Month: February 2020

PHOENIX (AP) Joey Votto turned 36 years old earlier this week and has battled a bad back that sent him to the injured list for a decent chunk of August.

But if age is starting to catch up with him, it’s hard to tell.

Votto and Josh VanMeter both hit two-run homers, Luis Castillo pitched five solid innings and the Cincinnati Reds beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 4-3 on Friday night.

”He’s done it his whole career,” Cincinnati Reds manager David Bell said of Votto. ”He’s always working on it, trying to improve and making adjustments. He’s in a good place. It’d be great to have him finish strong and take it into next year.”

The Diamondbacks lost their sixth straight to tumble further out of the NL wild card race. They won 11 out of 12 from Aug. 25-Sept. 7 to pull within 1 1/2 games of the second wild card spot, but are now 4 1/2 behind the Chicago Cubs with just 14 to play.

Votto gave the Reds a 2-0 lead in the third inning when he hit a two-run homer over the left field wall. It was his 15th of the season. In 18 games since coming off the injured list, he’s 20 of 64 (.313) at the plate with three homers.

The Diamondbacks pulled within 2-1 in the fourth before VanMeter launched a two-out, two-run homer to extend the Reds’ lead. Both runs were unearned because of an error by second baseman Wilmer Flores.

”We knew with Luis on the mound he would hold them to little or nothing,” VanMeter said. ”It was nice to get those four runs and it ended up being the difference.”

Raisel Iglesias pitched a scoreless ninth, working around Ketel Marte’s two-out double, for his 30th save. Michael Lorenzen pitched two scoreless innings of the relief in the seventh and eighth, striking out two.

”It is unfortunate we couldn’t get another big hit at a crucial time,” Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said. ”We hit some balls very, very hard from an offensive standpoint. The Reds made some big defensive plays.

Castillo (15-6) gave up two runs over five innings, striking out three to push his season total to 211. The Reds have won four of his last five starts.

Mike Leake (11-11) threw six innings for the Diamondbacks, giving up five hits and four runs (two earned). The bullpen pitched three scoreless innings to keep them in the game, but hits were hard to find.

WEB GEMS

Cincinnati shortstop Jose Iglesias made two phenomenal defensive plays, including one that saved a run.

The first was when the 29-year-old leapt to grab Adam Jones’ liner that seemed headed for the left-center field gap. The second was when he dove to grab Christian Walker’s hard grounder before turning to make the throw and get the third out at second base, which stranded Marte at third.

”That’s my job,” Iglesias said. ”Just try to save runs and try to make plays for my team.”

HAZEN EXTENDED

The Diamondbacks announced before the game that they’ve extended the contract of GM Mike Hazen. The team didn’t release details of the extension. The 43-year-old was hired in 2016 and has kept the Diamondbacks competitive in the NL Western Division, though they’ve finished behind the Dodgers each year.

Hazen’s name had been linked to the GM opening with the Boston Red Sox after they fired Dave Dombrowski. Hazen worked in the Red Sox front office before being hired by the Diamondbacks.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Diamondbacks: Luke Weaver (4-3, 3.03 ERA) threw two scoreless innings on Friday in a rehab assignment in Single-A Visalia. The right-hander hasn’t pitched in the big leagues since May 26 because of forearm tightness.

UP NEXT

Reds: RHP Anthony DeSclafani (9-8, 4.06 ERA) is scheduled to start. He’s pitched at least six innings in each of his last four outings and has a 2-1 record with a 2.32 ERA over his last five starts.

Diamondbacks: RHP Merrill Kelly (10-14, 4.68) will start for the first time against the Reds. Kelly’s spot rotation was in peril a few weeks ago, but he’s been better in his last two outings, giving up three earned runs over 13 innings.

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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP-Sports

PHILADELPHIA (AP) Pitching their ace every fifth day to boost their postseason hopes hasn’t worked out for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Pinch-hitter Andrew Benintendi’s sacrifice fly in the top of the ninth inning lifted the Boston Red Sox to a 2-1 win over Philadelphia on Saturday night.

The Phillies were mathematically eliminated from the NL East race when the Braves beat Washington earlier in the day to increase their lead in the division to 10 1/2 games over the Nationals. Philadelphia fell 3 1/2 games behind the Chicago Cubs for the second wild card spot and also trails the Brewers and Mets.

”I’m not gonna sugarcoat it and say we have much time left but we won’t hang our heads,” right-hander Aaron Nola said after allowing one run and four hits with nine strikeouts in seven innings.

Red Sox starter Eduardo Rodriguez had a season-high 12 strikeouts for the defending World Series champions, who entered the night 10 games out of a postseason berth.

After Nola beat Boston at Fenway Park on Aug. 20, manager Gabe Kapler has used him on his normal four days’ rest even when the team has off days in between his starts. The Phillies are 0-5 in Nola’s starts since then and have only scored 15 runs combined in those games. Nola has a 4.15 ERA in the five games but allowed three runs or less in six innings or more in three of them.

”We have to find ways to scratch more runs across for Nola,” Kapler said. ”It’s tough. Something we have to correct.”

They’re running out of time with 15 games remaining.

Mitch Moreland led off the ninth with a single off Hector Neris (3-6) and Christian Vazquez ripped a single to left-center, sending pinch-runner Chris Owings to third. Shortstop Jean Segura made a leaping catch on Jackie Bradley Jr.’s hard liner but pinch-hitter Brock Holt walked to load the bases. Benintendi then sliced a fly ball to left that scored Owings to put Boston up 2-1.

Matt Barnes (5-4) tossed a scoreless eighth and Brandon Workman finished for his 16th save in 22 tries.

Rodriguez allowed one run and four hits in 6 2/3 innings and remains at 17 wins.

Nola took a two-hitter into the seventh before running into trouble. Rafael Devers walked to start the inning and J.D. Martinez singled up the middle. After Moreland struck out, Vazquez drove a double off the wall in left-center to score Devers.

Nola then walked Bradley to load the bases but Gorkys Hernandez grounded into a third-to-home forceout. Red Sox manager Alex Cora elected to keep Rodriguez in the game and Nola struck him out to end the inning.

But Rodriguez surrendered the lead in the bottom half.

Bryce Harper led off with a single and Cesar Hernandez hit a two-out single. Rodriguez hit Adam Haseley with a pitch to load the bases and Maikel Franco walked on a 3-2 pitch, forcing in the tying run.

Josh Taylor replaced Rodriguez and struck out pinch-hitter Phil Gosselin to end the inning.

Nola retired the first 10 batters before Xander Bogaerts lined a single to right in the fourth.

”We’ve seen him the last two years,” Cora said of Nola. ”With all due respect to all the pitchers that we have faced, he’s been the best one. I love the way he competes, love his stuff, he doesn’t panic. He’s pitched twice over there at home and twice here, but with the offense that we have, he still dominates us. They really have a good one. He’s a special one. It would have been cool to face him in October, but I guess we’ll face him next year.”

INTERLEAGUE EXCELLENCE

The Red Sox are 13-0 in Rodriguez’s Interleague starts since 2017.

SWIPING RIGHT

The Phillies are 17-for-17 in stolen base attempts in their last 17 games. It’s the first time they have stolen 17 or more straight bases since 18 in a row in 2010.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Red Sox: OF Mookie Betts was scratched because of a sore left foot and Holt was scratched due to illness. Cora said Betts could return Tuesday.

Phillies: LF Corey Dickerson did not start because of a sore left foot. He could return Sunday.

UP NEXT

RHP Rick Porcello (12-12, 5.83 ERA) starts for the Red Sox and LHP Jason Vargas (6-7, 4.31) goes for the Phillies on Sunday. Porcello is 1-1, 2.77 in two career starts in Philadelphia. Vargas is 3-3, 3.48 in eight career starts vs. Boston.

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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP-Sports

Brett Quigley won the Morocco Champions in his second PGA Tour Champions start, saving par on the final two holes Saturday to hold off Stephen Ames by a stroke

Liverpool’s commanding lead in the English Premier League has grown to a scarcely believable 22 points with a 4-0 win over Southampton

Real Madrid extended its winning run and increased its Spanish league lead by defeating Atlético Madrid 1-0 in the Spanish capital derby

Erling Haaland has made it seven goals in three games as Borussia Dortmund routed Union Berlin 5-0 on Saturday

A look at how swanky a Miami Super Bowl has been, plus round up the best preview content before the big game.

How Sweet the Sound

Super Bowl Roundup

This Super Bowl list of the “blingiest packages for high-rollers” includes a $1.5-million package:

“The swanky 1 Hotel South Beach is offering a $1.5 million package for 20 that includes airfare, game tickets, a private butler, lodging at 10 oceanfront homes, a private dinner and a personal guru. Their cheapest package will set you back $200,000 and includes two tickets on the 50-yard line, a stay at a one-bedroom oceanfront home and field access after the game.”

Or:

“Private aviation company NetJets and luxury yacht charter company Northrop & Johnson teamed up to deliver what may be the most indulgent package of all, coming in at a whopping $720,000. Two guests will be flown to Miami in a private jet and put up in a suite at the Ritz Carlton to rest up before game day. After the game, a private jet will whisk you away to the Caribbean where you’ll spend four days sailing the tropical islands on a 236-foot, six-stateroom private yacht.”

Super Bowl players talked about their relationships with fantasy football … How a beach town turned Raheem Mostert into an out-of-nowhere star … Ranking all 53 Super Bowls … Ranking every starter in Super Bowl LIV … Ranking every uniform matchup in Super Bowl history … Roku and Fox struck a last-minute deal to keep Super Bowl-streaming apps working … $3,300 on a coin-flip bet.

Two years after Nick Foles shredded the Patriots for 373 yards in the Eagles’ 41–33 win over the Patriots in Super Bowl LII, Devin McCourty said the team knew Malcolm Butler would be benched for the game, telling 98.5 The Sports Hub:

“I hated when all of [the Butler news] came out. Because everybody was like, ‘They found out a day before or in the locker room.’ Nah everyone knew that (Butler wasn’t going to play) going into the game. That wasn’t the way we practiced.

“For anybody that’s in the New England area, do they really think we took the field and didn’t prepare? That was already the plan.”

Boise Beef

Conference realignment is always a topic of debate for college sports writers and fans, though rarely does anything of substance move the debate needle. Suing your conference moves the debate needle.

This week on the High Motor podcast, I talked with B.J. Rains of the Idaho Press-Tribune about Boise State’s options if they were to leave the Mountain West. Would they join the American as a full member? Football-only member? Wait for a Pac-12 invite.

Samantha Hoopes

You’re joking…

Odds & Ends

College GameDay predictions for each week of the 2020 college football season … Here’s everything coming to Netflix this month … Why did Tua Tagovailoa choose Alabama over USC? Ask my dad, he said … Coach K is a coaching legend, not the moral arbiter of college basketball … Cam Newton and Greg Olsen had a rambling drunk conversation … This guy took 20 hours to make a Rubik’s Cube mosaic to honor Kobe Bryant … Playing NBA Trade Deadline matchmaker … Baker Mayfield is flexible.

Newsnowland, amirite?

Never saw this video until yesterday

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Jimmie Ward and Arik Armstead perhaps best symbolized the San Francisco 49ers’ fall from contender to also-ran in the post-Jim Harbaugh era

We’ve almost made it to the final game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs. What can we expect to see from each team on the field?

MIAMI — At some point we’ll play football. But every Super Bowl week, the NFL does an exceptional job of making you believe otherwise by creating this self-sustaining universe of football nonsense on Radio Row and elsewhere; it’s a fever-dream world of on-set, celebrity-infused slop that makes us long for the consumerist subtlety of an old fashioned ShamWow infomercial.

Anyway, now is a good time to remind you of what’s at stake on Sunday. While almost every Super Bowl is a gift—a game between two really good teams!—this one is particularly appetizing. Chiefs coach Andy Reid has one of the deepest file stashes of potent plays in football history. His offensive coordinator, Eric Bienemy, told me this week: “We collect ideas from what we’re seeing. It may not just be one thing, it may have been a few plays that have been successful throughout a period of time. We watch a ton of college football on Saturdays, and then you just want to study: What’s the next thing? Why are these guys doing so well? Let’s take a look at it. There’s no such thing as a bad idea, under coach Reid we remain flexible. Put it up on the board and whatever sticks we let it ride.”

49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, one of the most thorough playcallers in the league, has spent the entire season setting up a roulette game with his offense for Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo to play. There are only so many places to allocate resources and wherever there are weaknesses, San Francisco has the personnel flexibility to attack them. Run game coordinator Mike McDaniel said this week that Shanahan—who, as the Falcons’ offensive coordinator for the 2016 season was (unfairly) blamed for the team squandering a 28-3 lead in Super Bowl LI—has been carrying around the lessons he learned that day for four years now. While young, he is more emotionally prepared than many coaches for the gravity of this moment.

“That loss, you learn a great amount from. But the biggest thing is that he’s applied his lessons from that throughout the entire season. This year we’ve played with a lead a little more often and he’s applied those lessons. It’s not like you go into the Super Bowl and say ‘Okay now we do X.‘ You’ll never forget—once you lose a Super Bowl you just never feel comfortable with a lead. That’s been every single game since 2016 that we’ve been carrying that weight. That’s a lesson you’ll always be mindful of.”

So what should you be keeping an eye out for, in what promises to be a classic? Here’s a few things…

1. The Deebo Samuel Effect

I picked the 49ers to win and for Deebo Samuel to get the MVP award. While this is one of the least based-in-facts things I’ll say during this preview, it’s that the Super Bowl is always ripe for birthing a star—the kind of player who is hyper-talented, maybe moreso than his opponents realize. I like Samuel because he can impact the game in so many ways. Shanahan has made the receiver reverse a part of his run game suite, almost to the point where teams have to fear him as much as they might Tevin Coleman or Raheem Mostert. Samuel is aggressive after the catch and the 49ers are already experts at building YAC situations in for their receivers on different calls. He can feast on a missed tackle. If the game hinges on one massive offensive play for the 49ers, there’s a good chance he has something to do with it.

2. Terrell Suggs and the Chiefs’ Pass Rush

I am always a fan of aging pass rushers or interior rushers in big games. Had it not been for the Falcons blowing a 25-point lead in 2016 we may have been talking about the impact of someone like Dwight FreenEy in that game; had the Rams’ offense not been blanked, we may have been talking about Ndamukong Suh. In these moments, with two weeks’ rest and a legacy at stake, the Super Bowl can be a place where some of the most artful quarterback torturers of our time shine.

Suggs is not a tipping point for the Chiefs’ defense in the way Nick Bosa was for the 49ers’. There are still effective ways of slowing them down. San Francisco’s offensive line is stout and their complementary backfield pieces are among some of the best blockers in the league. That said, if there is a wildcard who emerges to force the 49ers to change some of what they’re doing and become less multi-dimensional, it might be one of the best and most studious pass rushers in NFL history who has had two weeks to deep dive into the offensive linemen he’ll face.

3. The Chiefs’ Big Decision on Defense

We saw the Green Bay Packers decide to respect Jimmy Garoppolo’s arm during the NFC championship game, which ended up costing them dearly. As time wears on, I’m not sure how much flak Packers defensive coordinator Mike Pettine deserves because, ultimately, if he allocated more resources to stop the run we would have made fun of them for getting beat deep by Samuel and the rest of the 49ers’ speedy receiving corps. This is the challenge the 49ers pose to every team, essentially forcing them to make a Gift-of-the-Magi tradeoff before each kickoff.

Tyrann Mathieu will mitigate some of this because of his scheme versatility. The Chiefs can more easily morph because of his ability to bounce between cornerback and safety. But at the heart of their gameplan they’ll have to decide if they are more worried about what happened against the Packers two weeks ago, or what may happen if they bet against Jimmy Garoppolo.

4. Patrick Mahomes’s Targets Not Named Tyreek Hill

Perhaps we’ll hear more about Mecole Hardman or Sammy Watkins during this Super Bowl. Neither of the Chiefs’ last two opponents had a pass rush nearly as potent as the one San Francisco will unleash on Sunday. This means that Patrick Mahomes has less time to utilize his functional pocket mobility to buy time for his best players to get open. Tyreek Hill, normally the biggest beneficiary of such plays, might have to get more of his touches manufactured. It’s interesting that Hill was one of the players who supposedly broke the Seattle Cover 3 defense’s stranglehold over the NFL, but 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh has had a few years to install various tweaks and traps to the defense which can help minimize the impact of a knifing speedster like Hill. Mahomes is good enough to beat any team under any circumstance, but it will be fascinating to see how he finds an edge under this particular circumstance. It’s not like there isn’t a weapon set behind Hill that would still be the best in the NFL without him.

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