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Yahoo
31-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Game # 101, Athletics vs Guardians Game Thread
The Athletics go for the series win this morning against the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field. After splitting the first two games. Jeffrey Springs will take the mound for the A's. The 32-year-old lefty is 8-6 on the season, with a 3.93 ERA in twenty games. He beat Cleveland in his only other start against them this season, going 7.1 innings and giving up just one run on three hits while striking out six. Springs will match up against 25-year-old righty Gavin Williams for the Guardians. This season he's 5-4 with a 3.70 ERA in nineteen starts. He has not faced the A's this year. Williams will face this lineup for the Athletics this morning: Springs will go up against this lineup for Cleveland: Follow the Game: Athletics - NBCSCA Athletics - Talk 650 KSTE, A's Cast, KWNR 95.5 The Bull More from MLB Draft 2017: Oakland A's select Greg Deichmann with No. 43 overall pick MLB Draft 2017: Oakland A's select Austin Beck with No. 6 overall pick MLB Draft 2017: Oakland A's select Kevin Merrell with No. 33 overall pick Jaycob Brugman is a hit in his MLB debut weekend 2017 Oakland A's Draft Preview The A's are totally blowing it Farm Report: Pitching Prospects Update
Yahoo
26-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Nick Kurtz's historic 4-HR barrage is latest proof that 'The Big Amish' is slugging his way into AL Rookie of the Year race
For the first time in his young career, 22-year-old first baseman Nick Kurtz was named AL Player of the Week on Monday after his highly productive showing in the Athletics' first series of the second half vs. Cleveland. With the All-Star festivities having put a pause on the regular season, this award, doled out weekly by the league office, didn't cover the usual sample of six or seven games played over a week. Instead, it highlighted just the first weekend after the break. And in that abbreviated sample, Kurtz mashed to an outstanding degree, collecting multiple hits in all three games at Progressive Field, including five of the extra-base variety. On the surface, it's a modest accomplishment for the rookie first baseman, the first official accolade in a career that promises to feature plenty more. At the same time, 'player of the week' wholly undersells what Kurtz has been doing at the plate lately. Because he was not just the star of this past week(end). He has been the best hitter in baseball for the past nine weeks. Kurtz put the baseball world on further notice Friday with a historic night at the plate when he became the first rookie in MLB history to homer four times in a game in a 15-3 blowout of the Houston Astros. Kurtz went 6-for-6 with 8 RBI and 19 total bases. The A's broadcasters toasted the feat in the booth with a butter churn celebration, paying homage to Kurtz's "Big Amish" nickname given to him to acknowledge his Lancaster, Pennsylvania roots. "It's hard to think about this day being kind of real, it still feels like a dream," Kurtz said postgame via ESPN. Neither Aaron Judge nor Cal Raleigh nor Ronald Acuña Jr. nor Kurtz's NL Player of the Week counterpart, red-hot trade candidate Eugenio Suárez, has been as dominant with the bat as the A's rookie since the end of May. Over the past 42 games before Friday's explosion, Kurtz was hitting .327/.408/.782 with 18 home runs, good for a 1.190 OPS and 217 wRC+ that were both tops in baseball. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] 'I think Nick's put himself, in a very short time, in conversation about Rookie of the Year,' A's manager Mark Kotsay said in Cleveland. 'We've got one on the team right now that's probably a little ahead of him in Jacob [Wilson]. But it's fun to watch these two, and it's going to be fun to watch them over the next 64 games and the progress they're able to make.' Indeed, Wilson's marvelous first half, which led to him starting the All-Star Game at shortstop for the AL, has somewhat overshadowed Kurtz's prolonged hot streak. But make no mistake: Both are succeeding to a degree achieved by very few rookie hitters as they emerge as one of the most promising young position-player duos in baseball. 'Nick, he's still learning the league,' Kotsay said. 'Jacob got a little head start on him. 'But Nick seems to be a quick learner.' 'Now it's go time' Three weeks of torching Triple-A pitching earned Kurtz his big-league call-up on April 23, roughly nine months after he was selected fourth overall in the 2024 MLB Draft. It wasn't smooth sailing at first: After he hit his first home run on May 13, Kurtz fell into an 0-for-21 skid that plummeted his OPS to a paltry .558. But Kurtz didn't panic. And those who observed how he went about his business in the earliest days of his big-league tenure were unsurprised when he began to not just dig himself out of that hole but also flourish in spectacular fashion upon finding his footing. 'He had to go through some struggles, like everybody does, and he didn't press,' A's hitting coach Chris Cron said. 'It wasn't a major deal. Of course he wanted to do well, but it wasn't the end of the world.' 'When you come billed with the kind of power he came with, to not be able to tap into that readily and immediately, I think you would see some guys start to scramble,' former A's pitcher and current broadcaster Dallas Braden said. 'Instead, what he did was cut the swing down and spray the baseball all over the yard until he got comfortable to a point where he could dip back into that power pool.' It took some time for Kurtz to tweak his patented patient approach, which he mastered as an amateur, to fit the unique challenge of hitting major-league pitching. 'If you wait for your pitch, you're probably striking out on three pitches,' he said. 'It's all about adjusting on the fly and pitch-to-pitch. Some guys, you need to be aggressive on pitches that aren't necessarily your pitch. When I first got up, I was trying to be a little too patient. Being down 0-1, 0-2, 1-2 so much … this game is so hard.' Kurtz realized early on that he needed to take control of his at-bats, rather than letting the pitcher dictate the terms of engagement. And behind the scenes, he was making adjustments to allow his strengths to manifest against more daunting competition. 'His ability just to communicate what he's trying to do, understand the information that we're throwing out there — that doesn't just happen with a snap of the finger,' Cron said. 'You tell him something, he can absorb, and he can apply. Application of the information is the hardest thing to grasp, and he does that.' Said All-Star teammate Brent Rooker: 'To have as high-level approaches as he has as a 22-year-old, and then to also go out and execute them and execute them with the power that he does … That makes him stand out.' Soon enough, Kurtz began to better understand when to unleash his thunderous left-handed swing — 'It's about playing the game and the situations,' he said — and the results followed. 'Once he found himself in 2-0, 2-1s, 3-0, 3-1s,' Braden said, 'now it's go time.' With that, Kurtz took off. On May 20, he snapped his hitless skid with a single and a home run against the Angels. Two more homers followed the next day. A strained left hip flexor put Kurtz on the injured list later that week and threatened to derail his newfound momentum, but the brief injury scare was no trouble. It took just one minor-league rehab game — he homered, of course — before Kurtz rejoined the A's lineup and resumed raking. 'It's kind of what you dream about' As the home runs kept coming, each seismic swing seemed to carry greater weight than the last: A go-ahead blast off Royals closer Carlos Estévez in the top of the ninth in Kansas City. Two walk-off homers against the Astros off elite relievers in Bryan Abreu and Josh Hader. A titanic, three-run shot in Detroit — the only home run ball to reach the shrubbery beyond the center-field wall at Comerica Park this season — that provided the only runs in a 3-0 victory over the Tigers. And that magical Friday night against the Astros. Whether in pregame batting practice or in high-stakes battles against some of the best pitchers on the planet, the power that was promised during Kurtz's brief time as a prospect has consistently been on display this season. Most remarkably, Kurtz's ability to clear the fence from foul pole to foul pole is nearly unrivaled; only Judge has hit more home runs to the opposite field or to straightaway center since the start of June entering Friday. And when Kurtz is going good, the homers tend to come in bunches. It happened last spring, when he hit 14 homers in a 10-game span after a cold start to his junior season at Wake Forest. It happened before his call-up this year, when he hit seven homers across 12 games in Triple-A. Now it's happening at the highest level, with a five-homers-in-six-games run in June and an 11-homers-in-14-games stretch in July. Kurtz did his best to describe what it's like to be so locked in: "It's probably one of the best feelings, knowing when you're up there — honestly, it doesn't matter whether you get a hit or not — but I know what I'm feeling in my swing, I know exactly where [the bat] is going. I'm seeing the ball — it's huge right now. It's kind of what you dream about.' "It amazes me,' said Rooker, who was also a first-round draft pick out of college but didn't blossom into an impact big-league bat until his age-28 season. 'I was a very, very good college player. And if you had thrown me in the big leagues at 22, I would've absolutely had no chance.' [Get more A's news: Athletics team feed] 'I don't think people realize how difficult that is' Rooker's more gradual development only increases his appreciation for how Kurtz and Wilson have hit the ground running as rookies. 'Their ability to just jump right in and have success immediately and adjust as quickly as they have, I don't think people realize how difficult that is,' he said. Adding to the unique dynamic of this unrivaled rookie duo is how drastically different they are as players. Wilson is a skinny, right-handed shortstop who thrives on a hyper-aggressive approach and succeeds thanks to his nearly unparalleled bat-to-ball skills. Kurtz is a gargantuan, left-handed first baseman who whiffs often but pulverizes the ball so frequently that the punchouts are entirely tolerable. 'I don't think there's one way, from a hitting standpoint, to tell somebody how to do it,' Kotsay said. 'Jacob has his unique style. He's a bat-to-ball guy that puts it in play and sometimes seems to have a magic wand where he can hit it where he wants to. I played with a guy like that — Tony Gwynn — who had that magic wand. 'And for Nick, when he touches it, he impacts the baseball, and he can leave anywhere in the yard. They're definitely two different styles of hitters, but they have an advanced approach for how young they are in knowing who they are and knowing what they're trying to do.' Said Wilson of his counterpart: 'When we drafted him, it was obviously a huge bat for us to go out and get, and as you can see, it's translating to the big-league level pretty nicely right now. Definitely happy to have him on the team, excited to hopefully play with him for a very long time.' Kurtz's and Wilson's Baseball Savant pages are opposites to a spectacular degree, a fitting reflection of each player leaning all the way in on what he does best. To Rooker, this is a great sign. "The key to having success here is knowing what you're good at and then just being as good as you possibly can be at those things,' he said. 'Everybody here is doing something at an elite level. ... You have to figure out what that thing is, and you have to be as good as you possibly can at that. There's a ton of value, obviously, in trying to improve your weaknesses. [But] I think there's more value in finding your superpower and doing that as well as you possibly can. And I think those two guys are perfect examples of that.' 'Yes ... I'm a big leaguer' For as impressive of a start to his career as Kurtz has had, he knows this is just the beginning. "I put zero expectations on myself in Year 1,' he said. 'I had no idea what I was getting into.' He also will not stay this hot forever; another round of adjustments is surely in store, a regression to reality that will put his advanced aptitude to the test once again. And for the Athletics as a whole — a franchise in a transition between cities, with an inexperienced yet ascendent roster still figuring out how to translate talent into victories — every game is another opportunity to grow together. 'That's the best part about what we've developed here with some of those young guys — they're coming up together,' Cron said. 'And these two guys, Jacob, with his lineage, with his dad playing [in the big leagues], he's been around the game. The maturity of Nick Kurtz is off the charts. Physically, they're not the same, but they have this mindset of, 'Yes,' — without being braggadocious —'I'm a big leaguer.' And there's nothing that really fazes either one of them.' Veterans such as Rooker will continue to play a critical role in these young players' development, and Kurtz is quick to credit the A's DH, as well as the recently released Seth Brown. But Kurtz also knows that the franchise's future depends on his generation becoming the driving force behind the team's success. 'We might not all know the answers,' he said, 'but we're in it together, and we're gonna figure it out.'
Yahoo
26-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Nick Kurtz's historic 4-HR barrage is latest proof that 'The Big Amish' is slugging his way into AL Rookie of the Year race
For the first time in his young career, 22-year-old first baseman Nick Kurtz was named AL Player of the Week on Monday after his highly productive showing in the Athletics' first series of the second half vs. Cleveland. With the All-Star festivities having put a pause on the regular season, this award, doled out weekly by the league office, didn't cover the usual sample of six or seven games played over a week. Instead, it highlighted just the first weekend after the break. And in that abbreviated sample, Kurtz mashed to an outstanding degree, collecting multiple hits in all three games at Progressive Field, including five of the extra-base variety. On the surface, it's a modest accomplishment for the rookie first baseman, the first official accolade in a career that promises to feature plenty more. At the same time, 'player of the week' wholly undersells what Kurtz has been doing at the plate lately. Because he was not just the star of this past week(end). He has been the best hitter in baseball for the past nine weeks. Kurtz put the baseball world on further notice Friday with a historic night at the plate when he became the first rookie in MLB history to homer four times in a game in a 15-3 blowout of the Houston Astros. Kurtz went 6-for-6 with 8 RBI and 19 total bases. The A's broadcasters toasted the feat in the booth with a butter churn celebration, paying homage to Kurtz's "Big Amish" nickname given to him to acknowledge his Lancaster, Pennsylvania roots. "It's hard to think about this day being kind of real, it still feels like a dream," Kurtz said postgame via ESPN. Neither Aaron Judge nor Cal Raleigh nor Ronald Acuña Jr. nor Kurtz's NL Player of the Week counterpart, red-hot trade candidate Eugenio Suárez, has been as dominant with the bat as the A's rookie since the end of May. Over the past 42 games before Friday's explosion, Kurtz was hitting .327/.408/.782 with 18 home runs, good for a 1.190 OPS and 217 wRC+ that were both tops in baseball. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] 'I think Nick's put himself, in a very short time, in conversation about Rookie of the Year,' A's manager Mark Kotsay said in Cleveland. 'We've got one on the team right now that's probably a little ahead of him in Jacob [Wilson]. But it's fun to watch these two, and it's going to be fun to watch them over the next 64 games and the progress they're able to make.' Indeed, Wilson's marvelous first half, which led to him starting the All-Star Game at shortstop for the AL, has somewhat overshadowed Kurtz's prolonged hot streak. But make no mistake: Both are succeeding to a degree achieved by very few rookie hitters as they emerge as one of the most promising young position-player duos in baseball. 'Nick, he's still learning the league,' Kotsay said. 'Jacob got a little head start on him. 'But Nick seems to be a quick learner.' 'Now it's go time' Three weeks of torching Triple-A pitching earned Kurtz his big-league call-up on April 23, roughly nine months after he was selected fourth overall in the 2024 MLB Draft. It wasn't smooth sailing at first: After he hit his first home run on May 13, Kurtz fell into an 0-for-21 skid that plummeted his OPS to a paltry .558. But Kurtz didn't panic. And those who observed how he went about his business in the earliest days of his big-league tenure were unsurprised when he began to not just dig himself out of that hole but also flourish in spectacular fashion upon finding his footing. 'He had to go through some struggles, like everybody does, and he didn't press,' A's hitting coach Chris Cron said. 'It wasn't a major deal. Of course he wanted to do well, but it wasn't the end of the world.' 'When you come billed with the kind of power he came with, to not be able to tap into that readily and immediately, I think you would see some guys start to scramble,' former A's pitcher and current broadcaster Dallas Braden said. 'Instead, what he did was cut the swing down and spray the baseball all over the yard until he got comfortable to a point where he could dip back into that power pool.' It took some time for Kurtz to tweak his patented patient approach, which he mastered as an amateur, to fit the unique challenge of hitting major-league pitching. 'If you wait for your pitch, you're probably striking out on three pitches,' he said. 'It's all about adjusting on the fly and pitch-to-pitch. Some guys, you need to be aggressive on pitches that aren't necessarily your pitch. When I first got up, I was trying to be a little too patient. Being down 0-1, 0-2, 1-2 so much … this game is so hard.' Kurtz realized early on that he needed to take control of his at-bats, rather than letting the pitcher dictate the terms of engagement. And behind the scenes, he was making adjustments to allow his strengths to manifest against more daunting competition. 'His ability just to communicate what he's trying to do, understand the information that we're throwing out there — that doesn't just happen with a snap of the finger,' Cron said. 'You tell him something, he can absorb, and he can apply. Application of the information is the hardest thing to grasp, and he does that.' Said All-Star teammate Brent Rooker: 'To have as high-level approaches as he has as a 22-year-old, and then to also go out and execute them and execute them with the power that he does … That makes him stand out.' Soon enough, Kurtz began to better understand when to unleash his thunderous left-handed swing — 'It's about playing the game and the situations,' he said — and the results followed. 'Once he found himself in 2-0, 2-1s, 3-0, 3-1s,' Braden said, 'now it's go time.' With that, Kurtz took off. On May 20, he snapped his hitless skid with a single and a home run against the Angels. Two more homers followed the next day. A strained left hip flexor put Kurtz on the injured list later that week and threatened to derail his newfound momentum, but the brief injury scare was no trouble. It took just one minor-league rehab game — he homered, of course — before Kurtz rejoined the A's lineup and resumed raking. 'It's kind of what you dream about' As the home runs kept coming, each seismic swing seemed to carry greater weight than the last: A go-ahead blast off Royals closer Carlos Estévez in the top of the ninth in Kansas City. Two walk-off homers against the Astros off elite relievers in Bryan Abreu and Josh Hader. A titanic, three-run shot in Detroit — the only home run ball to reach the shrubbery beyond the center-field wall at Comerica Park this season — that provided the only runs in a 3-0 victory over the Tigers. And that magical Friday night against the Astros. Whether in pregame batting practice or in high-stakes battles against some of the best pitchers on the planet, the power that was promised during Kurtz's brief time as a prospect has consistently been on display this season. Most remarkably, Kurtz's ability to clear the fence from foul pole to foul pole is nearly unrivaled; only Judge has hit more home runs to the opposite field or to straightaway center since the start of June entering Friday. And when Kurtz is going good, the homers tend to come in bunches. It happened last spring, when he hit 14 homers in a 10-game span after a cold start to his junior season at Wake Forest. It happened before his call-up this year, when he hit seven homers across 12 games in Triple-A. Now it's happening at the highest level, with a five-homers-in-six-games run in June and an 11-homers-in-14-games stretch in July. Kurtz did his best to describe what it's like to be so locked in: "It's probably one of the best feelings, knowing when you're up there — honestly, it doesn't matter whether you get a hit or not — but I know what I'm feeling in my swing, I know exactly where [the bat] is going. I'm seeing the ball — it's huge right now. It's kind of what you dream about.' "It amazes me,' said Rooker, who was also a first-round draft pick out of college but didn't blossom into an impact big-league bat until his age-28 season. 'I was a very, very good college player. And if you had thrown me in the big leagues at 22, I would've absolutely had no chance.' [Get more A's news: Athletics team feed] 'I don't think people realize how difficult that is' Rooker's more gradual development only increases his appreciation for how Kurtz and Wilson have hit the ground running as rookies. 'Their ability to just jump right in and have success immediately and adjust as quickly as they have, I don't think people realize how difficult that is,' he said. Adding to the unique dynamic of this unrivaled rookie duo is how drastically different they are as players. Wilson is a skinny, right-handed shortstop who thrives on a hyper-aggressive approach and succeeds thanks to his nearly unparalleled bat-to-ball skills. Kurtz is a gargantuan, left-handed first baseman who whiffs often but pulverizes the ball so frequently that the punchouts are entirely tolerable. 'I don't think there's one way, from a hitting standpoint, to tell somebody how to do it,' Kotsay said. 'Jacob has his unique style. He's a bat-to-ball guy that puts it in play and sometimes seems to have a magic wand where he can hit it where he wants to. I played with a guy like that — Tony Gwynn — who had that magic wand. 'And for Nick, when he touches it, he impacts the baseball, and he can leave anywhere in the yard. They're definitely two different styles of hitters, but they have an advanced approach for how young they are in knowing who they are and knowing what they're trying to do.' Said Wilson of his counterpart: 'When we drafted him, it was obviously a huge bat for us to go out and get, and as you can see, it's translating to the big-league level pretty nicely right now. Definitely happy to have him on the team, excited to hopefully play with him for a very long time.' Kurtz's and Wilson's Baseball Savant pages are opposites to a spectacular degree, a fitting reflection of each player leaning all the way in on what he does best. To Rooker, this is a great sign. "The key to having success here is knowing what you're good at and then just being as good as you possibly can be at those things,' he said. 'Everybody here is doing something at an elite level. ... You have to figure out what that thing is, and you have to be as good as you possibly can at that. There's a ton of value, obviously, in trying to improve your weaknesses. [But] I think there's more value in finding your superpower and doing that as well as you possibly can. And I think those two guys are perfect examples of that.' 'Yes ... I'm a big leaguer' For as impressive of a start to his career as Kurtz has had, he knows this is just the beginning. "I put zero expectations on myself in Year 1,' he said. 'I had no idea what I was getting into.' He also will not stay this hot forever; another round of adjustments is surely in store, a regression to reality that will put his advanced aptitude to the test once again. And for the Athletics as a whole — a franchise in a transition between cities, with an inexperienced yet ascendent roster still figuring out how to translate talent into victories — every game is another opportunity to grow together. 'That's the best part about what we've developed here with some of those young guys — they're coming up together,' Cron said. 'And these two guys, Jacob, with his lineage, with his dad playing [in the big leagues], he's been around the game. The maturity of Nick Kurtz is off the charts. Physically, they're not the same, but they have this mindset of, 'Yes,' — without being braggadocious —'I'm a big leaguer.' And there's nothing that really fazes either one of them.' Veterans such as Rooker will continue to play a critical role in these young players' development, and Kurtz is quick to credit the A's DH, as well as the recently released Seth Brown. But Kurtz also knows that the franchise's future depends on his generation becoming the driving force behind the team's success. 'We might not all know the answers,' he said, 'but we're in it together, and we're gonna figure it out.'
Yahoo
25-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
How Nick Kurtz is slugging his way into the AL Rookie of the Year race
For the first time in his young career, 22-year-old first baseman Nick Kurtz was named AL Player of the Week on Monday after his highly productive showing in the Athletics' first series of the second half vs. Cleveland. With the All-Star festivities having put a pause on the regular season, this award, doled out weekly by the league office, didn't cover the usual sample of six or seven games played over a week. Instead, it highlighted just the first weekend after the break. And in that abbreviated sample, Kurtz mashed to an outstanding degree, collecting multiple hits in all three games at Progressive Field, including five of the extra-base variety. On the surface, it's a modest accomplishment for the rookie first baseman, the first official accolade in a career that promises to feature plenty more. At the same time, 'player of the week' wholly undersells what Kurtz has been doing at the plate lately. Because he was not just the star of this past week(end). He has been the best hitter in baseball for the past nine weeks. That's right: Neither Aaron Judge nor Cal Raleigh nor Ronald Acuña Jr. nor Kurtz's NL Player of the Week counterpart, red-hot trade candidate Eugenio Suarez, has been as dominant with the bat as the A's rookie since the end of May. Over his past 42 games, Kurtz is hitting .327/.408/.782 with 18 home runs, good for a 1.190 OPS and 217 wRC+ that are both tops in baseball. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] 'I think Nick's put himself, in a very short time, in conversation about Rookie of the Year,' A's manager Mark Kotsay said in Cleveland. 'We've got one on the team right now that's probably a little ahead of him in Jacob [Wilson]. But it's fun to watch these two, and it's going to be fun to watch them over the next 64 games and the progress they're able to make.' Indeed, Wilson's marvelous first half, which led to him starting the All-Star Game at shortstop for the AL, has somewhat overshadowed Kurtz's prolonged hot streak. But make no mistake: Both are succeeding to a degree achieved by very few rookie hitters as they emerge as one of the most promising young position-player duos in baseball. 'Nick, he's still learning the league,' Kotsay said. 'Jacob got a little head start on him. 'But Nick seems to be a quick learner.' 'Now it's go time' Three weeks of torching Triple-A pitching earned Kurtz his big-league call-up on April 23, roughly nine months after he was selected fourth overall in the 2024 MLB Draft. It wasn't smooth sailing at first: After he hit his first home run on May 13, Kurtz fell into an 0-for-21 skid that plummeted his OPS to a paltry .558. But Kurtz didn't panic. And those who observed how he went about his business in the earliest days of his big-league tenure were unsurprised when he began to not just dig himself out of that hole but also flourish in spectacular fashion upon finding his footing. 'He had to go through some struggles, like everybody does, and he didn't press,' hitting coach Chris Cron said. 'It wasn't a major deal. Of course he wanted to do well, but it wasn't the end of the world.' 'When you come billed with the kind of power he came with, to not be able to tap into that readily and immediately, I think you would see some guys start to scramble,' former A's pitcher and current broadcaster Dallas Braden said. 'Instead, what he did was cut the swing down and spray the baseball all over the yard until he got comfortable to a point where he could dip back into that power pool.' It took some time for Kurtz to tweak his patented patient approach, which he mastered as an amateur, to fit the unique challenge of hitting major-league pitching. 'If you wait for your pitch, you're probably striking out on three pitches,' he said. 'It's all about adjusting on the fly and pitch-to-pitch. Some guys, you need to be aggressive on pitches that aren't necessarily your pitch. When I first got up, I was trying to be a little too patient. Being down 0-1, 0-2, 1-2 so much … this game is so hard.' Kurtz realized early on that he needed to take control of his at-bats, rather than letting the opposing pitcher dictate the terms of engagement. And behind the scenes, he was making adjustments to allow his strengths to manifest against more daunting competition. 'His ability just to communicate what he's trying to do, understand the information that we're throwing out there — that doesn't just happen with a snap of the finger,' Cron said. 'You tell him something, he can absorb, and he can apply. Application of the information is the hardest thing to grasp, and he does that.' Said All-Star teammate Brent Rooker: 'To have as high-level approaches as he has as a 22-year-old, and then to also go out and execute them and execute them with the power that he does … That makes him stand out.' Soon enough, Kurtz began to better understand when to unleash his thunderous left-handed swing — 'It's about playing the game and the situations,' he said — and the results followed. 'Once he found himself in 2-0, 2-1s, 3-0, 3-1s,' Braden said, 'now it's go time.' With that, Kurtz took off. On May 20, he snapped his hitless skid with a single and a home run against the Angels. Two more homers followed the next day. A strained left hip flexor put Kurtz on the injured list later that week and threatened to derail his newfound momentum, but the brief injury scare was no trouble. It took just one minor-league rehab game — he homered, of course — before Kurtz rejoined the A's lineup and resumed raking. 'It's kind of what you dream about' As the home runs kept coming, each seismic swing seemed to carry greater weight than the last: A go-ahead blast off Royals closer Carlos Estevez in the top of the ninth in Kansas City. Two walk-off homers against the Astros off elite relievers in Bryan Abreu and Josh Hader. A titanic, three-run shot in Detroit — the only home run ball to reach the shrubbery beyond the center-field wall at Comerica Park this season — that provided the only runs in a 3-0 victory over the Tigers. Whether in pregame batting practice or in high-stakes battles against some of the best pitchers on the planet, the power that was promised during Kurtz's brief time as a prospect has consistently been on display this season. Most remarkably, Kurtz's ability to clear the fence from foul pole to foul pole is nearly unrivaled; only Judge has hit more home runs to the opposite field or to straightaway center since the start of June. And when Kurtz is going good, the homers tend to come in bunches. It happened last spring, when he hit 14 homers in a 10-game span after a cold start to his junior season at Wake Forest. It happened before his call-up this year, when he hit seven homers across 12 games in Triple-A. Now it's happening at the highest level, with a five-homers-in-six-games run in June and a seven-homers-in-13-games stretch in July. Kurtz did his best to describe what it's like to be so locked in: "It's probably one of the best feelings, knowing when you're up there — honestly, it doesn't matter whether you get a hit or not — but I know what I'm feeling in my swing, I know exactly where [the bat] is going. I'm seeing the ball — it's huge right now. It's kind of what you dream about.' "It amazes me,' said Rooker, who was also a first-round pick out of college but didn't blossom into an impact big-league bat until his age-28 season. 'I was a very, very good college player. And if you had thrown me in the big leagues at 22, I would've absolutely had no chance.' [Get more A's news: Athletics team feed] 'I don't think people realize how difficult that is' Rooker's more gradual development only increases his appreciation for how Kurtz and Wilson have hit the ground running as rookies. 'Their ability to just jump right in and have success immediately and adjust as quickly as they have, I don't think people realize how difficult that is,' he said. Adding to the unique dynamic of this unrivaled rookie duo is how drastically different they are as players. Wilson is a skinny, right-handed shortstop who thrives on a hyper-aggressive approach and succeeds thanks to his nearly unparalleled bat-to-ball skills. Kurtz is a gargantuan, left-handed first baseman who whiffs often but pulverizes the ball so frequently that the punchouts are entirely tolerable. 'I don't think there's one way, from a hitting standpoint, to tell somebody how to do it,' Kotsay said. 'Jacob has his unique style. He's a bat-to-ball guy that puts it in play and sometimes seems to have a magic wand where he can hit it where he wants to. I played with a guy like that — Tony Gwynn — who had that magic wand. 'And for Nick, when he touches it, he impacts the baseball, and he can leave anywhere in the yard. They're definitely two different styles of hitters, but they have an advanced approach for how young they are in knowing who they are and knowing what they're trying to do.' Said Wilson of his counterpart: 'When we drafted him, it was obviously a huge bat for us to go out and get, and as you can see, it's translating to the big-league level pretty nicely right now. Definitely happy to have him on the team, excited to hopefully play with him for a very long time.' Kurtz's and Wilson's Baseball Savant pages are opposites to a spectacular degree, a fitting reflection of each player leaning all the way in on what he does best. To Rooker, this is a great sign. "The key to having success here is knowing what you're good at and then just being as good as you possibly can be at those things,' he said. 'Everybody here is doing something at an elite level. ... You have to figure out what that thing is, and you have to be as good as you possibly can at that. There's a ton of value, obviously, in trying to improve your weaknesses. [But] I think there's more value in finding your superpower and doing that as well as you possibly can. And I think those two guys are perfect examples of that.' 'Yes ... I'm a big leaguer' For as impressive of a start to his career as Kurtz has had, he knows this is just the beginning. "I put zero expectations on myself in Year 1,' he said. 'I had no idea what I was getting into.' He also will not stay this hot forever; another round of adjustments is surely in store, a regression to reality that will put his advanced aptitude to the test once again. And for the Athletics as a whole — a franchise in a transition between cities, with an inexperienced yet ascendent roster still figuring out how to translate talent into victories — every game is another opportunity to grow together. 'That's the best part about what we've developed here with some of those young guys — they're coming up together,' Cron said. 'And these two guys, Jacob, with his lineage, with his dad playing [in the big leagues], he's been around the game. The maturity of Nick Kurtz is off the charts. Physically, they're not the same, but they have this mindset of, 'Yes,' — without being braggadocious —'I'm a big leaguer.' And there's nothing that really fazes either one of them.' Veterans such as Rooker will continue to play a critical role in these young players' development, and Kurtz is quick to credit the A's DH, as well as the recently released Seth Brown. But Kurtz also knows that the franchise's future depends on his generation becoming the driving force behind the team's success. 'We might not all know the answers,' he said, 'but we're in it together, and we're gonna figure it out.'
New York Times
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Guardians broadcaster Tom Hamilton, everyone's best friend, gets his Hall of Fame moment
CLEVELAND — There's a round, hazelnut brown table in the back of Booth 3 at Progressive Field with four black office chairs, though it's common for guests to pull up more. For every visiting broadcaster, this is the sanctuary. This is where a planned 90-second visit turns into 90 minutes, and you wish you had 90 more to spare. This is where a late-afternoon hello blurs into a sprint back to the microphone to detail the game's first pitch. This is where time flies, conversations flow and bellowing laughter booms. Advertisement This is where Cleveland radio broadcaster Tom Hamilton holds court, where he sits each afternoon to scribble the lineups and prepare his notes before a visitor knocks on the door. He makes every colleague feel like there's nowhere on the planet he'd rather be than in that moment, at that table, talking to them. He does the same thing on the mic. Hamilton is everyone's friend, whether you know him from decades of interactions or you only know him through your car radio or MLB app or the dust-covered stereo that still sort of catches the signal if you point the antenna in the right direction. You feel like he's talking directly to you, one on one, painting vivid brushstrokes with his descriptions of an outfield wall's quirky dimensions or a pitcher's funky delivery, telling gripping stories about players' backgrounds, filling time with casual chatter about college baseball or razzing his longtime partner in the booth, Jim Rosenhaus. Hamilton will head into the Baseball Hall of Fame this Saturday as the recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award, the pinnacle achievement in the sport's broadcasting realm. He has lost sleep in recent weeks over his speech, the attention and the fact that the humble guy who narrates everyone else's stories for a living now has no choice but to relay his own. He's looking forward to the ceremony and the pomp and circumstance. He's eager to watch CC Sabathia — whose outings he detailed for eight years — receive his own honor the following day. He's also looking forward to exhaling when it's all done, when he can return to Progressive Field for another ballgame and retreat to that cherished table in the back of his booth, where he's everyone's best friend. 'It's like a holiday,' said Detroit Tigers broadcaster Jason Benetti. 'I get to sit at the table and talk to my friend Tom, who laughs at everything and has a witty comment for everything. You lose an hour and a half in an instant.' How did Hamilton land a spot in Cooperstown? There's that distinct inflection in his voice that reminds you he's from rural Wisconsin, where he was raised on a 150-acre dairy farm. There's that consistent enthusiasm that stems from the advice Herb Score rattled him with on his first day in 1990, when he naively thought the Cleveland Indians were a pennant contender. Advertisement No, they were the sorry bunch depicted in 'Major League,' a group that lost a franchise-record 105 games the following year. As Score stressed, he couldn't allow their shortcomings to dampen the spirit in his voice. There's the self-deprecation. He says he rented an apartment in Bay Village, Ohio, upon landing the job in 1990 because he didn't think he'd last long in the business. He says Rosenhaus will 'go straight to heaven' for having to deal with him for nearly two decades. He says players must see him and think, 'Grandpa's still here with us. I didn't know he made it through the night.' And he says, his voice trembling and tears ready to spill down his cheeks, on joining the most estimable voices in the history of the sport: 'I don't belong.' For years, instead of suggesting he had a chance to win the Frick Award, he'd compare himself to actress Susan Lucci of 'All My Children' fame. Lucci had become a perennial Daytime Emmy candidate until she finally won after 18 nominations. When Hamilton received the call in December — he thought the window had passed, so he went to work out — the man who has filled tens of thousands of hours of airtime with his carefully manicured words had no words left to offer. Hamilton, 70, would much rather wax poetic about Earl Gillespie and Eddie Doucette and Merle Harmon and Gary Bender, the idols he grew up listening to on his front porch, than indulge in any conversation about his legacy. Hamilton and Rick Manning are Cleveland's longest-tenured broadcasters, at 36 seasons and counting. Hamilton joins Jimmy Dudley and Jack Graney, who broadcast in Cleveland in the early- and mid-1900s, as the franchise's only Frick Award winners. 'He's the best baseball announcer in the history of Cleveland,' said Chicago Cubs broadcaster Pat Hughes, the 2023 Frick Award winner. 'I don't think anybody's even close.' Benetti said whenever the two connect, Hamilton won't talk about himself. He'll instead steer the conversation to how he watched a regional baseball game at Kent State or caught up with former Cleveland manager Terry Francona or a Big Ten basketball coach, such as Purdue's Matt Painter. 'It's always through the lens of what the other person experienced,' Benetti said. 'I think that's the epitome of the job we do. He's so good at telling other people's stories that even in life, he tells other people's stories. It's fascinating. Ninety-eight percent of the industry, I feel like, start stories, even accidentally, with 'I.' Advertisement 'I don't think he does that. I really don't.' One of the greatest compliments anyone can pay Hamilton, then, is to place him on the pedestal he puts those Milwaukee luminaries. So, it speaks volumes that longtime Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman, the 2000 Frick Award winner, would sometimes search for a Cleveland game on the radio on his 25-minute drive home from the ballpark in Cincinnati. Or that Benetti and Hughes and Blue Jays broadcaster Dan Schulman seek out his calls. 'His energy and enthusiasm never wane,' Schulman said. 'He makes you feel like every single moment of every single game is the most important moment there is. He's an absolute treasure.' Even manager Stephen Vogt, before he ever joined the Guardians, would seek out Hamilton's broadcasts three time zones away during a long drive. 'He has the talent, the voice, the calls, the moments,' said Guardians pitcher Shane Bieber. 'As a player, listening to him, you appreciate his kindness, his stories, how he gets to know you. We don't take that for granted.' Hamilton knows he's not the main character; he's there to elevate whomever is. 'That's what it's supposed to sound like,' said Guardians catcher Austin Hedges, who grew up listening to Vin Scully, the 1982 Frick Award winner. 'His voice sounds like baseball,' said Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan, who grew up listening to San Francisco Giants staples Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow. When David Fry's toddler points at the TV and says, 'Dada, home run,' he'll find video of his postseason homers, and the dramatic ones Lane Thomas and Jhonkensy Noel slugged in 2024. 'You know exactly what's going to happen,' Fry said, 'and you still get chills as (Hamilton) says, 'Deep drive…'' 'When I first came over here,' Francona said, 'I didn't realize how good he was. I talked to him every day and loved him. And then one day I called in the winter, and they put me on hold. And it was Hammy's call. I'm like, 'Goddamn, he's good.'' Advertisement 'You can tell the great ones from the not-so-great,' Fry said, 'or in his case, the Hall of Famers from the rest.' 'The best home run calls in all of baseball,' said Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro, who worked in Cleveland for nearly a quarter-century. 'I feel that bar none.' Shapiro grew up listening to longtime Baltimore broadcasters Chuck Thompson and Jon Miller, both Frick Award winners. He even attended Miller's Hall of Fame induction. 'And then I listened to Hammy for 24 years,' Shapiro said, 'and I was like, 'This guy is as good as anybody ever.'' Hamilton has provided the soundtrack to every memorable Cleveland moment over the last 35 years, from Rajai Davis' Game 7 home run in the 2016 World Series to the team's playoff clinch in September 1995, in which he proclaimed the city would have 'an October to remember.' An unscientific poll revealed his call of the José Ramírez-Tim Anderson duel near second base in August 2023 as the consensus favorite. 'Down goes Anderson!' he shouted after Ramírez landed a right jab. 'It's like he had been doing boxing for 30 years,' said Benetti, who was on location, detailing the brawl on the Chicago White Sox broadcast. Of course, Hamilton downplays the call. He felt uncomfortable when reporters and radio shows called him to relive the scene in the days that followed. Hamilton insists the moment is never about the person describing it. 'Oh, ya know,' Benetti said, impersonating his friend. 'I just say what I see. Oh, ya get lucky, ya know.' Hamilton attributed his call to having, fortunately, the best angle to the play from his perch. 'He's on every big moment,' Benetti said. 'I've never heard him miss.' It's not as simple as a farmer's kid being gifted a magical voice. 'People think you show up at 5:30,' Brennaman said. 'They have no idea what we do.' Hamilton arrives in time to make the rounds in the clubhouse each afternoon. He checks in with players nursing injuries, reviews certain at-bats or pitch sequences, catches up with coaches and interviews the manager for the pregame show. He heads to the field to collect more intel or find another conversation he might be able to file away for later if the score gets out of hand. Advertisement 'He's like the perfect golf partner or lunch partner,' Benetti said. 'He's a genuinely curious soul with an enormous voice.' The afternoon preparation stocks him with plenty of anecdotes and details to weave into the broadcast. You're never at risk for tuning in to a yawn-inducing at-bat. 'The most important thing we have in our business is credibility,' Brennaman said. 'If a fan turns on the radio every night and can't trust you to be credible on the air, I don't think you have a whole lot working for you. Fans can pick up on insincerity or phoniness. What he's delivering is the same thing he'd be delivering to a fan if they were sitting at a bar drinking and talking baseball. 'Tom wrote the book on sincerity. He cares about the people who listen to him. I truly believe he has a love affair with the Cleveland baseball fans that's true to him and true to his personality.' In early July, Jon and Robin Stang drove two hours to an airport in Bismarck, N.D., flew to Minneapolis and then boarded another flight to Cleveland. They have no ties to the Colorado Rockies or Minnesota Twins, the closest teams to their residence in Regent, N.D., a town of about 450 people. Years ago, they randomly chose the Guardians as their team, and Hamilton as their tour guide through each season. They spend their days on tractors, spreaders and lawnmowers on a grain farm that has been in the Stang family for 111 years. The fastest, most enjoyable two or three hours of their day from April until at least September is when they get lost in a Hamilton soliloquy. 'I listen to you all the time,' Jon said upon meeting him in July. 'You usually make my day.' 'Well, I've been disappointing people my whole life,' Hamilton countered, in his typical, self-deprecating nature. During a recent road trip, Rosenhaus passed Hamilton a note about a Cleveland fan who was celebrating his 100th birthday. Hamilton seamlessly wove him into the fabric of the broadcast for a half-inning. Advertisement 'He made it seem like he knew the guy,' Rosenhaus said. The broadcast partners occasionally grab a meal on the road. By the time the check arrives, Hamilton has learned the server's hometown and career goals, along with a list of sites to view in that particular city. 'There's nobody in baseball I look forward to BSing with for 10 minutes before the game more than him,' Schulman said. When he finishes his work on the field and in the clubhouse each day, Hamilton returns to his booth and sits at that round table. He studies packets of statistics and jots down notes for each player on both sides. And he entertains. 'Once I got all my business taken care of in the clubhouse and at field level,' Brennaman said, 'one of the first things I did was go see him and Rosey.' 'If I don't stop in (on) the first day,' Benetti said, 'he'll say, 'Oh, I don't know! You've changed!'' 'You know if you're a friend of his,' Brennaman said. That's the case if you've swapped stories while sitting at that table, in his booth or if you've listened to his broadcast. 'That,' Benetti said, 'is the best kind of friend anybody can want.' (Top photo of Tom Hamilton: Nick Cammett / Diamond Images via Getty Images; Audio courtesy of Brian Motsay / Cleveland Guardians)
