Worldwide Sports News

Earlier this year I took a look at two positive examples of teams that had been in the Colorado Rockies position and seemed to have turned things around. The Miami Marlins turned a 100-loss team in 2024 into an almost .500 squad in each of the last two seasons while the Chicago White Sox have taken their team to the playoffs just two seasons after losing 121 games in a single season.

Coming into the season, the Athletics looked like they were perhaps on a similar upwards trajectory. Coming off an abysmal 50-112 record in 2024, the A’s had won more games in each of the past two season. They had what looked like a young core of exciting hitters and a shiny new ballpark being built in Las Vegas. It appeared as though the franchise was on the upswing.

Instead, the Athletics fortunes took a dive back into the same lowly tier of teams that the Rockies currently occupy and lost 98 games.

As important as it is to diagnose what has caused teams to have success and emulate them, it’s equally as important to consider the circumstances that have led other teams to continued failure.

So, which portions of the Athletics troubles can the Rockies learn from?

Don’t abandon your fanbase

First, we have to get the obvious factor out of the way since it has little bearing currently on the Rockies. The largest factor looming over the Athletics organization is unique to their franchise.

Owner John Fisher chose to move the team away from Oakland, its home for decades, after failing to secure a sweetheart deal with the local government. This has left the team in a transitory period for the past two seasons where they have been playing in a minor-league ballpark in West Sacramento.

In theory, they only need to stay there for one more season until they move to their currently under construction, new ballpark in Las Vegas.

This doesn’t change the fact that they have sacrificed all good will they had with the people who had previously attended their games. Fisher cut off decades of attachment from the people of Oakland in order to move somewhere that he wouldn’t need to pay as much of the construction costs for a new stadium.

Ultimately, this transitional period may come to pass, and the team’s new roots in Las Vegas could eventually prove strong. It is, however, a wild gamble that has had clear negative effects on the team in the short term before even considering the emotional cost to the people of the Bay Area.

The team’s temporary ballpark in Sacramento has been a frequent source of complaints from players accustomed to Major League-style accommodations. There have been rumblings for the past two offseasons that the ballpark has been a stumbling block in attempting to convince free agents to sign with the team.

Beyond the players, the lack of seating at the small ballpark has meant that their attendance numbers have been dramatically lower than all other teams for the past two seasons.

These are not factors that directly result in wins and losses on the field, but they are certainly additional hurdles to overcome in attempting to put together a winning roster. This has been, and remains, an entirely self-inflicted problem.

The most extreme version of this problem is not one the Rockies have come close to matching. Their ownership has not made any public rumblings of being dissatisfied with their home in Denver or Coors Field. If anything, the team’s yearly attendance has seemed relatively immune to their poor play on the field throughout much of their history.

That being said, the Rockies attendance has started to dip over the past few seasons. After ranking ninth in all of Major League Baseball as recently as 2021, the Rockies have slipped in the attendance rankings every season since. In 2026 they ranked 18th in the league.

They have a long way to go to reach the utter lack of fan support that John Fisher A’s currently have, but they should be careful not to take that for granted in the long term.

Don’t underestimate the importance of depth

In 2025, the Athletics lineup was one of the most exciting in baseball:

• Veteran slugger Brent Rooker played all 162 games and hit 30 home runs for the third straight season.
• Catcher Shea Langeliers proved that his breakout 2024 wasn’t a fluke by hitting 31 home runs of his own.
• Tyler Soderstrom finally made good on his prospect pedigree with a 120 wRC+ while learning a position entirely new to him.
• Rookie shortstop Jacob Wilson hit the ground running and was both second in the Major League batting title and American League Rookie of the Year races.

Second, that is, to the A’s other rookie star Nick Kurtz.

The fourth overall pick in 2024 (one after the Rockies selected Charlie Condon), Kurtz rocketed through the minor leagues and made his debut at the end of April the following season. In his rookie season, Kurtz was not only unanimously voted Rookie of the Year but also his .290/.383/.619 slash line earned him American League MVP votes.

With all five of these players and bounce-back candidate Lawrence Butler under team control through at least 2028, the A’s had an offensive core to envy at the conclusion of the 2025 season.

So what happened in 2026? Injuries exposed a lack of depth.

Every player named above other than Butler spent at least some time on the injured list in 2025. To make it worse, Langeliers was the only one of these players to avoid an elongated stay on the 60-day injured list.

Without a consistent showing from this offensive core, the rest of the team’s faults were on full display. Their lack of pitching talent could not be papered over by mashing home runs the way the front office had drawn it up. A lack of major league baseline talent available in their depth chart was exposed as soon as the their core started going down.

Essentially, they had no fallback options to keep them afloat.

For the 2026 A’s, the plan was to let the exciting lineup core mash and hope that would be enough. As soon as a couple of the key players went down, there was no one else on the team to keep it from sinking back to a nearly 100-loss season.

The Rockies roster is a bit different than the Athletics was heading into last season.

The Rockies have managed to cultivate someexiciting potential core offensive players in Hunter Goodman, TJ Rumfield, and Cole Carrigg, but they don’t yet have anyone that will factor into the MVP race. The Rockies have not been able to cultivate nearly the ceiling that the Athletics did over the past two seasons.

On the flipside, the Rockies front office has made it a point since they were installed last offseason to “raise the floor” of the roster. The additions of players like Willi Castro, Mickey Moniak, Troy Johnston, and Connor Norby are the sort of depth moves that the Athletics failed to make.

While the front office looks to find more upside, they would be wise to also continue adding even more complementary pieces lest they fall into the same trap as the 2026 A’s.

Spend some money

Many of the 2026 Athletics roster problems could have easily been solved in the offseason had they been willing to do one thing: Spend money on free agents.

The team entered last offseason having had their pitching staff put up the 22nd worst fWAR in the Majors despite having employed Mason Miller for the first half of the season.

How did they address this obvious roster weakness? They signed notable aces Aaron Civale, Mark Leiter Jr., and Scott Barlow all for a total of less than $10 million.

That’s not to take anything away from those specific players — a team can never have enough competent big leaguers. (See the first section about not having enough depth.) If the team had already been fielding an expensive roster, simply supplementing it with small deals around the edges like those is both understandable and commendable.

The A’s, on the other hand, only spent a total of $95 million dollars on their 2026 payroll.

With the fifth-lowest payroll commitments in the league, the Athletics decided that the best way to bolster their feeble pitching staff was to sign a handful of depth arms and hope that their small collection of highly touted prospects would be able to make the leap sooner rather than later.

It wasn’t an impossible plan. All of the Athletics most highly rated pitching prospects (Gage Jump, Kade Morris, Jamie Arnold, Wei-En Lin, and Braden Nett) started the season in Double-A or higher.

The future core of their rotation was on the cusp of the majors, so why spend money on high-priced free agents just to block those young players?

Pitching prospects, as it turns out, are not guaranteed to remain healthy, much less live up to their potential. Jump and Morris both made their Major League debuts in 2026, but neither managed an ERA below 5.47. Arnold only just made it to Triple-A to end the season. Lin and Nett both missed significant time to injury. (Lin is still out recovering from Tommy John surgery.)

All told, the youthful wave of reinforcements to an abysmal pitching staff failed to materialize fast enough to matter for the 2026 season.

Had they simply spent money to bring in a handful of short-term stopgaps via free agency, perhaps their team as a whole could have weathered the injuries on the lineup side a bit more. Given that their division was won by the .500 Houston Astros, they would not have needed much to become legitimate contenders.

Instead, they sat on their hands during the winter and continued their modus operandi of moving forward with the cheaper internal options.

The Rockies, heading into this offseason, face a similar choice, albeit within a different specific context. They can either pump money into addressing an abysmal starting rotation, or they can play around with some marginal upgrades and wait for a wave of pitching prospects.

The problem for the Rockies is that they really don’t have an identifiable wave of pitching talent in the minor league system anywhere near what the A’s had coming into 2026. Ensuring that Chase Dollander has a spot in the rotation when his arm is healthy is not reason enough to avoid bringing in outside talent.

If there are quality starting pitchers willing to come to Denver for just money, the front office shouldn’t be scared of spending.

Conclusions

While the 2026 Athletics and the 2027 Rockies aren’t exact mirrors of one another, there are enough similarities to learn from.

Ultimately, the Athletics rise to prominence was stymied by ownership level decisions that hamstrung their front office. For the Rockies to avoid taking a similar step backwards it is on ownership to not settle for good enough. They should instead continue to empower the front office to make whatever moves they believe will improve the team and not take half measures.

Please keep in mind our Purple Row Community Guidelines when you’re commenting. Thanks!

Happy Thurday.

We only get one playoff game today, the Guardians and White Sox play game four. White Sox are up two games to one. It is an 8:00 Eastern start.

The Rays beat out the Yankees in three games. Yay Rays.

The Dodgers beat out the Braves in four games. You disappointed me Braves.

The Brewers beat out the Padres in four games. Please, Brewers, beat the Dodgers.

We have a couple of days left in the Haiku voting. Get your votes in.

There isn’t much for Blue Jays news.

The Athletic has a story saying the Yankees should fire Aaron Boone.

But the symbolism was hard to ignore. Boone has spent his entire Yankees existence coming up short in October, and here he had inadvertently planted his main attraction in an Aaron Judge-less cast 37 feet away from a potential Hollywood ending.

The complaint is that Boone had Ben Rice batting second and then he was one batter away from hitting at the end of the game, when he would have been the tying run. I’m a bigger fan of blaming the players than the manager.

Aaron Judge said:

“He puts us in the right position to succeed,” Judge maintained, “especially in a season like this where I am banged up missing 100 games.” Judge mentioned all the other injuries Boone had to work around and said, “He’s definitely had our back and is the guy.”

Judge turns 35 near the start of next season (if there is a start to next season). He spent most of this season injured. And he doesn’t have a World Series ring. I’m ok with him never getting one.

Shi Davidi wrote about Kazuma Okamoto and how big a star he is in Japan. I can attest to that. I wore a Blue Jays cap in Japan and people wanted to talk about him all the time (expect for when they wanted to talk about how we lost the World Series to the Dodgers.

The story suggests that Okamoto will make it easier for the Jays to sign other Japanese players. I’m not sure that is true, but ok. I’d imagine Japanese players will sign with the team that offers them the best deal, like anyone else.

The Jays do have some questions to answer before next season:

• Is Ernie Clement an MLB second baseman, or do they need to find someone else?
• Do they count on Anthony Santander to play outfield next year?
• Is Spencer Miles a starter or reliever?
• Is Ricky Tiedeman a starter or reliever? Likely reliever I’d guess.
• Do they want to sign a full time DH, or do they want to use the spot to rest players?
• And, of course, can Vlad be Vlad again?
• Do they take Myles Straw’s option? That’s an easy one, no. Do they try to sign him again?
• The Jays, and all the other teams, will be wondering what the salary cap (or tax, or whatever they call it) will look like next year?

Getting swept at home had the Yankees devastated in the clubhouse. 

Yankees manager Aaron Boone described a dejected group Wednesday night after losing 4-3 in Game 3 of the ALDS at Yankee Stadium to complete a sweep at the hands of the Rays.

“The ending is terrible,” a solemn Boone said after the game. “There’s no easy way. It’s a broken clubhouse. What you go through as a team, as a family over the last eight, nine months getting ready for this. It’s just the worst.”

Boone shook up the Game 3 lineup, choosing to sit Jazz Chisholm Jr. in favor of Anthony Volpe, who played well, including hitting what appeared to be a game-tying home run that was called back for fan interference. 

The manager also put Trent Grisham in the leadoff spot despite being ice-cold with the bat over the last month.

Grisham went 0-for-5 in the decisive Game 3, and 0-for-11 in the ALDS, and was nursing an injury for much of September. 

The final out of the game wound up being a Grisham strikeout with Jazz Chisholm Jr. stranded on second base representing the tying run. 

They enter the offseason with loads of decisions to make, including Chisholm Jr., who is due to be a free agent this offseason. 

The Bronx Bombers will need to replace his production as his season ended uncomfortably, with him being benched to start Game 3 before he took over for Jose Caballero. 

“No comment. Next.” Chisholm Jr. said when asked how it felt to be benched. 

The Rays move on to the ALCS to face the White Sox and Guardians for the right to face the winner of Dodgers vs. Brewers/Padres in the World Series. 

Meanwhile, general manager Brian Cashman has a lot of work to do, though baseball also has its own problems as the sport deals with a potential lockout.

Los Angeles Dodgers star pitcher Tarik Skubal didn’t pitch in his team’s NLDS-clinching Game 4 win against the Atlanta Braves on Wednesday night.

But he still stole the show postgame, given his beer-soaked celebration tactics during two live interviews.

In one interview with Dodgers reporter Kirsten Watson, Skubal was asked about the celebration to come and said, “I can’t f****** wait.”

Then he chugged the two beers he was double-fisting, most of which missed his mouth and ran down his chest.

The celebrations continued moments later, when Skubal did a wild interview with Dodgers SportsNet LA reporter David Vassegh.

“I’ve got another beer in a place where it shouldn’t be,” Skubal said to Vassegh. Their interview paused so that beer could be thrown and poured on everybody in the vicinity, Vassegh included.

As Vassegh struggled to re-gather himself, Skubal said, “The game is speeding up on you, it is speeding up on you.”

Then Skubal got another beer poured down his back and said, “What’s running down my pants right now is so cold.

“It’s because these f****** guys!” he added before turning to throw more beer at the teammates behind him.

After Vassegh and Skubal gathered themselves once again, Skubal was asked how much the Dodgers meant to him and said, “It’s a great team. The culture they have here, the preparation, the expectation to win, I love being a part of it.”

Everybody associated with the Dodgers loved Skubal being a part of it, as well.

If this is how wild celebrating the NLDS is, it will be fun to see how Skubal would celebrate a World Series championship.

After the Yankees were eliminated in the ALDS by a division rival for the second straight season, Aaron Judge delivered a message to Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman.

“We’re the Yankees. I feel like they should go all in and do what they need to do,” Judge, who did not play in the playoffs due to a calf strain, said after the Yankees’ 4-3 Game 3 loss to the Rays in The Bronx Wednesday night. “If we’ve got holes, if it’s finding certain players or personnel, whatever we need, you got to go out there and get it. That’s why I signed back here to play with the Yankees is to fight for a championship every single year and to go all in. That’s what I do every offseason is get ready to give this team and this city everything I’ve got, so I expect them to do the same.”

Judge, the three-time MVP who turns 35 in April, has five years left on the nine-year, $360 million contract he signed after testing free agency following his historic 62-homer season in 2022.

Asked if he feels the front office has gone all in enough, Judge turned more diplomatic.

“It’s tough to say,” Judge said. “I want to trade for everybody, sign everybody every single year, but I know that’s not realistic. They give us a winning team every single year, but that’s not good enough here in New York. We’re the Yankees. You’ve got to go out there and expect championships and go all in every year. So I’m excited to see what they do.”

The likelihood of a work stoppage, with the players and owners locked in bitter CBA negotiations, looms over MLB’s offseason, but the Yankees have major questions on some free agents and others.

Jazz Chisholm Jr., David Bednar, Trent Grisham, Paul Goldschmidt and Paul Blackburn are among the Yankees players whose contracts are up.

The Yankees will also have to decide if they’ll stomach one final year of Giancarlo Stanton, where Anthony Volpe, Spencer Jones and Jasson Dominguez fit in, and whether to move on from third baseman Ryan McMahon.

Apparently, Ronald Acuña Jr. is in his feels.

The 28-year-old superstar deleted any Atlanta Braves-related content from his Instagram account after Atlanta lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLDS. He also changed his profile picture to a black photo with “desconectado” written in gray, which translates to “disconnected” in English.

There’s no way of knowing exactly where Acuña Jr.’s emotional state is at. Some on social media are claiming he does this every offseason, while others are suggesting this is proof the star wants out of Atlanta.

Acuña Jr. hasn’t done the bulk delete on his X account. Then again, he hasn’t been active on that platform since the 2026 season began, aside from one post about his home country of Venezuela.

Regardless, Acuña Jr. didn’t do much to help his team topple Los Angeles. He produced a .133 batting average with just two hits, one RBI, and four strikeouts across four NLDS games.

He was also booed by Braves fans during Wednesday night’s 4–1 loss. After the game, he said that fans were within their rights to boo him because he “didn’t do anything” in the series, per FOX’s Justin Felder.

The Braves have a $17 million team option on Acuña Jr.’s contract this offseason, so he would need the franchise’s blessing if he were to leave Atlanta.

Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters

Francesco Stephano Pezzolo was born in San Francisco, California, in 1887. That man would later be known as Frank Stephen Bodie and, eventually, Ping Bodie. Bodie felt the need to change his name out of fear of being mocked and discriminated against for his Italian heritage. The Ping portion of his name came from the sound of him hitting baseballs with a legendary 52-ounce piece of lumber, and the Bodie part he adopted from a town in California that was special to him and his family.

Frank Stephen “Ping” Bodie

Born: October 8, 1887 (San Francisco, CA)

Died: December 17, 1961 (San Francisco, CA)

Yankees Tenure: 1918-1921

There is not much recorded on Bodie’s childhood, but he came into the public eye around 1905 while playing baseball in the California State League at just 17 years old. The young ballplayer was moved all over the field and played for a variety of independent league teams before catching on with the San Francisco Seals in 1908.

With the Seals, Bodie stopped bouncing around positions and started primarily roaming the outfield grass. During the 1910 season, Bodie had a breakout season for the Seals, hitting an unheard-of 30 home runs during the deadball era. The power surge placed the young right-handed hitter on the radar of every big league club. In September of 1910, Bodie was drafted by the Chicago White Sox in the Rule 5 draft.

After that impressive season, Bodie was invited to spring training and broke camp with the White Sox in 1911 but found himself mostly riding the pine. After the team started slowly on offense, owner Charles Comiskey publicly criticized the team and called out the offense. Allegedly, the rookie Bodie, with true American-Italian bravado, walked right up to the owner the next day and told him he could be the answer to his problems if he could get him in the lineup. The rest, as they say, is history. In 145 games as a rookie, Bodie slashed .289/.348/.407 with four home runs, good for a 2.8 WAR.

In Chicago, Bodie rose to fame due to his powerful swing and big personality. A showman and entertainer at heart, the press fell in love with the humor and charisma Bodie brought to the ballpark every day. After a successful rookie year, there would be no sophomore slump. In 1912, he hit five more home runs and slashed .294/.358/.407. For the second straight season, he was tied for the team lead in home runs as the White Sox finished just above .500 for the second straight season.

The 1913 season was a weird one for Bodie as he set his career high in home runs with eight. Those eight long balls were good for third in the league. However, Bodie’s average dropped to .264, and for the first time, his slugging finished below .400 at .397. The decline did not stop for Bodie in 1914. A season-long struggle caused conflict with manager Jimmy Callahan. After Bodie finished with a .229 batting average and three home runs, the White Sox sold him back to the Seals.

Despite his big league success, Bodie accepted going back to the Pacific Coast League. Bodie completely dominated for the next two seasons. The Philadelphia Athletics needed offense and signed Bodie ahead of the 1917 season. Bodie did not disappoint, slashing .291/.356/.418 with seven home runs, good for third in the league again. The Athletics finished the season 55-98-1. Bodie would later joke that he was the only ticket in town other than the Liberty Bell that year. In March of 1918, the Athletics traded Bodie to the New York Yankees for George Burns, who was a Yankee for as long as it took the paperwork to process after being purchased from Detroit only to be flipped.

Bodie’s age-thirty season was his first in pinstripes, and he slashed .256/.319/.358 and finished seventh in the league with three home runs. Unfortunately for Bodie, the Yankees did not fare much better than any of his previous clubs, finishing the 1918 season 60-63-3. However, he started the legendary run of San Francisco Italians in the Bronx.

Both Bodie and the Yankees turned things around in 1919. The club went 80-59-2. Bodie slashed .278/.334/.406 with six home runs. The turnaround might have been due to the fact that Bodie scored a big win in an eating contest in April of that year. In a publicity stunt, Bodie competed against a Jacksonville Zoo ostrich named Percy in a spaghetti eating contest. Legend has it that Bodie won on the 11th plate as Percy could not finish his, and Bodie finished it for him.

The Yankees made a splash following the 1919 season by acquiring Babe Ruth. Bodie got the honor of being Ruth’s first roommate on the Yankees for the 1920 season, a role that he absolutely loved due to the extra attention brought his way from the presence of Ruth. The Yankees went 95-59 on the year, and Bodie had one of the best seasons of his career, slashing .295/.350/.446 with seven home runs.

As much fun as 1920 was, the 1921 season saw the good times finally run out for Bodie as his production fell off the table. In 31 games, Bodie hit .172 with no home runs. In August, the Yankees traded him to Boston. New York went on to win the American League pennant that year but fell in the World Series to the Giants. After the season was over, Bodie refused to go back to the Red Sox and returned home.

Not yet done with baseball, Bodie played in the minors for another seven years. After retiring from the game, he took up work as an electrician in Hollywood. For over thirty years, he worked on sets and got roles as a bit actor with Universal Studios. At age 74, in his hometown down by the bay, Bodie died of lung cancer.

Happy birthday, Ping!

Max Muncy doesn’t need divine interference to produce massive postseason moments for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But a prayer doesn’t hurt—especially when done with a personalized candle.

Muncy hit a solo home run in the ninth inning of his team’s Game 4 NLDS 4-1 victory against the Atlanta Braves. This was the 19th postseason home run Muncy has hit with the Dodgers, further extending what’s already a franchise record.

Moments before this home run, the game’s broadcast showed Dodgers rookie outfield Josue De Paula holding what looked to be a candle with Muncy’s image plastered on it.

Dodgers fans have noticed this candle before. Shortstop Alex Freeland has been seen holding it in the dugout in the past, and fans on social media posted videos of him holding it at times during Wednesday night’s game.

A closer look at the candle shows that is has Muncy’s image wearing a white Dodgers jersey, a white clerical stole (a band of cloth worn around the neck) with Muncy’s No. 13 and the Dodgers’ logo on it, and a gold “FUNKY” chain.

The 36-year-old is also holding a baseball in his right hand on the candle.

The Dodgers’ vibes are feeling immaculate right now.