Month: May 2025

MLB’s investment in Athletes Unlimited intrigues

MLB has made a significant investment in professional softball, which could end up being great news for the sport.

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Obviously, it’s a rarity in this space when MLB’s business activities are brought up and not immediately ripped apart for some deserved transgression. So hey, let’s enjoy something happening where I’m leaning far more toward, “huh, neat” than “what’s their goal, here?” with eyes narrowed.

I’m speaking of, as the headline already alerted you to, Major League Baseball’s significant investment in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, or AUSL. Last summer, I wrote about the AUSL for Baseball Prospectus, in a piece titled “Athletes Unlimited and a New Model for Pro Sports.” Here’s a bit of that to get you up to speed on the league and my thoughts on it:

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It’s not just the Rockies

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Saying that the Rockies have taken up all the oxygen in the room when it comes to 2025’s losing teams is probably pushing things a little far, but it is, at least, fair to say that they’re at the center of that particular attention economy. How could they not be, considering that, heading into Tuesday’s action against the Cubs, they’re sitting at 9-45, the worst-ever modern (i.e. 1901 and beyond) start through 54 games of an MLB season? Given that the 2024 White Sox set the modern loss record with 121 defeats, and Colorado is currently on pace for 135 of them?

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Brandon Hyde suffers for Orioles’ organizational sins

The Orioles didn’t struck when they should have the way they should have, and it’s becoming their defining feature under Mike Elias.

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There’s a common theme to 2025’s worst MLB teams, and it’s that they were pretty clearly going to have rough seasons. And yet, none of them did the things that would keep this from occurring. Three of those four squads have also fired their managers already — the Orioles being the latest thanks to getting rid of Brandon Hyde, following the Rockies and Pirates doing so a little earlier in May — because that’s one way to pretend you’re Doing Something about losses that have been brought about by an organizational-wide philosophy.

You can argue that the Orioles weren’t expected to be quite as bad in 2025 as they’ve been — they’re 15-30, on pace for 108 losses — but this is just arguing a matter of degrees. The O’s made it so that a whole lot of things had to go right for them to compete in 2025 like they did even a year ago when they won 91 games and lost in the Wild Card round, and none of those things have gone right. Instead, they’ve just hit the worst-case scenario in a few instances, but all within the realm of plausibility without the need for hindsight.

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Pirates, Rockies shuffle some deck chairs

Firing the managers will fix everything, sure.

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On Thursday, the Pirates fired manager Derek Shelton. On Sunday, the Rockies fired their manager, Bud Black. The Pirates had just lost seven games in a row and sat in last place in the NL Central, while the Rockies were one day removed from a 21-0 loss to the Padres, at home, that pushed their run differential to -134, twice as low as the next-worst team, the Marlins.

The Pirates made it seem like firing Shelton would be a move that would turn things around for them sooner than any other possible move, as if it was Shelton’s fault that they were the way they were, and simply elevating Don Kelly from bench coach to manager would undo that damage. The Rockies, similarly, let go of Black because what else are you going to do when you’re on pace for the worst season in modern history (and then some)?

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