In their first meeting of the 2025 MLB season, the New York Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox, 9-6. The Yankees jumped on Red Sox starter Walker Buehler, roaring out to a 7-0 lead by the second inning. 

The onslaught began immediately with Trent Grisham drawing a leadoff walk and Aaron Judge hitting a double. Buehler looked like he might get out of trouble, getting Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt out. But he then dropped in a knuckle-curve that Jazz Chisholm Jr. golfed out to center field for a three-run homer.

Jasson Domínguez followed with a single and came home on a two-run shot by Anthony Volpe. Buehler threw a 94.7 mph fastball right down the middle of the strike zone that the Yankees shortstop smacked to the opposite field. 

The right-hander allowed one more hit, a single to Austin Wells, before getting DJ LeMahieu to ground out to end the inning. Buehler finished with seven runs (five earned), seven hits and two walks allowed before Zack Kelly took over in the third. 

In his past two starts, Buehler has given up 12 runs (10 earned), 17 hits (four of them home runs) and four walks in 7 2/3 innings. Following the game, the eight-year veteran gave a tough self-evaluation to reporters. 

“This organization put a lot of faith in me this offseason and I’ve been f***ing embarrassing for us,” Buehler said, via MassLive’s Christopher Smith. “So it’s tough.”

“It’s obviously a big game and a big rivalry that I was excited to be a part of,” he added. “And for it to go the way that it did is super disappointing, especially after the past two, three weeks of kind of prep and throwing and all that kinda s*** and how I’m feeling. Physically I feel great and for it to happen that way, it sucks.”

Buehler (4-4) has a 5.10 ERA after 10 starts for Boston with 44 strikeouts and 17 walks in 48 2/3 innings. In early May, he went on the injured list with right shoulder inflammation. Buehler signed a one-year, $21.05 million free-agent deal with the Red Sox after seven seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers and nearly three years removed from Tommy John surgery.

The Red Sox did have some highlights, including Marcelo Mayer hitting his first career home run. (Rafael Devers later added his 13th of the season.) They scored four runs against Yankees starter Will Warren. But they couldn’t overcome Buehler’s terrible second inning. 

“He feels great physically, he feels his stuff is really good, and then that happened, you know?” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said of Buehler after the game. “So it’s not easy to be out there and get your ass kicked, right? I think we’re all frustrated, you know, and he’s trying to find a way.”

Boston has lost nine of its past 12 games and dropped to 30-35 for the season. That leaves the Red Sox in fourth place, 10.5 games behind the Yankees in the AL East. They’re also five games out of the AL’s third wild-card playoff berth. 

The old NBA Finals logo has been missed on the court more than usual this season, as the Indiana Pacers face off with the Oklahoma City Thunder. 

NBA Finals games used to feature a giant script “The Finals” logo somewhere on the court, but that logo has fallen out of use over the past decade. However, after days of social media chatter about the ambience of this year’s Finals, NBA commissioner Adam Silver acknowledge the issue, and hinted at a possible solution.

From The Athletic:

“Maybe there’s a way around it,” he told a small group of reporters during an NBA Cares charity event at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Oklahoma County. “To be honest, I hadn’t thought all that much about it until I [saw] it [on social media]. I’m nostalgic, as well, for certain things. And also, I think for a media-driven culture, whether it’s people watching live or seeing those images on social media, it’s nice when you’re looking back on highlights and they stand out because you see that trophy logo or some other indication that it’s a special event. So, we’ll look at it.”

The “Finals” logo ceased to become a court feature in 2014, with the league citing player safety due to the slipperiness of the decals. It has since made some cameos, appearing in a small form on the Cleveland Cavaliers’ court in 2017 and as the featured logo on the COVID-19 bubble court of the 2020 NBA Finals.

As Front Office Sports broke down Friday, the league has been trending away from such pageantry in other ways for years. The league has moved Finals patches from the front of player jerseys to the back. Broadcasts don’t feature player introductions or the national anthem. The Finals logo is actually present…in a small version on the padding under the baskets.

Outside of some extra ads and the logo on scorebug, the broadcast didn’t look much different from a regular-season game.

Many have noted the division in the league’s apparent effort to dress up the Finals vs. its newer event, the in-season NBA Cup tournament. Those games feature custom-painted courts for every team and a giant trophy at center court.

Silver addressed that difference as well, basically saying the Cup was easier to plan for:

“In the case of the Cup, of course, we have the opportunity to plan well in advance and to design a specific neutral court for a Cup championship game,” he said. “And the teams design their own Cup courts. It actually takes a significant amount of time to create new courts in terms of how they’re painted, et cetera.

“One of the reasons we moved away from the logos on the courts is — whether it was perception or reality — there was a sense that maybe the logos added some slipperiness to the court, and it was a change sort of on the court that was coming just at the time of the Finals. … Maybe it’s for superstitious reasons or just a sense from teams that we shouldn’t be changing things around such important competition. That’s largely why we stopped putting the logos on the court.”

With the demand clearly there, the ball is in the NBA’s court, as it were. For now, Game 2 of the 2025 Finals is scheduled for Sunday in OKC.

The Oklahoma City Thunder are in the NBA Finals for the first time since 2012 after dispatching the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games. They will face the Indiana Pacers, who knocked off the New York Knicks in six games on Saturday night, and the Thunder are overwhelming favorites in the series. In fact, Oklahoma City is the biggest Finals favorite in franchise history.

The Thunder opened as -800 favorites in the NBA Finals at BetMGM, with the Pacers as +550 underdogs.

Oklahoma City was a -175 favorite back in the 2012 NBA Finals against the Miami Heat, but ended up losing the series in five games. The Seattle SuperSonics were -140 favorites in the 1978 NBA Finals against the Washington Bullets, per Sports Odds History.

The biggest favorites in NBA Finals history were the 2001 Los Angeles Lakers, who were -2000 against the Philadelphia 76ers and won the series in five games. The 2018 champion Golden State Warriors were the second biggest of all time as -1075 favorites over the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Who were the biggest favorites to lose in the Finals? Well, that again would be the Lakers, who fell as -700 favorites to the 2004 Detroit Pistons.

Oklahoma City has arguably been the best team in the league all season, going 68-14 in the tough Western Conference to earn the No. 1 seed, which included a historic 55-23-4 record against the spread in the regular season — the best ATS mark in 35 seasons.

While the Thunder have struggled against the spread in the postseason entering the finals (7-9 ATS), they have been impressive and won games when it has mattered most — winning Game 7 against the Denver Nuggets in the conference semifinals and hitting clutch shot after clutch shot in Game 4 against the Timberwolves in the last round.

The Pacers are in the NBA Finals for only the second time in franchise history (in 2000 they lost to the -800 favorite Los Angeles Lakers in six games) and have been impressive in the postseason, winning seven games outright as underdogs. Indiana was a -190 favorite at sportsbooks in its Round 1 series against a banged-up Milwaukee Bucks team, before being underdogs (+425 series price) against the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Knicks (+135) in the last two rounds.

We’ll be tracking the changing finals odds throughout the series:

Indiana Pacers (+275) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (-350)

Indiana up 1-0 in series

Game 2: Pacers at Thunder (-10.5, 227.5)

Game 1: Pacers 111, Thunder 110

Spread result: Pacers +10

Total: Under 230

Series price heading into Game 1: Pacers (+500) vs. Thunder (-700)

Craig Kimbrel is returning to the Atlanta Braves bullpen. The Braves are calling up their former All-Star closer from Triple-A Gwinnett, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported on Thursday.

Atlanta officially announced the move on Friday, adding that reliever Daysbel Hernández (2.22 ERA in 25 appearances) has been placed on the 15-day injured list with right forearm inflammation. 

The decision was likely prompted by the Braves blowing a six-run lead in the ninth inning Thursday versus the Arizona Diamondbacks, leading to an 11-10 loss. Atlanta took a 10-5 lead into the ninth. Three of Arizona’s first four batters reached base against Scott Blewett, including home runs by Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Alek Thomas. 

Raisel Iglesias relieved Blewett and didn’t fare better, allowing five of the next six batters on base with RBI hits by Ketel Marte, Ildemaro Vargas and Eugenio Suárez resulting in four runs and an Arizona lead. Ultimately, five runs were charged to Blewett and Iglesias gave up the lead with the three he allowed. 

“We’re not a bad team. We’re a good team that’s playing bad,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said after the game. “We’re all going to be miserable, and we should. We didn’t execute and put the game away, and we’ve got to do that.” 

With the loss, Atlanta dropped to 27-34, placing them fourth in the National League West and 11 games behind the first-place New York Mets. The Braves are also seven games out of the NL’s third wild-card playoff berth.

In 18 minor league appearances this season (15 for Gwinnett), Kimbrel has compiled a 2.00 ERA with 23 strikeouts in 18 innings with 8 walks and 9 hits allowed. 

Kimbrel, 37, pitched the first five seasons of his career with the Braves, collecting a 1.43 ERA and 186 saves in 294 appearances. He won the 2011 National League Rookie of the Year award and made four All-Star teams during his stint with Atlanta. 

The right-hander was traded to the San Diego Padres before the 2015 season and he’s played for six other teams since then. Last season, he had a 5.33 ERA for the Orioles in 57 appearances despite a strikeout rate of 12.6 per nine innings and was released in late September. 

However, Kimbrel had a 2.80 ERA, 53 strikeouts in 35 1/3 innings and 23 saves before the All-Star break. 

“Hopefully, he can replicate what he did the first half of last year,” Snitker said when Atlanta signed Kimbrel in the spring. “It would be awesome if he could come in and do that.”

During his 15 MLB seasons, Kimbrel has compiled a 2.59 ERA and 440 saves with a strikeout rate of 14.1 per 9 innings. 

Blewett’s outing was his last for the Braves. The team announced that he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles on Friday for cash considerations. Atlanta was planning to DFA Blewett (5.51 ERA in 11 games) after Thursday’s game, but worked out a deal with Baltimore.

It’s a return to Baltimore for the right-hander, who appeared in two games for the Orioles before being designated for assignment and traded to Atlanta. Blewett began the season with the Minnesota Twins, but received a DFA and was picked up by the Orioles.