August 2025

There were 1,614 posts published in August 2025 (this is page 133 of 162).

Outfielder Roman Anthony finalizing 8-year, $130 million contract extension with Red Sox: Report

Roman Anthony made his MLB debut earlier this season. Now the 21-year-old outfielder is finalizing an eight-year, $130 million contract extension with the Boston Red Sox, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

The deal is set to start in 2026, and it’s slated to include escalators that could make the contract worth as much as $230 million, per Passan, who also reported Wednesday that the deal includes a club option and will keep Anthony under team control through 2034.

In 46 MLB games this season, Anthony is slashing .283/.400/.428 with two home runs and 19 RBI.

The Red Sox drafted Anthony 79th overall out of Florida’s Stoneman Douglas High School in the second round of the 2022 MLB Draft. He eventually became the sport’s top minor-league prospect, with both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline ranking him No. 1 in June ahead of his call-up to the bigs.

Two days before he made his first Boston Red Sox appearance, Anthony went viral for hitting a 497-foot grand slam that had an exit velocity of 115.6 mph and put his Triple-A Worcester Red Sox ahead in the bottom of the eighth inning against the Rochester Red Wings.

During his 58 Triple-A games in 2025, the 6-foot-3, 200-pound Anthony hit .288 with 10 homers and 29 RBI. 

Anthony debuted in the majors against the Tampa Bay Rays on June 9 at Fenway Park. At the time, Gold Glover Wilyer Abreu was on the 10-day IL. Anthony took his place in right field but committed an error there and went hitless. Fortunately for him, his first game with the organization wasn’t predictive of how his rookie season would pan out.

His next time out, also against the Rays, Anthony delivered a two-run double in his first at-bat. With one momentous swing, he propelled the Red Sox to a bounce-back 3-1 win and teased his AL Rookie of the Year candidacy.

Just about a week later, Anthony served up his first career MLB home run. He deposited a solo shot in a 2-0 road victory over the Seattle Mariners, Boston’s first game after it surprisingly traded three-time All-Star slugger Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants.

While Anthony has yet to fully harness the power he’s capable of in the majors, he has collected 15 doubles and a dozen multi-hit games. And he has emerged as a stable force at the top of the Red Sox’s lineup.

Anthony is poised to become the latest Boston player under contract through at least 2030. Left-hander Garrett Crochet, center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela, infielder Kristian Campbell and right-hander Brayan Bello are also in that category.

Rick Carlisle on building a team in modern NBA: ‘The NBA game has now become a play hard league’

Part of the discussion about Luka Doncic’s extension with the Los Angeles Lakers — after LeBron James opted into his contract — was about the Lakers’ potential to have max cap space as soon as next summer. That allows them to retool the roster around Luka Doncic, which sparked some speculation about the Lakers chasing Giannis Antetokounmpo or other stars to slot in where LeBron stands now, building a classic multi-star title team. Multiple superstars has always been the Lakers’ ideal.

Rick Carlisle is questioning that old-school thinking and if that’s the best way to build a contender in the modern NBA.

In a fantastic interview/conversation with Caitlin Cooper of “Basketball She Wrote” (a journalist every basketball fan should follow), Carlisle talked about how the Pacers were built and won, and that serving as a model for other teams (an echo of things he said during the Finals).

“The NBA game has now become a play hard league. It’s not just being top heavy with stars. Roster construction is changing… It’s become more important to have more good players than be top heavy with two or three great players that get all the touches.”

These past NBA Finals were a testament to that. Oklahoma City boasts MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, while Indiana features an All-NBA, Olympian player in Tyrese Haliburton. However, in both cases, these were teams deep with good role players who played hard nightly and fit the teams’ systems and styles — neither team rolled out a player the other team could just instantly target in their top eight. This wasn’t SGA and Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren covering up for the players below them, OKC rolled out quality players in Alex Caruso, Isaiah Hartenstein, Lu Dort, Cason Wallace, and on and on down the line.

The key to those rosters was not the high ceilings of the stars but the high floor of the top eight — Indiana reached the Finals on the strength of that idea. The Pacers didn’t just have Haliburton, Myles Turner and Pascal Siakam, there were quality players in Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, T.J. McConnell, Obi Toppin, Bennedict Mathurin and Ben Sheppard. There was quality depth Carlisle could trust in a way that was not happening with the New York Knicks, for example.

A year prior it was the same thing, the Celtics had stars in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, but that roster also was eight deep with players Joe Mazzulla could lean into: Kristaps Porzingis, Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, Al Horford, Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser and on down the line. Two years ago, it was an MVP in Nikola Jokic in Denver but surrounded by depth in guys such as Aaron Gordon, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Michael Porter Jr., Bruce Brown, Jeff Green, Christian Braun and more.

During the NBA Finals, Carlisle owned the idea that none of this works without the right star at the top — a team needs a transcendent star or two. However, beyond that, it becomes about depth more than stockpiling stars. It’s not how strong the stars at the top are, but how weak is the weakest link in the chain? And come the playoffs, can opponents pull the chain apart by focusing on that weak link?

Fans are understandably weary of talk of the NBA and its tax aprons, but those are changing how teams are built now. Carlisle has seen the future, as have the Pacers, and they were in the Finals because of it. Expect other innovative teams to try to follow this model.

Ex-Miami Heat Security Guard Sold Stolen LeBron Jersey, Feds Say

A former Miami Heat security guard made his initial appearance in federal court for being accused of selling a stolen LeBron James Heat NBA Finals jersey and more than 100 other Heat game-worn jerseys and items, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

Marcos Perez, 62, is accused of violating Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Section 2314, which concerns interstate transportation of stolen property. A conviction would carry a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and a fine of $250,000. The charging document was filed by U.S. Attorney Hayden P. O’Byrne and Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert F. Moore in a Florida federal district court on Monday.

Prosecutors say that Perez, a former Miami Police Department officer, knowingly transported stolen goods worth millions of dollars from Kaseya Center., which was previously known as American Airlines Arena and FTX Arena. He then sold the items to online brokers, pocketing about $2 million. The DOJ executed a search warrant at Perez’s Miami residence in April and seized about 300 stolen game-worn jerseys and memorabilia. According to the feds, the Heat confirmed the authenticity of the items.

Perez is depicted as selling stolen items well below their market value. For instance, he allegedly sold the James jersey for about $100,000, and it was later sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $3.7 million.

Perez worked for the Heat from 2016 to 2021 and then worked as an NBA security employee from 2022 to 2025. His assignments included game-day security, which meant he had access to a secured equipment room containing, the DOJ says, “hundreds of game-worn jerseys and other memorabilia that the organization intended to display in a future Miami Heat museum.”

In a statement posted on X, Miami Police Department chief Manny Morales said Perez “separated from the Miami Police in 2016.” He added that “any betrayal of the public’s trust, past or present is a stain on the badge and the oath we all take to serve with integrity and honor.”

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Microsoft Releases Guidance on High-Severity Vulnerability (CVE-2025-53786) in Hybrid Exchange Deployments

Note: This Alert may be updated to reflect new guidance issued by CISA or other parties. 

CISA is aware of the newly disclosed high-severity vulnerability, CVE-2025-53786, that allows a cyber threat actor with administrative access to an on-premise Microsoft Exchange server to escalate privileges by exploiting vulnerable hybrid-joined configurations. This vulnerability, if not addressed, could impact the identity integrity of an organization’s Exchange Online service. 

While Microsoft has stated there is no observed exploitation as of the time of this alert’s publication, CISA strongly urges organizations to implement Microsoft’s Exchange Server Hybrid Deployment Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability guidance outlined below, or risk leaving the organization vulnerable to a hybrid cloud and on-premises total domain compromise.  

  1. If using Exchange hybrid, review Microsoft’s guidance Exchange Server Security Changes for Hybrid Deployments to determine if your Microsoft hybrid deployments are potentially affected and available for a Cumulative Update (CU). 
  1. Install Microsoft’s April 2025 Exchange Server Hotfix Updates on the on-premise Exchange server and follow Microsoft’s configuration instructions Deploy dedicated Exchange hybrid app.  
  1. For organizations using Exchange hybrid (or have previously configured Exchange hybrid but no longer use it), review Microsoft’s Service Principal Clean-Up Mode for guidance on resetting the service principal’s keyCredentials.  
  1. Upon completion, run the Microsoft Exchange Health Checker to determine if further steps are required.  

CISA highly recommends entities disconnect public-facing versions of Exchange Server or SharePoint Server that have reached their end-of-life (EOL) or end-of-service from the internet. For example, SharePoint Server 2013 and earlier versions are EOL and should be discontinued if still in use.   

Organizations should review Microsoft’s blog Dedicated Hybrid App: temporary enforcements, new HCW and possible hybrid functionality disruptions for additional guidance as it becomes available. 

Disclaimer:   

The information in this report is being provided “as is” for informational purposes only. CISA does not endorse any commercial entity, product, company, or service, including any entities, products, or services linked within this document. Any reference to specific commercial entities, products, processes, or services by service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by CISA.