August 2025

There were 1,614 posts published in August 2025 (this is page 61 of 162).

John Wall makes retirement official, will join ‘NBA on Prime’ broadcasting team

Clippers guard John Wall shoots against Washington Wizards Corey Kispert, center, and Kristaps Porzingis during a game on Dec. 10, 2022, in Washington. (Nick Wass / Associated Press)

In his prime, John Wall was a rocket, a supremely talented point guard whose speed, explosiveness and star power made him the first pick in the NBA draft, a five-time All-Star and a fan favorite of the Washington Wizards, the team for which he delivered nearly all his heroics and highlight reels.

At the end, Wall was in uniform and running the court — that in itself a sight to see — but the uniform was the Clippers and his game had been reduced to eye-blink spurts of greatness.

The Clippers visited Washington’s Capital One Arena on Dec. 10, 2022, Wall in the midst of a 34-game slog that would be his last in the NBA. Wizards fans cheered his introduction and the 90-second tribute video that Wall was too emotional to even watch.

When the Clippers were off to a disastrous second-quarter start, Wall answered with six consecutive points, the last two swishing on his step-back 13-foot jumper. He spun toward the crowd, pointed both index fingers toward the court, and shouted, “Still my city!”

Wall was so overcome by the cheering crowd that he started walking to the wrong bench. “I kind of flashed back and forgot like, I’m in a different jersey,” he said. “Just being in that moment and electrifying the crowd, that’s what I’ve been doing for a lot of years in my career when I was here.”

Read more:‘Still my city!’ John Wall stars in return to Washington as Clippers rally for win

Wall announced his retirement on Tuesday, although most fans probably figured he had retired already. His Clippers stint ended Jan. 13, 2022, and he never played again. His slide began in 2020 when Washington did the unfathomable, trading the most popular Wizard since Wes Unseld to the Houston Rockets for Russell Westbrook.

Wall had suffered a succession of leg injuries and he would suffer some more. The loss of his signature speed, coupled with the death of his mother, sent Wall into a depression that eventually had him contemplating suicide.

“For me, it all happened really fast,” he wrote in a first-person Players Tribune story. “In the span of three years, I went from being on top of the world to losing damn near everything I ever cared about.

“In 2017, I’m jumping up on the announcer’s table in D.C. after forcing Game 7 against Boston, and I’m the king of the city. I’m getting a max extension, thinking I’m a Wizard for life. A year later, I tore my Achilles and lost the only sanctuary I’ve ever known — the game of basketball. I ended up with such a bad infection from the surgeries that I nearly had to have my foot amputated. A year later, I lost my best friend in the whole world, my mom, to breast cancer.

“My best friend is gone. I can’t play the game I love. Everybody just got their hand out. Nobody is checking on me for me. It’s always coming with something attached. Who’s there to hold me down now? What’s the point of being here?”

Never mind that the Rockets gave him $172 million over four years, and that he gave them only 40 games in 2020-2021 in return. The next season, he agreed to the Rockets’ request that he not play, that he sit out and become a glorified assistant coach while the team tanked.

Read more:‘It’s pretty profound’: How John Wall became a hero in D.C. community

Wall agreed to forfeit a slice of his salary — his career earnings were $276 million — to get a fresh start with the Clippers, but it was soon clear he had little to offer, averaging 11.3 points and shooting 40.3%.

“That’s the most frustrating part because people think, ‘Oh, he got the money, he’s set for life, he don’t care,'” Wall recently told the Washington Post. “No, I would give up all the money to play basketball and never deal with none of those injuries. I didn’t play the game of basketball for money. I played the game of basketball because I love it,”

It took him two more years to reconcile that he was through, and his retirement announcement Tuesday was timed with another that he will join Prime Video for its studio show in its inaugural season broadcasting the NBA in 2025-2026.

Prime Video will broadcast 67 regular-season games, the play-in tournament and some playoff games. Wall called the G League Winter Showcase in January, which led to appearances on NBA TV. Now he’ll join the “NBA on Prime” team along with Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, Dwyane Wade, Blake Griffin, Udonis Haslem and Candace Parker.

For Wall, it will be an opportunity to revisit his prime, sharing the basketball knowledge he accumulated through a difficult upbringing in North Carolina, an All-American one-and-done season at Kentucky and an 11-year NBA career in which he averaged 18.7 points and 8.9 assists a game.

“If you never really had the opportunity to sit down and talk to me, you won’t really understand how much I love basketball, where my basketball mind is at, where my IQ is,” Wall said. “I can basically tell you the best player in the country — from girls to boys, high school, to the players that’s in college, to the people that’s at the NBA and WNBA.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Orioles closer Félix Bautista undergoes rotator cuff, labrum surgery, expected to miss 12 months

Baltimore Orioles closer Félix Bautista will miss the rest of the 2025 MLB season after undergoing rotator cuff and labrum surgery, the team announced Wednesday.

Bautista, 30, was in the midst of another strong season when he was placed on the injured list in July due to a shoulder injury. He was diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff and torn labrum, leading to Wednesday’s procedure.

Bautista is expected to miss at least 12 months following the surgery, which means he’ll miss most — if not all — of the 2026 MLB season while rehabbing.

It’s the second major injury sustained by Bautista during his major-league career. He missed the entire 2024 MLB season while recovering from Tommy John surgery.

Bautista was able to return in time for the start of the 2025 MLB season and was off to a great start prior to his injury. Through 34 2/3 innings, he had a 2.60 ERA and 50 strikeouts. 

When healthy, Bautista has been one of the best relievers in the majors. He burst onto the scene in 2022, when he posted a 2.19 ERA as a rookie. After spending time as a late-inning reliever his first few months, Bautista won the closer role that August and finished the season strong.

He was even better in 2023. Bautista was the Orioles’ closer the entire season, posting a 1.48 ERA and racking up 33 saves. That performance earned him his first All-Star appearance. Late in the season, however, Bautista was shut down due to elbow soreness. He eventually underwent Tommy John surgery and missed all of 2024.

While his 2025 return was a success prior to the injury, his outlook moving forward is unclear. After undergoing two major surgeries over a two-year span, Bautista will have a lot to prove the next time he steps foot on the mound.

What feud? Shaquille O’Neal to be presenter for Dwight Howard at Hall of Fame

In a couple of weeks, when Dwight Howard is inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, Shaquille O’Neal will be by his side as one of his presenters. Shaq’s addition to the list of Patrick Ewing, Robert Parish, Dennis Rodman, and Dominique Wilkins was announced by the Hall.

It’s an interesting choice, given that Shaq and Howard have had a public feud that goes back more than 17 years. It was an inevitable tension as Shaq was not willing to cede his spot among the best centers in the game to another player, especially one Shaq saw as appropriating his “Superman” image.

This feud continued after Shaq’s playing days, with him once suggesting Brook Lopez was a better center than Howard (who had been named First Team All-NBA for five straight years at that point). Howard said Shaq was retired and needed to let it go. Shaq later said all this was a motivational tactic to fire up Howard, but it continued even a year ago when both were out of the game (Howard was inspired by the Mike Tyson/Jake Paul “fight”).

Now, though, it’s apparently all good. The two men have a lot in common, including both being the No. 1 pick of the Orlando Magic and leading that franchise to the NBA Finals, and both were dominant at their peak.

hen Dwight Howard deservedly enters the Hall of Fame next month, Shaq will be there to present him and welcome him to the club.

Bulls’ Nikola Vucevic handling trade rumors like a vet, ‘There are always rumors. Most of them are false.’

He was linked to the Lakers. He was linked to the Warriors. He was linked to pretty much any team in need of a solid center. Then, there were rumors that the Chicago Bulls would buy out the final year of his $21.5 million contract, allowing him to sign elsewhere as a free agent.

Nikola Vucevic brushed them all off. The 14-year NBA veteran has been dealing with rumors his entire career, and he has been traded a couple times, he knows what that experience was like. What was happening this summer was nothing like that, he told BasketUSA in an interview as he practices with Montenegro for the EuroBasket championships starting in a week (hat tip to Real GM for the translation).

“The Bulls’ GM [Marc Eversley] had contacted me after all the rumors about me, confirmed that nothing was true and that everything we had said to each other after the season was still relevant. I knew it but it’s always nice when your GM contacts you to tell you…

“There are always rumors. Most of them are false. It’s a bit of nonsense. For example, the buy-out was misinterpreted in Europe: the journalist wrote that if there was no ‘trade’ during the season, there might be a ‘buy-out’ option before the ‘deadline.’ I know how the business works, in the last year of a contract, there is always speculation. Since I can’t control anything, I try not to worry about it.”

Last season, Vucevic averaged 18.5 points and 10.1 rebounds a game, shooting 40.2% from 3-point range on 4.4 attempts a game. He is a high-quality offensive center who could help a lot of teams and has become a key part of the Bulls’ attack, but is not the defensive anchor at the position that a lot of teams are seeking in the modern game.

Vucevic added in the interview that he is “almost certain” he will be with the Bulls when the season opens, which makes sense as he is clearly the starter at the five and one of only two true centers on the 15-man roster (Zach Collins is the other).

Whether he is in Chicago when the season ends is another question. He’s a 34-year-old center in the final year of his contract — players in that situation are often available in trades, and can be bought out to save money after the trade deadline. That is possible here, depending on what other moves Chicago makes. The Bulls front office has to be thinking about what comes next at the five, although figuring out the Bulls front office’s long-term vision is a challenge in and of itself.

Whatever that plan is, it includes Vucevic at the five to start the season.

NBA summer predictions: Projecting the West’s best teams and LeBron James’ future with the Lakers

With the NBA’s new schedule out, and training camps just weeks away, it’s time to look ahead to the 2025-26 season. What does the future hold for the Western Conference? Our writers take an early stab at predicting how the standings will play out. (Check out our East predictions, too.)

Dan Devine: The Spurs, but almost by default. The second through eighth seeds in the West were separated by four wins last season, with 48 Ws representing the low end. Nos. 9 through 12 were separated by four wins, too. That kind of congestion makes it tough to envision most of the teams in the conference taking too huge a jump, so give me San Antonio — 34 wins with Victor Wembanyama missing 36 games and De’Aaron Fox playing just 578 minutes in silver and black — to climb the standings with better health, better depth and another year of seasoning.

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Ben Rohrbach: The Spurs. Assuming Wembanyama remains healthy, he will be the best defensive player in the league, and on offense he will be set up by a trio of guards — Fox, Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle — who are explosive in their own right. They have added some veteran depth around Wembanyama, and they still have much of their existing core, including Devin Vassell. It is a team primed to make a leap from outside the play-in tournament into the hunt for a guaranteed playoff seed.

Vincent Goodwill: The easy answer is the Spurs, almost because everyone else in the West is bunched together. We are assuming a full season of Victor Wembanyama and, if that happens, one season closer to him being fully actualized. More playmakers around him to make the game easier, and one can expect his first of many DPOYs. Going from 34 wins to at least 43-44 isn’t unreasonable.

Tom Haberstroh: The Spurs. It’s hard to pick any of the West teams that made the playoffs last season since almost all of them were basically 50-win outfits. Of the teams that were in the bottom half, the Spurs have the highest upside with Fox and Wembanyama healthy. I think the public is underestimating the potential for Wemby to establish himself as the NBA’s best player by the end of the season.

Haberstroh: The Lakers. From a standings standpoint, I don’t see how the Lakers stay at a No. 3 seed again. I’m a believer in Skinny Luka, but if LeBron James is at all checked out, there’s not nearly enough depth on this roster to sustain a level required to claim first-round home-court advantage. I fear the talent drop-off after Luka Dončić, James and Austin Reaves will doom them this season.

Devine: This sucks, but … the Kings. I’m just bracing for the worst in Sacramento, where Fox is gone, Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan are hosting a revival of the wildly underwhelming-in-the-worse-conference Bulls, Domantas Sabonis exited the season hoping for a point guard, and Scott Perry responded with Dennis Schröder and (maybe?) Russell Westbrook. Maybe Doug Christie’s got the goods to turn all of this into a team that doesn’t find itself drowning well below .500 in the West. But maybe, before too long, last season’s 40-42 mark feels like the start of another disastrously steep descent.

Rohrbach: The Lakers. Listen: LeBron James will turn 41 years old this season, and he does not seem happy about his current status within the organization, or at least that is what his last public statement suggested. That has a chance to disrupt the team’s chemistry throughout the season. Even if it does not, the Lakers face real defensive issues as they try to build lineups around James, Dončić and Reaves. The addition of Deandre Ayton at the center position does little to assuage concern.

Goodwill: This is no indictment, but what if it’s the Thunder? For the same reasons so many other teams in the West are bunched, what happens if the Thunder slide to an unfathomable 60 wins just from being a champion and taking everyone’s best shot? It wouldn’t be a mark of decline; remember, the Warriors of Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant went from 67 wins to 58 in a year, just because even dynastic defending is still damn hard.

Goodwill: (1) Thunder, (2) Nuggets, (3) Rockets, (4) Warriors, (5) Timberwolves, (6) Clippers

The Thunder are still built to be a regular-season juggernaut with youth and the like. Cameron Johnson over Michael Porter Jr. already looks to be an upgrade, but could we be giving the Nuggets too much assumed love when hardly anyone in today’s NBA stays atop or near it for too long? Denver and Houston could flip-flop, as could the Timberwolves and Warriors in the 4-5 spots. A full “best of the rest of” Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler could have them right around 50, but you can’t assume health — a big reason why the graybeards in Los Angeles barely escape the play-in.

Haberstroh: (1) Thunder, (2) Rockets, (3) Nuggets, (4) Clippers, (5) Warriors, (6) Timberwolves

The West is going to be a bloodbath, but I have the most confidence in these teams locking in slots. I’m sincerely hoping we get Lakers-Mavs in a win-or-go-home play-in tournament game. Make it happen, basketball gods.

Devine: (1) Thunder, (2) Nuggets, (3) Timberwolves, (4) Rockets, (5) Warriors, (6) Clippers

Even if another 68-win campaign seems like a lot to expect, the champs take the top spot until proven otherwise. I loved the Nuggets’ offseason, and feel plenty confident betting on Nikola Jokić to get them to 50-plus wins; I’m pricing in a slight adjustment period, though, for Houston after the addition of Kevin Durant, who brings both titanic scoring talent and, seemingly, a fairly particular emotional weather system with him everywhere he goes.

Maybe I’m overly bullish on Minnesota, given the loss of Nickeil Alexander-Walker and the big bets that team president Tim Connelly has made on youngsters like Rob Dillingham, Terrence Shannon and Jaylen Clark to back-fill the rotation, but head coach Chris Finch is as good as it gets at maximizing his roster around supernova Anthony Edwards. I think what Golden State found after the Jimmy Butler trade was real, and I think the Clippers’ reloaded depth is real … and, evidently, I think they’re more real than the Lakers’ bet that Deandre Ayton, Marcus Smart and Jake LaRavia will fix a defense that gave up 121.6 points per 100 possessions — a league-worst-caliber mark — when Luka Dončić, LeBron James and Austin Reaves shared the floor.

Rohrbach: (1) Thunder, (2) Nuggets, (3) Rockets, (4) Timberwolves, (5) Warriors, (6) Clippers

Oklahoma City is a juggernaut. Denver and Houston made moves to firmly position themselves as Nos. 2 and 3 in the West. Minnesota and Anthony Edwards are still lurking. And I trust the veteran stewardship of Golden State and the L.A. Clippers more than I do the defense of the Lakers or the youth of some other challengers, including the Spurs and Grizzlies. However you order them, there are only six slots for twice as many competitors.

Rohrbach: Go big or go home: LeBron James will not be on the Lakers at the end of the season. It made sense for the Lakers to trade James from the moment they traded for Dončić. Paying a 40-year-old max money is a hindrance to building a contender around a 26-year-old perennial MVP candidate. It just is. Who knows how the Lakers find a partner to match salaries for James, but they would be wise to acquire whatever they can for one of the game’s all-time greats before he could leave them in 2026 free agency.

Goodwill: The Sacramento Kings won’t be as bad as everyone thinks. With that roster being log-jammed, would a contender or wanna-be contender out East try to get Malik Monk or even DeMar DeRozan to solidify themselves in this Boston-Indiana sabbatical year? And maybe the Kings find themselves in a dogfight with the Lakers for one of the play-in spots. Bold, I know.

Haberstroh: LeBron waives his no-trade clause and OK’s a trade to the Cavs. He’s coming home — again. It won’t be easy, but if the Cavs get off to a slow start, Darius Garland’s contract could be large enough to grease the wheels in a three- or four-team trade.

Devine: Apparently, it’s that the Lakers will be in the play-in tournament, Skinny Luka and all. I know. I’m just as surprised as you are!

NBA summer predictions: Projecting the West’s best teams and LeBron James’ future with the Lakers

With the NBA’s new schedule out, and training camps just weeks away, it’s time to look ahead to the 2025-26 season. What does the future hold for the Western Conference? Our writers take an early stab at predicting how the standings will play out. (Check out our East predictions, too.)

Dan Devine: The Spurs, but almost by default. The second through eighth seeds in the West were separated by four wins last season, with 48 Ws representing the low end. Nos. 9 through 12 were separated by four wins, too. That kind of congestion makes it tough to envision most of the teams in the conference taking too huge a jump, so give me San Antonio — 34 wins with Victor Wembanyama missing 36 games and De’Aaron Fox playing just 578 minutes in silver and black — to climb the standings with better health, better depth and another year of seasoning.

[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season]

Ben Rohrbach: The Spurs. Assuming Wembanyama remains healthy, he will be the best defensive player in the league, and on offense he will be set up by a trio of guards — Fox, Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle — who are explosive in their own right. They have added some veteran depth around Wembanyama, and they still have much of their existing core, including Devin Vassell. It is a team primed to make a leap from outside the play-in tournament into the hunt for a guaranteed playoff seed.

Vincent Goodwill: The easy answer is the Spurs, almost because everyone else in the West is bunched together. We are assuming a full season of Victor Wembanyama and, if that happens, one season closer to him being fully actualized. More playmakers around him to make the game easier, and one can expect his first of many DPOYs. Going from 34 wins to at least 43-44 isn’t unreasonable.

Tom Haberstroh: The Spurs. It’s hard to pick any of the West teams that made the playoffs last season since almost all of them were basically 50-win outfits. Of the teams that were in the bottom half, the Spurs have the highest upside with Fox and Wembanyama healthy. I think the public is underestimating the potential for Wemby to establish himself as the NBA’s best player by the end of the season.

Haberstroh: The Lakers. From a standings standpoint, I don’t see how the Lakers stay at a No. 3 seed again. I’m a believer in Skinny Luka, but if LeBron James is at all checked out, there’s not nearly enough depth on this roster to sustain a level required to claim first-round home-court advantage. I fear the talent drop-off after Luka Dončić, James and Austin Reaves will doom them this season.

Devine: This sucks, but … the Kings. I’m just bracing for the worst in Sacramento, where Fox is gone, Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan are hosting a revival of the wildly underwhelming-in-the-worse-conference Bulls, Domantas Sabonis exited the season hoping for a point guard, and Scott Perry responded with Dennis Schröder and (maybe?) Russell Westbrook. Maybe Doug Christie’s got the goods to turn all of this into a team that doesn’t find itself drowning well below .500 in the West. But maybe, before too long, last season’s 40-42 mark feels like the start of another disastrously steep descent.

Rohrbach: The Lakers. Listen: LeBron James will turn 41 years old this season, and he does not seem happy about his current status within the organization, or at least that is what his last public statement suggested. That has a chance to disrupt the team’s chemistry throughout the season. Even if it does not, the Lakers face real defensive issues as they try to build lineups around James, Dončić and Reaves. The addition of Deandre Ayton at the center position does little to assuage concern.

Goodwill: This is no indictment, but what if it’s the Thunder? For the same reasons so many other teams in the West are bunched, what happens if the Thunder slide to an unfathomable 60 wins just from being a champion and taking everyone’s best shot? It wouldn’t be a mark of decline; remember, the Warriors of Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant went from 67 wins to 58 in a year, just because even dynastic defending is still damn hard.

Goodwill: (1) Thunder, (2) Nuggets, (3) Rockets, (4) Warriors, (5) Timberwolves, (6) Clippers

The Thunder are still built to be a regular-season juggernaut with youth and the like. Cameron Johnson over Michael Porter Jr. already looks to be an upgrade, but could we be giving the Nuggets too much assumed love when hardly anyone in today’s NBA stays atop or near it for too long? Denver and Houston could flip-flop, as could the Timberwolves and Warriors in the 4-5 spots. A full “best of the rest of” Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler could have them right around 50, but you can’t assume health — a big reason why the graybeards in Los Angeles barely escape the play-in.

Haberstroh: (1) Thunder, (2) Rockets, (3) Nuggets, (4) Clippers, (5) Warriors, (6) Timberwolves

The West is going to be a bloodbath, but I have the most confidence in these teams locking in slots. I’m sincerely hoping we get Lakers-Mavs in a win-or-go-home play-in tournament game. Make it happen, basketball gods.

Devine: (1) Thunder, (2) Nuggets, (3) Timberwolves, (4) Rockets, (5) Warriors, (6) Clippers

Even if another 68-win campaign seems like a lot to expect, the champs take the top spot until proven otherwise. I loved the Nuggets’ offseason, and feel plenty confident betting on Nikola Jokić to get them to 50-plus wins; I’m pricing in a slight adjustment period, though, for Houston after the addition of Kevin Durant, who brings both titanic scoring talent and, seemingly, a fairly particular emotional weather system with him everywhere he goes.

Maybe I’m overly bullish on Minnesota, given the loss of Nickeil Alexander-Walker and the big bets that team president Tim Connelly has made on youngsters like Rob Dillingham, Terrence Shannon and Jaylen Clark to back-fill the rotation, but head coach Chris Finch is as good as it gets at maximizing his roster around supernova Anthony Edwards. I think what Golden State found after the Jimmy Butler trade was real, and I think the Clippers’ reloaded depth is real … and, evidently, I think they’re more real than the Lakers’ bet that Deandre Ayton, Marcus Smart and Jake LaRavia will fix a defense that gave up 121.6 points per 100 possessions — a league-worst-caliber mark — when Luka Dončić, LeBron James and Austin Reaves shared the floor.

Rohrbach: (1) Thunder, (2) Nuggets, (3) Rockets, (4) Timberwolves, (5) Warriors, (6) Clippers

Oklahoma City is a juggernaut. Denver and Houston made moves to firmly position themselves as Nos. 2 and 3 in the West. Minnesota and Anthony Edwards are still lurking. And I trust the veteran stewardship of Golden State and the L.A. Clippers more than I do the defense of the Lakers or the youth of some other challengers, including the Spurs and Grizzlies. However you order them, there are only six slots for twice as many competitors.

Rohrbach: Go big or go home: LeBron James will not be on the Lakers at the end of the season. It made sense for the Lakers to trade James from the moment they traded for Dončić. Paying a 40-year-old max money is a hindrance to building a contender around a 26-year-old perennial MVP candidate. It just is. Who knows how the Lakers find a partner to match salaries for James, but they would be wise to acquire whatever they can for one of the game’s all-time greats before he could leave them in 2026 free agency.

Goodwill: The Sacramento Kings won’t be as bad as everyone thinks. With that roster being log-jammed, would a contender or wanna-be contender out East try to get Malik Monk or even DeMar DeRozan to solidify themselves in this Boston-Indiana sabbatical year? And maybe the Kings find themselves in a dogfight with the Lakers for one of the play-in spots. Bold, I know.

Haberstroh: LeBron waives his no-trade clause and OK’s a trade to the Cavs. He’s coming home — again. It won’t be easy, but if the Cavs get off to a slow start, Darius Garland’s contract could be large enough to grease the wheels in a three- or four-team trade.

Devine: Apparently, it’s that the Lakers will be in the play-in tournament, Skinny Luka and all. I know. I’m just as surprised as you are!

Pirates reportedly promote top pitching prospect Bubba Chandler, who will be used as bulk reliever down the stretch

The Pittsburgh Pirates are finally making the move fans have been clamoring for all season. The team will reportedly promote pitching prospect Bubba Chandler to the majors on Friday, according to MLB.com’s Alex Stumpf.

While Chandler, 22, has excelled as a starter in the minors, the team will reportedly use him as a bulk reliever in the major leagues. The team still believes in Chandler’s future as a starter, though, and he could get some starts down the stretch.

Chandler, considered one of the best pitching prospects in the minors, was thought to be a candidate for an early promotion to the majors this season, but the Pirates held off until August before making the move.

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The youngster shot up prospect lists thanks to a dominant 2024 in which he posted a 3.08 ERA over two minor-league levels and racked up 148 strikeouts in 119 2/3 innings. That performance resulted in Chandler being ranked as the No. 7 overall prospect in the minors ahead of the 2025 MLB season, per Baseball America.

Chandler experienced a bit of a dip in production at Triple-A this season, with a 4.05 ERA in 100 innings. Despite the higher-than-expected ERA, Chandler struck out 121 batters.

In the long term, Chandler is expected to partner with Paul Skenes at the top of the Pirates’ rotation. Fans envisioned the pair establishing themselves as one of the best young duos in the sport as early as 2025, but those plans were put on hold when the team opted to keep Chandler in the minors for most of this season.

Now Chandler will look to find his footing in the majors. Using him out of the bullpen — at least initially — could be a good way for the Pirates to help him gain some confidence in the majors.

If he can pass those early tests, it shouldn’t be long before Chandler is slotted into the team’s rotation. At 53-74, the Pirates could certainly use the help, and Chandler has shown more than enough ability to excel as a starter.