Browsing: hard

Third baseman Izaac Pacheco has never liked being told something canâ€t be accomplished.

The Tigers’ 2021 second-round pick out of Friendswood High in Texas has proven he is willing to exhaust every option before accepting anything but success.

That stems from a work ethic ingrained from an early age.

“Head down and keep working,†Pacheco said, citing his high school coach Cory Benavides.

The 22-year-old Pacheco has spent the past three seasons at High-A West Michigan. This year he broke through as the Midwest League MVP after hitting .258/.388/.499 with 17 home runs in 99 games.

Routine has always been a focal point for Pacheco, but he found additional inspiration from an MLB all-star.

“I watched a podcast with Bobby Witt Jr., and he talked about journaling,†Pacheco said. “I think he was the first guy I saw who was open about it and said he writes his affirmations and journals and brings the journal into the dugout.

“It made me think, ‘Obviously, this guy is an incredible player,’ so I wanted to do that too.â€

The journal became a daily practice for Pacheco—pages of personal affirmations, notes on opposing pitchers and takeaways from a rotation of mental-skills books. Scouts took note of the differences.

“This was not the same kid I saw last year,†one said. “He played tighter defensively. His swing was better. And he just looked like he understood his body. The kid grew up.â€

For Pacheco, the mental side of baseball holds as much value as the physical.

“I really never failed coming up to pro ball,†Pacheco said. “I think it’s a big realization to know that there are 10 guys behind you who want your spot. It’s not about being scared of it, but wanting to put the work in, and that’s who I am.

“My parents raised me to believe that if you want something, you have to work hard for it. If you want to be better than the people behind you, youâ€ve got to work harder than they do.

“Itâ€s pretty simple.â€

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Infamous WWE star reflects on his recent release.

Known for his work on WWE LFG (Legends and Future Greats) Sexy ‘BJ Ray’ was recently released from his contract by the Stamford-based promotion. Not in the good books of the mentors on the show, Ray was also recovering from a serious injury when the promotion decided to part ways with him.

Soon after the news of his release became public, BJ Ray shared an update on X(Twitter) and reflected on his WWE journey and shared his gratitude to the promotion.

WHAT A JOURNEY ðŸŒ

Well obviously I had to have pissed somebody off lmao!

I would like to take this moment to address you guys as Brayden Jesse Ray. First and foremost, I have to give the glory to my lord and savior Jesus Christ, who had given me this opportunity. Secondly, I would like to thank Hunter, Shawn, & Matt Bloom (as well as all the
@WWE
coaches & staff) that were involved with this entire process. The WWE Performance Center is truly a unique place filled with many gifted individuals and unlimited support.

As soon as I stepped out of my uber at my WWE tryout, the SexyBJRay effect was in full play. I had a strategy upon filming WWE: NEXT GEN, to start building one of the most over exaggerated versions of myself, to give the wrestling industry a HEEL like theyâ€ve never seen before.

And quite frankly, it arguably was one of the greatest rookie runs of all time. In a matter of months, whether hate or love, I won the WWE fans over and they were extremely invested. Without ever having a debut match on live
@WWENXT
tv, I have become one of the most recognized names in the brand and industry. From getting swarmed at WWE World in Las Vegas to taking pictures with fans in every airport I walk into, I have been able to build a movement with my hard work and dedication.

The hours behind the scenes, editing social media content, training, and reflecting on my character work, I feel it has all paid off.

There have been many challenges along the way, but I can only control what I can only control. Obviously this release is a big bummer (especially when you have no idea what you could have done different), but the only option in my opinion is an attitude of gratitude.

All I can do is keep pushing, & put it in Godâ€s hands. Iâ€m healing strong and will continue to rehab my shoulder until Iâ€m 100%. And the biggest SHOUTOUT & THANKS to my fans who made it all worthwhile.

And now, Brayden Jesse Ray is back on sabbatical and SexyBJRay has a few words. As my good friend
@TheNotoriousMMA
once said, “Iâ€d like to take this chance to apologize to absolutely nobodyâ€. What youâ€ve seen was just the trailer… get ready for the whole movie ðŸ¿

and p.s. “Ayo you got Snapchat?!â€

With no confirmed in-ring appearances scheduled for BJ Ray, the youngster recently reached out to Tony Khan for a chance.

Released WWE Star BJ Ray Ray Reaches Out To Tony Khan For A Chance In AEW

Soon after his release and a successful surgery, ‘Sexy’ BJ Ray recently reached out to Tony Khan on X(Twitter) for a shot in AEW.

@TonyKhan Your boy is ready… call me – The Ratings Machine (aka SexyBJRay),â€

In other news: Andrade’s in-ring career in jeopardy.

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For Marco Penge, what a difference a year has made.

On Sunday, Penge held off several challengers to win the Spanish Open and punch his ticket to the 2026 Masters and Open Championship. The 27-year-old Englishman has won three times on the DP World Tour this season, earned his PGA Tour card and appears to be headed for bigger things.

But 12 months ago, he was in the midst of a free fall. Penge had descended to No. 440 in the Official World Golf Ranking, and faced a career-defining, five-foot birdie putt at the Genesis Championship in Korea. Had Penge missed, he would have missed the cut and lost his DP World Tour card. He rolled it in and finished 22nd to narrowly keep his playing privileges.

But Penge’s year-long odyssey was only just beginning. He played last year under the knowledge that the DP World Tour was investigating him for breaching betting regulations. Penge admitted he placed bets on golf majors and the Ryder Cup, events he wasn’t playing in. He claims he didn’t know he wasn’t allowed to make small wagers on tournaments he wasn’t playing in. Regardless, the DP World Tour suspended Penge for three months in December.

He returned and won the Hainan Classic in April. An ADHD diagnosis in June, he said, helped him better understand himself and the type of training regimen he needed to follow. He won again at the Danish Golf Championship in August and yet again in Spain on Sunday.

Penge is headed to the PGA Tour as one of the year’s 10 best DP World Tour players who were not already exempt. And yet, as often has been the case in the fractured professional golf landscape, there have been unsubstantiated rumors in some corners that Penge might instead make the jump to LIV Golf, as Tom McKibbin did earlier this year.

On Sunday, Penge was asked about his future and whether LIV Golf is an option.

“I’m going to America tomorrow with my wife to find a place for when we move in January,” Penge said, via Ten Golf. “So as far as I’m aware, I’m playing the PGA Tour next year and hopefully I can have a great season and finish in the [FedEx Cup] Playoffs there and then come back to the DP World Tour and play the rest of the season here. Hopefully, I’ll have a great season and finish in the Playoffs there and then come back to the DP World Tour and play the rest of the season here.

“I love playing golf, and I’d play every week if my team let me. I want to be playing against the best players in the world, and I want to be playing national opens like this. When you win a couple of national opens, that’s something that I’ll never forget. It’s something my family will never forget. That’s my plan.”

In less than a year, Penge has gone from almost falling into the golf hinterlands to No. 31 in the world.

“It’s hard to believe where I was eight months ago to where I am today,” he said. “To do that [get to 31st in the world] on the DP World Tour, where the points are slightly less, is incredible [but] I’m not the sort of person to big myself up.”

The PGA Tour is next. At least, that’s the plan.

EDMONTON — A year ago, the Edmonton Oilers were still mired in a Stanley Cup lost.

As weâ€ve heard this fall, from everyone from Zach Hyman to Connor McDavid, recovering from a series in which you clawed back to Game 7, then lost by a single goal, is somehow different than getting back to a second Cup Final and losing to a better team.

It may sound weird, but itâ€s true.

And the evidence was on display Saturday, as the Oilers beat the Vancouver Canucks for 50 of the 60 minutes played, winning 3-1 in a game where they allowed just 15 Canucks shots on goalie Calvin Pickard.

“It could have been six or seven to one,†Pickard said. “Their goalie was great.â€

This was a calibre of game, particularly on the defensive side, that we did not see from Edmonton until Game 15 a year ago. After owning the opening 30 minutes against Calgary on opening night, then letting down in the final 30, this was a pedigree of hockey that a team like the Oilers should be able to produce on demand.

Itâ€s amazing what you can accomplish, when your headâ€s in the present — and not back in Sunrise, trying to win a long-lost game from a spring youâ€ll never get back.

“Weâ€ve moved on from the previous season and playoffs, whatever happened,†said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “Obviously there’s still disappointment, but guys had done it once before. (There is) no more feeling sorry for ourselves. Let’s get to work. The attitude right from Day 1 has been upbeat, energetic.â€

The game the Oilers rolled out on a Saturday night against a division rival would beat most teams in most rinks on most nights.

Edmonton gave the Canucks just two power plays and earned five of its own. Without Thatcher Demkoâ€s heroics this would have been a runaway, but instead of pining over a power play that did everything but score, the depth guys went and scored a couple at even strength — before McDavid and Leon Draisaitl collected their only points on the night from Draisaitlâ€s empty-netter that made it 3-1.

“We were the better team,†declared Draisaitl, who has started his season with a goal in both games. “We played really well. We had our legs. All four lines were going and there were different guys chipping in.

“Weâ€re going to be a hard team to beat when we consistently find a way to play like that.â€

Itâ€s a long season, to be sure, and the Oilers head out on a five-game Eastern swing on Monday, playing just one of their next eight games on home ice. But as immature as they looked when they put their collective feet up against Calgary, squandering a 3-0 lead to lose in a shootout, weâ€ve seen this team enough to know how it usually turns out.

And if theyâ€ve reached that level in Game 2, winning the Pacific Division becomes more than just a possibility.

“Weâ€ve got to help ourselves out a little bit more compared to the last two years,†said Draisaitl, whose Oilers have chased the Pacific leader all season long in each of their Stanley Cup finalist seasons. “You can build a lot of momentum, a lot of confidence within your group if you get off to a good start. You see it with a lot of teams, they get off to a really good start, then they just kind of carry it the rest of the way. Theyâ€re a playoff team.â€

In hindsight, winning a game like that — contested to the end when Vancouver pulled its goalie while on a power play — is more valuable than if the power play would have scored two, and there was nothing to sweat over.

This one ended with McDavid and Draisaitl as the two penalty-killing forwards. McDavid deftly got his stick on a Brock Boeser chance that would have tied the game, then he grabbed a loose puck with six Canucks in the zone and still 80 seconds on the clock.

Instead of chopping the puck out of the zone and allowing Vancouver — and the magnificent Quinn Hughes — to reload, McDavid spun, moved the puck over to Darnell Nurse, who found Draisaitl.

It was a snapshot on why Knoblauch has decided this season to ice his two superstars on the PK, and example of how high-level hockey IQ can make the difference between a regulation win and possible overtime.

“Good penalty killers are the ones who can make plays under pressure,†Knoblauch said. “You saw it with Connor, being able to slow things down rather than just shoveling a puck out. He’s able to settle things down and make a heck of a play.â€

In the end, 3-1 feels a lot better than 6-1 would have, when you earn a game on Noah Philpâ€s first NHL goal and an Andrew Mangiapane tuck in the 500th game of his NHL career.

“Pucks werenâ€t going in for us. Demko was great, he made a lot of big saves,†Pickard said. “But we didnâ€t stray from the game plan, we didnâ€t cheat for offence. We earned that win.

“If we play that game over and over again, weâ€re going to win pretty much every time.â€

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Wednesday’s 5-2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 4 of the American League Division Series means the New York Yankees have gone 16 years since winning the World Series, which is quite the drought for a franchise with 27 championship rings.

But manager Aaron Boone believes the next breakthrough is still ahead.

“I’m confident we’ll break through,” he told reporters (5:35 mark). “I have been every year. And I believe in so many of the people in that room. That hasn’t changed. The fire hasn’t changed. It’s hard to win a World Series.”

Boone’s longevity is notable at this point, as the 2025 campaign was eighth as the Yankees manager. It is a span that includes seven playoff appearances and a spot in last year’s World Series, but he is yet to lead the team to a championship.

That raises natural questions about his future given the championship-or-bust nature of the Yankees as a franchise, but he believes he will still be there in 2026.

“No, I’m under contract,” he said when asked if he had reason to think he won’t return next season (6:10 mark). “So, no, I don’t expect anything.”

The Yankees surely had no plans of losing in the American League Division Series, especially after winning 94 games during the regular season. That was the same amount of wins they had in 2024 when they reached the World Series but fell short against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But the future is still bright, especially since their starting rotation next season could feature Gerrit Cole, Max Fried, Carlos Rodón, Luis Gil and Cam Schlittler, among valuable depth options.

That will be difficult to beat if a lineup with Aaron Judge leading the way puts up enough runs.

It’s likely of little solace to Yankees fans following another postseason loss Wednesday, but there is a reason Boone is still confident.

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Image credit:
Cam Schlittler (Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

He located. At times, he baffled. But most importantly, he simply blew Boston hitters away with pure, unadulterated velocity.

When the year began, Schlittler sat 93-94 mph with his fastball and touched 96. But every month this season, heâ€s added velocity. He began touching 99 mph in May. By June, he was sitting at 96 mph. In July in the majors, he was sitting 97 and touching 100 for the first time. By the time the postseason arrived, he was sitting at 99 mph, touching 101 and introducing himself to fans on a national stage with one of the best fastballs we’ve seen this year.

Schlittler is one of the most intriguing “Where did he come from?†stories the game has seen in years. A somewhat-promising potential back-end starter for much of his early pro career, he pitched his way into being a Top 100 Prospect by the end of June. And now that heâ€s added another 6 mph to his heater, heâ€s pitching like an ace.

Schlittler may be a pop-up prospect, but as a starter who is throwing 99 mph, he has officially arrived. In fact, if that kind of velocity holds, he is actually very well positioned to have a long and productive MLB career now.

Some understandably may worry that throwing so hard will put him at risk of having a spectacular but brief and injury-plagued career. But in reality, the opposite is true.

The most important determining characteristic for MLB success as a starting pitcher is how hard a player can throw. Knowing that, what we find is that starting pitchers who throw as hard as Schlittler are much more likely to have long MLB careers. So, if you were to try to predict which star starters of today will last the longest, the pitchers who throw harder than everyone else would be your best bets.

Why? The reasoning is actually pretty straightforward.

If you throw harder than normal, you are more likely to have success. If you throw harder than normal, you are more likely to have a better peak to your career. And if you throw harder than normal, you are more likely to have durability and, thus, a longer MLB career.

Now, I know that the durability part of that equation is going to trip a lot of people up. But I promise, weâ€ll explain it all thoroughly. So, let’s take a closer look at why throwing hard is so important for a pitcher’s long-term success.

For Pro Pitchers, Velocity Is The Most Important Thing

Before we begin, I’d like to issue an important disclaimer: Please do not read this as a manifesto calling for 12-year-olds to start chucking it as hard as they can in front of radar guns.

This is not about that. Weâ€re talking about professional pitchers here. These are adults who are getting paid to play baseball in scenarios where the rewards for MLB success are significant.

On the other hand, a middle or high school pitcher who throws extremely hard runs a risk of blowing out a physically-undeveloped body and never reaching pro ball. Even for fully-mature and filled-out pro pitchers, chasing velocity increases risk of injury. Throwing harder ups the stress put on a pitcherâ€s elbow. That’s just how it is.

But when it comes to pro pitchers looking to establish a career, the risk of injury pales in comparison to the risk of ineffectiveness. For all the understandable concerns about the rate of elbow injuries among pro pitchers, telling them to throw softer to reduce injury risk is the equivalent of telling a race car driver that they will reduce their risk of crashing by driving more slowly. They may crash less often, sure. But they also are more likely to be replaced by a faster driver.

As more than one pro pitcher has put it to me over the years: Would you rather risk injury to be a major league pitcher or be a healthy pitcher who has been released?

Ok, with that said, let’s bring this back to Schlittler. In 2023, when he was pitching in Class A, he went 1-2, 4.11 with more hits (49) than innings pitched (46). He sat at 90 mph and maxed out at 92.

By adding a remarkable 8-9 mph of velocity since then, Schlittler went from a fringe back-of-a-rotation profile to going 4-3, 2.96 this year with a .217 opponent average in the majors. Between the majors and minors, he struck out 183 batters this season.

Clearly, throwing harder has made all the difference for him. Thatâ€s not surprising, as there is a linear relationship between how hard a fastball is thrown and how successful it is.

In general, MLB hitters turn into something like Oswald Peraza when facing a 100 mph fastball from a starting pitcher. And when they get a sub-90 mph heater, they hit better than Bobby Witt Jr. The data shows a direct relationship in which hitters are increasingly successful as fastballs get softer:

avg veloAVGOBPSLGWHIFF%100+ mph.141.213.21628.498-99 mph.208.292.33324.596-97 mph.247.323.40120.994-95 mph.260.336.43318.792-93 mph.275.351.46616.290-91 mph.293.373.52014.3Under 90 mph.301.383.52512.8Source: Baseball Savant

Harder-Throwing Pitchers Have More Success

There are many who want to believe the key to MLB success as a pitcher is elite command, dastardly movement or an exquisite feel for pitching. Those are useful traits, but they donâ€t match the ability to throw hard. In fact, they donâ€t really come close.

Throwing hard makes it more likely a pitcher will have a devastating secondary pitch. And throwing hard does nothing to prevent pitchers from having command or feel to pitch. Having a foundation of elite velocity makes it easier to master other aspects of the game. On the other hand, working off of below-average velocity requires that a pitcher master most of the other aspects of pitching just to survive.

To better illustrate this, we can look at all MLB starting pitchers with 100-plus innings pitched in 2025. We selected 100 innings to ensure we’re only comparing established starters who were in rotations for most of the year.

If we divide the resulting player pool into five buckets based entirely on average fastball velocity, we find that the hardest-throwing starters averaged more fWAR and more innings pitched. Overall, the relationship between WAR and velocity was largely linear:

velocityPitchersAvg
WARMEDIAN
WARMAX
WARMIN
WARAVG
IP97+ mph113.32.96.61.715895-96 mph252.72.45.8-0.615493-94 mph501.91.94.1-0.314891-92 mph201.91.65.5-0.4151< 90.9 mph81.11.12.5-0.3141

Now, these numbers don’t do anything to account for movement, command, quality of secondary pitches, etc. Logically, starting MLB pitchers who donâ€t throw as hard should be better at some of those other attributes, as they arenâ€t able to rely on elite velocity but still made it to the big leagues. The gameâ€s best changeups, for example, often come from pitchers with less stuff.

Elite control and command donâ€t always pair with top-tier velocity, but this year, there was no such thing as an ineffective 100-inning starter who threw 97-plus regularly. Perhaps just as important is that was also no such thing as an exceptional pitcher who sat under 91 mph.

Year after year, the best starters are the ones who throw really hard. Consider that the best pitchers in the majors in 2025 were Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes. Both sit at 97-98 mph and can reach back for triple digits. Of the best 15-20 starting pitchers this season, only Logan Webb and Ranger Suarez have significantly below-league-average velocity.

This isnâ€t a new trend. Of the Cy Young winners over the past 15 seasons, only knuckleballer R.A. Dickey (NL, 2012) and lefthander Dallas Keuchel (AL, 2015) did so with below-average velocity. Of the past 30 Cy Young winners, 17 threw 2+ mph harder in their award season than the average MLB starter. This year will likely make that 19 of 32.

The trend is only getting stronger, too. From 2021-2024, Cy Young winners have threw 2.9 mph harder than average MLB starters. If Skubal (+4.6 mph) and Skenes (+3.9 mph) win this year, as expected, those numbers will climb even higher.

But we donâ€t just have to look at the best of the best to see this play out. To examine the trend further, we studied every starting pitcher who debuted in the majors from 2008-2015 (see below for more details).

We chose those end points because 2008 is the first year of the pitch-tracking era, which means we have velocity data that is measured on the same scale as it is today. And 2015 is far enough back that the vast majority of pitchers who debuted during this timeframe have already pitched out the entirety of their careers. Of the 236 pitchers in the study, only 45 were still pitching in 2025, and that includes pitchers like Clayton Kershaw, who went on to announce his retirement.

For every pitcher, we looked at average fastball velocity in their debut season and compared it to the overall average fastball velocity for starting pitchers who threw with the same hand that season. In this way, we created a velocity delta for each pitcher. For example, when Stephen Strasburg debuted, he threw 6 mph harder than the average righthanded starter. Lefthander Alex Wood had exactly average velocity for a lefty starter in the year he debuted. Lefty Mike Fiers threw 2.8 mph softer than the average lefty.

Sorted into five distinct velocity buckets, here’s how those those 236 pitchers performed over their careers:

velo compared
to MLB avgTOTAL PITCHERSERAH/9BB%SO% 2 mph543.828.618.31%21.44%

We see that pitchers who threw harder had a better ERA, fewer hits per nine innings and a higher strikeout rate, albeit with a slightly higher walk rate. This suggests, again, that if pitchers throw harder, hitters have a tougher time. And we can see that the truly elite starting pitchers are almost always the ones who throw extremely hard.

But that doesnâ€t answer everything. Thereâ€s still one big, nagging question: What about their durability?Â

After all, if these starters with elite velocity are great for a season or two and then flame out because of injuries, is it worth the tradeoff?

Thatâ€s not whatâ€s happening. What we find instead is that harder throwing starting pitchers are the ones who have longer MLB careers.

Throwing Harder Makes Pitchers More Durable

Understandably, this is the aspect of our findings that will seem the most counterintuitive to readers. As multiple studies have shown over the past 20 years, the harder a pitcher throws, the more stress he puts on the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. So, if throwing harder increases the risk of Tommy John surgery, how does throwing harder make pitchers more durable?

The answer is pretty simple: The biggest threat to an MLB pitcherâ€s career is not a career-ending injury—itâ€s ineffectiveness.

By the nature of this study, we tried to ensure we werenâ€t including data brief MLB callups. Every pitcher included recorded more starts than relief appearances in their first two MLB seasons and every pitcher had to have 60-plus innings pitched. These were starters who made 10 or more MLB starts. All but 35 of them made 20-plus MLB starts.

Within those parameters, something became quite clear: Soft-tossers donâ€t get to stick around. Consider that:

• Of the 27 pitchers who debuted while throwing two-plus mph softer than average, only 39.7% reached 200 career innings.
• Among the slightly harder-throwing -1 to -2 mph group, 62.9% topped 200 innings.
• Among pitchers who threw 1 to 2 mph harder than average, 91.9% threw 200 innings.
• Among the pitchers who threw more than 2 mph harder than average, 94.4% threw more than 200 innings.

Now, a pitcher with a 200-inning MLB career may be one who had some longevity, but 500 innings means a pitcher stuck around for three or more seasons. But even with that expansion scope, the same trends apply. Less than 30% of pitchers who debuted throwing 1 mph or more softer than average failed to reach 500 innings. Among +1 to +2 mph starters, 67.6% reached 500 innings. Among pitchers who threw more than 2 mph harder, 79.6% made it to the 500-inning mark.

And what about for pitchers who reach 1,000 career innings? To do that, a player has to be excellent for a long time, showing both durability and longevity. It’s a much rarer thing, as only 57 active pitchers have 1,000 or more MLB innings.

While that is a very high bar to clear, 50% of pitchers in the > 2 mph bucket reached 1,000 innings. Among pitchers with -1 mph velocity or worse, only 15% reached that mark.

Lastly, if you raise the threshold to 3 mph or more harder than average, the success rate goes up even further, with 57% of those pitchers reaching 1,000 innings. Of the 29 pitchers in the study who fit that description, their average career innings pitched (so far) was 1,139. And with the likes of Gerrit Cole, Kevin Gausman, Zack Wheeler and Eduardo Rodriguez among that group, the average career innings pitched number will only continue to climb.

To study this even further, we ran regression analyses that looked at pitchers’ age at the time of their MLB debut and how their fastball velocity compared to the league average (for starters of that same handedness in that year). In each different way we studied the data—including instances that controlled for age at MLB debut—there was always a positive correlation between throwing harder and increased career longevity.

Of the top 20 pitchers in career innings pitched included in the study, eight threw 2+ mph harder than average. With that in mind, here’s one other stat we left out of that previous chart:

velo compared
to MLB avgAVG
CAREER IP 2 mph1074

So, what does all of this data tell us?

Throwing harder does increase injury risks, yes. That’s just the nature of the game. But for every pitcher whose career is ended prematurely by injury, multiple other pitchers will have gotten released or demoted due to ineffectiveness. And effectiveness, clearly, is predicated largely on how hard a pitcher throws.

Ultimately, the clearest path to being a successful MLB pitcher is to throw harder than your peers.

The Need For Speed

MLB velocity climbs year after year. This only adds to why there is such an attritional effect for soft-tossers. If a pitcher debuted throwing 1 mph harder than league average, that pitcher will have average velocity before long if they just maintain their stuff.

For example, if a pitcher debuted throwing 91.5 mph in 2008—which was average velocity for a righthanded starter at the time—by just maintaining that velocity over the course of their career, they would have been throwing 1 mph softer than average by 2015. And if they were still around in 2025, throwing 91.5 mph would have them throwing 2.8 mph softer than average.

On the other hand, a pitcher who debuts throwing 2 mph harder than average can comfortably know that simply maintaining their velocity will keep them above-average for years, even if the league will eventually catch up to them.

And the hardest-throwers who do suffer injury? Because their stuff is better than most, they have more margin to still have effective stuff post-injury, even if they never get back to being 100% of their pre-injury self.

Take Jacob deGrom as an example. One of the most effective pitchers in history, heâ€s had multiple Tommy John surgeries and averaged under 50 innings per season from 2021-2024. Some may point to him as a cautionary tale of a pitcher who threw too hard.

But, despite those injuries, deGrom has thrown 1,540 innings in his MLB career, which is good for 22nd-most among active pitchers. And as his 2025 numbers show, he was still pitching effectively as a 37-year-old. While deGrom has had injuries, his career (47.9 bWAR and 46.4 fWAR) is one that almost any debuting rookie would love to emulate.

Itâ€s much harder to find examples of soft-tossers who can pitch for that long. Injuries donâ€t have to derail them—their lack of velocity does the trick. Yes, Jamie Moyer was a wizard many years ago, and so was Mark Buehrle. But they were outliers. In the modern game, it’s very hard for even the most successful soft-tossers to carry success into their mid 30s.

Consider that there are 32 starters who debuted between 2008-2015 and have compiled 1,500+ career innings. Aaron Nola, Mike Leake, Kyle Hendricks, Dallas Keuchel and Trevor Cahill are the only pitchers in that group who debuted throwing 1 mph or more softer than average velocity.

Leake was out of the league as a 31-year-old. Cahill’s last effective season was as a 30-year-old.

Keuchel is a perfect example of a pitcher who dominated without exceptional velocity. He won a Cy Young in 2015 and was excellent from 2014-2020. But that 2020 season as a 32-year-old was his last year of effectiveness. From 2021 on, he was 13-19, 6.24. Keuchel never threw hard, but as his velocity started to dip just a bit, his hard-hit rate skyrocketed.

Hendricks was excellent for the Cubs from 2016-2020. But from his age-31 season in 2021 until now, he’s 36-43, 4.79 with 2.5 bWAR in five seasons. From 2015-2020 he had a better than league average ERA for six straight seasons. He’s been worse than league average in ERA four out of five seasons since.

In Nola’s case, he quickly added velocity to get to league average. But when his fastball dropped to 91.8 mph in 2025, his effectiveness waned, and he posted a 6.01 ERA that was more than two runs above his career average. As a 32-year-old, he likely needs to regain velocity to regain effectiveness.

Among the 1,500+ inning club pitchers who are no longer pitching, the average final season for the hard-throwers came as 36-year-olds. Among the soft-tossers, the average age of their final season was 33.

Among the hardest-throwing members of the 1,500-inning club, there were plenty of examples of pitchers who carried success into their mid 30s and beyond. Justin Verlander, for example, won two Cy Youngs and finished as runner-up twice more from ages 32 to 39. Kevin Gausman’s best seasons have come in his 30s. Zack Wheeler went 65-35, 2.90 in 908 innings from ages 31-35. Nathan Eovaldi hasn’t posted an ERA below league average in his age 30-35 seasons.

A similar trend is true across all the pitchers in the study. While it may seem logical to think the hard-throwing pitchers would be the first to lose effectiveness because of the wear and tear of throwing so hard, they actually have the most longevity. That may be because the ability to reach top-tier velocities generally requires a good combination of strength and solid mechanics.

Excluding any pitcher who pitched in 2025 (and therefore is still active), we found that pitchers who threw the hardest pitched in the majors until they were older than the other pitchers. However, unlike almost all our other examples, this trend does not come with a linear progression. Pitchers with average velocity stayed in the majors until they were older than those who threw 1 to 2 mph harder than average:

velo compared
to MLB avg Avg AGe (final season)Avg MLB seasonsmedian MLB seasons> 2 mph32.810.1101 to 2 mph31.9910-0.9 to 0.9 mph31.98.38-2 to -1 mph30.66.15< -2 mph30.66.14

So, when you watch Cam Schlittler or Paul Skenes or Tarik Skubal, marvel at how they can dominate by throwing 100-plus mph, a number that once was reserved for a few relievers pitching in short stints.

But don’t worry too much about whether they are going to burn out too quickly. The evidence actually shows that these are the type of pitchers more likely to have lengthy careers.

Final Notes

• Our study looked at every MLB pitcher from 2008-2015 who made more starts than relief appearances in their first two MLB seasons. They needed 60+ innings pitched to qualify, and we wanted to ensure that we were selecting for only pitchers who were successful enough to get 10+ starts. We limited it to pitchers who debuted in their age-27 season or younger to ensure we were focusing on pitchers who could be expected to have numerous seasons in the majors if they pitched effectively. Otherwise, the study would have included some veteran pitchers from Japan who came to the U.S. for a couple of years, often before returning to Japan. Since NPB stats are not part of the study, they would misstate the actual longevity of those pitchers.

• Any player who died while an active pitcher was removed from the study. That included Jose Fernandez, Yordano Ventura and Tyler Skaggs.

• The R-squared of our OLS regression model that looked at velocity delta while controlling for age at MLB debut was 0.183 with a p-value of < 0.001 and a coefficient of 85.18.

• The R-squared of our linear regression model that looked at career length in the major leagues based on velocity delta and age at MLB debut was 0.203.

• The correlation of velocity to career length diminished as we set increasing cutoffs for minimum innings pitched, but the correlation always remained at any cutoff.

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  Alden GonzalezOct 3, 2025, 08:00 AM ET

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  ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.

WHEN THE LOW point arrived last year, on Sept. 15 in Atlanta, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts broke character and challenged some of his players in a meeting many of them later identified as a fulcrum in their championship run.

This year, he attempted to strike a more positive tone.

It was Sept. 6. The Dodgers had just been walked off in Baltimore, immediately after being swept in Pittsburgh, and though they were still 15 games above .500, a sense of uneasiness lingered. Their division lead was slim, consistency remained elusive and spirits were noticeably down. Roberts saw an opportunity to take stock.

“He was talking to us about the importance of what was in front of us,” Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas said in Spanish. “At that time, there were like seven, eight weeks left because we only had three weeks left in the regular season, and he wanted all of us, collectively, to think about what we were still capable of doing, and the opportunity we still had to win another championship.”

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Later that night, Yoshinobu Yamamoto got within an out of no-hitting the Baltimore Orioles, then he surrendered a home run to Jackson Holliday and watched the bullpen implode after his exit, allowing three additional runs in what became the Dodgers’ most demoralizing loss of the season. The next morning, though, music blared inside Camden Yards’ visiting clubhouse. Players were upbeat, vibes were positive.

The Dodgers won behind an effective Clayton Kershaw later that afternoon, then reeled off 16 wins over their next 21 games — including back-to-back emphatic victories over the Cincinnati Reds in the first round of the playoffs.

It took a day, but Roberts’ message had seemingly landed.

“We needed some positivity,” Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernandez said, “to remove all of the negativity that we were feeling in that moment.”

As they approach a highly anticipated National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, the Dodgers once again look like one of the deepest, most fearsome teams in the sport.

But the journey there was arduous.

A Dodgers team many outsiders pegged as a candidate to break the regular-season-wins record of 116 ultimately won only 93, its fewest total in seven years. Defending a championship, a task no team has successfully pulled off in a quarter-century, has proven to be a lot more difficult than many Dodger players anticipated. But they’ve maintained a belief that their best selves would arrive when it mattered most. And whether it’s a product of health, focus, or because the right message hit them at the right time, they believe it’s here now.

“We’re coming together at the right time,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said amid a champagne-soaked celebration Wednesday night, “and that’s all that really matters.”

BUSTER POSEY’S San Francisco Giants became the most dominant team in the first half of the 2010s, during which they captured three championships. They won every other year — on even years, famously — but could not pull off the repeat the Dodgers are chasing. To this day, Posey, now the Giants’ president of baseball operations, can’t pinpoint why.

“I wish I could,” Posey said, “because if I knew what that one thing was, I would’ve tried to correct it the second, third time through.”

Major League Baseball has not had a repeat champion since the New York Yankees won their third consecutive title in 2000, a 24-year drought that stands as the longest ever among the four major North American professional sports, according to ESPN Research. In that span, the NBA had a team win back-to-back championships on four different occasions. The NHL? Three. The NFL, whose playoff rounds all consist of one game? Two.

MLB’s drought has occurred in its wild-card era, which began in 1995 and has expanded since.

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“The baseball playoffs are really difficult,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “You obviously have to be really good. You also have to have some really good fortune. The number of rounds and the fact that the very best team in the league wins around 60% of their games, the very worst team wins around 40% — now you take the upper-echelon in the playoffs, and the way baseball games can play out, good fortune is a real part of determining the outcomes.”

The Dodgers, now 11 wins shy of a second consecutive title, will hope for some of that good fortune this month. They’ve already encountered some of the pitfalls that come with winning a championship, including the one Posey experienced most vividly: the toll of playing deep into October.

“That month of postseason baseball — it’s more like two or three months of regular-season baseball, just because of the intensity of it,” Posey said.

The Dodgers played through Oct. 30 last year — and then they began this season March 18, nine days before almost everybody else, 5,500 miles away in Tokyo.

“At the time, you don’t see it,” Hernández said, “but when the next season starts, that’s when you start feeling your body not responding the way it should be. And it’s because you don’t get as much time to get ready, to prepare for next season. This one has been so hard, I got to be honest, because — we win last year, and we don’t even have the little extra time that everybody gets because we have to go to Japan. So, you have to push yourself to get ready a month early so you can be ready for those games. Those are games that count for the season. So, working hard when your body is not even close to 100%, I think that’s the reason. I think that’s why you see, after a team wins, next year you see a lot of players getting hurt.”

The Dodgers had the second-most amount of money from player salaries on the injured list this season, behind only the Yankees, the team they defeated in the World Series, according to Spotrac. The Dodgers sent an NL-leading 29 players to the IL, a list that included Freddie Freeman, who underwent offseason surgery on the injured ankle he played through last October, and several other members of their starting lineup — Will Smith, Max Muncy, Tommy Edman and Hernández.

The bullpen that carried the Dodgers through last fall might have paid the heaviest price. Several of those who played a prominent role last October — Blake Treinen, Michael Kopech, Evan Phillips — either struggled, were hurt or did not pitch. It might not have been the sole reason for the bullpen’s struggles — a combined 4.94 ERA from free agent signees Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates played just as big a role — but it certainly didn’t help.

“I don’t know if there’s any carryover thing,” Treinen said Sept. 16 after suffering his third consecutive loss. “I don’t believe in that. We just have a job, and it’s been weird.”

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts knows a little something about October baseball. Can his team make history this fall? Katelyn Mulcahy/MLB Photos via Getty Images

IN FEBRUARY, ROJASmade headlines by saying that the 2025 Dodgers could challenge the wins record and added they might win 120 games at full health. An 8-0 start — after an offseason in which the front office added Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, Michael Conforto, Hyeseong Kim, Scott and Yates to what was arguably the sport’s best roster already — only ratcheted up the expectations.

The Dodgers managed a 53-32 record through the end of June — but then, they went 10-14 in July, dropped seven of their first 12 games in August and saw a seven-game lead in the National League West turn into a one-game deficit.

From July 1 to Aug. 14, the Dodgers’ offense ranked 20th in OPS and 24th in runs per game. The rotation began to round into form, but the bullpen sported the majors’ highest walk rate and put up a 1.43 WHIP in that stretch, fifth highest.

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The Dodgers swept the San Diego Padres at home in mid-August, regaining some control of the division, but then Los Angeles split a series against the last-place Colorado Rockies and lost one in San Diego. The Dodgers swept the Reds, then lost two of three to the Arizona Diamondbacks, dropped three in a row to the Pirates and suffered those back-to-back walk-off losses to the Orioles.

Consistency eluded the Dodgers at a time when it felt as if every opponent was aiming for them.

Before rejoining the Dodgers ahead of the 2023 season, Rojas spent eight years with the Miami Marlins, who were continually out of the playoff race in September and found extra motivation when facing the best teams down the stretch. Those matchups functioned as their World Series.

“I think that’s the problem for those teams after winning a World Series — you’re going to have a target on your back,” Rojas said. “And it’s going to take a lot of effort for your main guys to step up every single day. And then, at the end of the regular season, you’re going to be kind of exhausted from the battle of every single day. And I think that’s why when teams get to the playoffs, they probably fall short.”

Travis d’Arnaud, now a catcher for the Los Angeles Angels, felt the same way while playing for the defending-champion Atlanta Braves in 2022. There was “a little bit more emotion” in games that otherwise didn’t mean much, he said. Teams seemed to bunt more frequently, play their infield in early and consistently line up their best relievers. Often, they’d face a starting pitcher who typically threw in the low-90s but suddenly started firing mid- to upper-90s fastballs.

“It’s just a different intensity,” said A.J. Pierzynski, the catcher for the Chicago White Sox teams that won it all in 2005 and failed to repeat in 2006. “It’s hard to quantify unless you’re playing in the games, but there’s a different intensity if you’re playing.”

BEFORE A SEASON-ENDING sweep of the Seattle Mariners, the 2025 Dodgers were dangerously close to finishing with the fewest full-season wins total of any team Friedman has overseen in these past 11 years. Friedman acknowledged that recently but added a caveat: “I’d also say that going into October, I think it’ll be the most talented team.”

It’s a belief that has fueled the Dodgers.

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With Snell and Glasnow healthy, Yamamoto dialing up what was already an NL Cy Young-caliber season and Shohei Ohtani fully stretched out, the Dodgers went into the playoffs believing their rotation could carry them the way their bullpen did a year earlier. Their confidence was validated immediately. Snell allowed two baserunners through the first six innings of Game 1 of the wild-card round Tuesday night, and Yamamoto went 6â…” innings without allowing an earned run 24 hours later.

“For us, it’s going to be our starting pitching,” Muncy said. “They’re going to set the tone.”

But an offense that has been without Smith, currently nursing a hairline fracture in his right hand, has also been clicking for a while. The Dodgers trailed only the Phillies in slugging percentage over the last three weeks of the regular season. In the Dodgers’ first two playoff games, 10 players combined to produce 28 hits. Six of them came from Mookie Betts, who began the season with an illness that caused him to lose close to 20 pounds and held a .670 OPS — 24 points below the league average — as recently as Aug. 6. Since then, he’s slashing .326/.384/.529.

His trajectory has resembled that of his team.

“We had a lot of struggles, really all year,” Betts said. “But I think we all view that as just a test to see how we would respond. And so now we’re starting to use those tests that we went through earlier to respond now and be ready now. And anything that comes our way, it can’t be worse than what we’ve already gone through.”

The Dodgers still don’t know if their bullpen will be good enough to take them through October — though Sasaki’s ninth inning Wednesday night, when he flummoxed the Reds with triple-digit fastballs and devastating splitters, certainly provided some hope — but they believe in their collective ability to navigate it.

They believe this roster is better and deeper than the championship-winning one from last fall. And, as Rojas said, they believe they “know how to flip the switch when it matters most.”

“It’s been a long year,” Muncy said. “At this point, seven months ago, we were on the other side of the world. We’ve been through a lot this year, and to end up in the spot we’re in right now — we’re in a great spot. We’re in the postseason. That’s all that matters. That’s what we’ve been saying all year. Anything can happen once you’re in October.”

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India’s Mohammed Siraj, left, and Yashasvi Jaiswal celebrates the dismissal of West Indies’ Brandon King. (AP Photo) NEW DELHI: Star India pacer Mohammed Siraj once again underlined his growing stature in Test cricket with a devastating spell that left the West Indies reeling on the opening day of the first Test on Thursday. Sirajâ€s four-wicket haul (4/40) dismantled the hosts for 162 in just 44.1 overs, before India replied strongly to close at 121 for 2, trailing by just 41 runs.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!The day belonged to Siraj, who admitted that the chance to bowl on a green-top surface brought out the best in him. “I was very excited to bowl on this green-top wicket, something we donâ€t get very often in India. The last time we had such a wicket was against New Zealand in Bengaluru,†he said after stumps.

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Siraj set the tone early, striking thrice in the morning session with his trademark wobble seam deliveries. The standout dismissal came when he sent Brandon Kingâ€s middle stump flying after the batter shouldered arms. “I was able to execute it the way I had planned. Two balls before, he was hit on the pads, and I thought about bowling in the line of the stumps. It worked exactly as I wanted,†Siraj explained.

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He also removed West Indies skipper Roston Chase with an angled ball that surprised even him. “With the wobble seam, the ball either comes in or cuts out. But that delivery kept straightening from the shiny side while I had bowled it with wobble seam,†Siraj said with a smile.Reflecting on his performance, the Hyderabad pacer highlighted how confidence from Indiaâ€s hard-fought 2-2 series draw in England earlier this year carried over into this match. “It was a very competitive series in England, and I got a lot of confidence from it. To perform against a strong side gives a different kind of confidence and I felt it today as well,†he said.Siraj admitted the wickets didnâ€t come easy. “I had to work hard for these four wickets as well. Even in England, I had to work hard. Itâ€s not the case that you can get wickets just like that. No one gave me the fifth wicket (today), I had to take all four with hard work,†he declared, summing up his relentless effort.

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LOS ANGELES — October baseball isnâ€t always a crapshoot.

Sometimes, the sportâ€s deepest-pocketed, most talent-rich juggernaut swats away an 83-win, small-market opponent like a pesky fly.

A Los Angeles Dodgers team that had hoped to be resting up for the division series this week played its way out of the wild-card round as quickly as possible Wednesday. They swept a Cincinnati Reds team that slipped into the postseason with the second-fewest regular-season wins of any playoff team in the wild-card era, clinching the best-of-three series with an 8-4 victory in Game 2.

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For two straight days, the Dodgers mostly looked like the team hailed as the preseason favorites to be World Series champs for a second straight year, the team with three league MVPs at the top of its lineup, the team with a starting rotation so deep that Clayton Kershaw was left off the wild-card roster. The Dodgers†offense and starting pitching were more than strong enough to overcome a tenuous bullpen, one that twice took breezy victories and needlessly injected moments of late-game tension.

But this was the Reds. This was the easy part. For the advancing Dodgers, much tougher challenges await.

[Get more Los Angeles news: Dodgers team feed]

Up next come the talented, rested, playoff-tested Philadelphia Phillies, the Dodgers†opponent for a best-of-five division series beginning Saturday at Citizens Bank Park. The Phillies piled up 96 wins this season, won four of six against the Dodgers and edged them in the race for home-field advantage and a first-round bye.

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On Wednesday, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts described the Phillies as a “very talented ball club†but insisted that he thinks the Dodgers “match up very well against those guys.†He contended that his squad could be the sharper team early in the series, having played two wild-card games while the Phillies had the week off.

“Getting through the wild-card series kind of seamlessly like we did, I think weâ€re in a great spot,†he said.

If the performance of the starting rotation the past two nights is any indication, the Dodgers will arrive in Philadelphia fists bared, ready for a fight. In the wild-card round, the Reds were unable to make Roberts pay for the decision to save Ohtani to start Game 1 against the Phillies.

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In their outings against Cincinnati, Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto both secured 20-plus outs, struck out nine-plus batters and surrendered five or fewer hits. Thatâ€s the first time in MLB postseason history, per OptaSTATS, that a team’s starters have done that in back-to-back games.

Yamamoto was especially resilient Wednesday after the Reds loaded the bases with nobody out and the Dodgers leading by a single run in the top of the sixth. He caught a break when Austin Hays†one-hop liner found Mookie Betts†glove at shortstop and Betts astutely threw home to force out the third-base runner. Then Yamamoto locked in and struck out both Sal Stewart and Elly De La Cruz on sharp curveballs below the zone.

Through an interpreter, Yamamoto said postgame that he worried he was “throwing too many curveballs†during that sequence, but he said he trusted catcher Ben Rortvedt. Only after De La Cruz checked his swing but could not hold up at strike three did Yamamoto concede, “That was a good call.â€

And as deep as the Dodgers†starting rotation is, so is their lineup.

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Just two games into this postseason, October heroes of the past are heating up, most notably Kiké Hernandez. After the Dodgers fell behind in the first inning on two unearned runs made possible by a Teoscar Hernandez error, Kiké helped his team recover. In the fourth, he drove in the tying run with a ringing double in the gap, then scored the go-ahead run on a Miguel Rojas single, pumping his fist as he stepped on home plate.

The Dodgers star who struggled most over the course of the regular season has also caught fire at the ideal time. Betts had four hits Wednesday, including three doubles, which tied a Dodgers single-game postseason record dating to 1953.

“Better late than never,†he said afterward with a smile. “I went through arguably one of the worst years of my career. But I think it really made me mentally tough. So now there’s just a different level of focus. And it’s not really on myself. It’s more on winning the game.â€

In the Game 2 victory, nearly everyone in the lineup contributed. Teoscar Hernandez hit a two-run double. Rojas and Rortvedt had two hits apiece. Itâ€s no wonder that before the game, Reds manager Terry Francona scoffed at the idea of intentionally walking Ohtani, who singled and scored a run.

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“Youâ€re kidding, right?†he said. “Have you heard of Mookie Betts or Freddie Freeman? … You start walking people in that lineup, and youâ€re asking for trouble.â€

But if thereâ€s one reason for concern heading into the Philadelphia series, itâ€s the same one that plagued the Dodgers throughout the second half. Their relievers canâ€t be trusted to protect big leads, let alone small ones in high-leverage situations.

On Tuesday in Game 1, relievers Alex Vesia, Edgardo Henriquez and Jack Dreyer frittered away much of an eight-run lead over the course of a 59-pitch top of the eighth inning. Boos rained down from the Dodger Stadium crowd after Dreyer walked in a run, the Reds†third of the frame, to allow Cincinnati to send the tying run to the on-deck circle.

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A pattern emerged in Game 2, when Roberts called starter Emmet Sheehan in the top of the eighth with the Dodgers leading 8-2. Sheehan walked the bases loaded, then yielded a base hit and a sacrifice fly.

When Sheehan nearly hit Will Benson with a pitch on an 0-2 count, Roberts had seen enough. He pulled Sheehan in the middle of the at-bat and brought on Vesia, who sandwiched two strikeouts around a walk to wriggle out of the inning with an 8-4 lead intact.

Why didnâ€t Roberts allow Sheehan to finish pitching to Benson? The skipper conceded postgame that Sheehan “wasnâ€t sharp†and said he felt better about Vesia against the right-handed hitters on deck. Would Roberts hesitate before turning to Sheehan in future postseason games? No, the manager gave Sheehan his vote of confidence.

“I believe in him,†he said. “I really do.â€

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The one pitcher who earned Roberts†trust in this wild-card sweep was starter-turned-reliever Roki Sasaki, who finished off the Reds with a pair of strikeouts in the ninth inning Wednesday. Asked if Sasaki would be the Dodgers†postseason closer moving forward, Roberts gave a non-answer but acknowledged, “I donâ€t think the moment is going to be too big for Roki.â€

With the Phillies looming, Sasaki will need to be ready for bigger moments as October rolls on. For the Dodgers, the Reds were a speed bump.

Now comes the hard part.

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In the wake of the Mets’ season ending with them falling all the way out of the playoffs, there will be no shortage of takes about what went wrong with a team that entered the year as an expected World Series contender.

There will be discussions about the inconsistent offense, the subpar defense, the coaching, the trade deadline, the decisions made by manager Carlos Mendoza, and the team’s failure to win a single game they trailed after eight innings.

And while it’s understandable to want to point fingers in a whole bunch of different directions, it can be argued that doing so is kind of a waste.

Yes, there seemed to be a spark missing at times.

Sure, the offense could’ve been more consistent.

And yes, there were injuries that threw a wrench into things.

But as the dust settles on the 2025 Mets and the 2026 team starts to take shape, it’s pretty easy to determine the main culprit for what went wrong.

It was the starting rotation.

The rotation is the nerve center of a team. Everything flows from there. If there isn’t enough length provided (the Mets finished 27th in MLB in innings pitched per start) it negatively impacts the bullpen, which becomes overworked.

If the starting pitching is constantly putting the team in holes, there’s that much more pressure on the offense to dig out of it.

It’s a vicious cycle.

/ Sep 21, 2025; New York City, New York, USA; New York Mets pitcher Sean Manaea (21) reacts as he exits the game against the Washington Nationals during the fourth inning at Citi Field.

Take Game 162 for an example.

The Mets had simply run out of starting pitchers to rely on. That led them to start a struggling Sean Manaea, who was pulled after 1.2 innings. From there, it was a march of relievers — Huascar Brazobanfor 1.0 inning, Brooks Raleyfor 0.2 of an inning, Ryne Stanek for 0.1 of an inning, and Tyler Rogers for 0.1 of an inning.

By the time Edwin Diaz was called on to stop the bleeding in the fifth inning, the Mets were in a 4-0 hole. And the season, for all intents and purposes, was over.

You can question Mendoza’s decision to pull Raley as quickly as he did, or to go to Stanek. But the fact of the matter is that he was managing the last three and a half months of the season with one hand tied behind his back. That’s because the starting pitching was simply not good enough in any aspect, and it took the rest of the team down with it.

So this was a collapse, sure. But it’s one with an asterisk, because it can be easily argued that the 2025 Mets were irretrievably flawed from the start.

Looking at how things were shaping up back on Feb. 18, following Frankie Montas‘ injury (and the questionable decision to sign him in the first place), the Mets’ rotation still had a high ceiling. But the floor was alarmingly low.

As I laid out at the time, there were injury concerns with Kodai Senga, Clay Holmes was transitioning from reliever to starter, Sean Manaea‘s late-season results in 2024 were perhaps unsustainable, and David Peterson had yet to put together back-to-back strong seasons.

Meanwhile, Griffin Canning, Tylor Megill, and Paul Blackburnwere fine as depth options, but counting on two out of three of them in the rotation could be asking a lot. Regarding Brandon Sproat, his initial struggle with the transition to Triple-A meant that it could possibly take longer than expected for him to become a big league option.

To put it simply, there were lots of what-ifs — too many for a team with championship aspirations. And while the starting staff excelled over the first few months of the season, the cracks were easy to see.

That included regression from Canning, who had a 5.90 ERA from May 23 to June 26, when he tore his Achilles. And it included the struggles of Megill, who had a 5.79 ERA from May 4 through June 14, which was his last appearance of the season as he dealt with injuries.

Jun 14, 2025; New York City, New York, USA; New York Mets starting pitcher Tylor Megill (38) reacts during the fourth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Citi Field. / Brad Penner-Imagn Images

When the injuries hit Canning, Megill, and then Senga, the Mets — who were also without Manaea — were left in a precarious spot.

It would’ve seriously impacted any team, but the way New York chose to address it was puzzling.

They in effect punted a handful of games as they relied on bullpen games, four starts from Paul Blackburn(losses on June 13, 18, 23, and 28), and one start from Blade Tidwell.

The bullpen game strategy cost the Mets two games in July, and came at a time when Nolan McLeanwas dominating for Triple-A Syracuse.

Against the backdrop of David Stearns choosing to not promote McLean, the Mets kept losing games that were winnable.

It’s impossible to know how McLean would’ve fared if he was called up a month or so before his debut on Aug. 16. But it’s hard to believe his presence in the rotation wouldn’t have led to at least one more win, which would’ve resulted in the Mets making the playoffs.

You can also point to not adding a starting pitcher around the trade deadline, but the scarcity of available arms and the high price tags make that one a lot more understandable than the strategy they employed over the summer as the injuries mounted — when it at times felt like New York thought a giveaway loss here or there wouldn’t matter.

Still, it all comes back to the way the starting rotation was put together during the offseason. There was just not enough certainty, and it put the team in a precarious spot really quickly — one Stearns and Co. were unable to wrest themselves out of.

Given Stearns’ history of success and analytical nature, it’s fair to believe he’ll take a different approach to the rotation for 2026 — one that places an emphasis on track record over hope.

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