The New York Rangers have the 24th-best prospect pool according to The Athletic’s prospect pipeline rankings. 

Corey Pronman of The Athletic listed Malcolm Spence, Brennan Othmann, E.J. Emery, Gabe Perreault, Carey Terrance, Noah Laba, and Scott Morrow as the Rangers’ top prospects. 

In last year’s prospect pipeline list, the Rangers ranked as the 15th best team, as the Blueshirts saw a slight drop off. 

The only teams ranked behind the Rangers in this list are the Winnipeg Jets, Toronto Maple Leafs, Ottawa Senators, Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Vegas Golden Knights, Edmonton Oilers, and Colorado Avalanche. 

The Rangers’ opening-night roster may consist of a number of young players, including Othmann, Perreault, Morrow, and Brett Berard.

Rafael Devers' huge night, bizarre Matt Chapman play spark another Giants' win originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — Matt Chapman stood on second base and smiled as a ballpark tried to digest a game-altering throw that had hit his helmet and skipped more than 100 feet to the backstop. He held one finger in the air as 30,000 fans alternated cheers and laughter. The grin on his face said it all, but if anything was actually said on the field or in the Giants dugout, the veteran wasn’t going to let it slip.

“I can’t remember,” he said later, smiling. “Maybe I’m concussed.”

When you’re going right, you’re going right, and the Giants finally feel headed back in that direction. They have played solid baseball for five straight games now, winning four of them, and the breaks once again are backing their efforts. 

There were a few of them Wednesday, none bigger than a throw from right field that bounced off Chapman’s helmet as he stood on first base and allowed another two-out run to score in the three-run fifth. When Casey Schmitt followed with a single, Chapman cruised home from second. The Giants kept pouring it on from there, beating the Chicago Cubs 12-3. 

Chapman — who was fine, by the way — was part of the strangest play, but most of the damage came from another man who has played plenty of third base in the big leagues. Rafael Devers homered twice and also had a double, single and walk. He drove in five runs, showing exactly why president of baseball operations Buster Posey jumped the line in June to bring him to San Francisco. 

“This is the guy that everybody is accustomed to seeing,” Chapman said. “It’s not easy to get traded and come in and instantly be yourself. [We’re] seeing him get more comfortable … when he feels good, he’s that dangerous.”

The Giants are a ways away from being officially eliminated from the MLB playoff race, and Chapman reiterated several times Wednesday that the focus is simply “on tomorrow.” But when the attention does fully turn to 2026, the Giants will be reminded that this summer wasn’t a total loss. 

Devers, their big acquisition, is sneaking up on 30 total homers. His 26th went out to dead center at Oracle Park and his 27th was an opposite-field shot, his specialty. When he’s comfortable at the plate, he’s ballpark-proof, the type of player the Giants have sought for years. On Wednesday, Devers became just the third Giant since 2015 to have at least three hits leave the bat at 106 mph or above. 

“He hit it everywhere today,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We know he’s capable of having games like that.”

The same could have been said of the Giants the past two months. They knew this was in them somewhere, but they couldn’t summon a stretch like this until they already were in a deep hole. With 29 games to go, they remain seven games out of a playoff spot. 

Barring a miracle, they’ll look up in the offseason and wonder where this was against the Pittsburgh Pirates right before the trade deadline, or the Washington Nationals, San Diego Padres and Tampa Bay Rays right after. 

But that’s something they don’t want to think about at the moment. For the first time in a long time, they’re having fun. They’re scoring in traditional ways and in hilarious ways. 

“I don’t know if you get an RBI for hitting one off your head,” Chapman said as the victory soundtrack played in the background. “Hopefully …”

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast

Ceddanne Rafaela makes up for rare defensive gaffes with game-winning home run originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Ask anybody involved with the Red Sox in any way whom they believe to be the best center fielder in baseball, and they won’t hesitate. It’s Ceddanne Rafaela.

It was downright shocking, then, to see Rafaela make not one but two defensive gaffes on Wednesday night in Baltimore. Both were costly, too, as Rafaela dropped a ball while diving to allow a run to score in the bottom of the second and later didn’t take charge as a fly ball fell directly between him and left fielder Jarren Duran in the seventh, allowing another run to score.

Both plays should have resulted in third outs, but they instead accounted for the entirety of Baltimore’s offense on a night when Brayan Bello was dealing.

It was uncharacteristic, to say the least, and it put the Red Sox in position to lose a game they should have won.

Yet baseball has a funny way of creating opportunities for those who need them. And in the top of the ninth, Rafaela got his.

With Duran — who did bear some responsibility for the fallen fly ball — reaching base on a leadoff single, Rafaela stepped to the plate as the go-ahead run in the final frame. After taking the first two pitches from Keegan Akin, Rafaela got an off-speed pitch over the heart of the plate and unleashed on the offering.

The re-modified dimensions of Camden Yards helped out, and by the time the ball came down, Rafaela was casually jogging around first base, having known right off the bat that he had given his team a 3-2 lead.

The home run was Rafaela’s 15th of the season but his first since July 13, and only his second after hitting a walk-off home run against the Rays on July 11.

From there, Aroldis Chapman — in the midst of the best season of his life — shut down the Orioles in a 1-2-3 inning with three strikeouts to secure the victory.

For the Red Sox, the victory secured a second consecutive four-game series win, after they took the first three in the Bronx over the weekend. They’ll have the chance to make this one a four-game sweep on Thursday afternoon.

For Rafaela, it might have meant a little more. He had cost his team a shutout, but he managed to make sure the unexpected miscues didn’t hurt in the standings.

Before MLB’s newest trophy was offered up as the prize in a competition between the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres, it had to pass through the hands of Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder.

The custom Fender Telecaster guitar, named the Vedder Cup, is said to have been played by its namesake for “about an hour” before it was shipped off to T-Mobile Park in Seattle.

Read more:Travis Kelce kept his mouth shut about his engagement to Taylor Swift. His dad, however, dishes details

“He gave it a good run through,” George Webb, Pearl Jam's equipment manager, told the Seattle Times on Monday. “He always likes to feel like he puts a little energy, you know, spiritual energy, into an instrument. Not just hand off something that’s brand-new, never-touched kind of thing. So yeah, jammed on it for about an hour. Had a good time.”

The trophy features many nods from the 60-year-old musician, including a hand-drawn “cresting wave” illustration and an arrow and mod symbol — an allusion to Vedder’s tribute to the Who on his personal guitar. On the back, the Padres and Mariners logos appear alongside text hand-written by the singer and guitarist: “The Vedder Cup Established 2025 by Major League Baseball.”

It also contains a logo from EB Research Partnership, a nonprofit co-founded by Vedder and his wife, Jill, after a childhood friend's son was born with the painful skin condition epidermolysis bullosa. The nonprofit funds research on the disease.

Read more:Seattle's Cal Raleigh becomes first catcher to win MLB All-Star Home Run Derby

The cup is intended to bring “meaningful awareness” to the rare disorder, Mariners Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Trevor Gooby said in a statement in March, when the longtime rivalry became official.

“We can't wait to see this rivalry series grow and look forward to battling the Mariners for the Vedder Cup,” Padres Chief Executive Erik Greupner added.

The rivalry, such as it is, arose from forces both real and manufactured, apparently. Vedder has strong ties to both cities, having grown up in San Diego, then moved to Seattle to start Pearl Jam with Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament — hence, the "Vedder" Cup.

Also, upon the introduction of interleague play in the late ’90s, MLB looked for "natural" rivalries between teams like the Padres and Mariners. This year, the league canonized the rivalry, which is said to have begun as geographic, given both teams' West Coast homes, Reuters reports.

Read more:'Power' actor Alix Lapri arrested on suspicion of cruelty to children

The two teams have met almost annually since 1997. In the informal all-time series, Seattle currently leads 68-63. Additionally, they share a training complex in Peoria, Ariz.

Some fans are still left with questions as to why the competition has turned official, with one claiming on Reddit that "padres and mariners fans literally give no s— about each other."

Still, they conceded it is "likely the most meaningless and yet kinda fun thing in MLB."

The trophy was in the spotlight Monday when the teams met for the fourth time this season. The Mariners notched a 9-6 victory over the Padres, taking the season series after three previous wins in San Diego. The Padres beat the Mariners Tuesday, 7-6, and the final game is Wednesday, but the contest has already been decided. Cal Raleigh, the Mariners’ switch-hitting, homer-hammering catcher, known as "Big Dumper," hoisted and played the trophy in celebration Monday night.

Read more:Sting sued by former the Police bandmates over 'Every Breath You Take' royalties

The name and logo for the cup were first shown off in March, but its final design wasn’t finished until the weeks leading up to the fixture.

“Typically on a custom build like this it will take us six months or so to source the wood, get everything mapped out ready to go and take our time to vet the process, apply the graphics, do some test runs,” Chase Paul, director of product development for Fender, told the Seattle Times. “On this we just kind of headed into it in parallel with testing and the production version at the same time, and kind of getting it ready to go.”

In all, it took Fender eight or nine weeks to get the work done, which Paul called a "really incredible effort by the team in the shop."

Naturally, Vedder doesn’t want the trophy guitar to sit on a shelf for the next year while it's in the Mariners’ possession. According to Webb, “He wants it to be played.”

Read more:If Taylor Swift broke Ticketmaster, why does DOJ's Live Nation lawsuit invoke a little déjà vu?

“That’s his attitude with everything. It’s a living, breathing instrument. It sounds great,” he added.

As an added bonus to fans, the league announced it would give away limited-edition Vedder Cup hats during the last 2025 game between the two on Wednesday.

To no surprise, the exclusive ticket package that included the hats has sold out.

Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

What we learned as Rafael Devers homers twice in Giants' blowout win vs. Cubs originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

• BOX SCORE

SAN FRANCISCO — With two outs in the bottom of the fifth and the Giants nursing a one-run lead, Dominic Smith hit a single to center. Rafael Devers eased into third, and then looked around in confusion as the ball rolled around near the bag. 

Had Chicago Cubs rookie Matt Shaw fielded the throw cleanly, Devers might have been out because he slowed down as he approached the bag. Instead, he scored a few seconds later on Matt Chapman’s bloop single, and then turned and watched as Smith scored, too, after a throw from right field hit Chapman’s helmet and bounced all the way to the backstop.

It was the type of sequence that would have fit right in with games of April or May. Right now, everything once again is going right for the Giants, who crushed the Cubs 12-3 to clinch a second straight series against an NL Central team headed for the MLB playoffs. 

The Giants’ own postseason odds haven’t improved much in recent days since the New York Mets picked up steam at the exact same time. They completed a sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies earlier Wednesday, leaving the Giants seven out with 29 to play.

Stranger things have happened, but right now they’re happy to just be back on the right track. Their fourth straight win got them to 65-68, and they’ll go for a sweep Thursday behind ace Logan Webb. 

Devers Demolishes

Here’s how Rafael Devers’ night went: 106 mph homer, 107 mph double, walk, 106 mph homer, single. 

The first blast went to dead center and got the Giants on the board in the first inning, and the second one was a three-run shot to left in the sixth that got them to double-digits. With the two-homer night, Devers reached 27 homers on the season. 

Devers won’t really break the long-running 30-homer drought since most of that damage happened with the Boston Red Sox, but he certainly looks capable of doing it next year. When he’s right, Devers is the kind of hitter who can make even Oracle Park feel small. 

W for Whis

Willy Adames’ athletic double play got Carson Whisenhunt through the fifth and allowed him to pick up his second big league win. It wasn’t easy, but Whisenhunt twice got double plays with the bases loaded. 

Whisenhunt gave up five hits, walked three and hit one, but allowed just three earned over those five innings. The Giants are watching everything he does right now, and that includes dealing with adversity. Wednesday wasn’t the cleanest night, but Whisenhunt found a way to limit the damage, which is a positive sign as he tries to lock up a long-term rotation spot. 

Double Trouble

Jung Hoo Lee caught a break in the fourth when left fielder Willi Castro misjudged his liner to left. It went for a double, his 30th of the year, and that put him in a small club.

Lee became the fifth San Francisco Giant to pick up 30 doubles and 10 triples in a single season, joining Willie Mays, Bobby Bonds, Garry Maddox and Angel Pagan. Lee is second in the National League in triples and now ranks eighth in doubles. 

While there have been some home runs, most notably in New York, peppering the gaps is what the Giants expected when Lee signed a long-term contract. He had just four doubles and no triples as a rookie, but he has found his stride in the second half of his sophomore season. Lee has now picked up a hit in 21 of 23 games this month. 

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast