It is Friday. The Orioles have returned home and beat the Nationals, 3-1. Trevor Rogers was good. Coby Mayo was also good! There were some shenanigans, but not enough to keep the Orioles from getting the win.
YOU KNOW WHAT MUST BE DONE
(GIFS!)
The hockey world is focused on western New York as NHL Draft is taking place this weekend in Buffalo.
Never ones to miss out on a good time, The Hockey Show hosts Roy Bellamy and David Dwork made the trip north to take in all the fun and festivities.
On this week’s show, Roy and Dave got into all the latest NHL happenings, including a plethora of trades, including Bowen Byram going to Chicago, Simon Nemac heading to Calgary, William Eklund being sent to Ottawa and both Jordan Kyrou and Alex Tuch being dealt to Washington.
Of course, a big topic of discussion focused on what the Florida Panthers have been up to.
Earlier this week the Panthers acquired Brady Tkachuk from Ottawa and then on Thursday they traded for gritty forward Garnet Hathaway from Philadelphia while remaining quite active in the goalie markets, including veteran Sergei Bobrovsky and several other netminders.
Roy and Dave also discussed their thoughts on the top prospects going in the first round of the NHL Draft, the hiring of Mike Babcock in Edmonton and the Islanders signing Tony DeAngelo to a two-year extension.
You can check out the full show in the video below:
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SAN DIEGO –– The Dodgers still don’t know when starting catcher Will Smith will return from his neck injury.
Thus, when Shohei Ohtani takes the mound next Wednesday, it will “most likely” be Dalton Rushing behind the plate again, manager Dave Roberts said on Friday.
Typically, managers aren’t asked about battery pairings almost a week away from a pitcher’s next start.
But over the last couple days, the Ohtani-Rushing dynamic has been the leading story around the Dodgers, after the two expressed frustration with one another during a second-inning meltdown in Minnesota this week.
In the wake of that episode –– in which the four-time MVP and second-year backup catcher suffered miscommunication in everything from pitch-calling to ABS challenges to PitchCom mix-up that led to a run-scoring passed ball –– Roberts said there had been “conversations” behind the scenes to ensure “that going forward we’ll all be on the same page.”
“It’s not always going to be synced up, but I think that where it got to the other day, I really don’t see that happening going forward,” Roberts said. “They all care. Everyone cares. Just more of, I got to make sure that we’re all on the same page and they got to do their jobs.”
This week’s Minnesota game was only the third time Rushing has been behind the plate for an Ohtani start this year. It has happened in each of the two-way star’s previous three outings because Smith continues to battle a lingering neck injury.
What was initially believed to be minor neck pain has now sidelined Smith for three weeks.
On Friday, Roberts said Smith is still not doing any baseball activities, but is “feeling better day-by-day.”
Roberts added that it’s unlikely Smith will be back by the start of next week’s homestand, but still downplayed any long-term concern.
“I think it’s concerning in the sense that it’s a lot longer than we’d expected,” Roberts said. “It’s not concerning because we don’t think it’s a long-term situation.”
With their first overall pick in the 2026 NHL draft, the Pittsburgh Penguins selected forward Liam Ruck out of Medicine Hat of the WHL.
Scott Wheeler wrote of Ruck:
He’s a right-shot winger who has good touch, a quick release, likes to go short side and can pick his spots in the net — with an eagerness to try as a volume shooter. His skating is below average, but I’d also say it’s the slightly better of the two and that his motor helps him compensate, though it does raise questions about his projectability up levels at his size for some. He finds ways to take pucks to scoring areas, but can also work and score closer to the boards. He keeps his feet moving off the puck and plays with energy on both offense and defense (including the PK), relying on his effort and instincts to consistently make things happen or get open for them.
Dobber Prospects:
Ruck is known as a two-way forward with a high motor and strong offensive instincts; he excels around the net and generates scoring chances with his aggressive style of play, thanks to his strong forecheck and strong positioning. One of his greatest assets is his shot; he has a quick release and is a threat in the slot.
Projected as a reliable, steady middle-six NHL player contributing on the penalty kill, and could develop as an asset on the power play as a net-front presence.
Corey Pronman:
Ruck is a dangerous scoring winger. He’s a very slick and intelligent player who creates a lot with the puck. His pure athletic tools don’t jump out: he’s not that big, and he’s a below-average skater. He does work hard, though, and gets to the hard areas to generate offense, earning his coach’s trust consistently. Ruck has a path to the league due to his great stick and brain.
Ruck is committed to the University of North Dakota for the start of the 2027-28 season.
It was an interesting night, San Jose just happened to trade up to pick 21, one before the Pens to take defenseman Ryan Lin. Did the Sharks know or suspect that Pittsburgh would have taken Lin? We might never know, but the timing of a move happening right before the Pittsburgh pick stands out a little bit.
In the end, the Pens stay on target to their prior tendencies with high picks by taking a productive, skillsy forward out of the WHL with their first pick this year. The big question now looks like whether or not the Penguins will attempt to keep the Ruck twins together by drafting Markus. That could be a target for the 39th overall pick that Pittsburgh has, but they made need to make a trade to move up a few spots in order to ensure they can keep the twin magic together.
The Texas Rangers scored five runs while the Toronto Blue Jays scored four runs.
Remember last night when the Rangers scored a bunch of runs early and then gently moseyed to a victory over the Blue Jays despite their lead shrinking to almost nothing late? Well, tonight’s game was pretty much the same deal.
The Rangers scored three runs in the top of the first off of 2025 friend Patrick Corbin as they enjoyed a rare trio of hits with RISP. A couple of innings later, Justin Foscue made it 5-0 with his fifth home run of the season, a two-run shot following a Jake Burger walk.
Irritatingly, the Rangers went hitless with RISP in their remaining nine opportunities as they couldn’t quite turn the game into a blowout. The well running dry at the plate would eventually lead to some late-innings heartburn again. Nevertheless, the early damage was already in the books and, luckily for Texas, they had Nathan Eovaldi on the mound and he was shoving.
The second most famous pitcher from Alvin, TX went seven innings and allowed zero runs on five hits and a walk with nine strikeouts. Toronto didn’t have their first hit until the fourth inning and only really threatened Eovaldi in his last couple of frames. The veteran erased a couple of rallies to maintain the five run lead.
The Rangers needed all five of ’em, too. Like last night, despite being staked to a big early lead, the Blue Jays flipped it on in the late innings and eventually put up a four-run frame in the eighth.
Starring down a potentially dubious outcome after leading by five runs early, Texas again turned to Jacob Latz for the save and he came through for the second consecutive one-run win for the Rangers in Toronto.
Player of the Game: Foscue drove in three of the five runs and his dinger was big, and Wyatt Langford continued his torrid June with three more hits and a stolen base while flying around on the bases, but it’s hard to argue against Eovaldi’s evening as he provided Texas with seven shutout frames to keep the mileage off a sputtering bullpen during this brutal stretch.
Up Next: Eyeing a third win in three tries to begin this series, the Rangers don’t yet have a pitcher listed for tomorrow’s game while Toronto will start RHP Dylan Cease.
The Saturday afternoon first pitch from Rogers Centre is scheduled for 2:07 pm CDT and will be back on the Rangers Sports Network.
The Sebastian Cossa era with the Detroit Red Wings is officially over.
The Red Wings traded him to the Utah Mammoth, and in return, are receiving the 23rd overall selection in the 2026 NHL Draft.
Utah trades pick 23 to Detroit for goalie Sebastian Cossa
— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) June 27, 2026
— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) June 27, 2026
The trade gave the Red Wings a selection in the opening round of the Draft; they'd traded their first-round pick to the St. Louis Blues in March as part of the package to acquire defenseman Justin Faulk.
With the No. 23 pick, they selected forward J.P. Hurlbert, who led the WHL in scoring last season with the Kamloops Blazers and has committed to the University of Michigan.
Bookmark The Hockey News Detroit Red Wings team site to stay connected to the latest news, game-day coverage, and player features.
Despite being chosen 15th overall by Detroit in the 2021 NHL Draft, Cossa has appeared in just one NHL game to date, making his lone appearance during the 2024-25 season in December, a 6-5 shootout win over the Buffalo Sabres.
The young netminder turned in an outstanding 2025-26 campaign with the Grand Rapids Griffins, but as the season progressed, Michal Postava seized the starting role.
By the time the Calder Cup Playoffs arrived, Postava had earned the crease, leaving Cossa to serve as the backup throughout the entire postseason.
Cossa posted a record of 26-8-4 with a 2.33 goals-against average and a .915 save percentage in what would be his final season with the Griffins. A pending restricted free agent, Cossa was no longer waiver-eligible.
Now, all indications point toward 2023 second round (41st overall) pick Trey Augustine as being Detroit's goaltender of the future.
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Happy Pride Night! After a rousing electric guitar version of the Star-Spangled Banner, the Orioles came on out and delivered an inspired Friday win, defeating the Nationals in a tidy 3-1 contest. It wasn’t the most explosive offensive performance ever, but left-handed starter Trevor Rogers certainly brought the energy, going 6 1/3 innings with a fastball that was simply ruthless.
Let’s talk about another great start from Trevor Rogers, his third quality start in a row. As of May, Rogers’ ice-cold start to the season was making Birdland wonder whether his charmed 2025 was a mirage, but June has been quite the leveler. He now has a 2.05 ERA in five appearances. That’ll work.
Tonight, Rogers faced the minimum through three innings. This included a drama-free first inning with two pop flies (Rogers nicely battling back from down 3-0 to Curtis Mead) and a swinging K. In the second, Rogers whiffed CJ Abrams with high heat, making me think how tough the lefty Rogers looks against a lefty—but then he did the same on three pitches to right-hander Dylan Crews!
The Rogers four-seam fastball has been a weapon in June, and it looked devastating today. Of his first 20 pitches, 16 were strikes, and of 87 total, 65. Wow. Trevor Rogers is locked in, people.
Rogers’ counterpart on the mound, the rather inexperienced Andrew Alvarez, who has all of ten career starts, made a strong first impression here at Oriole Park, too. Alvarez whiffed two in a perfect first inning, dotting breaking balls everywhere. Lefties bearing offspeed pitches, and this Orioles lineup? Danger.
The Orioles wasted a scoring chance against Alvarez in the second when Pete Alonso walloped a curveball and with two outs, Leody Taveras walked. But Taveras ran into a third out on the bases, and Alvarez was out of trouble. Baltimore put the leadoff man on in the third, Jackson Holliday legging out an infield single, but Pete Alonso struck out with runners at the corners, and the rally went no further.
Meanwhile, Rogers was working at a furious pace, like he had somewhere to be. The third inning was just a bunch of groundballs. A somewhat lackadaisical throw to first by Gunnar Henderson took Pete Alonso just off the bag long enough to allow Jacob Young to get on base on the E6. But Rogers was unbothered: he teed up another ground ball—double play—and one more grounder to get out of the inning. Unflappable.
The Nationals nicked Rogers in the fourth—Maryland native James Wood doubled, and Curtis Mead followed him with a bloop single—but astonishingly, even with men on second and third and no outs, didn’t draw blood. Rogers just dug in, attacking the zone like a beast. First, he drew a bouncer right at Blaze Alexander, who made a strong, accurate throw home, and Wood was a sitting duck at the plate. Defense! CJ Abrams popped out next, and there were two outs. Crews scorched a ball, 104 mph, into the infield—but right at Jackson Holliday, who made a great stop, and fired to first. De-fense!
The game’s first runs came in the fourth, and they were orange-colored. Coby Mayo had taken some ferocious hacks at Alvarez in his first AB, back in the second, but he didn’t miss a big hanging curveball this time—double. A flustered Alvarez walked Tyler O’Neill on four pitches (one looked to be a strike). A mound visit and two quick outs later, and the rally looked to be toast. But Jackson Holliday walked to load the bases, and from the 9 spot, Blaze Alexander got the big base-knock. Two scored. Don’t get too enamored with Blaze, I’ll just say. Taylor Ward singled with two on, but Alexander got thrown out trying to go first-to-third and no third run would score. Runs, but also another stupid mistake.
On top of that, Washington immediately got one back, making it 2-1 in the fifth. With one out, Jacob Young had doubled deep to center. It looked like Rogers would get out of it cleanly when he struck out No. 8 hitter Nasim Nuñez. But the veteran Keibert Ruiz singled him home.
But that was all the Nats would get off Rogers tonight. Determined, I assume, to avoid handing this Orioles bullpen anything like a narrow lead, Rogers came back out for the sixth. I joke, but he’d only thrown 75 pitches when he came back out for the seventh, too.
Maybe Rogers likes a challenge, so he spotted the Nationals a leadoff double. Maybe not. He really struggled to retire Daylen Lile, but a pop out ended Lile’s AB and Rogers’ night. The O’s lefty exited with another quality start: 6 1/3 innings with one run on five hits, seven strikeouts and no walks. Welcome back, Rogers!
I’m sorry to remind you but I must: over the last three weeks, this Orioles bullpen has an ERA of 5.38. Happily, they didn’t look like it tonight. Also, the Orioles offense made their assignment a little easier by scratching out a third run for insurance. Washington’s Brad Lord had pitched a clean sixth, and tried to give his team length by pitching into the seventh. Bad call, probably.
Lord allowed a leadoff single to Taylor Ward before Gunnar struck out in an inconvenient spot. But Pete Alonso walked for the second time, and up to the plate came Coby Mayo. Mayo looked locked into today. He came through, to the tune of a 113-mph run-scoring double, his second of the day. 3-1 Birds.
After that, no drama from this relief corps whatever. Tyler Wells got two quick outs to end the seventh. Grant Wolfram pitched a perfect inning in the eighth. So, too, did lately homer-prone closer Ryan Helsley, who, flashing both a nasty breaking ball and 100 up in the zone, drew a quick groundout, a swinging strikeout, and … a slow roller to short. Too many times lately, the Orioles have done stupid things when faced with a play like this. But not tonight: Gunnar barehanded it and made an absolutely perfect throw to first. Ballgame over.
Clocking in at just over two-and-a-half hours, this was a clean, well-pitched, well-fielded game. Just the cure for the Orioles’ recent sloppiness. Watching a game like this, you could easily be tricked into believing the Orioles could actually make some noise down the stretch. Who knows?
So who is your Most Birdland Player, CamdenChat? Trevor Rogers and his 6 1/3 one-run innings (maybe not just SPB [Starting Pitcher Bias])? Coby Mayo, 2-for-4 with two doubles? Blaze Alexander, with the big two-run RBI single, a walk, and a run-saving throw home? Taylor Ward, quietly going 3-for-5 at the top of the order?
With the abundance of trade rumors that had cropped up this past week, it was only a matter of time before the hammer dropped. On Friday evening, during the first round of the 2026 NHL Draft, the Ducks traded forward Mason McTavish to the St. Louis Blues for the 15th overall pick and the 29th overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft. The Ducks then used the 15th pick to select forward Nikita Klepov. There is zero salary retention in the deal.
2025-26 was a rollercoaster season for McTavish. He missed the start of training camp due to a contract dispute before signing a six-year contract with a $7 million AAV. He did have a good start to the season, putting up 18 points in 25 games, but he was unable to perform consistently in a bigger role while Leo Carlsson was out due to surgery to remove a Morel-Lavallée lesion.
The inconsistency persisted into the second half of the season, with McTavish eventually shifted to the wing and even healthy scratched for a handful of games. He was also a healthy scratch in two of the Ducks' playoff games against the Vegas Golden Knights.
While McTavish is a capable player offensively, his lack of foot speed and below-average defensive work proved to be deficiencies. Without the pace needed to adjust to head coach Joel Quenneville's system, he was a square hole in a round peg. In his 2025-26 exit interview, McTavish said that he wanted to come into next season a bit leaner and work on improving his speed and defensive work. The fruits of his labor will be viewed in St. Louis instead of Anaheim next season.
Related articles:
Ducks Trade Olen Zellweger to the Buffalo Sabres
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Ducks Assistant GM Martin Madden on 2026 NHL Draft, Prospects & More
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The Mets changed managers on Friday, but that hardly jumpstarted a lineup that had to deal with Zack Wheeler for most of the night. Now Andy Green knows what it was like to be Carlos Mendoza.
Green’s crew managed only five hits in a 2-1 loss to the Phillies at Citi Field that extended the Mets’ losing streak to seven games. Green took over as interim manager earlier in the day after Mendoza was fired.
Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mike Puma about the inside buzz on the Mets.
Try it freeThe Mets (34-48) looked every bit like the team that entered the day ranked 29th in MLB with a .673 OPS. Their misery on this night included getting one-hit over the final five innings. It was the fifth time during their losing streak the Mets scored three runs or fewer.
“I thought the energy was good, the effort was what you want — we just weren’t able to square up balls,” Green said.
Zach Thornton, in his second major league start, was sharp over six innings. The left-hander, thrust into the rotation following David Peterson’s trade to the Cubs and Kodai Senga’s demotion to the bullpen, allowed one earned run on five hits with seven strikeouts and one walk.
“It just gives me the confidence I can compete with the best out there and I can get anybody out,” Thornton said.
But Green said a decision hadn’t been reached on whether Thornton will remain in the rotation. Christian Scott will return from the injured list on Saturday and it’s possible Thornton will be the roster casualty.
Thornton surrendered three straight hits to begin the game, but escaped the first with only one run allowed. Bryce Harper delivered an RBI single that gave the Phillies a 1-0 lead after Trea Turner’s leadoff double and Kyle Schwarber’s ensuing single. Thornton rebounded to get three straight outs.
“Zach was really good, especially you are talking about a young kid who gets barreled up three consecutive times, gets a mound visit and settles in and gives us six great innings,” Green said. “It’s tough to win baseball games when you put one run on the board.”
Derek Hill scaled the fence in right-center in the bottom of the inning to rob Juan Soto of a two-run homer. Carson Benge singled leading off before Hill fully extended over the fence for the larceny.
“It was an unbelievable catch,” Soto said. “You see the replays and you see how impressive it was. He didn’t have any timing — he just went straight to the wall and jumped. That was incredible.”
Jared Young’s RBI single in the fourth tied it 1-1. Bo Bichette’s leadoff double ignited the rally before Young delivered against Wheeler.
Huascar Brazoban allowed an RBI single to Trea Turner in the seventh that gave the Phillies a 2-1 lead. Hill’s leadoff single and Bryson Stott’s walk gave the Phillies their base runners before Hill’s single. It was a rare misstep for Brazoban, who wasn’t scored upon in his previous seven appearances and began the night with a 1.82 ERA.
Wheeler dominated with a second good outing in less than a week against his former team. The right-hander allowed one earned run on four hits with five strikeouts and one walk over seven innings. Wheeler, in his return from surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome, has pitched to a 2.03 ERA in 11 starts this season.
“It’s tough and it’s part of baseball,” Soto said. “We just haven’t been coming through in big situations and that is kind of the way the game goes. You have got to come through in the right moment, at the right time.”
Green, who last managed a major league game for the Padres in 2019, said he felt at home in the dugout.
“It’s what I know,” Green said. “I will certainly make mistakes along the way, but the game was not moving any faster than a normal game has in the past. I have got good coaches around me that are very bright, so I think in that sense I felt good.”
BOSTON — The Yankees at least spared themselves the infamy of having a perfect game thrown against them.
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Try it freeThey even mustered a run in the eighth inning.
But that is where the list of positive developments ended for them on Friday night at Fenway Park.
Red Sox lefty Payton Tolle dominated them across seven innings, allowing just one hit to Spencer Jones after retiring 16 straight to start the game, as the Yankees stumbled to a second straight loss by a score of 6-1.
“Good pitcher executing, it can be a tough game sometimes,” manager Aaron Boone said. “So obviously just had a hard time to mount anything. But no issue with where our preparation and focus [were]. We just got beat tonight by him.”
Tolle, who struck out 11 in six innings of one-run ball against the Yankees (48-33) in April, was even more untouchable on Friday night while striking out seven. Jones poked a single into center field off him with one out in the sixth, and Tolle later walked a pair in the seventh. But all three base runners proved harmless as he mowed down the Yankees, who have now lost six of their past nine.
The Yankees began the season 18-6 against lefty starters but have now dropped four of their last five, including the first two games of this four-game set against the last-place Red Sox (34-46).
“[Tolle] did a good job of filling up the zone, getting ahead in the count and then was able to do what he wanted to do with certain pitches,” said Jones, who was getting a rare start against a lefty. “Credit to him, he was able to execute and get out ahead.”
Besides Tolle vying for a perfect game, the only real drama — if you can call it that — of the night came in the bottom of the fifth inning, when the benches cleared after Will Warren walked Willson Contreras. Ball four was up and in on Contreras, who essentially stands on top of the plate, and he flipped his bat before jogging down to first and jawing at Warren.
Contreras, who had crushed a 418-foot homer off Warren earlier in the game, seemed to want to know why the Yankees pitcher was looking at him. After some talking back and forth, both teams left their dugouts and bullpens to crowd around first base with nothing more than words exchanged.
“He said something, so I said something back,” Warren said. “I’m just trying to make a pitch.”
That only added to the frustration for Warren, who gave up five runs on seven hits and three walks across 5 ²/₃ innings. For the first time in his career, he did not record a single strikeout.
Warren was consistently hit hard even on outs, as 10 of the 24 balls the Red Sox put in play against him came off the bat at 95 mph or higher.
After a strong first two months of the season, Warren has had a rockier June, giving up 16 runs (12 earned) on 27 hits in 19 ²/₃ innings across four starts, with left-handed hitters in particular giving him some trouble during that stretch.
“I’m not sure [why],” Warren said. “Just got to find a way to get them out. I’ve dealt with that in the minor leagues. The four-seam kind of changed that. Obviously they’re on it right now, but we’ll figure it out and move on.”
After Tolle exited the game, the Yankees broke up the shutout against former teammate Tommy Kahnle in the eighth inning. Anthony Volpe led off with a double and eventually came in to score on Austin Wells’ groundout to erase the goose egg and save some face.
“Obviously,” Boone said, “just a tough night for us offensively.”
It is the end of the sixth inning; the White Sox are leading 17-1. The Royals scored their only run on a double play groundball after David Sandlin walked the bases loaded following a 10-run bottom of the third inning. This comes one night after the Royals were almost no-hit in Tampa Bay and lost 13-2. I’m not watching any more of this and neither should you.
If you’re looking for positives, Steven Cruz struck out 3 in 1.1 scoreless innings. Carter Jensen extended his hitting streak to 17 games. Jac Caglianone had a triple. Kendry Chourio earned his first win with the River Bandits. That’s all I’ve got for you.
Good night.
It’s kind of crazy the way momentum works in baseball. Normally, we equate momentum as when one teams comes from behind on another, scoring runs to take a lead and eventually emerging victorious. One could argue that both teams had some kind of momentum today coming into this game. The Phillies, of course, had several games where they were down to their last strike before demolishing a Nationals bullpen. The Mets had a different kind of momentum. They had earlier fired their manager and were looking to get off to a good start under the interim manager.
In the first inning, the Phillies capitalized on their momentum, the first three hitters reaching on hits and scoring a run. Eventually, the Mets starter Zach Thornton settled down and kept them off the board the rest of the inning to swing some mo’ back New York’s way. Carson Benge singled off of Zack Wheeler to start the Mets’ frame, bringing up Juan Soto. Soto drove a ball that looked off the bat to be a home run, but Derek Hill had other ideas.
That, my friends, is a dagger.
You could almost see the air going out of the Mets’ balloon after that catch, much in the way you could see Ralph Wiggum’s heart breaking with Lisa Simpson.
The rest of the game, it was Wheeler in total command of his game. He allowed a single run in the fourth when Bo Bichette doubled, moved to third on a ground ball and scored on a Jared Young single, but the rest of the game was a masterclass.
The issue? Thornton had also settled all the way in, limiting the Phillies’ offense to the lone run on seven hits. He was relieved by Huascar Brozaban in the seventh, a move on which the Phillies capitalized. Hill singled, then moved to second on a walk to Bryson Stott. Trea Turner came through with a two-out RBI single to score Hill and give the Phillies a lead.
In the end, the momentum shifting catch by Hill was the difference. Without it, who knows how the Mets respond. They’d have had the lead in the first inning with no outs and the stadium loud. Instead, they allowed Wheeler to get locked in and were summarily locked up themselves.
Good.
These teams will lock horns again tomorrow afternoon, so long as the weather holds up.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Josh Naylor, -0.24 WPA
The Rock, on a roll: Luis Castillo, +0.24 WPA
Hey there! With the defending champs about to embark on a well-deserved summer as the defending champs, what better time than now, the oasis between the draft and the corpse of what used to be free agency, to get all high and mighty up in our perch as Knick fans and cast judgment on all the loser teams beneath us — specifically, five current and/or historic rivals and/or curiosities.
BOSTON — A week or two from now, the Celtics may look completely different than they do now. Maybe they’ve sprinkled enough leprechaun dust around to pull some more Al Jefferson/KG or Kevin McHale/Robert Parish/Joe Berry Carroll shenanigans. If you had to bet on one team retooling a contender on the fly and coming out ahead, besides the Lakers, you could do worse than placing a fiver on the Red (Auerbach) Devils.
But I can’t live a week or two into the future. I can only live today, and sometimes even that’s pushing it. Today, for the first time in quite some time, I find myself wondering — just who or what are the Boston Celtics, anyway?
For a while they achieved a kind of basketball perfection, featuring a rotation where every player could shoot and play both ends. As the hypocritical, soul-sucking Knick-hating CBA pushed cheap billionaires away from the player-empowering “Big Three” model to teams’ decidedly less romantic search for the strongest weakest link, the Celtics seemed to have cracked the code. Figurative reams of digital press praised them not only for winning just the franchise’s second ‘chip since Rick Brunson was 14, but for Brad Stevens’ gossamer genius in building them to contend for years.
A funny thing happened on the way to paradise, though. The team was sold. Odd, it seemed. The Celtics are a flagship North American sports franchise. They’d literally just won the championship. And the people writing and cashing their checks looked at each other and just said “Peace”?
Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles and the new owners did the *practical* thing, “practical” almost always meaning “cashed in something ineffable and intangible for $$,” using the injury as cover to get rid of Jrue Holiday and three centers who could all shoot, rebound and defend. They were always gonna be better than people expected, but they were better than that, even. Tatum came back from his Achilles tear in, like, record time, a statement that seems as likely to age well as Joel Embiid. The playoffs exposed the team’s Achilles heel as its cheap-ass owners, who knew Tatum would be back for the postseason and gave their plucky squad all of Nikola Vučević at the trade deadline.
Credit to Stevens for possessing a seemingly soberer view of his team than some of its media fanboys. The Cs fell 10 wins short of a title in 2025, 13 last season. That’s not title contention. That’s . . . *waves haphazardly at what’s come of Denver*. Excepting Vučević, everyone on the books this past season is next season, too. Something’s gotta give, and something ain’t gonna be Tatum. So it’s gotta be Jaylen Brown or Derrick White.
Speaking of which . . .
DETROIT –
Going from 14 wins one season to 44 the next? Unprecedented. 44 to 60? Nearly as impressive. Next step? That one’s a doozy. After a bittersweet postseason, the Pistons are firmly in “What do we do now?” territory.
Detroit is neither blind to what ails it nor subtle in pursuing its remedy, and while newly-signed Isaiah Joe will narcotize some of their shooting pains, he isn’t a panacea. The last three Eastern conference champions have featured dynamic offensive duos: Tatum/Brown, Tyrese Haliburton/Pascal Siakam, Jalen Brunson/Karl-Anthony Towns. The Pistons have Cade Cunningham. They need Tobias Harris to not be their second-best offensive player. Kawhi Leonard, Tyler Herro, Norm Powell, Jaylen Brown — more in that vein.
Now Jalen Duren, a restricted free agent fresh off All-NBA Third Team honors, is ready to explore sign-and-trades after being underwhelmed by Detroit in contract negotiations. Harris is an unrestricted free agent. Isaiah Stewart’s in Memphis. Duncan Robinson could be cut loose for $2 million. Kevin Huerter? They don’t know her. Not only are the Pistons in obvious need of a serious talent injection, something they haven’t really had to deal with for, oh, 20 years is rather quite suddenly their new normal. Pressure.
Miami acquired Giannis Antetokounmpo, who’d’ve been a terrifying addition for Detroit. LaMelo Ball is about to co-star in a fascinating experiment alongside Anthony Edwards in Minnesota; might’ve been just as interesting watching him and Cade in tandem. Heck, either of Julius Randle or Naz Reid would level-up the Piston attack. Everyone and their cousin knows what they need. Every time another team acquires an offensive star, whether the Pistons were in or even interested in the player, a pressure builds around general manager Trajan Langdon. How about this guy? Why not this guy? Who’s the next guy? What about him? Even if he himself is unaware of it, that doesn’t mean others around him aren’t unaware, i.e. aware. Got that?
Get this: the Celtics are seemingly nudging Brown out the door this summer. They daren’t send their former Finals MVP to a key conference rival, dare’st they? What would it took to make a trade work? Would Duren appeal to Boston, who’ve preferred to play 5-out but were forced away from that style last year? And if Duren isn’t the Beantown ballast, does Detroit have anyone else who appeals? They wouldn’t consider Ausar Thompson? T’would they?
MIAMI – “Men were deceivers ever/One foot in sea, and one on shore/To one thing constant never.” That’s from Much Ado About Nothing, fitting both in that it describes Antetokounmpo’s schtick the past couple of years and captures my feelings about the Giannis trade in four words. Not that I don’t see what they’re going for.
There are times a team needs a superstar player for reasons having nothing to do with basketball. When Amar’e Stoudemire signed with the Knicks, it felt like the first thing to go right for the franchise in a decade. The Knicks weren’t suddenly title contenders; they weren’t even 50-win contenders. But the Knicks were back. That mattered.
And oh by the way: squint hard enough and you can see STAT’s signing in 2011 as the first pebble to roll in what became the 2026 Knicks’ title-winning avalanche. Stoudemire putting the “Ooooh!” back in New York showed Carmelo Anthony what he was missing. The Melo era ended with him traded to Oklahoma City, for a draft pick the Thunder initially received from the Bulls along with two future/former Knicks, Taj Gibson and Doug McDermott. Chicago got back another someday Knick, Cameron Payne.
Seven months later, that pick was shipped from OKC to New York, along with McDermott and Enes Freedom, with Carmelo going the other way. That pick, the 36th in the 2018 draft, became some kinda player, the best on either team in 2023 and 2025 playoff series whose significant endgame efforts on both ends helped the Knicks end their 53-year title drought.
Which is to say I understand the Heat trading for Antetokoumpo. You can’t make money if you’re broke. Takes some to make some. Miami is the rare NBA “destination” franchise, though it hasn’t been for a while. Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Kel’el Ware are both fun players, but nobody’s uprooting their family to go play with them. Giannis? Different story.
A little less than two years ago, the Knicks added KAT and Mikal Bridges. They saw a way to assemble a title-worthy starting five, which there’s no guarantee pops up in life, and they took it. It cost them depth and continuity, and that cost them in the ECF vs. Indiana. But with the hard part finished, the Knicks used the following summer and trade deadline to assemble a title-worthy bench.
Maybe Miami’s thinking similarly. Even if Giannis never leads them to a championship, or even comes close, there’s a far better chance some future star takes their talents to South Beach in the next few years to join him than Tyler Herro. If that future star is on the Heat in 2030, with Giannis retired, he’ll have delivered what they hoped for. So I get it, in that sense.
What I don’t get is any hype beyond that.
If Antetokounmpo were 25 or 28 next season and not turning 32, I could see them playing a bit of the long game, biding a little time to fully clear their books before adding the next Hardaway to their Mourning, Shaq to their Wade, LeBron to their Wade, Bosh to their Wade, etc. If Bam Adebayo’s fit alongside Giannis felt closer to KAT/OG than Ewing/Cartwright, a little wait would seem to promise a big payoff. If. If! If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinkers’ hands.
Before the deal, the Heat weren’t laying a glove on the Knicks, the Celtics, the Pistons or the Cavs. After the trade, and assuming they fill out the roster with an unexceptional lot of role players and given Miami’s success rate turning seeming joes into pros, what’s changed? Cleveland is suspect enough that it’s possible Antetokounmpo’s ferocity alone could take them down. Beyond that? Nah.
If you’re a Heat fan, this trade is a big deal. If you’re a Bucks fan, same. If you root for any other team, this feels like an oddly “meh” takeaway, given this is a story we’ve been hearing about for at least a year. And if you’d told me back then someone would swap four players and a half-dozen picks and swaps for Giannis, I’d have assumed it was a seismic deal, for one team if not two. Not so much.
CHARLOTTE – Hmm.
Hmmmmmm.
Dunno where to go with this one. Let’s try this: when you think of Mitchell Robinson, what words come to mind? What other basketball players or pro athletes in general does he remind you of? Take a minute or two. Think about it. I’ll wait.
Okay, you’re back? Did you think of A.C. Green? Cal Ripken Jr.? Lou Gehrig? No? No ironmen popped to mind? That’s fair. Mitch is a great many great things, but “durable” isn’t one even his biggest stans would attempt with a straight face. What’s that gotta do with Charlotte’s point guard?
The past six seasons, Mitch has played 270 games, only a handful fewer per those six seasons than LaMelo Ball. But while M-Rob is likely to sign for $45-$50 million the next three years, in that same span Ball will make $130 million. Apart from any and all questions of LaMelo’s style of play/stylings, it’s difficult to be worthy of a max or near-max salary even if you’ve generally been available, and generally Ball hasn’t.
So as counterintuitive as it’d seem, it’d seem the situation calls for recognizing and applauding Charlotte for anticipating a tricky point in their aspiring ascension and successfully moving past it. I’m not sure it does, though.
While the Hornets’ 28-10 run to close the season certainly was not much ado about nothing, it’s likely whatever something they were up to was never quite all it appeared to be in the moment. A third of the league spent most of the year tanking. When push came to shoving their way to a playoff spot, the Hornets lost 121-90 to an Orlando team that didn’t score 121 points total over seven games versus Detroit.
It’s fair to wonder if the Hornets have any business being self-confident enough to make this kind of move now, and what the optics will be if it backfires. Ball is now cast out, publicly ex-communicated by a sad sack of a franchise. His ego is wounded. He’ll now be playing with by farrrrrr the best teammate he ever has. And it’s fair to wonder if the team might be confusing their success in collecting the right players for once with those players doing the actual work of embettering the team.
I can’t remember where I read this earlier, but Kon Knueppel made well over 40% of his 3s while playing with Ball versus about 37% without him. As a Knicks fan I’m the last person who will ever doubt Coby White, and he’ll cost the Hornets about $20 million less per year than Ball for three years. Still. I wonder, after a postseason watching the Knicks defy the odds over and over again because their shaman had better magic than the other guy, if the Hornets may have short-circuited something special before it got a chance to spread its wings.
CLEVELAND – LOLOLOLOL
Payton Tolle last faced the Yankees on April 23rd, when he held them to a run on just three hits in six innings, tallying a career-high 11 strikeouts. It’s hard to think that he could improve on that outing, but he took things to another level tonight, logging one of the most dominant performances by an opposing starter the Yankees have seen in quite some time. He carried a perfect game into the sixth inning before a Spencer Jones single broke up the perfecto and no-hit bids.
By that point, the Red Sox had built a comfortable cushion off Will Warren that the Yankees never really looked like threatening. They may have played a cleaner game in the field than the series opener, but that’s not going to count for much when you manage just three hits on the day. It’s telling that the most exciting moment was a benches-clearing kerfuffle in the fifth as the Yankees sleepwalked to a 6-1 loss.
It wasn’t quite the strikeout display as his first start against the Yankees, but Tolle was nonetheless effective at inducing a whole lot of harmless contact from the Yankees early in counts. He did strike out the side in the second, but mostly it was pop ups and ground balls from the Bombers lineup. Their first baserunner came with one out in the sixth, Spencer Jones flipping a single to the opposite field. They’d muster just two more baserunners against Tolle from that point: a pair of two-out walks by Jasson Domínguez and José Caballero in the seventh, only for Jazz Chisholm Jr. to strand them in place with a routine fly out to center.
There is no doubting that this year’s version of Will Warren is much improved from his 2025 rookie campaign – evidence of his development path over the offseason. However, having watched half a season’s worth of starts from him in 2026, I think I’ve identified the three biggest things for him to continue to work on. The first we have discussed multiple times already – the need to maintain composure upon encountering adversity in a start. Warren tends to unravel with runners on, especially if they got there via an error, and I suspect the problem is down to him pitching out of the stretch instead of the windup.
The second area of improvement is to be smarter with his fastball. I feel he is a tad too brazen with his fastball in the zone – stuff-wise it’s just not good enough to beat hitters when it’s not commanded to the edges. Finally, he has seen his strikeout rate drop with each month of the season as he has really struggled to put guys away with two strikes.
Tonight, it was the latter pair of issues that really bit him. In the first, Wilyer Abreu tripled to center with two outs, and after Warren worked Willson Contreras to a 2-2 count, he made a mistake with a sinker that caught way too much of the zone and Contreras drove Abreu home with a single to left-center. Then in the second, Warren loaded the bases with no outs, giving up a bunt single to Caleb Durbin, a line drive single to Anthony Seigler, and walking Connor Wong. He then managed to induce a pair of ground balls, but the infield failed to convert the double play both times, allowing a further pair of runs to score.
The following inning, Warren once again got ahead of Contreras, 1-2, but this time hung a sweeper up and over the plate, and Contreras crushed it over the Monster and onto Lansdowne Street to make it 4-0, Boston. I don’t think for one second that this engendered any feelings of malicious intent in Warren, but Contreras certinly seemed primed for some form of retribution. He got his opportunity to fly off the handle in the fifth. After drawing a walk, Contreras jawed at Warren as he walked to first after two close pitches up and in, Contreras notorious for his hair-trigger temper given the number of times he has gotten plunked in recent years. This caused both benches to clear in a completely unnecessary brouhaha, everyone eventually filing back into the dugouts after Contreras got his moment to puff out his chest.
Boston tacked on another in the sixth as Caleb Durbin led off with a double, advanced to third on a Seigler grounder, and jogged home on a deep sac fly from Wong. At least the Yankees managed to avoid the shutout, breaking the ice in the eighth against old friend Tommy Kahnle. Anthony Volpe led off with a double, advanced to third on a Jones grounder, and scored on an Austin Wells RBI groundout. However, Boston reestablished their five-run lead in the eighth as Jarren Duran led off with a single, stole second, advanced to third on a Seigler grounder, and touched home on a Wong single. Domínguez collected New York’s third and final hit–an automatic double to right in the ninth with two outs–but Caballero flew out to wrap up a punchless 6-1 loss.
The Yankees still have two games to save face and split this four-game series against the last-place Red Sox. That starts tomorrow with Gerrit Cole on the mound against a third straight lefty in Jake Bennett. First pitch is scheduled for 1:10 pm ET with the broadcast moving to ABC.