As we were all reminded earlier this season when the Mets seemingly had an abundance of starting pitching, you can never -- EVER, EVER, EVER -- have enough rotation inventory. These things tend to work themselves out, many times in ways that mean more work for David Stearns and his peers running the various baseball operations departments across the majors.
Which brings us to Zac Gallen, once an ace-level starter who is now struggling in a down year that also happens to be a contract year. The Arizona righty has an attractive pedigree -- three top-10 finishes in the NL Cy Young voting, including third in 2023. But this season hasn’t been as sparkling as a free-agent-to-be would like.
If the Diamondbacks -- who have so many attractive players on expiring contracts that they may have the biggest impact on what kind of trade deadline we see -- make Gallen available, should New York try for him?
Let’s peek at the pros and cons of the Mets potentially making a deal for Gallen.
Pros
The Mets' rotation might be at its peak right now with Sean Manaea, Kodai Senga and Frankie Montas back from injuries. And even with those guys missing significant time, the Mets had the fourth-best rotation ERA (3.38) in baseball going into the All-Star break. But it’s a lesson in the fragility of pitching in that, while that trio has come off the injured list, Griffin Canning, Tylor Megill and Paul Blackburn have gone on it.
Plus, Mets starters have a 5.16 ERA since June 13, the second-worst mark over that span.
Adding a starter of Gallen’s caliber would alleviate some concerns going forward, especially if there are more health issues looming. Only four teams get fewer innings per start than the Mets, and an extra, talented arm could help. Clay Holmes’ workload likely will need to be managed going forward, and the Mets have sought a six-man contingent in the past, in part to help Senga.
And pumping a Cy Young-level starter through the Mets' pitching program seems intriguing, no?
Gallen, who turns 30 on Aug. 3, does not have great numbers this year -- more on that in the category below -- but he recently had back-to-back wins over the Giants and Padres, in which he allowed one earned run in 13 innings while allowing only 10 hits, walking one and striking out 19. In May, he overwhelmed the Mets in consecutive starts, giving up two runs and four hits in 13 innings.
That’s more like his old self.
And that is really, really good. In 2022, he went 12-4 with a 2.54 ERA and led MLB by allowing just 5.9 hits per nine innings. The next season, when he was third in the NL Cy Young vote, Gallen was 17-9 with a 3.47 ERA, throwing 210 innings. He also won two playoff games in Arizona’s run to a National League pennant. He was 14-6 with a 3.65 ERA last year.
Going into this season, Gallen was on the cusp of a massive free-agent payday. He’s got a second half and -- if he plays for a team that gets into the playoffs -- an October to take advantage. That kind of carrot could make him an important deadline pickup.
May 28, 2025; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Zac Gallen reacts in the fifth inning against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Chase Field. / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Cons
At the break, Gallen, who was born in New Jersey and went to high school outside Philadelphia, was 7-10 with a 5.40 ERA in 20 starts. He’s already given up 21 home runs, one shy of his career worst, and his HR/9 (1.6) would be the worst of his career over a full season. His K/9 and hits per nine are at career-worst levels, too, and his BB/9 would be his worst since 2021.
He’s given up some loud contact -- he’s already allowed six homers on his knuckle-curve, the most in a single season. That pitch is generally the one he throws second-most to his four-seamer. There are bloated slugging percentages against some of his secondary offerings, including his slider and cutter, though the expected slug numbers against those are lower. And, Gallen has received good surface results despite loud contact in past seasons.
As always, beware of market inflation. Adding a big-name starter is a great way for a team to get its fanbase torqued up for October, and there’s always a league-wide need for pitching. So other contenders will be prowling around Gallen, despite his eh season. That could mean he’ll be prospect pricey, even in a down season.
Speaking of prospects, we’ve heard so much about the near-ready arms in the Mets' system. Does one of those provide the necessary rotation depth? Perhaps. There’s less big-league resume in that option, but it also doesn’t hurt the farm.
Verdict
Gallen is used to being part of intriguing trades – he went from the Cardinals to the Marlins with Sandy Alcantara in the five-player deal for Marcell Ozuna before the 2018 season, and Miami swapped him to Arizona for Jazz Chisholm Jr. at the 2019 deadline.
Does it happen again now? Maybe. Arizona went into the break just 5.5 games out of a playoff spot. While they may sell, a lot of their players are the ones who took them to the Fall Classic not long ago. Do they believe a surge is coming? The trade market can’t wait to find out.
Taking a swing this big for pitching doesn’t exactly match Stearns’ track record since he took over the Mets' baseball operations. Stearns has added lesser names -- some of whom, obviously, have soared. This one might be worth doing, especially with all the workload uncertainty in the Mets' rotation. Depth, something the Mets have preached throughout this season, has already been an enormous factor in their year.
And, if Arizona really wheels and deals, should the Mets attempt a major haul and try to add third baseman Eugenio Suarez to power up the lineup beyond the so-called “Fab Four?” The prospect huggers won’t like it, but maybe a shiny trophy would distract them.
Rory McIlroy is out and about, soundtracked by the usual ozone-layer-bothering roars. An iron straight down the middle. An approach straight down the middle and over the flag. He’ll have a 20-foot putt coming back for birdie. Matt Fitzpatrick has some work to do, though, having dispatched his tee shot into the rough down the left, then sent a flyer over the back of the green. Meanwhile Hideki Matsuyama’s eagle putt at 12 shaves the hole, Tyrrell Hatton’s bunkered tee shot at 2 leads to bogey, and here’s how the top of the leaderboard looks right now.
-14: Scheffler
-10: Li
-9: Fitzpatrick
-8: Matsuyama (12), R Hojgaard (3), Hatton (2), English (1), Gotterup (1), McIlroy
-7: DeChambeau (13), Fleetwood (11), Hall (7), MacIntyre (3), Henley (3), Schauffele (2)
The Anaheim Ducks have missed the playoffs every year since 2017-18 and in doing so, have drafted in the top ten for seven consecutive seasons and procured one of the NHL’s deepest and most potent prospect pools.
Despite several young players having graduated and become full-time NHLers, such as Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier, Mason McTavish, Pavel Mintyukov, and Olen Zellweger, the Ducks still have an impressive pipeline of potential impact and depth prospects yet to make the jump.
For this exercise, only players who haven’t lost rookie status are eligible for a ranking, and to be clear, these are my (Patrick Present) subjective rankings.
Honorable Mentions: Yegor Sidorov, Herman Traff, Tarin Smith, Lasse Boelius, Calle Clang
10. Nathan Gaucher, 21, C, San Diego Gulls (AHL)
It was a difficult decision to cut Sidorov from the list and rank Gaucher in the tenth spot. Ultimately, it came down to path and projectability. Based on his position demand, brand of hockey, and draft pedigree. It’s a near-certainty that Gaucher will play NHL games, likely well over 100, in his career, beginning within the next couple of seasons. Though having shown more electricity and offensive upside to this point in their careers, the same cannot be said for Sidorov.
Gaucher is a straight-line, tenacious, and defensively detailed right-shot center who plays a heavy brand and is difficult to play against on a shift-by-shift basis. He’s an explosive skater, which he uses to cover a great amount of ice to eliminate time and space, whether that’s in defensive zone coverage, on the backcheck in the neutral zone, or on the forecheck in the offensive zone.
He utilizes his 6-foot-3, 207-pound frame to establish body position, protect pucks, and bully his way to the front of the opposing crease.
The Ducks selected Gaucher (22nd overall in 2022) in the first round of the 2022 draft, Pat Verbeek’s first draft as GM of the franchise, with a pick acquired in the trade of Hampus Lindholm to the Boston Bruins at the 2022 trade deadline.
Before his pro career, and in his four seasons playing in the CHL for the Quebec Remparts of the QMJHL, he scored 158 points (80-78=158) in 199 regular season games and added 29 (11-18=29) in 36 playoff games, en route to QMJHL and Memorial Cup championships in 2023.
He won two World Junior Championship gold medals with Canada in 2022 and 2023, playing a shutdown, checking role and totaling six points (2-4=6) in 14 games between the two tournaments.
Offense has not been easy to come by since beginning his professional career in 2023-24 as a member of the San Diego Gulls, as he’s only produced 44 points (18-26=44) in 128 AHL games over the last two seasons. He is, however, making his trademark 200-foot impact on every game, and he quickly found his “B-game” when failing to find scoresheets.
“Nathan has had to deal with a couple of really important injuries that have set him back a little bit since we drafted him. And unfortunately, he hurt himself right before camp, so it took him a while to get going this year because of that,” Ducks assistant general manager and director of amateur scouting Martin Madden told The Hockey News: Anaheim Ducks, when asked about Gaucher’s progression. “And then, unfortunately, ended the season with injury as well.
“But he grew a lot in terms of his confidence with the puck, offensively. Overall, his offensive play grew as he gained confidence, establishing himself as a hard player to play against on the defensive side. They were using him in a checking role, PK. But as the season went on, his skating got better and better, and I think that helped with time and space, so he had more confidence in his hands. He had more confidence to look around and make plays.”
The offense was coming around for Gaucher toward the final stretch of the 2024-25 season, as he scored 11 points (5-6=11) in his final 12 games before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury.
Unfortunately, Gaucher bookended his 2024-25 campaign with injuries: first, he missed a significant percentage of rookie and training camps with a lower body injury, and then sustained the aforementioned shoulder injury to end his season, requiring surgery.
He was given an estimated recovery time of 4-6 months after sustaining the injury in March and is expected to be fully healthy by rookie and training camps in September.
It’s plausible to believe Gaucher will rediscover what made him offensively successful at the end of last season, compound it with his defensive prowess, and hit the ground running in 2025-26, which will be his third season in the AHL. If he can continue to polish his two-way game and explore the reaches of his offensive capabilities, he will likely be playing NHL games within the next two seasons.
Ahead of next week’s World
Junior Summer Challenge in Minnesota, a series of games involving
four U-20 teams is taking place in Vierumäki,
Finland
on Sunday and Monday. Two teams from Finland – essentially an
A-team and a B-team – will host the Czech and Swiss national junior
teams once each.
Most
of the A-team has already been drafted by NHL teams, including
forwards Kosta Helenius and Emil Hemming, who were first-round picks
in 2024 and have both already been signed
by the Buffalo Sabres and Dallas
Stars, respectively. Both played for Finland in last year's World Juniors and are locks to make it again.
Presumably,
the Finns will take the players that impress them the most from these
two games to Minnesota, with the A-team presumably supplying most or
all of the squad.
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July 14 was the three year anniversary of Johnny Gaudreau signing with Columbus.
Bryce Harper has been a lot of things in his career.
Number one pick. Rookie of the Year. All-Star. MVP. NLCS MVP.
One thing Harper typically hasn’t been is overshadowed. But that’s been the case this weekend at Citizens Bank Park.
Harper has three home runs in the first two games of this series against the Angels.
But Kyle Schwarber, fresh off his All-Star Game heroics, has been the headliner. Schwarber homered on his first swing of Friday’s series opener and provided a game-changing grand slam on Saturday.
Meanwhile Harper has quietly gone about his business — a .500 batting average and 11 extra base hits (four home runs and seven doubles) in his last six games. His season numbers are on the rise. He’s hitting .272 with 13 home runs, 41 RBI and a .881 OPS.
“Just got to keep it rolling,” Harper said following Saturday’s 9-5 win. “Just hitting the pitches over the zone and letting the ones that aren’t go by. Doing damage on any pitches in the zone that I can. Just trying to simplify and stay right there.”
Schwarber appreciates the protection that Harper is providing for him in the lineup.
“He’s having great quality at-bats right now,” Schwarber said. “When that guy steps to the plate you just always feel like he’s going to do something dangerous, special, whatever it is. The way he’s swinging the bat right now, that’s prime Bryce. And when you can get on base ahead of him or if I don’t do a job, if I’m hitting in front of him, you have all the confidence in the world that he’s going to get it done.”
Harper has repeatedly referred to himself as one of the best players in baseball during this hot streak.
He gets no argument from his manager.
“He is one of the best players in the game,” Rob Thomson said Sunday morning. “So he’s telling the truth.”
Castellanos chipping in
Nick Castellanos’ contributions to Saturday’s victory were lost in the shuffle. He made a sliding catch with the bases loaded and two outs in the fourth inning to bail Taijuan Walker out of further trouble.
What was a 3-1 Angels lead at the time could have easily been 5-1 or 6-1 if Castellanos fails to make that play.
He also went 2-for-5 at the plate and collected his 900th career RBI on a first-inning single. Castellanos is just the 15th active player to reach the 900 RBI milestone.
“900 RBI is nothing to laugh at,” Thomson said. “It’s really impressive. It’s a really good career.”
Castellanos is hitting .273 with a .751 OPS in 97 games this season. His 101 hits are second on the team behind Trea Turner. His 52 RBI trail only Kyle Schwarber.
“Nick, as we all know, is a little bit streaky,” Thomson said. “But when he gets hot, he gets really hot. And when he’s using right center field as his target, he’s really good. I think he’s done a much better job this year controlling the strike zone.”
Kent Hughes has had an active Summer so far. Before the draft, he acquired Noah Dobson from the New York Islanders to address one of the Montreal Canadiens’ pressing needs. While some were arguing that Logan Mailloux could fill the void left by David Savard’s retirement, the GM wanted a proven commodity to strengthen his lineup. Additionally, his decision to trade Mailloux might have already been made. The young defenseman was sacrificed to acquire some help up front in Zachary Bolduc from the St. Louis Blues, a 22-year-old with scoring upside.
The one question that remains is who will skate on the second line alongside Ivan Demidov. Plenty of teams were in the market this offseason for a top-six center, and all signs seem to point toward an internal solution. While the most obvious one seems to be giving yet another audition to Kirby Dach, The Sick Podcast collaborator Grant McCagg suggests it could be an idea to give Oliver Kapanen a look.
I can see the logic in that suggestion, after all, Kapanen impressed at training camp last season. It’s worth noting, however, that he had a bit of a head start. The then 20-year-old had already been through Timra IK’s training camp in the Swedish league, and he had already started playing games with them, which gave him a bit of an advantage.
As we got deeper into the camp, that advantage faded, and once the competition improved in preseason games with more real NHL skaters, it became harder for the youngster. He made the team out of camp, but after 12 games, the organization decided that he wasn’t quite ready and sent him back to Sweden since he still had a contract with Timra, which prevented him from being sent down to the AHL.
Will it be different this season? Has he made enough progress to be ready not only to play a regular role in the NHL but also to do so alongside Demidov, who will start his NHL career facing huge expectations? The Russian wonder had already shown that he can cut it in the best league in the world, but can he do that with a center that’s only a couple of years older than himself and only has 18 regular-season games under his belt?
The answer will depend on how much progress Kapanen made in Timra, playing big minutes and being used in all situations by coach Olli Jokinen. The former NHL player made it a mission to give the youngster plenty of experience, ensuring his transition to the NHL would be as smooth as possible.
McCagg also believes that the newly acquired Bolduc would be a good option to complete the line. The right winger has shown he has some scoring skills, putting up 36 points in 72 games in St. Louis, but 12 of those points came on the power play. The 22-year-old spent an average of 1:18 on the power play per game and averaged 12:49 of ice time in all situations. Would he be ready to get that much ice time? Furthermore, Demidov is a right winger as well, so one of the two would be playing on his offside. The idea is worth exploring, and that’s what training camp is about. There’s no doubt that Martin St-Louis will be making adjustments in the preseason; he will have no other choice, as the departures of Christian Dvorak and Joel Armia mean there’s no status quo heading into the season.
Grant McCagg breaks down Bolduc's goals this past season.
McCagg further suggests that Dach should be used with Patrik Laine and Alex Newhook. The three did spend some time together last year, and while they didn’t exactly hit it off, it wasn’t as bad a combination as the one formed with Laine, Dach, and Juraj Slafkovsky, which was in dire need of speed. That combination was painful to watch as it lacked dynamism and speed. Adding Newhook instead of Slafkovsky fixes the speed issue, but it creates a line that lacks a player to retrieve pucks in the deep zone.
It’s not an issue if the Canadiens enter the zone in possession rather than dumping the puck in, though. Newhook has demonstrated that he can be in charge of zone entries on the power play, primarily relying on his speed. However, once in the zone, he struggled to find options to keep the play going, even with the man-advantage. At even strength, could Dach and Laine get there in time to offer a viable option? It’s far from a foregone conclusion.
However, both Laine and Dach will be playing out the last year of their contracts, and they’ll have a lot to play for, starting with a contract extension or the value to hit the market as a UFA in Laine’s case. Will that be enough incentive for the Finn to play a more complete game? It remains to be seen, as he has yet to demonstrate that he can play that kind of game either with the Winnipeg Jets or the Columbus Blue Jackets.
At the end of the season, Laine’s then fiancée and now wife Jordan Leigh took to Instagram and thanked Montreal for making him love the game again. Does he love it enough to turn up his efforts a notch? Time will tell, but if a line formed by him, Dach, and Newhook is to succeed, he will have to.
Photo credit: David Kirouac-Imagn Images
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The unofficial second half of the 2025 MLB season has not been kind to the Giants thus far.
After losing consecutive games against the rival Los Angeles Dodgers before the MLB All-Star break, San Francisco kicked off its stretch run with a frustrating series north of the border against the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Giants dropped the first two games of the three-game series on Friday and Saturday, then sent left-handed pitcher Robbie Ray (L, 4 1/3 IP, 5 H, 5 ER, 5 BB, 3 K) to the mound on Sunday as San Francisco looked to avoid a series sweep.
However, an uncharacteristic outing from the consistently solid Ray and a disastrous sixth inning ultimately proved to be too much for the Giants’ offense to overcome.
The Giants got the scoring started in the top of the first inning on Heliot Ramos’ RBI single that scored Jung Hoo Lee from second base and gave San Francisco an early 1-0 lead.
Toronto then responded with a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. solo home run in the bottom of the first to tie the game before Bo Bichette extended the Blue Jays’ lead to 3-1 in the bottom of the third with a two-run double over the head of Ramos, who appeared to misplay the ball, in left field.
Trailing 3-1 in the top of the fifth inning, Giants backup catcher Andrew Knizner roped an RBI single to center field that scored Matt Chapman and trimmed San Francisco’s deficit to one run.
Unfortunately for the Giants, the bottom half of the inning proved to be the difference in the game.
Ray surrendered a solo home run to George Springer to lead off the inning, before Bichette doubled with one out. Spencer Bivens then replaced Ray and surrendered an RBI single to Alejandro Kirk, extending Toronto’s lead to 5-2.
Down by five, the Giants then staged a comeback attempt in the top of the sixth, kickstarted by Chapman’s two-run home run that trimmed the deficit to 7-4 with two outs. Dominic Smith then doubled and Brett Wisely singled him home to cut Toronto’s lead to two, before Lee singled to center two batters later and scored Wisely from second to trim the Blue Jays’ lead to 7-6.
Toronto tacked on an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth after Springer doubled with two outs and scored on Guerrero Jr.’s RBI single to left field, extending the Blue Jays’ lead to 8-6.
The Giants’ offense went down quietly over the final three frames to cap off their fifth consecutive loss.
The unofficial second half of the 2025 MLB season has not been kind to the Giants thus far.
After losing consecutive games against the rival Los Angeles Dodgers before the All-Star break, San Francisco kicked off its stretch run with a frustrating series north of the border against the Toronto Blue Jays.
After dropping the first two games of the three-game series on Friday and Saturday, the Giants sent left-handed pitcher Robbie Ray (L, 4 1/3 IP, 5 H, 5 ER, 5 BB, 3 K) to the mound on Sunday as San Francisco looked to avoid a series sweep.
However, an uncharacteristic outing from the consistently solid Ray and a disastrous sixth inning, ultimately proved to be too much for the Giants’ offense to overcome.
The Giants got the scoring started in the top of the first inning on Heliot Ramos’ RBI single that scored Jung Hoo Lee from second base and gave San Francisco an early 1-0 lead.
Toronto then responded with a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. solo home run in the bottom of the first to tie the game before Bo Bichette extended the Blue Jays’ lead to 3-1 in the bottom of the third with a two-run double over the head of Ramos, who appeared to misplay the ball, in left field.
Trailing 3-1 in the top of the fifth inning, Giants backup catcher Andrew Knizner roped an RBI single to center field that scored Matt Chapman and trimmed San Francisco’s deficit to one run.
Unfortunately for the Giants, the bottom half of the inning proved to be the difference in the game.
Ray surrendered a solo home run to George Springer to lead off the inning, before Bichette doubled with one out. Spencer Bivens then replaced Ray and surrendered an RBI single to Alejandro Kirk, extending Toronto’s lead to 5-2.
Down by five, the Giants then staged a comeback attempt in the top of the sixth, kickstarted by Chapman’s two-run home run that trimmed the deficit to 7-4 with two outs. Dominic Smith then doubled and Brett Wisely singled him home to cut Toronto’s lead to two, before Lee singled to center two batters later and scored Wisely from second to trim the Blue Jays’ lead to 7-6.
Toronto tacked on an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth after Springer doubled with two outs and scored on Guerrero Jr.’s RBI single to left field, extending the Blue Jays’ lead to 8-6.
The Giants’ offense went down quietly over the final three frames to cap off their fifth consecutive loss.
The Philadelphia Flyers are not emblems of prospect development nor goalie development, but they are positioned to turn the page on that chapter.
For my returning readers, especially over the years, welcome back to what is effectively a daily column.
You know, the "Bailey's Daily" kind of thing. Conversational, relevant, informative, all of that stuff.
It can be hard to reliably produce content this late in the summer, but we here at The Hockey News are putting a bigger focus on community-building, so I thought it might be a good time for a daily "wrap" of sorts.
Let's see how it goes!
You can't talk Flyers this summer without talking Flyers prospects, which was at least somewhat to be expected.
GM Danny Briere and Co. haven't gone out and made too many big additions, bar Trevor Zegras, so it would seem that this regime is putting most of their eggs in the baskets of player development.
I didn't love every pick they made in the 2025 NHL Draft, but they ultimately came away with more talent than most other teams.
But, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? Prospect rankings can be highly subjective at times.
Top Flyers goalie prospect Egor Zavragin barely made a recent top-20 list of NHL-drafted goalie prospects, so, like always, the only thing that matters is what happens on the ice.
Speaking of goalies and prospects, the Anaheim Ducks (I know, I know) might be one place to look to see how it's done.
De facto starting goalie Lukas Dostal, 25, just signed a five-year, $32.5 million ($6.5 million AAV) contract with the Ducks, but it didn't just happen for him overnight.
Let's analyze his path:
In 2020-21, Dostal played 35 games combined between Ilves in Liiga and the AHL San Diego Gulls.
The following year, Dostal played 40 games for the Gulls as the full-time starter and snuck his way into four NHL games for the Ducks.
In 2022-23, the Czech netminder played 19 NHL games and 34 AHL games. By 2023-24, Dostal was a full-time NHLer, and this year, Dostal played 54 games and permanently usurped the starting goalie position from the now-traded John Gibson.
So, when you look at the Flyers and Sam Ersson, who's also 25, you have a 2021-22 season when he played five games for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.
Ersson played 12 games for the Flyers in 2022-23 but otherwise played 42 AHL games down in Allentown.
Then, with the loss of Carter Hart and the failure to address the backup goalie position, Ersson played 98 NHL games in the last two seasons combined.
This dish didn't spend a lot of time in the oven, and the Flyers are now actively deciding whether to re-fire it or throw it away and start anew.
The Flyers somehow haven't drafted a goalie in either of the last two drafts, leaving them with Ersson, Aleksei Kolosov, Carson Bjarnason, and Zavragin as the four young-ish goalie prospects with conceivable NHL upside.
They may want to get this one right if they aren't going to continue adding to the pool, because developing this position can take upwards of five years most of the time.
"I threw one pitch and boom, the ligament exploded," Tommy John said of the injury that led to the surgery that today bears his name and left him with a scar on his left arm, above in 2018. (Stan Grossfeld / Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Tommy John surgery was never supposed to go this far.
It was once a cross-your-fingers-and-pray fix for a career-ending injury. Now, MLB teams cycle through as many as 40-plus pitchers a year, knowing that surgery is a phone call away.
Just ask John himself, a left-hander who never threw all that hard, only reaching the mid-80s on his sinking fastball. The soft-throwing lefty was having his best year as a Dodgers starting pitcher in 1974.
He didn’t have the strikeout acumen of teammate Andy Messersmith, or the ace makeup of future Hall of Famer Don Sutton. But what John did have was consistency. John consistently pitched late into games, and sent opposing hitters back to the dugout without reaching first base.
“The game of baseball is 27 outs,” said John, now 82. “It wasn’t about throwing hard. It’s, how do I get you out?”
He was the first to go under the knife. The first to lead pitchers through a dangerous cycle of throwing as hard as possible, knowing the safeguard is surgery.
“I threw one pitch and boom, the ligament exploded,” John said.
John’s arm injury left a sensation akin to what an amputee feels after losing a limb. In 1978, he told Sports Illustrated, “It felt as if I had left my arm someplace else.” He didn’t feel pain. He felt loss. His left arm was his career. It was the direct cause for his toeing the Dodger Stadium mound in the first place. Then, John went on to pitch another 15 years in MLB.
It’s the same loss that Hall of Fame Dodgers left-hander Sandy Koufax felt when he retired at age 30 after numerous arm injuries, which could have likely been fixed if current elbow and shoulder surgeries had existed in 1966.
It’s the same loss that Texas Rangers team physician Keith Meister sees walking daily into his office.
Today, Meister can view MRI scans of elbow tears and can tell pitchers where and how they hold the baseball. The tear patterns are emblematic of the pitches being thrown in the first place. The solution — Tommy John surgery, a once-revolutionary elbow operation — replaces a torn or partially damaged ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow with a tendon from somewhere else in the body. The operation is no quick fix. It requires a 13- to 14-month recovery period, although Meister said some pitchers may require just 12 months — and some up to 18.
Meister, who is currently tallying data and researching the issue, wants to be part of the change. Midway through an October phone interview, he bluntly stopped in his tracks and asked a question.
“What is the average length of a major-league career for a major-league pitcher?” he said.
Meister explained that the average career for an MLB pitcher is just 2.6 years. Along with numerous other interviewees, he compared the epidemic to another sport’s longevity problem: the National Football League running back.
“People say to me, ‘Well, that sounds like a running back in football,’” Meister said. “Think about potentially the money that gets saved with not having to even get to arbitration, as long as organizations feel like they can just recycle and, you know, next man up, right?”
Orthopedic surgeon Keith Meister, in his TMI Sports Medicine & Orthopedic Surgery office in Arlington, Texas, in 2024, has advocated for changes to mitigate pitching injuries. (Tom Fox / The Dallas Morning News)
Financial ramifications play close to home between pitchers and running backs as well. Lower durability and impact have led to decreasing running-back salaries. If pitchers continue to have shorter careers, as Meister puts it, MLB franchises might be happy to cycle through minimum-salary pitchers instead of shelling out large salaries for players who remain on the injured list rather than in the bullpen.
The Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays have shuffled through pitchers at league extremes over the last five years. In the modern era — since 1901 — only the Rays and Dodgers have used more than 38 pitchers in a season three times each. Tampa used 40-plus pitchers each year from 2021 to 2023.
Last year, the Dodgers used 40 pitchers. Only the Miami Marlins tasked more with 45.
The Dodgers have already used 35 pitchers this season, second-most in baseball. The Rays tallied just 30 in 2024 and have dispatched just 23 on the mound so far this season. What gives?
Meister says the Rays may have changed their pitcher philosophy. Early proponents of sweepers and other high-movement pitches, the Rays now rank near the bottom of the league (29th with just 284 thrown) in sweeper usage entering Saturday's action, according to Baseball Savant. Two years ago, the Rays threw the seventh most.
Tampa is rising to the top of MLB in two-seam fastball usage, Meister said, a pitch he says creates potentially much less stress on the elbow. Their starting pitchers are second in baseball in the number of innings, and they’ve used just six starting pitchers all season.
“It’s equated to endurance for their pitchers, because you know why? They're healthy, they're able to pitch, they're able to post and they're able to go deeper into games,” Meister said. “Maybe teams will see this and they'll be like, ‘Wait a minute, look what these guys won with. Look how they won. We don't need to do all this crap anymore.’”
The Dodgers, on the other hand, rank ninth in sweeper usage (1,280 thrown through Friday) and have used 16 starting pitchers (14 in traditional starting roles). Meanwhile, their starting pitchers have compiled the fewest innings in MLB. Rob Hill, the Dodgers’ director of pitching, began his career at Driveline Baseball. The Dodgers hired him in 2020. Since then, the franchise has churned out top pitching prospect after top pitching prospect, many of whom throw devastating sweepers and change-ups.
As of Saturday, the Dodgers have 10 pitchers on the injured list, six of whom underwent an elbow or shoulder operation — and since 2021, the team leads MLB in injury list stints for pitchers.
“There are only probably two teams in baseball that can just sit there and say, ‘Well, if I get 15 to 20 starts out of my starting pitchers, it doesn't matter, because I'll replace them with somebody else I can buy,’” Meister said. “That’s the Yankees and the Dodgers.”
He continued: “Everybody else, they've got to figure out, wait a minute, this isn't working, and we need to preserve our commodity, our pitchers.”
Outside of organizational strategy changes, like the Rays have made, Meister has expressed rule changes to MLB. He’s suggested rethinking how the foul ball works or toying with the pitch clock to give a slightly longer break to pitchers. He said pitchers don’t get a break on the field the same way hitters do in the batter’s box.
“Part of the problem here is that a hitter has an ability to step out of the box and take a timeout,” Meister said. “He has to go cover a foul ball and run over to first base and run back to the mound. He should have an opportunity take a break and take a blow.”
Meister hopes to discuss reintroducing “tack” — a banned sticky substance that helps a pitcher’s grip on the ball — to the rulebook, something that pitchers such as Max Scherzer and Tyler Glasnow have called a factor in injuries. Meister has fellow leading experts on his side too.
“Myself and Dr. [Neal] ElAttrache are very good friends, and we talk at length about this,” said Meister.
Meister explained that the lack of stickiness on the baseball causes pitchers to squeeze the ball as hard as possible. The “death grip on the ball,” Meister said, causes the muscles on the inner side of the elbow to contract in the arm and then extend when the ball is released. The extension of the inner elbow muscles is called an eccentric load, which can create injury patterns.
The harder the grip, the more violent the eccentric load becomes when a sweeper pitch, for example, is thrown, he said.
“Just let guys use a little bit of pine tar on their fingertips,” Meister said, adding that the pitchers already have to adjust to an inconsistent baseball, one that changes from season to season. “Not, put it on the baseball, not glob the baseball with it, but put a little pine tar on their fingertips and give them a little better adherence to the baseball.”
According to the New Yorker, MLB is exploring heavier or larger baseballs to slow pitchers’ arm movements, potentially reducing strain on the UCL during maximum-effort pitches.
Meister, however, said there does not seem to be a sense of urgency to fix the game, with a years-long process to make any fixes.
In short, Meister is ready to try anything.
For a man who has made a career off baseball players nervously sitting in his office waiting room, awaiting news that could alter their careers forever, Meister wants MLB to help him stop players from ever scheduling that first appointment.
“To me, it’s not about the surgery any more as much as it is, what can we do to prevent, and what can we do to alter, the approach that the game now takes?” Meister said.
San Diego Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove exits during the fourth inning of Game 2 of an NL Wild Card Series game against the Atlanta Braves last October. A few days later, it was revealed he would need Tommy John surgery. (Gregory Bull / Associated Press)
Keith Meister is worried. The 63-year-old orthopedic surgeon feels as if he’s screaming into a void, his expert opinion falling on deaf ears.
Meister, whose slight Southern twang sweeps into conversation through his 20-plus-year career in the Lone Star State as the Texas Rangers’ team physician, is a leading voice in baseball’s pitching-injury epidemic. Meister wants the sport to err on the side of caution and create change to save pitchers’ arms. The trend, Meister says, stems from the industry-wide push to increase speed, spin and break at all costs.
While MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Assn. bicker about what’s causing the problem and how to solve it, the doctor provides his perspective. He just wants the 17-year-old high schooler, the 23-year-old college pitcher, and the 32-year-old MLB veteran to stop showing up at his office.
“It’s not going to change at the lower levels until it changes at the highest level,” Meister said in a phone interview. “I don't see a motivation within Major League Baseball to change anything that would enhance the level of safety.”
MLB asked Meister to sit on a committee examining the growth in pitcher injuries about 18 months ago, he said. Meister says the committee never met. (MLB did not respond to a request for comment about the committee.)
Injury is among the biggest risks for youth pitchers looking for the all-too-sought-after faster fastball. Their quest to emulate their heroes, such as hard-throwing veteran starters and stars Justin Verlander and Jacob deGrom, has caused them to need the same surgeries as the pros.
Trickling down, it's the teenager, the budding pitching prospect desperate to land his Division I scholarship, who is hurt the most. MLB teams wave around multimillion-dollar signing bonuses for the MLB Draft. Those same pitchers hurt their elbows after pushing their abilities to the extreme, calling into action surgeons such as Meister.
“It’s an even bigger problem than it appears,” said David Vaught, a baseball historian, author and history professor at Texas A&M. “This goes back into high school or before that, this notion that you throw as hard as possible. … It's so embedded, embedded in the baseball society.”
Tommy John surgery saves careers. But as pitchers across baseball push for higher velocity, more hurlers are going under the knife — for a first time, a second time and in some instances, a third or fourth procedure.
MLB pitching velocity steadily rose from 2008 to 2023, with average fastball velocity going from 91.9 mph to 94.2. According to Meister, the total number of elbow ligament surgeries in professional baseball in 2023 was greater than in the 1990s altogether. A 2015 study revealed 56.8% of Tommy John surgeries are for athletes in the 15- to 19-year-old age range.
“It's like the soldiers on the front lines — they come into the tent with bullet wounds,” Meister said. “You take the bullets out, you patch them back up and you send them back out there to get shot up again.”
"It's like the soldiers on the front lines — they come into the tent with bullet wounds," Orthopedic surgeon Keith Meister said about performing Tommy John surgeries. "You take the bullets out, you patch them back up and you send them back out there to get shot up again." (Tom Fox / The Dallas Morning News)
MLB released a report on pitcher injuries in December 2024. The much-anticipated study concluded that increased pitching velocity, “optimizing stuff” — which MLB defines as movement characteristics of pitches (spin, vertical movement and horizontal movement) — and pitchers using maximum effort were the “most significant” causes of the increase in arm injuries.
Meister was interviewed for the report. He knew all that years ago. He was yelling from the proverbial rooftop as MLB took more than a year (the league commissioned the study in 2023) to conclude what the doctor considered basic knowledge.
“Nothing there that hadn't been talked about before, and no suggestion for what needs to be changed,” Meister said to The Times Wednesday.
Although pitching development labs such as Driveline Baseball and Tread Athletics provide fresh ideas, Meister said he does not entirely blame them for the epidemic.
It’s basic economics. There’s a demand for throwing harder and the industry is filling the void.
However, Meister sees the dramatic increase in velocity for youth pitchers, such as a 10-mph boost in velocity within six months, as dangerous.
“That's called child abuse,” Meister said. “The body can't accommodate. It just can't. It's like taking a Corolla and dropping a Ferrari engine in it and saying, ‘Go ahead and drive that car, take it on the track, put the gas pedal to the metal and ask for that car to hold itself together.’ It's impossible.”
On the other end of the arm-injury epidemic is the player lying on his back, humming along to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” as an air-cast-like device engulfs his arm, pressurizing the forearm and elbow.
The noise of the giant arm sleeve fills the room of Beimel Elite Athletics, a baseball training lab based in Torrance — owned by former MLB pitcher Joe Beimel. It generates Darth Vader-like noises, compressing up and down with a Krissshhhh Hhhwoooo… Krissshhhh Hhhwoooo.
Greg Dukeman, a Beimel Elite Athletics pitching coach whose 6-foot-8 frame towers over everyone in the facility, quipped that the elbow of the pitcher undergoing treatment was “barking.”
For professional and youth players alike, this technology, along with red-light therapy — a non-intrusive light treatment that increases cellular processes to heal tissue — and periodic ice baths, is just one example of how Beimel attempts to treat athletes as they tax their bodies, hoping to heal micro-tears in the arm without surgical intervention.
With little to no research publicly available on how high-velocity-and-movement training methods are hurting or — albeit highly unlikely — helping pitchers’ elbows and shoulders, Meister said, it’s often free rein with little — if any — guardrails.
Josh Mitchell, director of player development at Beimel’s Torrance lab, said that’s not exactly the case in their baseball performance program. Beimel will only work with youth athletes who are ready to take the next step, he said.
“You got the 9- and 10-year-olds, they're not ready yet,” Mitchell said. “The 13- and 14-year-olds, before they graduate out of the youth and into our elite program, we'll introduce the [velocity] training because they're going to get it way more in that next phase.”
Beimel uses motion capture to provide pitching feedback, and uses health technology that coincides with its athletes having to self-report daily to track overexertion and determine how best to use their bodies.
Their goal is to provide as much support to their athletes as possible, using their facilities as a gym, baseball lab and pseudo health clinic.
Joe Beimel pitched for eight teams, including the Dodgers, over the course of a 13-year career. (Ted S. Warren / Associated Press)
Mitchell knows the pleasure and pain of modern-day pitching development. The Ridgway, Pa., native’s professional career was waning at the Single-A level before the Minnesota Twins acquired him in the minor league portion of the Rule 5 Draft.
The Twins, Mitchell said, embraced the cutting-edge technique of pitching velocity, seeing improvements across the board as he reached the Double-A level for the first time in his career in 2021. But Mitchell, whose bushy beard and joking personality complement a perpetually smiling visage, turned serious when explaining the end of his career.
“I'm gonna do what I know is gonna help me get bigger, stronger, faster,” said Mitchell, who jumped from throwing around 90 miles per hour to reaching as high as 98 mph on the radar gun. “And I did — to my arm's expense, though.”
Mitchell underwent two Tommy John surgeries in less than a year and a half.
Mitchell became the wounded soldier that Meister so passionately recounted. Now, partially because of advanced training methods, youth athletes are more likely to visit that proverbial medic's tent.
“There's a saying around [young] baseball players that if you're not throwing like, over 80 miles per hour and you're not risking Tommy John, you're not throwing hard enough,” said Daniel Acevedo, an orthopedic surgeon based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., who mostly sees youth-level athletes.
In MLB’s report, an independent pitching development coach, who was unnamed, blamed “baseball society” for creating a velocity obsession. That velocity obsession has become a career route, an industry, a success story for baseball development companies across the country.
Driveline focuses on the never-ending “how” of baseball development. How can the pitcher throw harder, with more break, or spin? And it’s not just the pitchers. How can the hitter change his swing pattern to hit the ball farther and faster? Since then, baseball players from across levels have flocked to Driveline’s facilities and those like it to learn how to improve and level up.
“Maybe five or six years ago, if you throw 90-plus, you have a shot to play beyond college,” said Dylan Gargas, Arizona pitching coordinator for Driveline Baseball. “Now that barrier to entry just keeps getting higher and higher because guys throw harder.”
MLB players have even ditched their clubs midseason in hopes to unlock something to improve their pitching repertoire. Boston Red Sox right-handed pitcher Walker Buehler left the Dodgers last season to test himself at the Cressey Sports Performance training center near Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., before returning to eventually pitch the final out of the 2024 World Series.
Driveline is not alone.
Ben Brewster, co-founder of Tread Athletics, another baseball development company based in North Carolina, said high-school-aged players have been attracted to his performance facility because they see the results that MLB players and teammates achieve after continued training sessions.
Tread Athletics claims to have a role in more than 250 combined MLB draft picks or free agent signings, and says it has helped more than 1,000 high school players earn college opportunities.
Kansas City Royals left-hander Cole Ragans achieved a 4.4-mph increase from 2022 to 2023, the largest in MLB that year. With the velocity increase after his work at Tread Athletics, Ragans went from a league-average relief pitcher to a postseason ace in less than a year.
Kansas City Royals left-hander Cole Ragans achieved a 4.4-mph increase from 2022 to 2023, the largest in MLB that year, after his work with Tread Athletics. (Charlie Riedel / Associated Press)
So what makes Ragans’ development different from that of a teenage prospect reaching out to Tread Athletics?
“Ragans still could go from 92-94 miles per hour to 96 to 101,” Brewster said. “He still has room, but relatively speaking, he was a lot closer to his potential than, like, a random 15-year-old kid throwing 73 miles per hour.”
Meister knows Ragans well. When the southpaw was a member of the Rangers’ organization, the orthopedic surgeon performed Tommy John surgery on Ragans twice. (Ragans has also battled a rotator cuff strain this season and has been out since early June.)
“These velocities and these spin rates are very worrisome,” Meister said. “And we see that in, in and of itself, just in looking at how long these Tommy John procedures last.”
Throwing hard is not an overnight experience. Brewster shared a stern warning for the pitching development process, using weightlifting as an example. He said weightlifters can try to squat 500 pounds daily without days off, or attempt to squat 500 pounds with their knees caving in and buckling because of terrible form. There’s no 100% safe way to lift 500 pounds, just like there is no fail-safe way of throwing 100 mph. There’s always risk. It’s all in the form. Lifting is a science, and so is pitching — finding the safest way to train to increase velocity without injury.
“The responsible way to squat 500 pounds would be going up in weight over time, having great form and monitoring to make sure you’re not going too heavy, too soon,” Brewster said. “When it comes to pitching, you can manage workload. You can make sure that mechanically, they don't have any glaring red flags.”
Brewster added that Tread, as of July, is actively creating its own data sets to explore how UCLs are affected by training methods, and how to use load management to skirt potential injuries.
MLB admitted to a “lack [of] comprehensive data to examine injury trends for amateur players” in its December report. It points to a lack of college data as well, where most Division I programs use such technology.
The Andrews Sports Medicine & Orthopedic Center based in Birmingham, Ala. — founded by James Andrews, the former orthopedic surgeon to the stars — provided in-house data within MLB’s report, showing that the amount of UCL surgeries conducted for high school pitchers in their clinic has risen to as high as 60% of the total since 2015, while remaining above 40% overall through 2023.
Meister said baseball development companies may look great on the periphery — sending youth players to top colleges and the professional ranks — but it’s worth noting what they aren’t sharing publicly.
“What they don't show you is that [youth athletes] are walking into our offices, three or six months or nine months later.”
Steph Curry has faced off against some impressive NBA athletes over the years, but one stands out to the Warriors star in today’s game.
In a recent match with Good Good Golf, Curry revealed who he believes is the league’s most athletic player — and his answer shouldn’t be too surprising.
“Ja Morant,” Curry said (h/t ClutchPoints). “I think pound for pound, he’s the most athletic player in the league. Russell Westbrook when he was in his full prime. John Wall. We always talk about those guys as being the most athletic in the league.”
Curry and Morant have clashed in several high-profile matchups since the Memphis point guard’s debut in 2019, with the Warriors most recently defeating the Grizzlies 121-116 in the NBA play-in tournament on April 15 to secure the No. 7 playoff seed.
Morant injured his ankle during that game but played through it, finishing with 22 points on 9-of-18 shooting with two rebounds and two assists over 35 minutes.
The 25-year-old’s electric dunks and scoring prowess have earned him countless accolades already, including 2019-20 Rookie of the Year, 2021-22 Most Improved Player and two All-Star selections in addition to four postseason appearances.
While Morant has stopped dunking as often as he used to to prioritize his health, the Grizzlies star remains one of the game’s most dynamic players thanks to his speed, handles and clutch shooting — something Curry has experienced firsthand. And the respect is mutual, as Morant showcased following Golden State’s 2022 Western Conference semifinals victory over Memphis.
New manager on the need for his team to find an identity, the challenge of the second tier and on managing Dembélé, Doué and Doku at Rennes
Julien Stéphan had been enjoying his break from football for about two months when his wife’s patience finally gave in. “She said to me: ‘I hope you will manage again quickly – and very quickly – because I want to see you on the pitch and to see you back in your own environment,’” says the new Queens Park Rangers manager.
Stéphan left Rennes for the second time last November and estimates that as well as spending precious time with his two children he watched 20 to 25 games a week as he waited for his next opportunity. That finally arrived last month when the Frenchman took over at Loftus Road from Martí Cifuentes, who has since joined Leicester. But the chance to take a breather after six years as a manager during which he guided Rennes to the Champions League for the first time and led Strasbourg to sixth in Ligue 1 – their highest position since 1980 – was most welcome.
