning, he’s laughing at Howard Stern, he’s drinking a beer and he’s having a good time.”
Stoops, too, had a learning curve.
“I learned after the first few weeks late at night not to stop in and check in on Mike,” Stoops said. “One night, it’s 11 or something, I’m ready to go home, and he starts telling me a story about Geronimo. After about 20 minutes, I said, ‘Mike, I’m going home. I’m the head coach, I get to go when I want.'”
Mangino, meanwhile, couldn’t shake him at night, and he couldn’t get through to him by day. In a staff meeting, Mangino suggested a running play. Leach couldn’t have been less interested. Mangino suggested trying it at practice, and Leach blew him off again. Mangino said maybe he’ll practice it anyway.
“Mike said, you could put it in all you want, you could run it during every play of inside drill, but I’m never going to call it in a game,” and Mangino and Leach nearly came to blows, Stoops said, laughing.
An irritated Stoops called them into his office and made them hash it out. Stoops made it clear that he had given Leach full control, and they’d do it his way. Leach and Mangino became good friends.
The Big 12 was never the same. The new-look Sooners went 7-5 and made their first bowl game in five years. Texas Tech hired Leach, and Mangino took over, finally getting to put in a couple of wrinkles of his own.
Mangino had a season’s worth of reps in place, and he said he ran about 80% of Leach’s offense. “And it worked,” he said. The Sooners won a national championship, going 13-0 behind Josh Heupel, a lightly recruited junior college quarterback Leach found at Snow College.
From the @kfor archives, Mike Leach at his last OU practice with Josh Heupel on Dec. 8, 1999. You can see the emotions as he talks with Heupel. Leach was introduced as the Texas Tech head coach the next day. pic.twitter.com/xm65rAhAes
— KFORsports (@KFORsports) December 14, 2022
“They were the ones that invented it … but we [Oklahoma, Leach, Texas Tech and the Big 12] were the ones to make it popular,” Stoops said. “They weren’t getting the national attention at Kentucky until we started it. And then, of course, we kept it and won the national championship.”
Liftoff in Lubbock
Leach became a star at Texas Tech. He took down No. 1 Texas, guided the Red Raiders to a bowl game in all 10 of his seasons and finished as the program’s all-time winningest coach at 84-43.
Dykes was part of Leach’s first staff that replaced his dad, Spike Dykes, who had retired.
“We were doing all this stuff that was really analytics, but they didn’t know it was,” Dykes said. “We were going for it all the time on fourth down or going for it in our own territory. My dad would be like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘It gives us a chance to beat Texas. Instead of losing by 14, we might lose by 50. But we also might win?'”
It became one of the most influential eras in college football. In Mumme’s days in Kentucky, Urban Meyer and Sean Payton were among the earliest coaches to visit to try to learn what the Air Raid is all about. In Lubbock, Leach made sure his doors were wide open, and there were visitors everywhere.
Leach made sure his coaches knew that he wanted them to teach visitors anything they wanted to know.
There was only one issue: “They didn’t believe us,” said Lincoln Riley, who was a student assistant for Leach, because the entire offense was so simple.
“I’ve never been to a place where you had more coaches around constantly,” Riley said. “Mike was so open to people coming in. You think just Texas high school coaches? No. I’m talking professional coaches, college coaches from all around the country, high school coaches from all around the country, every single year. There’s a group from Japan that came, groups from England that came over, I mean, you name it, we had ’em.”
Dykes and Holgorsen, who were receivers coaches and later co-offensive coordinators, would handle a lot of high school coaches on their visits. Dykes said he can remember walking out to the parking lot one day and overhearing the coaches leaving convinced the offense couldn’t be that simple, that Leach & Co. were holding things back.
“‘Those sumb—— wouldn’t tell us anything,'” Dykes recalled them saying. “And we told them everything.”
Muleshoe High’s David Wood coached Riley and his brother Garrett Riley, now the offensive coordinator at Clemson, and watched as they passed over small-school offers to head to Lubbock to learn from Leach. Over time, he said, you could see the Tech influence take hold and spread throughout high school football, with Muleshoe being one of the early adopters, because Lincoln returned to help him install it while he was still a walk-on quarterback at Tech.
“We were a run offense, but once we realized how simple it was, we didn’t think it was going to be that hard to switch,” Wood said. “We used to run maybe 30 plays in practice because you analyze every play and tell every player what they did wrong and then you’d run the play again and make sure everyone did it right. The way Leach did it, when we watched it, you got to coach on the run. So we were able to get like 120 plays a practice instead of 30 plays a practice.”
Wood said when Riley set out for Lubbock in 2002, there were maybe two schools in the Texas Panhandle that were running a spread offense.
“I would say probably 70 percent of the teams we played when I retired [in 2017] were running it,” he said. “Maybe 80.”
The Big 12 became known for its shootouts, and Leach’s earliest quarterback rooms were filled with future stars and coaches, all of whom waited their turn, many of them just to start for one season. Kliff Kingsbury, who had originally signed with Spike Dykes, threw for more than 5,000 yards as a senior in 2002 and set seven NCAA records in his three years as a starter at Tech. His backup, B.J. Symons, set the NCAA passing record with 5,833 yards in 2003, and Symons’ backups, Sonny Cumbie and Cody Hodges, each passed for more than 4,000 yards in a season as starters.
They did it all because Leach repeated the same things he and Mumme had always preached, particularly in the film room.
“The worst coaching point he would ever give us, and the one that we all hated, was: ‘This guy was open. This guy was open. This guy was open. This guy wasn’t open. And he’s the one guy you threw it to!” said Cumbie, now the head coach at Louisiana Tech, imitating Leach’s monotone cadence. “I don’t care if it’s two-high [safety coverage], one-high. Is it man? Is it zone? Is this guy open? Yes. Throw it to him.”
Something’s in the air tonight
Mumme’s Kentucky era ended in an NCAA investigation, with Mumme resigning in 2001 amid findings that an assistant coach was sending money orders to players in Memphis. Mumme was cited for a “failure to monitor,” but was not punished by the NCAA.
Since then, he’ll sign up to coach anything, anytime, anywhere, including stops at New Mexico State, reviving football after 20 years at Southeastern Louisiana or stops at Division III schools Belhaven in Mississippi and McMurry in Texas.
“I’m the Johnny Appleseed of football,” Mumme said. “I always thought that was a great story. It’s not that I set out to do that — I never set out to get kicked out of Kentucky — but when you look back on it, providence had a plan. We spread it a whole lot of places it wouldn’t have been otherwise.”
And despite his offense being almost the norm now, rather than catching teams by surprise, it still works as it was intended: As a sort of money ball, beating teams that you have no business beating.
At McMurry, he took over a program that had three winless seasons in the previous decade, including an 0-10 mark the year before he arrived. Three years later, they were 9-3 and 7-1 in the conference.
Out of the spotlight, Mumme still made history. And he did it in the most Mumme way possible.
McMurry opened the 2011 season with an 82-6 loss to Stephen F. Austin, who was ranked in the FCS at the time. After getting down early, Mumme would just keep going for it on fourth down over and over. He was down 35-0 at halftime, and it only got worse from there. But he wouldn’t stop.
“Losing by 50 was the same as losing by 1,” Dykes said. “Hal never cared.”
The next week, Mumme gave the team four days off. He showed them five plays from the first half where it easily could’ve been 35-28 instead of 35-0. They were set to face UTSA the next week, a D-I team coached by Larry Coker, who’d won a national championship at Miami. Mumme’s quarterback, Jake Mullin, like Dewald, wasn’t on the team when he arrived. He played baseball, but was a quarterback on the intramural team when Mumme found him.
“They said they created this offense for teams without much talent, which was great for us,” Mullin said, who, like Dewald, ended up throwing for more than 12,000 yards in his career. “Whenever [Mumme] got there, there was not much there. I mean, I remember I was bigger than my left guard.”
Mumme took the team to the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, his favorite place, where Teddy Roosevelt recruited Texans at the bar to serve in his Rough Riders. He took the team on a tour of the Alamo the night before the game. The next day, McMurry upset UTSA 24-21 in front of 31,000 fans in the Alamodome, one of the only upsets of a D-I team by a D-III team in history, and Mullin threw for 372 yards.
“The Menger’s filled with ghosts, we did have a ghost sighting in there,” Mumme said. “Between the Menger ghosts and the Alamo ghosts, they probably helped us out.”
Mumme’s fascination with history earned him an invitation from then-McMurry professor Don Frazier to a party for his new book, “The Alamo and Beyond.” Also invited? One of the world’s largest collectors of Alamo memorabilia in the world: Phil Collins. Yes, that Phil Collins.
Frazier didn’t want Collins to be constantly accosted at the event, so he invited Mumme because he said half the table of Texans would rather talk to Mumme about the Air Raid and Leach than to a British rock star. Even about the Alamo.
Mumme got his copy autographed by Collins. The inscription reads:
“To coach… Something’s in the air tonight. Cheers. Phil Collins.”
The next chapter
Mumme, 71, keeps spreading the gospel. He is part of the operations group of a new spring league called the International Football Alliance with teams in Mexico and Texas, and will coach one of the teams. His son, Matt, who never became Michael Jordan, instead stuck with the family business and is now the assistant head coach at Colorado State.
Mumme has seen his little creation change the sport, including watching some of the most storied running teams of his lifetime at USC and Oklahoma be completely transformed. Now, it’s finally broken through to the final frontier: the Big Ten, where Wisconsin, under Leach acolyte Phil Longo, is following the same formula as Oklahoma: Join forces with a defensive head coach (Luke Fickell) and flip the offense. Harrell, the former Leach quarterback, is the new offensive coordinator at Purdue as well.
“A couple of days before Mike passed, we talked and he was just ultra excited that we’re bringing the Air Raid to the Big Ten,” Longo said. “It’s the most excited I’ve ever heard him. So it meant something to me that he was happy that we were making moves, and he’s the only one who didn’t seem shocked by it.”
Mason Miller, Leach’s offensive line coach at Mississippi State who is now the offensive coordinator at Tarleton State, has worked for either Mumme or Leach basically since 1994 when he played running back at Valdosta State. He said the Air Raid family has become so big that it has its share of “little sibling rivalries,” but that when they all get together, “we’re like magnets to each other.”
Leach’s loss has been profound on the family. But out of that loss, there’s a new beginning.
Leach’s son Cody spent two years as a volunteer coach at BYU under Kalani Sitake, and spent his dad’s final year as a graduate assistant at Mississippi State. Now, he’s an assistant special teams coach for the Bulldogs, who has completed his Air Raid certification — a service Mumme offers to keep spreading the word to coaches anywhere — and is studying his dad’s old game tapes stored in Gatorade coolers in his garage.
“I wish I could have gotten more time with him,” Cody, 27, said. “But Dad being so famous, being on TV, the occasional ‘Friday Night Lights’ cameo and other random stuff in media, I can always find him. Not everyone has that kind of opportunity where your parent is so well-documented that you can just find them and pull them up anytime.”
There’s another Mumme-Leach pairing in the works, with Cody hoping to follow his father’s path.
“He knew so many other amazing coaches and all the guys he knows, I’ve known for a long time too,” Cody said. “So I have plenty of people to be able to talk to. His was the first generation, and it’s kind of taking off into other branches. For me, it’s a legacy.”
Stoops says he can’t help but look around and see how profound their impact was.
“It goes back to Mike,” he said. “And Hal’s not talked enough about. He and Mike were joined at the hip. Between the two of them, I don’t know that anyone’s had a stronger influence on coaches. It goes on and on. The influence is huge. These tentacles from them go all over the place. They branch out from the two of them everywhere.”
Jake Trotter and Chris Low contributed to this story.
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Sports
Midseason grades for all 30 MLB teams: ‘A’ is for Astros, ‘F’ is for …?
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2 hours agoon
July 10, 2025By
admin
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David SchoenfieldJul 9, 2025, 07:00 AM ET
Close- 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.
Sports
Ramirez, Brown out of ASG; McKinstry among subs
Published
2 hours agoon
July 10, 2025By
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ESPN News Services
Jul 9, 2025, 05:52 PM ET
The Detroit Tigers have the best record in the majors. Now they are tied for having the most All-Stars, too.
Zach McKinstry was picked Wednesday to replace Houston Astros shortstop Jeremy Pena, who has been dealing with a rib injury. The infielder-outfielder will join Detroit second baseman Gleyber Torres and outfielders Javier Baez and Riley Greene — all AL starters — and staff ace Tarik Skubal, who also is among the candidates to start the All-Star Game on Tuesday night in Atlanta.
The five All-Stars for Detroit is tied for the most with the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, who have DH Shohei Ohtani, catcher Will Smith and first baseman Freddie Freeman starting for the NL along with pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Clayton Kershaw.
Yamamoto is scheduled to start Sunday for Los Angeles, so Cincinnati Reds left-hander Andrew Abbott has been picked to replace him.
Meanwhile, Astros third baseman Isaac Paredes was chosen for the AL team in place of starting third baseman Jose Ramírez, the seven-time All-Star who wants to spend the week rehabbing an Achilles injury; Twins right-hander Joe Ryan was selected as the replacement for Astros pitcher Hunter Brown; and Brewers closer Trevor Megill was added to the NL team in place of teammate Freddy Peralta, their scheduled starter for Sunday’s game.
The shuffling of replacements gives the Astros four All-Stars in Paredes, Peña, Brown and pitcher Josh Hader. The Brewers have two in Megill and Peralta. And the Twins have two with Ryan joining two-time All-Star outfielder Byron Buxton.
“This was the goal in the offseason,” said Megill, who struck out Freeman, Andy Pages and Tommy Edman in order in the 10th inning to secure the Brewers’ 3-2 win over the Dodgers on Wednesday. “Just worked my butt off for it, and here we are.”
Ramírez was hit by a pitch in a game against Toronto on June 26 and has struggled at the plate since. The seven-time All-Star was still hitting .299 with 16 homers, 44 RBIs and 24 stolen bases through 87 games for the Guardians.
“Everybody wants to go to the All-Star Game and especially for the support from the fans,” Ramírez said. “But I feel the best thing for the team is to be able to be resting (those) days and be able to contribute to the team in the second half.”
McKinstry, Paredes, Megill and Ryan make six total replacements and 71 players between the two All-Star teams. The other substitution was Rays third baseman Junior Caminero for Boston‘s Alex Bregman, who has been dealing with a strained right quadriceps.
The Tigers have been one of the surprise stories of the first half of the season. After going 86-76 and tying for second in the AL Central last season, they were 59-34 through Tuesday — the best record in the majors.
Along with playing every infield position besides catcher, and both corner outfield spots, McKinstry entered Wednesday hitting .283 with seven homers and 27 RBIs. The 30-year-old needs just three more homers and nine RBIs to set career highs.
Peña, who is hitting a career-best .322 with 11 homers and 40 RBIs in 82 games for the Astros, has been out since June 28 with a fractured rib. He had hoped to return by the All-Star break, but he has not been cleared to resume baseball activity.
Paredes, his teammate, is headed to his second straight All-Star Game in his first season in Houston. He’s hitting a career-best .255 with 19 homers and 49 RBIs for the Astros, who lead the AL West.
“My main focus is to work hard for the team and be able to give the most I can for the team,” Paredes said, “but as you can see now with the results that I’m getting … those results allow me to get to the All-Star Game, so it feels good.”
Megill earned his first career All-Star selection by going 2-2 with a 2.41 ERA, 21 saves and 43 strikeouts in 33⅔ innings.
The 29-year-old Ryan, whose name has surfaced in plenty of trade talk recently, was one of the biggest snubs when the initial All-Star Game rosters were announced. The right-hander is 8-4 with a career-best 2.76 ERA across 18 starts, and he’s struck out 116 against just 21 walks over 104 1/3 innings for the Twins.
“The last couple years, I’ve had really good numbers at voting, then I’ve kind of scuttled the last two outings or so. I can see why optically it might not look as good,” Ryan said. “But putting it together, it was kind of a shock not to be in (this year).
“At the same time, there’s so many good pitchers in the league right now. You’ve just got to hang with them and if you don’t like it, play better. That was kind of the mindset I was trying to shift into, but to get the news and be excited to go, it makes everything kind of go away and you just think about the future and going forward.”
The Associated Press and FIeld Level Media contributed to this report.
Sports
Yankees DFA LeMahieu after ‘hard conversations’
Published
2 hours agoon
July 10, 2025By
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Jorge CastilloJul 9, 2025, 04:54 PM ET
Close- ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
NEW YORK — The Yankees 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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