Passan: How Jordan Montgomery finally solved Yordan Alvarez
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
HOUSTON — Over the winter, Jordan Montgomery spent his days at Tread Athletics, a performance lab about 10 miles outside of Charlotte, fine-tuning his pitching craft. While the coaches at Tread appreciated almost everything about Montgomery, from his size to his competitiveness to his willingness to learn, what they loved most of all was his curveball. They loved it so much that it earned a nickname:
The Death Ball.
To the naked eye, it looks like a perfectly OK curveball, and based on spin rate and break alone, it’s nothing special. And it confounds hitters anyway.
Yordan Álvarez learned its power first-hand Sunday night in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series. The Houston Astros slugger, one of the best hitters in the world, coming off a division series in which he hit four home runs in four games, faced Montgomery three times. All three ended with Álvarez swinging through the Death Ball. Never had one pitcher struck out Álvarez three times in a single game.
Montgomery isn’t just any pitcher. Acquired by the Texas Rangers at the trade deadline for exactly a night like tonight, the 30-year-old authored one of the best — and certainly the most important — starts of his career in Game 1. He threw 6⅓ scoreless innings and neutralized Álvarez in the Rangers’ 2-0 victory that pilfered home-field advantage from Houston and silenced the once-raucous crowd of 42,872 at Minute Maid Park.
In the three at-bats Montgomery squared off with Álvarez, he threw 17 pitches — eight sinkers, six Death Balls, two four-seam fastballs and even a changeup, a rarity for a left-handed pitcher against a left-handed hitter. He worked inside and outside, up and down, completely avoiding the middle of the strike zone. If a pitcher is going to beat Álvarez, he needs to empty his bag of tricks.
It’s a good thing Montgomery’s curveball is magic.
“When it comes out of his hand, it looks like a fastball,” Álvarez said. “That makes it a little more difficult. The way he releases the ball, the angle he releases it, makes it a little bit more difficult to pick it up and makes it look like a fastball.”
This is why, even with the analytics that inform so much of baseball today, context matters. At Tread, Montgomery worked not only on the shape of his pitches but how his delivery presents them. Álvarez suggesting Montgomery’s curveball looks like a fastball might sound outlandish — the average velo on Montgomery’s fastball Sunday night was 93.3 mph; on the curveball, 79.8 — but he’s not wrong. It’s how Montgomery and his coaches designed it.
They recognized that Montgomery had two things working in his favor on the pitch: his height and his release point. It didn’t spin particularly hard, and it didn’t have the looping action a more aesthetically pleasing curve might. It came out flat and broke late — and when paired with this sinker and four-seam fastball, it turned into the reaper.
Montgomery’s release point on the Death Ball is 80.2 inches from the ground, the second-highest vertical release on a curve in baseball (behind his opponent in Game 1, Justin Verlander). Montgomery releases his four-seamer 80.4 inches vertically and his sinker 80.9 inches — and the horizontal release point on all three are within a half-inch of one another. The tunneling effect charms hitters into believing they’re seeing one thing when it’s something else, and it’s what left Álvarez flailing, with five whiffs among the 17 pitches he saw.
When he was around 12 and growing up in South Carolina, Montgomery learned to throw a curve when his father, Jim, helped him wrap duct tape around Coke cans to give them extra weight. Montgomery would try to spin them into a nearby garbage can. Eventually he got the feel for the pitch, rode it to the University of South Carolina and used it to get to the major leagues with the New York Yankees. They traded him to the St. Louis Cardinals last season, and the Cardinals received a bounty from the Rangers in the late-July deal that landed him in Texas.
Upon his arrival, Montgomery didn’t think he’d be the team’s postseason ace, not with the subsequent acquisition of Max Scherzer, plus Nathan Eovaldi pitching like a frontline starter. But Eovaldi got hurt. And Scherzer did, too. And Montgomery found himself not only starting Game 1 of Texas’ wild-card series against Tampa Bay but doing the same against the Astros, whose seventh consecutive ALCS appearance extended the league record.
Álvarez helped carry the Astros here. The 26-year-old is a dream hitter: powerful but precise. He destroys right-handed pitchers — and crushes lefties, too. His holes are more pin pricks than swiss cheese. Carving him up takes the exactitude of a surgeon.
Dr. Montgomery started in the first with a clear plan: Work Álvarez inside. He started with a low-and-inside sinker that Álvarez fouled off, moved up and in with a sinker Álvarez took for a ball and then pounded three more pitches inside: a curveball Álvarez took for a strike, a sinker he fouled off and a curveball he swung through.
“We know he likes to get extended, and we were going to make him beat us inside, make him a little uncomfortable,” said Rangers catcher Jonah Heim, an All-Star who is widely lauded for his game-calling and framing abilities. “And when he’s kind of squirmy, we try to get him, and the curveball plays. [Montgomery] did an amazing job of execution.”
The second at-bat might’ve been even more impressive. In all the years Montgomery spent in the AL East, he learned that the best hitters, like Rafael Devers, will eventually sell out on an inside pitch if you keep pounding there. So after missing low and in with a sinker, Montgomery feathered a middle-away four-seamer through which Álvarez swung. He came back high and in with a sinker Álvarez fouled off, tried to change his eye level with an even higher four-seamer and went inside again twice — a changeup for a ball, a sinker fouled — before another Death Ball.
“I wanted to make him swing,” Montgomery said. “I was going to make him beat me with my best pitch there. And usually when you don’t miss middle, it’s a good day.”
That’s the thing about Montgomery. He’s not a nibbler. He’s not someone who picks at the corners. He goes right at hitters. And he isn’t afraid to go deep into his repertoire. Earlier this week, Rangers outfielder Robbie Grossman was telling Montgomery that he needed to use a slide step to the plate rather than his full delivery when nobody was on base. Well, in his third at-bat against Álvarez, down in the count 2-0, Montgomery conjured one more trick and froze Álvarez on perhaps the most hittable pitch he’d see all day, a sinker low and across the middle of the plate.
“It’s not only the curveball,” Astros third baseman Alex Bregman said. “He’s got a bunch of other weapons as well, and he executes really well. So I think it’s just execution really. It’s a good pitch.”
Montgomery knows that, and so after getting that first strike against Álvarez, he wasn’t throwing anything else. On 2-1, Montgomery threw a curve toward the bottom of the strike zone; Álvarez swung over it. The next pitch was a bouncer, nowhere close to the plate, and it left Álvarez flailing, looking less like one of the best hitters in the world than a guy who was utterly perplexed by what he was seeing.
Three at-bats. Three strikeouts swinging to end the inning. And one gift of a performance, to both the Rangers and his family.
On Saturday, Montgomery’s wife, McKenzie, celebrated her birthday. And on Sunday, it was his father’s, and Jim had been asking for a playoff win as the perfect present. An ALCS win against a future Hall of Famer sufficed.
Montgomery isn’t done. He’ll likely start another game this series, when he’ll line up against Verlander again. He’ll go through the meticulous pregame routine of plyoball drills that his coach, Tyler Zombro, taught him at Tread — the ones that help him find consistency in his delivery and conviction in his movement. He’ll get together with Heim and his pitching coach, Mike Maddux, with whom he vibed almost immediately after arriving, and he’ll game plan.
And then he’ll try to keep doing exactly what he has done all postseason and what he hopes to do all the way through the World Series: spin ’em to death.
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Bradford Doolittle
CHICAGO — At 27, Luis Robert Jr. is already a relic of sorts, the last remaining player from the White Sox’s all-too-brief era of contention.
On the south side of Chicago, that era seems like a very long time ago. That’s how a pair of 100-loss seasons, including last year’s record-setting 121-loss campaign, can warp a baseball fan’s perception of time. In fact, it was only 3½ years ago when, on Oct. 12, 2021, Chicago was eliminated by the Houston Astros from the American League Division Series.
Seventeen players appeared in that game for the White Sox. Robert had a hit that day but had to leave early with leg tightness — one of a string of maladies that have bedeviled his career. He is the only one of those 17 still in Chicago.
The irony: If Robert was playing up to his potential, he wouldn’t be around, either. And if he regains his mojo, he’s as good as gone.
Robert has the chance to be the most sought-after position player in 2025’s in-season trade market. Pull up any speculative list of trade candidates and Robert is near the top. Executives around the league ask about him eagerly. Despite a lack of positive recent results — including a disastrous 2024 and a rough start to this season — it’s not hard to understand why.
“A player like Luis Robert always gets a lot of attention,” White Sox GM Chris Getz said when the season began. “We’re really happy where he’s at, and how he approached spring training and how he’s performing. We expect him to perform at a very high level.”
Robert’s tools are impossible to miss. His bat speed (93rd percentile in 2025, per Statcast) is elite. His career slugging percentage when putting the ball in play is .661, slotting him in the 89th percentile among all hitters. It’s the same figure as New York Mets superstar Juan Soto. Robert’s sprint speed (29.0 feet per second) is in the 94th percentile. When healthy, he’s a perennial contender to add a second Gold Glove to the one he won as a rookie.
Still, the allure of Robert is as much about his contract as it is about his baseline talent. Smack in his prime and less than two years removed from a 5.3 bWAR season, Robert will earn just $15 million in 2025 and then has two team-friendly club options, both at $20 million with a $2 million buyout.
No potentially available hitter has this combination: a recent record of elite production, a right-now prime age, top-of-the-charts underlying talent and a club-friendly contract with multiyear potential but plenty of off-ramps. That such a player toils for a team projected to finish in the basement has for a while now made this a matter of if, not when, he is moved.
“I didn’t think I’d be here,” Robert said through an interpreter. “But I’m glad that I’m here. This is the organization that made my dream come true. It’s the only organization that I know.”
The White Sox could certainly have dealt Robert by now, based on that contract/talent combination alone. But the luxury of the contract from Chicago’s standpoint is that it buys the team time to seek maximum return. First, Robert has to show he’s healthy — so far, so good in 2025 — then he needs to demonstrate the kind of production that would make an impact for a team in win-now mode.
“He’s just extremely talented,” first-year White Sox manager Will Venable said. “The one thing that I learned about him, and watching him practice every day, is he practices extremely hard. He’s extremely focused. He certainly has the physical ability, but he’s the type of player he is because he works really hard.”
Certainly, the skills are elite, but the production has been inconsistent and, for now, headed in the wrong direction.
When Robert broke in with Chicago a few years ago, he was a consensus top-five prospect. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel ranked Robert fifth before the 2020 season, but in his analysis of the ranking, McDaniel noted one of the key reasons Robert is still on the White Sox five years later: “The concern is that Robert’s pitch selection is weak enough — described as a 35 on the 20-80 scale — that it could undermine his offensive tools.”
Since the beginning of last season, there have been 202 hitters with at least 450 plate appearances. According to the FanGraphs metric wRC+, only 15 have fared worse than Roberts’ 80. Only 10 have posted a worse ratio of walks to strikeouts (0.22). Only nine have a lower on-base percentage (.275).
Despite starting the season healthy, his superficial numbers during the early going are even worse than last year. As the team around him plunged to historic depths, Robert slashed to career lows across the board (.224/.278/.379 over 100 games). This year, that line is a disturbing .163/.250/.245.
There is real evidence that Robert is trying to reform. The most obvious evidence is a walk rate (10.3%) nearly double his career average. The sample is small, but there are under-the-hood indicators that suggest it could be meaningful. For example, Robert’s early chase rate (34.2%, per Statcast) is a career low and closer to the MLB standard (28.5).
For aggressive swingers well into their careers, trying to master plate discipline is a tall task. Few established players of that ilk have had a longer road to travel than Robert. During the wild-card era, there have been 1,135 players who have compiled at least 1,500 plate appearances. Only 17 have a lower walk-to-strikeout ratio than Robert’s career figure (0.21).
On that list are 133 hitters with a career mark of 0.3 W/SO or lower, who together account for 645 different seasons of at least 300 plate appearances. Only 26 times did one of those seasons result in at least a league-average ratio, or about 4%. Only one of those hitters had two such seasons, another 24 did it once and 108 never did it.
Still, 4% isn’t zero. To that end, Robert spent time during the winter working out with baseball’s current leader in W/SO — Soto.
“It’s no secret that one of the reasons why he’s one of the best players in the game is that he’s quite disciplined,” Robert said. “And that’s one of the things I want to improve.”
That’s easier said than done, and for his part, Soto said the workouts were mostly just that — workouts, though they were conducted with Robert’s hitting coach on hand. As with everyone else, it’s the sheer talent that exudes from Robert that caught Soto’s eye.
“Tremendous baseball player and tremendous athlete,” Soto told ESPN’s Jorge Castillo in Spanish. “He showed me a lot of his abilities that I didn’t know he had. That guy has tremendous strength, tremendous power. And he really surprised me a lot in everything we did.”
In this year’s Cactus League, Robert produced a .300/.386/.500 slash line, with four homers.
“If I’m able to carry on the work that I did during spring training, I’m going to have a good season,” Robert said. “Especially in that aspect of my vision of the whole plate. I know I can do it.”
Getz — who will have to determine if and when to pull the trigger on a Robert deal — lauded Robert’s efforts during the spring.
“Luis Robert is in an excellent spot,” Getz said. “The amount of three-ball counts that he had in spring training was by far the most he has had as a professional player. So that just speaks to his determination and focus to put together quality at-bats.”
It’s a bittersweet situation. The remaining vestige of the last good White Sox team remains the club’s most talented player. He’s in his age-27 season, often the apex of a hitter’s career. Yet if he reaches that apex, it’s only going to smooth his way out of town.
For the White Sox, all they can do is make sure Robert can stay focused on the field, while tuning out the trade chatter that isn’t going away.
“We’re going to support Luis,” Getz said. “I know that oftentimes he gets asked questions whether he’s going to be traded, but I’ve been really impressed with how he’s been able to remain focused on his craft. He’s very motivated to show the baseball world what he’s capable of doing.”
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Ryan McFadden
Las Vegas Raiders standout pass rusher Maxx Crosby has been named the assistant general manager for the Eastern Michigan football program, the university announced Monday.
Crosby is the first active NFL player to hold the position. He will help Eastern Michigan evaluate high school and portal prospects, manage its NIL budget and also serve as special assistant to the fundraising, alumni relations and student-athlete support.
“There is no place more important to my personal and athletic development than Eastern Michigan University,” Crosby said in a statement released by the school. “It truly is an honor for me to not only be named the Assistant GM of the EMU, but together with my wife Rachel, make another donation aimed at creating opportunities for other athletes to be impacted by the EMU program, community, students and alumni.”
Crosby is one of the best defensive players to ever come out of Eastern Michigan. In three seasons, he set the program record with 20 career sacks, and his 41 tackles for loss are the third most in school history.
Crosby, a fourth-round pick in 2019, has recorded 59.5 sacks in six seasons with the Raiders. He was rewarded by the Raiders this offseason, signing a three-year, $106.5 million contract extension in March.
In addition to his role as assistant general manager for EMU, Crosby also launched the “Maxx Match,” which is a fundraising challenge in which he will personally match all donations to the Eastern Michigan football program, up to $100,000, made before the end of May.
In 2023, Crosby and his wife Rachel donated $1 million to the football program.
“Maxx Crosby’s return to EMU in this leadership role is a transformative moment for our football program,” athletic director Scott Wetherbee said in the release. “His passion, vision, and generosity are inspiring, and the Maxx Match is a powerful example of that. … With him on board, we’re building a better football program and a stronger future for EMU athletics.”
While Crosby is the first NFL player to take an administrative job with an NCAA team, he is not the only athlete. Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry became the assistant general manager at Davidson College, his alma mater, last month.
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