Padres take road slide into matchup against the Dodgers
Associated Press
San Diego Padres (39-34, third in the NL West) vs. Los Angeles Dodgers (46-29, first in the NL West)
Los Angeles; Thursday, 10:10 p.m. EDT
PITCHING PROBABLES: Padres: Ryan Bergert (1-0, 2.33 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 16 strikeouts); Dodgers: Yoshinobu Yamamoto (6-5, 2.64 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 90 strikeouts)
BETMGM SPORTSBOOK LINE: Dodgers -251, Padres +203; over/under is 9 runs
BOTTOM LINE: The San Diego Padres visit the Los Angeles Dodgers looking to break a three-game road skid.
Los Angeles has a 28-12 record at home and a 46-29 record overall. The Dodgers have the best team batting average in the NL at .265.
San Diego is 18-22 in road games and 39-34 overall. The Padres have gone 26-13 in games when they record at least eight hits.
Thursday's game is the seventh meeting between these teams this season. The Dodgers are ahead 5-1 in the season series.
TOP PERFORMERS: Shohei Ohtani has 25 home runs, 45 walks and 43 RBIs while hitting .292 for the Dodgers. Will Smith is 14 for 37 with three doubles, a triple, three home runs and 10 RBIs over the last 10 games.
Manny Machado has 19 doubles and 11 home runs for the Padres. Luis Arraez is 13 for 44 with three doubles over the past 10 games.
LAST 10 GAMES: Dodgers: 8-2, .263 batting average, 4.40 ERA, outscored opponents by seven runs
Padres: 3-7, .245 batting average, 4.59 ERA, outscored opponents by two runs
INJURIES: Dodgers: Tony Gonsolin: 15-Day IL (elbow), Luis Garcia: 15-Day IL (adductor), Tyler Glasnow: 60-Day IL (shoulder), Evan Phillips: 60-Day IL (forearm), Blake Snell: 60-Day IL (shoulder), Roki Sasaki: 15-Day IL (shoulder), Blake Treinen: 60-Day IL (forearm), Edgardo Henriquez: 60-Day IL (foot), Kyle Hurt: 60-Day IL (elbow), Michael Grove: 60-Day IL (shoulder), Brusdar Graterol: 60-Day IL (shoulder), River Ryan: 60-Day IL (elbow), Gavin Stone: 60-Day IL (shoulder)
Padres: Yu Darvish: 60-Day IL (elbow), Jackson Merrill: 7-Day IL (concussion), Michael King: 15-Day IL (shoulder), Jason Heyward: 10-Day IL (oblique), Bryan Hoeing: 60-Day IL (shoulder), Logan Gillaspie: 15-Day IL (oblique ), Jhony Brito: 60-Day IL (forearm), Joe Musgrove: 60-Day IL (elbow)
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
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The Los Angeles Lakers will no longer be the Buss family business
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'The majority of businesses in this country are family-owned businesses,' Jeanie Buss told NPR earlier this year in a rare interview to promote a Netflix comedy series based on her career. 'And everybody has a family. If you're in business with them, (disagreements) happen. But at the end of the day, what brings you together is the team or the business, and you want to build something successful.' The Lakers and the Buss clan have been inextricable since 1979 — the longest active ownership tenure in the NBA — but Mark Walter's stunning sports coup Wednesday effectively ends this improbable era. A person with knowledge of the agreement confirmed it to The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because neither side immediately announced the deal. The sale should make an extraordinarily wealthy woman of Jeanie Buss, one of Jerry's seven acknowledged children and a longtime employee of his various sporting concerns. And that's the biggest reason many Lakers fans are rejoicing: This lavish sale comes with the knowledge that the buyers have exponentially more resources than the Buss family — and Walter has showed he knows how to spend it intelligently. Walter, who heads a group that already bought 27% of the Lakers in 2021, has a sterling reputation in Southern California for his group's stewardship of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The iconic baseball team has become a perpetual World Series contender with bold, aggressive financial moves grounded in smart organizational planning ever since Walter's firm, Guggenheim Partners, paid $2 billion to wrest the Dodgers from the reviled Frank McCourt in 2012. 'He's really committed to the city of Los Angeles in various ways, and sports is something that he's very passionate about, and certainly Los Angeles sports," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. "Speaking (as) a Dodger employee, he's very competitive and he's going to do everything he can to produce a championship-caliber team every single year and make sure the city feels proud about the Lakers and the legacy that they've already built with the Buss family.' In the Buss era, the Lakers could sell prospective players on their trophies, sunny Los Angeles and that family-business intimacy. While that was enough to win big in most decades, Walter's group epitomizes the modern, deep-pocketed approach to building a consistent championship contender. Guggenheim Partners reportedly has $325 billion under management, with Walter particularly leveraging insurance investments to pursue gains across the breadth of the sports world. 'He does everything he can to provide resources, support," Roberts said. 'He wants to win. He feels that the fans, the city, deserve that. I think that that's never lost, and it's more of challenging us always. How do we become better and not complacent or stagnant, to continue to stay current with the market, the competition to win?' Before this sale, the Buss siblings were not thought to be particularly wealthy, at least not by team owner standards. Jeanie Buss occasionally appeared to balk at writing certain checks — ask any Lakers fan about Alex Caruso's departure — and the team's front office and infrastructure are thought to be on the NBA's smaller side. The new ownership group's wealth could knock down some financial barriers in the restrictive, apron era of salary cap management. It definitely will provide the Lakers with every resource in scouting, player development and any other competitive avenue to assemble a team commensurate with the Lakers' brand. 'I know that my sister Jeanie would have only considered selling the Lakers organization to someone she knows and trusts would carry on the Buss legacy, started by her father Dr. Buss,' Magic Johnson wrote on social media. 'Now she can comfortably pass the baton to Mark Walter, with whom she has a real friendship and can trust. She's witnessed him build a winning team with the Dodgers and knows that Mark will do right by the Lakers team, organization, and fans!' There is a familial symmetry to these two transactions 46 years apart: Jerry Buss got a steal when he bought the Lakers, and his kids might end up with the wealthiest deal in sports history when they sell. Jerry Buss was a chemist and USC instructor who heavily leveraged his real estate investments to buy the Lakers, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings, the Forum arena and a large ranch from Jack Kent Cooke for $67.5 million. Buss loved a good time almost as much as he loved basketball, and he built the Showtime era of Lakers basketball on Magic and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but also on his own undeniable charisma and hunger for titles. Buss and his front offices then landed Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in the 1990s, ushering in a second championship era. All told, the Lakers reached the NBA Finals in 16 of Jerry Buss' 34 seasons as their primary owner, winning a whopping 10 championships. Jeanie Buss succeeded her father as the Lakers' governor upon his death in 2013. Her brother, Jim, was the Lakers' head of basketball operations until Jeanie fired him in February 2017 and installed Johnson and Rob Pelinka, Bryant's former agent. Pelinka gradually took over basketball operations and presided over a string of Lakers-worthy player additions, including LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Luka Doncic. The Lakers won the 2020 championship in the Florida bubble, and they reached the 2024 Western Conference finals. Their seismic trade to acquire Doncic last winter rejuvenated the franchise, positioning the Slovenian superstar as the Lakers' centerpiece for years after the matchless career of James, who has essentially confirmed he will return in the fall for his record 23rd NBA season. Jeanie Buss hasn't yet announced her reasons for agreeing to sell her inheritance, and she will remain the Lakers' governor — at least for now, because a governor must own at least 15% of the team. But she is following a recent trend of high-profile NBA owners ceding their teams to ownership groups with even more extensive resources. Buss is close friends with both Mark Cuban, who sold his majority ownership of the Dallas Mavericks for $3.5 billion, and Wyc Grousbeck, who sold the Boston Celtics for $6.1 billion. ___
Fox Sports
2 hours ago
- Fox Sports
After a whopping sale, the Los Angeles Lakers will no longer be the Buss family business
Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Buss family's decision to sell a controlling stake in the Los Angeles Lakers at an eye-popping franchise valuation of $10 billion marks the end of nearly a half-century when one of the most valuable properties in the sports world was run by an eccentric father and his sometimes squabbling children. With high-living playboy Jerry Buss and current team governor Jeanie Buss in charge, the glamorous Lakers essentially have been the professional sports equivalent of a quirky family business for two generations. Sports became increasingly corporate and monolithic in the 21st century while franchise values skyrocketed and ever-more-wealthy titans seized control of this perpetual growth industry. Just not around Hollywood's favorite basketball team, with its gold uniforms and 17 golden trophies. 'The majority of businesses in this country are family-owned businesses,' Jeanie Buss told NPR earlier this year in a rare interview to promote a Netflix comedy series based on her career. 'And everybody has a family. If you're in business with them, (disagreements) happen. But at the end of the day, what brings you together is the team or the business, and you want to build something successful.' The Lakers and the Buss clan have been inextricable since 1979 — the longest active ownership tenure in the NBA — but Mark Walter's stunning sports coup Wednesday effectively ends this improbable era. A person with knowledge of the agreement confirmed it to The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because neither side immediately announced the deal. The sale should make an extraordinarily wealthy woman of Jeanie Buss, one of Jerry's seven acknowledged children and a longtime employee of his various sporting concerns. And that's the biggest reason many Lakers fans are rejoicing: This lavish sale comes with the knowledge that the buyers have exponentially more resources than the Buss family — and Walter has showed he knows how to spend it intelligently. Walter, who heads a group that already bought 27% of the Lakers in 2021, has a sterling reputation in Southern California for his group's stewardship of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The iconic baseball team has become a perpetual World Series contender with bold, aggressive financial moves grounded in smart organizational planning ever since Walter's firm, Guggenheim Partners, paid $2 billion to wrest the Dodgers from the reviled Frank McCourt in 2012. 'He's really committed to the city of Los Angeles in various ways, and sports is something that he's very passionate about, and certainly Los Angeles sports," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. "Speaking (as) a Dodger employee, he's very competitive and he's going to do everything he can to produce a championship-caliber team every single year and make sure the city feels proud about the Lakers and the legacy that they've already built with the Buss family.' In the Buss era, the Lakers could sell prospective players on their trophies, sunny Los Angeles and that family-business intimacy. While that was enough to win big in most decades, Walter's group epitomizes the modern, deep-pocketed approach to building a consistent championship contender. Guggenheim Partners reportedly has $325 billion under management, with Walter particularly leveraging insurance investments to pursue gains across the breadth of the sports world. 'He does everything he can to provide resources, support," Roberts said. 'He wants to win. He feels that the fans, the city, deserve that. I think that that's never lost, and it's more of challenging us always. How do we become better and not complacent or stagnant, to continue to stay current with the market, the competition to win?' Before this sale, the Buss siblings were not thought to be particularly wealthy, at least not by team owner standards. Jeanie Buss occasionally appeared to balk at writing certain checks — ask any Lakers fan about Alex Caruso's departure — and the team's front office and infrastructure are thought to be on the NBA's smaller side. The new ownership group's wealth could knock down some financial barriers in the restrictive, apron era of salary cap management. It definitely will provide the Lakers with every resource in scouting, player development and any other competitive avenue to assemble a team commensurate with the Lakers' brand. 'I know that my sister Jeanie would have only considered selling the Lakers organization to someone she knows and trusts would carry on the Buss legacy, started by her father Dr. Buss,' Magic Johnson wrote on social media. 'Now she can comfortably pass the baton to Mark Walter, with whom she has a real friendship and can trust. She's witnessed him build a winning team with the Dodgers and knows that Mark will do right by the Lakers team, organization, and fans!' There is a familial symmetry to these two transactions 46 years apart: Jerry Buss got a steal when he bought the Lakers, and his kids might end up with the wealthiest deal in sports history when they sell. Jerry Buss was a chemist and USC instructor who heavily leveraged his real estate investments to buy the Lakers, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings, the Forum arena and a large ranch from Jack Kent Cooke for $67.5 million. Buss loved a good time almost as much as he loved basketball, and he built the Showtime era of Lakers basketball on Magic and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but also on his own undeniable charisma and hunger for titles. Buss and his front offices then landed Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in the 1990s, ushering in a second championship era. All told, the Lakers reached the NBA Finals in 16 of Jerry Buss' 34 seasons as their primary owner, winning a whopping 10 championships. Jeanie Buss succeeded her father as the Lakers' governor upon his death in 2013. Her brother, Jim, was the Lakers' head of basketball operations until Jeanie fired him in February 2017 and installed Johnson and Rob Pelinka, Bryant's former agent. Pelinka gradually took over basketball operations and presided over a string of Lakers-worthy player additions, including LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Luka Doncic. The Lakers won the 2020 championship in the Florida bubble, and they reached the 2024 Western Conference finals. Their seismic trade to acquire Doncic last winter rejuvenated the franchise, positioning the Slovenian superstar as the Lakers' centerpiece for years after the matchless career of James, who has essentially confirmed he will return in the fall for his record 23rd NBA season. Jeanie Buss hasn't yet announced her reasons for agreeing to sell her inheritance, and she will remain the Lakers' governor — at least for now, because a governor must own at least 15% of the team. But she is following a recent trend of high-profile NBA owners ceding their teams to ownership groups with even more extensive resources. Buss is close friends with both Mark Cuban, who sold his majority ownership of the Dallas Mavericks for $3.5 billion, and Wyc Grousbeck, who sold the Boston Celtics for $6.1 billion. ___ AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds and AP Sports Writer Beth Harris contributed to this report. ___ AP NBA: recommended
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
How will Mark Walter impact the Lakers? Here are 5 key tenets of his Dodgers reign
LOS ANGELES — Days after Mark Walter's Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series last fall for the second time in five years, he met with the team's president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, to discuss an offseason strategy. The team had stunned the baseball world with its spending the year before, inking Shohei Ohtani to a record-setting $700 million contract during a $1.4 billion spending spree. Friedman wanted to know what Walter prioritized as a new season dawned. Advertisement 'Mark's mindset,' Friedman told The Athletic earlier this year, 'was to be even more aggressive.' He added, 'He was like, 'Hey, let's keep going.' And Walter, aiming to reify this time as the 'golden era of Dodgers baseball,' doled out another $456 million on new players for 2025. Turns out, there was even more spending for Walter on the horizon. Walter and his holding group, TWG Global, are entering an agreement to purchase the Los Angeles Lakers for a franchise valuation of $10 billion. Walter, the 65-year-old financier from Chicago, has become the king of Los Angeles sports. The overlap between Dodgers and Lakers fans is significant. But there are plenty of folks in the South Bay, and spread across the basketball landscape, wondering how Walter will guide his new franchise. For those curious about Walter, here are five key tenets gleaned from his stewardship of the Dodgers. Not all are directly applicable to the Lakers. But they offer insight into the priorities Walter has displayed during the past 13 years in charge at Chavez Ravine. Long before the Dodgers landed Ohtani, Walter engaged in shock-and-awe spending to resuscitate a club that had fallen into bankruptcy and disrepair. A few months after purchasing the team in spring 2012, Walter chartered a jet that carried Adrian Gonzalez and several other exiles from the Boston Red Sox, a package of players that cost more than $250 million and brought instant credibility to Walter's ownership group. The tone was set for Walter's tenure. Without the restrictions of a hard salary cap, the ownership group has supported a top-five payroll every season since 2013, leading the sport in spending in seven of those seasons. The Dodgers have also not missed the postseason since 2013. This is not a coincidence. Advertisement Of course, in a league with a salary cap, the Lakers cannot exert the sort of advantage the Dodgers do. But the club has demonstrated a dexterity in spending in recent years through the usage of deferrals. The trend reached its apex with Ohtani, who agreed to defer 98 percent of his windfall until after his playing contract ends; the team is paying him just $2 million per season while using his celebrity to rake in untold millions through new sponsorships with Japanese companies. The club has turned the Ohtani contract into a credit card, using the money to lure talent to Los Angeles while convincing the new arrivals to defer salary for down the road. The Dodgers have about $1.04 billion in deferred money on their books and are still paying a premium up front for it. Their luxury tax bill a year ago was $103 million, the highest in baseball history. Between payroll and luxury tax, they're expected to pay more than half a billion dollars in 2025. Again: There are limits to how Walter's money could shape the Lakers' roster — after all, the NBA's second apron appears to be a far more prohibitive and punitive punishment for high-spending teams than Major League Baseball's tiered luxury-tax system. There are other things an owner can buy. Like a second plane. This season the Dodgers introduced what they've called a first-of-its-kind travel system to transport their massive traveling party; the players take one plane, and the rest of the staff takes another. In addition, the team just completed a multimillion-dollar renovation of their home clubhouse at Dodger Stadium — expanding the space, revamping weight rooms and training rooms, and adding saunas and restrooms to go with Japanese-style toilets that helped sway coveted Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki to sign with Los Angeles. Another small perk: adding a coffee stand in their player dining room for players ahead of day games. Advertisement 'I think he does everything he can to provide resources, support,' Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. 'He wants to win. He feels that the fans, the city deserves that. I think that's never lost.' The Dodgers won the National League West in 2013 and 2014 but fell short of a championship in each season. Ned Colletti, the team's general manager at the time, had built an admirable roster, one loaded with stars. But Walter and team president Stan Kasten believed there was a better choice available to run the baseball operations department. So the Dodgers pushed Colletti aside and lured Friedman, who had built the small-market Tampa Bay Rays into a competitor, out West. A year later, manager Don Mattingly met a similar fate after crashing out of the postseason early for the third season in a row. The team replaced him with Roberts, who has produced the best winning percentage of any manager in the history of Major League Baseball. What does this mean for Rob Pelinka and JJ Redick? Perhaps nothing. Walter does not conduct himself like George Steinbrenner, firing underlings seemingly at random. He stuck with Friedman and Roberts after the club lost the World Series in 2017 and 2018. Pelinka just signed a new extension, and Redick is only one year through a four-year deal. However, Walter has demonstrated his willingness to part ways with successful employees if he believes there are better choices available. And he spends to surround those top-level executives. The Dodgers employ one of the largest analytical departments in baseball and one of the largest scouting staffs. In an era when teams have been shedding non-player jobs to save money, Walter has done the opposite. Clayton Kershaw. Mookie Betts. Shohei Ohtani. The Dodgers have never lacked for stars under Walter. He has paid the cost to secure their services. The team has maintained ties with Kershaw, a homegrown star, through several rounds of free agency. After Friedman swindled the Red Sox to acquire Betts in 2020, Walter inked the former American League MVP to a contract extension worth $365 million. As for Ohtani, Walter found a way to connect with the two-way sensation's competitive spirit during negotiations after the 2023 season. When Ohtani met with Dodgers officials, Walter insisted he viewed his time running the team to be a failure — because the club had won only one title during those years. The comment stuck with Ohtani and helped convince him to sign. (The $700 million didn't hurt, either.) Advertisement So it would be reasonable to expect the Lakers to hunt for stars to build around. Good news for Walter: the team already has LeBron James and Luka Dončić. Can the Lakers capitalize on their fame as the Dodgers have with Ohtani? The Dodgers found every way possible to leverage their unique market position, flooding just about every crevice of Dodger Stadium with advertising while also having their leadoff hitter serve as a walking billboard. If the Lakers start to announce partnerships with companies from Slovenia, you'll have an answer. Walter doesn't appear often at Dodger Stadium. He rarely speaks to the media. He kept brief his remarks at the White House earlier this year. He tends not to meddle in baseball decisions, trusting the expertise of Friedman, Kasten and general manager Brandon Gomes. In this way, he represents the ideal of an owner, a man with deep pockets and plenty of trust for his staff. Said Roberts: 'I think a good owner in my eyes is a person that lets the people that he hires do their jobs.' Walter does that. But he can also afford a hands-off approach because the club has not stopped winning. Friedman is generally considered by his peers to be the sharpest executive in the sport, with his front office capturing top honors in The Athletic's annual poll for the second straight year. The combination of Friedman's ingenuity and Walter's stability appealed to Ohtani, who added a 'key man' clause into his contract, which would allow him to enter free agency if either Friedman or Walter leaves the organization during the 10 years of the deal. 'Everybody has to be on the same page in order to have a winning organization,' Ohtani said at the time. 'I feel like those two are at the top of it, and they're in control of everything, and I feel almost like I'm having a contract with those two guys.' So will the Lakers receive the same treatment from Walter? Will he afford the same autonomy to Pelinka and Redick? Time will tell. But there is reason to believe Walter's priorities with his basketball team will be the same as the priorities with his baseball team. He wants to win. (Top photo of Mark Walter during the 2013 playoffs, early in what has been a successful tenure with the Dodgers: Scott Cunningham / Getty Images)
