In 2023, Apple introduced the Double Tap feature for Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2. This allows a user to perform common actions, like answering or starting a song, simply by quickly tapping their thumb and index finger together twice. It was an intuitive way to confirm when you wanted to do something on your watch without tapping a tiny touchscreen button, but what if you wanted to dismiss something? Now, with the release of watchOS 26, Wrist Flick is here to solve that problem.
Also available on Apple Watch Series 9 (and higher) as well as Apple Watch Ultra 2 (and higher), Wrist Flick is kind of like Double Tap’s evil twin. If you get a notification you don’t like, or a call you want to mute, now you can quickly twist your wrist to dismiss it, like you’re tossing it into a garbage bin.
To try it out, first install watchOS 26 on your Apple Watch. Using a paired iPhone with iOS 26 installed, open the Apple Watch app, navigate to General > Software Update, and start the upgrade to the new version of watchOS. Alternatively, you can simply ensure Automatic Updates are enabled, and so long as your iPhone has iOS 26, your watch will simply choose a time to update on its own while charging (likely overnight).
Then, once watchOS 26 is installed, put on your watch and navigate to Settings > Gestures. Toggle on Wrist Flick.
That’s it. You’ll simply need to wait for a notification or call to come in, or for a timer you want to silence to go off, and you’ll be able to turn it off with a quick flick of the wrist. It might take some practice, but essentially, you want to quickly rotate your wrist away from your body, as seen on this page on Apple’s website.
Used together with Double Tap, the goal is that you won’t need to fiddle with your watch’s touchscreen for most basic activities anymore, so you won’t have to interrupt your workout (or, if you’re like me, you’re leisurely sit on the subway) by tapping away at it. The only limitation is that, while Double Tap has some basic mapping functions that let you customize what exactly it does, Wrist Flick currently doesn’t offer that level of control, instead sticking to Apple’s default “dismissing” behavior. That means you won’t be able to use it to, say, go back one tile in your Smart Stack, like how you can set Double Tap to advance you by one tile. Here’s hoping Apple expands its functionality soon.
It doesn’t take much to recognize that Paul Skenes is pretty good at what he does.
After another five scoreless innings Wednesday in Baltimore — an abbreviated outing intended to help manage his burgeoning workload for a last-place Pirates club — Skenes’ ERA sank to an MLB-best 1.92. It was the latest outing in what has been a spectacular sophomore follow-up to a rookie season that was historic by many measures.
Skenes’ unparalleled display of run prevention now spans two seasons’ leaderboards: His career ERA of 1.94 in 311 innings is the lowest mark for any pitcher in MLB’s live-ball era (since 1920) through his first 53 starts. The National League leader in strikeouts (203), WHIP (0.92) and fWAR (6.2), Skenes is firmly on track to claim his first Cy Young Award after finishing third in his debut season.
Even if you had zero knowledge of his record-setting statistics, Skenes passes the eye test emphatically. Witness an inning or two of the 6-foot-6 right-hander at work, and you’ll be treated to elite velocity, sharp movement and a varied assortment of pitches that routinely befuddle the best batters on the planet.
All of it makes sense on the surface. But dig deeper into what really enables Skenes’ success, and it becomes clear that his raw talent is far from the only thing fueling this unrivaled start to a career. The Pirates’ ace thrives at the intersection of his profound physical ability and intense curiosity regarding his craft. And despite already being one of the greatest young pitchers the game has ever seen, the 23-year-old is still in the early stages of fully comprehending what he’s capable of.
‘I’m gonna see what I have, and I’m gonna pitch with it’
Pirates pitching coach Oscar Marin has learned the lingo Skenes prefers to use when discussing and describing how he’s feeling on the mound.
“One of the biggest words he drives off of when he’s pitching,” Marin said, “is ‘feeling the flow.’ When he feels the flow is when everything feels synced up, feels connected. And when he feels the flow, it’s going to be a pretty good day.”
“It’s just my body. That’s all it is,” Skenes told Yahoo Sports when asked to define this phrase in his own words. “That’s my cue. It’s just the relationship, I think, between my upper half and my lower half.”
It’s a simple concept, albeit something of an amorphous one to an outsider. Skenes is hyper-aware of how his body is working every time he steps on the mound. He can tell when his mechanics and delivery are functioning as intended and when things are out of whack, and modern pitch-tracking technology offers objective measures for Skenes to monitor over the course of an outing. After an August start against Toronto, Skenes revealed that he regularly peeks at the PNC Park scoreboard — not just to see the velocity, as pitchers have done for years, but also to see exactly how much horizontal and vertical movement each of his pitches is exhibiting in real time.
“It’s telling me where my body is,” he explained afterward. “It’s the same thing as throwing a bullpen. I have video, but I also have the metrics. So it gives me some instant feedback during the game.
“I’m dialed into my body. I really am. And over the course of 32 starts, or whatever it’s going to be, if I’m throwing 3,200 pitches, roughly, along with bullpens, I gotta be moving right.”
In addition to in-game checks, this kind of self-evaluation is paramount to Skenes’ preparation. Going into his Sept. 4 start against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, things felt a bit off. In his verbiage: The flow was nowhere to be found.
“The pregame bullpen … was pretty tough,” he said. “It was terrible.”
And once the game began, the first piece of data was discouraging.
“My first pitch was 97 [mph]. I haven’t thrown a first pitch of the game 97 mph since I was in college,” he said. Indeed, his initial bolts had exclusively registered at 98 mph or above as a pro. It’s a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.
“It’s gonna be a long day,” Skenes remembers thinking, with a loaded Dodgers lineup in his path and his best stuff seemingly eluding him.
And yet, that first offering — though “only” 97.3 mph — was swung through by Shohei Ohtani for strike one. By the end of the leadoff encounter, Skenes had thrown two more fastballs past the reigning NL MVP at 97.9 mph and 98.8 mph for strikes two and three. Skenes then used a sinker to get Mookie Betts to ground out and a changeup to induce a weak popout from Freddie Freeman, completing his dismissal of the MVP trio.
“I wasn’t synced up,” Skenes reflected. “And then I got out on the mound in the first inning, I was executing my stuff — not exactly the way I wanted it, but we were executing it still.”
Slowly but surely, Skenes settled in and found his groove. Five more scoreless frames followed, helping the Pirates secure a surprise sweep of the Dodgers. Looking back, Skenes said his recent outings have charted a similar trajectory, hinting that his growing workload — Skenes has amassed 178 innings across 30 starts after throwing 133 frames in the majors last year — has impacted him to some degree, even if it hasn’t ultimately hindered his effectiveness.
“It’s been weird, and it’s kind of a pattern,” he said. “I think it’s just where we’re at in the year, feeling, like, sticky or out of sequence or something like that earlier in the game. And then it takes a little bit to find it.”
To wit: His first pitch Wednesday in Baltimore came in at 96.6 mph, and his four-seamer averaged 97.2 on the evening, a full tick down from his yearly average. But the decrease in heat did not prevent Skenes from putting up five zeroes on the scoreboard.
“It’s just the time of year where I’m gonna go out there, and I’m gonna see what I have, and I’m gonna pitch with it,” he said.
After the game, Skenes conceded that it was sensible to cut the outing short based on how he has been feeling and trying to be in the best position to make his final few starts of the season. Skenes has already learned plenty since arriving in the majors; understanding the physical demands of sustaining excellence over the entirety of a season is simply his latest lesson.
Through 53 career starts, Paul Skenes has put himself on a Hall of Fame trajectory. (Joseph Raines/Yahoo Sports)
‘As long as it keeps performing, I’ll keep throwing it’
In many respects, self-discovery has defined Skenes’ supercharged journey to the top of the sport. His first two years of college baseball were spent as a two-way player at the Air Force Academy, initially as a catcher and closer before he transitioned to the rotation as a sophomore while continuing to slug. At that point, Skenes still viewed baseball as secondary to his military track; he was merely playing for fun.
It wasn’t until he transferred to LSU and ditched the bat that his substantial potential on the mound started to crystalize, thanks in large part to the tutelage of pitching coach Wes Johnson (now the head coach at the University of Georgia). Even then, Skenes overwhelmed opponents using almost exclusively two pitches — a four-seam fastball and a slider — in his season with the Tigers en route to being selected No. 1 overall by Pittsburgh. Barely more than two years later, Skenes’ repertoire is seven pitches deep, mirroring a trend of expanded pitch mixes league-wide and underscoring his unwavering commitment to optimizing his arsenal.
As a rookie, Skenes seized headlines and dropped jaws with a pitch referred to as a “splinker” — an offering that features the mid-90s velocity commensurate with a sinking two-seam fastball but with a grip and enough vertical drop to also be considered a splitter. What was so remarkable about the pitch, which immediately rated as one of the best individual offerings in the league, wasn’t just its aesthetic absurdity but also the fact that Skenes developed it in the time between being drafted and making his major-league debut less than a year later.
That knack for innovation carried into Year 2. Skenes tinkered in spring training with adding a more traditional sinker and a cutter to an arsenal that had widened to six pitches in 2024, including three breaking-ball variations (curve, sweeper, slider) and a rarely used changeup. It felt like overkill to some, but there was a method to the madness. And while Skenes shelved the cutter before the regular season (for now, anyway), the sinker has become a staple of his high-octane attack.
“There’s a four-seam that stays true, and there’s a sinker that looks like a four-seam that just keeps running in. … I think that just opens up the zone and buys him more real estate,” Marin explained. “It’s an outside heater that’s not straight. It’s an outside heater that starts as a ball and ends up as a strike.”
In addition to giving Skenes another high-velocity pitch, the sinker’s movement amplifies the effectiveness of his breaking balls when targeting the outer half of the plate against right-handed hitters.
“I think it’s made his sweeper better and the slider better. … It’s playing the X game on the other half, right? It’s just combo-ing pitches that look almost exactly the same. One’s gonna bite to the left. The other one’s gonna bite to the right.”
More recently, however, a different one of Skenes’ many pitches has taken center stage as his most intriguing weapon: the changeup. But unlike with the sinker, which Skenes intentionally introduced and has meticulously mastered, the changeup’s glow-up into a plus-plus offering has come as something of a surprise, even to Skenes himself.
“I don’t know what’s up with that pitch,” he admitted.
He’s referring to the fact that the pitch’s velocity has suddenly spiked. After averaging 87-88 mph last season and the first four months of this season, Skenes’ changeup has averaged closer to 90 mph since the start of August.
“[The velocity] has been up the last couple outings,” he noted after throwing 15 changeups against the Dodgers, more than any of his other secondary pitches. The pitch maxed out at a career-high 91.9 mph to get Freeman out in the first inning and later fooled Dalton Rushing so badly that he flung his bat to the backstop.
Paul Skenes, Expelliarmus 90mph Changeup. 👌
If this baseball playing thing doesn’t work out, Shohei shows extraordinary bat boy skills here. pic.twitter.com/zLoo1khdYn
“I don’t know exactly why it’s harder right now,” Skenes said. “But as long as it keeps performing, I’ll keep throwing it.”
And to say the pitch is performing is an understatement: Skenes’ .093 wOBA allowed on his changeup is the single lowest mark for any individual offering thrown at least 200 times in 2025.
In a surprising twist, the uptick in changeup and sinker usage has lessened the presence of his once-renowned splinker, with its usage cut in half from 28% to 14% this season. Skenes insists these usage patterns are strictly the product of game-to-game circumstances, rather than any sort of purposeful change in pitch diet, but he acknowledges that how all his pitches function in concert with one another is a work in progress and something he’s constantly monitoring.
“We’re learning a lot about the changeup and splinker and how the relationship can be,” he said, “because we didn’t throw the changeup as much last year.”
As for the mystery of the changeup’s increased heat, Skenes is confident he’ll figure it out soon enough.
“The biggest difference is just pitching with it differently,” he mused. “It comes down to knowing my stuff and knowing how to pitch with my stuff, no matter where it is.”
‘When you’re looking for the best pitch, and there’s four of them …”
While his arsenal continues to evolve in remarkable and unexpected ways, one thing has remained fairly constant throughout Skenes’ sophomore season: his catcher, Henry Davis. In April, Davis and Skenes became the first battery in MLB history consisting of two former No. 1 picks. Davis, the top selection in the 2021 draft, has not enjoyed anywhere near the immediate major-league success that Skenes has. But this year, while his offensive production has underwhelmed, Davis has established himself as an integral part of Pittsburgh’s run-prevention efforts. He has been excellent at controlling the running game, and Pirates pitchers have combined to post a 2.92 ERA with Davis catching, the second-lowest mark for any qualified catcher behind only the Padres’ Freddy Fermin (2.88 ERA).
Most importantly, Davis has become Skenes’ preferred backstop. He did not catch Skenes once during his rookie season; that responsibility primarily belonged to veteran Yasmani Grandal, while Davis spent most of 2024 in Triple-A. But the top-pick duo has worked together behind the scenes since Skenes joined the organization, setting the stage for a partnership that is flourishing in 2025. After Joey Bart and Endy Rodriguez caught Skenes’ first four starts, Davis has gotten the nod in every outing since.
One key to their success: Each is similarly driven to do whatever it takes to win at the highest level.
As Skenes joked of Davis last month, “He’s probably the second-hardest worker in the building, if you know what I mean.”
With comparable determination and work ethic, the duo is constantly collaborating on Skenes’ adaptations between starts and his in-game plans of attack. The result is a notable amount of synergy for a battery in its first year together in the majors.
“Rarely do you see Paul shake Henry off and go to something else, which is pretty impressive, given the pitch selection that Paul has,” Pirates interim manager Don Kelly said. “And I just think it speaks to Henry’s preparation — but also the trust and chemistry that Paul and Henry have together.”
Added Marin: “Catching him as much as he has, he’s going to be able to see different things at different moments, specifically during games, how stuff looks, how it doesn’t look. But one thing they do really well as a group, in between innings, there’s a lot of communication between both of them on how things are working or if they need to go off-script a little bit, depending on what they’re seeing.”
While his preparation and aptitude for calling games have become clear strengths for Davis no matter whom he’s catching, he is also fully cognizant of the specific luxury he enjoys every time it’s Skenes’ day to pitch.
“It’s obviously interesting calling a game for [Skenes], right?” Davis said. “He has so many weapons. … Is this the best pitch for this moment? But you know, when you’re looking for the best pitch, and there’s four of them …”
This sentiment might sound like hyperbole, but it’s supported by the data: With so many pitches performing at outlier levels, Skenes’ “best” pitch can vary with the outing. Beyond his breakout changeup, Skenes’ four-seamer has the fourth-highest Run Value of any pitch in baseball. His sweeper has the lowest hard-hit rate allowed on any pitch thrown at least 400 times in 2025. Ask Skenes himself what pitch’s development he has been most pleased with this year, and he’ll point to the sinker. But he hasn’t forgotten about his old favorite toy: Skenes threw his vaunted splinker (which Statcast now labels as a splitter) 20% of the time vs. the Orioles on Wednesday, wryly joking afterward that he just wanted to show everybody he still has it.
Even at such an early stage of his career, Skenes’ cerebral approach is readily apparent in the way he thinks and speaks about pitching. Yes, he studies scouting reports, with Davis helping craft game plans. And yes, he is especially in tune with how his motions on the mound influence how his pitches move. And yes, Skenes’ arsenal is constantly expanding and evolving based on which pitches are performing at their best.
But at the end of the day, with stuff this good, it’s all about execution.
“I think when you get into pro ball, it’s a little bit intoxicating when you look at the numbers and the information available, and you want to be as prepared as you can be,” Davis said. But with a pitcher like Skenes, it’s also easy to lean on a mantra passed down to him by longtime Pirates backstop Jason Kendall.
“He said to me, for seven out of nine hitters, it’s going to be 95% about the pitcher’s strengths, 4% game situation, 1% hitter,” he said. Sure, there are exceptions when teams such as the Dodgers roll into town; certain stars require extra attention to detail. But even in those instances, Davis says, the calculus might just shift to 90% pitcher, 5% situation, 5% hitter.
It is this reality that empowers Skenes and Davis to focus so intensely on Skenes’ own capabilities, rather than worrying too much about how opposing hitters might try to counter. Because arguably no pitcher’s strengths are as varied and as imposing as Skenes’ — and if he throws the right pitches to the right spots, no hitter is likely to have much of a chance.
It doesn’t take much to recognize that Paul Skenes is pretty good at what he does.
After another five scoreless innings Wednesday in Baltimore — an abbreviated outing intended to help manage his burgeoning workload for a last-place Pirates club — Skenes’ ERA sank to an MLB-best 1.92. It was the latest outing in what has been a spectacular sophomore follow-up to a rookie season that was historic by many measures.
Skenes’ unparalleled display of run prevention now spans two seasons’ leaderboards: His career ERA of 1.94 in 311 innings is the lowest mark for any pitcher in MLB’s live-ball era (since 1920) through his first 53 starts. The National League leader in strikeouts (203), WHIP (0.92) and fWAR (6.2), Skenes is firmly on track to claim his first Cy Young Award after finishing third in his debut season.
Even if you had zero knowledge of his record-setting statistics, Skenes passes the eye test emphatically. Witness an inning or two of the 6-foot-6 right-hander at work, and you’ll be treated to elite velocity, sharp movement and a varied assortment of pitches that routinely befuddle the best batters on the planet.
All of it makes sense on the surface. But dig deeper into what really enables Skenes’ success, and it becomes clear that his raw talent is far from the only thing fueling this unrivaled start to a career. The Pirates’ ace thrives at the intersection of his profound physical ability and intense curiosity regarding his craft. And despite already being one of the greatest young pitchers the game has ever seen, the 23-year-old is still in the early stages of fully comprehending what he’s capable of.
‘I’m gonna see what I have, and I’m gonna pitch with it’
Pirates pitching coach Oscar Marin has learned the lingo Skenes prefers to use when discussing and describing how he’s feeling on the mound.
“One of the biggest words he drives off of when he’s pitching,” Marin said, “is ‘feeling the flow.’ When he feels the flow is when everything feels synced up, feels connected. And when he feels the flow, it’s going to be a pretty good day.”
“It’s just my body. That’s all it is,” Skenes told Yahoo Sports when asked to define this phrase in his own words. “That’s my cue. It’s just the relationship, I think, between my upper half and my lower half.”
It’s a simple concept, albeit something of an amorphous one to an outsider. Skenes is hyper-aware of how his body is working every time he steps on the mound. He can tell when his mechanics and delivery are functioning as intended and when things are out of whack, and modern pitch-tracking technology offers objective measures for Skenes to monitor over the course of an outing. After an August start against Toronto, Skenes revealed that he regularly peeks at the PNC Park scoreboard — not just to see the velocity, as pitchers have done for years, but also to see exactly how much horizontal and vertical movement each of his pitches is exhibiting in real time.
“It’s telling me where my body is,” he explained afterward. “It’s the same thing as throwing a bullpen. I have video, but I also have the metrics. So it gives me some instant feedback during the game.
“I’m dialed into my body. I really am. And over the course of 32 starts, or whatever it’s going to be, if I’m throwing 3,200 pitches, roughly, along with bullpens, I gotta be moving right.”
In addition to in-game checks, this kind of self-evaluation is paramount to Skenes’ preparation. Going into his Sept. 4 start against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, things felt a bit off. In his verbiage: The flow was nowhere to be found.
“The pregame bullpen … was pretty tough,” he said. “It was terrible.”
And once the game began, the first piece of data was discouraging.
“My first pitch was 97 [mph]. I haven’t thrown a first pitch of the game 97 mph since I was in college,” he said. Indeed, his initial bolts had exclusively registered at 98 mph or above as a pro. It’s a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.
“It’s gonna be a long day,” Skenes remembers thinking, with a loaded Dodgers lineup in his path and his best stuff seemingly eluding him.
And yet, that first offering — though “only” 97.3 mph — was swung through by Shohei Ohtani for strike one. By the end of the leadoff encounter, Skenes had thrown two more fastballs past the reigning NL MVP at 97.9 mph and 98.8 mph for strikes two and three. Skenes then used a sinker to get Mookie Betts to ground out and a changeup to induce a weak popout from Freddie Freeman, completing his dismissal of the MVP trio.
“I wasn’t synced up,” Skenes reflected. “And then I got out on the mound in the first inning, I was executing my stuff — not exactly the way I wanted it, but we were executing it still.”
Slowly but surely, Skenes settled in and found his groove. Five more scoreless frames followed, helping the Pirates secure a surprise sweep of the Dodgers. Looking back, Skenes said his recent outings have charted a similar trajectory, hinting that his growing workload — Skenes has amassed 178 innings across 30 starts after throwing 133 frames in the majors last year — has impacted him to some degree, even if it hasn’t ultimately hindered his effectiveness.
“It’s been weird, and it’s kind of a pattern,” he said. “I think it’s just where we’re at in the year, feeling, like, sticky or out of sequence or something like that earlier in the game. And then it takes a little bit to find it.”
To wit: His first pitch Wednesday in Baltimore came in at 96.6 mph, and his four-seamer averaged 97.2 on the evening, a full tick down from his yearly average. But the decrease in heat did not prevent Skenes from putting up five zeroes on the scoreboard.
“It’s just the time of year where I’m gonna go out there, and I’m gonna see what I have, and I’m gonna pitch with it,” he said.
After the game, Skenes conceded that it was sensible to cut the outing short based on how he has been feeling and trying to be in the best position to make his final few starts of the season. Skenes has already learned plenty since arriving in the majors; understanding the physical demands of sustaining excellence over the entirety of a season is simply his latest lesson.
Through 53 career starts, Paul Skenes has put himself on a Hall of Fame trajectory. (Joseph Raines/Yahoo Sports)
‘As long as it keeps performing, I’ll keep throwing it’
In many respects, self-discovery has defined Skenes’ supercharged journey to the top of the sport. His first two years of college baseball were spent as a two-way player at the Air Force Academy, initially as a catcher and closer before he transitioned to the rotation as a sophomore while continuing to slug. At that point, Skenes still viewed baseball as secondary to his military track; he was merely playing for fun.
It wasn’t until he transferred to LSU and ditched the bat that his substantial potential on the mound started to crystalize, thanks in large part to the tutelage of pitching coach Wes Johnson (now the head coach at the University of Georgia). Even then, Skenes overwhelmed opponents using almost exclusively two pitches — a four-seam fastball and a slider — in his season with the Tigers en route to being selected No. 1 overall by Pittsburgh. Barely more than two years later, Skenes’ repertoire is seven pitches deep, mirroring a trend of expanded pitch mixes league-wide and underscoring his unwavering commitment to optimizing his arsenal.
As a rookie, Skenes seized headlines and dropped jaws with a pitch referred to as a “splinker” — an offering that features the mid-90s velocity commensurate with a sinking two-seam fastball but with a grip and enough vertical drop to also be considered a splitter. What was so remarkable about the pitch, which immediately rated as one of the best individual offerings in the league, wasn’t just its aesthetic absurdity but also the fact that Skenes developed it in the time between being drafted and making his major-league debut less than a year later.
That knack for innovation carried into Year 2. Skenes tinkered in spring training with adding a more traditional sinker and a cutter to an arsenal that had widened to six pitches in 2024, including three breaking-ball variations (curve, sweeper, slider) and a rarely used changeup. It felt like overkill to some, but there was a method to the madness. And while Skenes shelved the cutter before the regular season (for now, anyway), the sinker has become a staple of his high-octane attack.
“There’s a four-seam that stays true, and there’s a sinker that looks like a four-seam that just keeps running in. … I think that just opens up the zone and buys him more real estate,” Marin explained. “It’s an outside heater that’s not straight. It’s an outside heater that starts as a ball and ends up as a strike.”
In addition to giving Skenes another high-velocity pitch, the sinker’s movement amplifies the effectiveness of his breaking balls when targeting the outer half of the plate against right-handed hitters.
“I think it’s made his sweeper better and the slider better. … It’s playing the X game on the other half, right? It’s just combo-ing pitches that look almost exactly the same. One’s gonna bite to the left. The other one’s gonna bite to the right.”
More recently, however, a different one of Skenes’ many pitches has taken center stage as his most intriguing weapon: the changeup. But unlike with the sinker, which Skenes intentionally introduced and has meticulously mastered, the changeup’s glow-up into a plus-plus offering has come as something of a surprise, even to Skenes himself.
“I don’t know what’s up with that pitch,” he admitted.
He’s referring to the fact that the pitch’s velocity has suddenly spiked. After averaging 87-88 mph last season and the first four months of this season, Skenes’ changeup has averaged closer to 90 mph since the start of August.
“[The velocity] has been up the last couple outings,” he noted after throwing 15 changeups against the Dodgers, more than any of his other secondary pitches. The pitch maxed out at a career-high 91.9 mph to get Freeman out in the first inning and later fooled Dalton Rushing so badly that he flung his bat to the backstop.
Paul Skenes, Expelliarmus 90mph Changeup. 👌
If this baseball playing thing doesn’t work out, Shohei shows extraordinary bat boy skills here. pic.twitter.com/zLoo1khdYn
“I don’t know exactly why it’s harder right now,” Skenes said. “But as long as it keeps performing, I’ll keep throwing it.”
And to say the pitch is performing is an understatement: Skenes’ .093 wOBA allowed on his changeup is the single lowest mark for any individual offering thrown at least 200 times in 2025.
In a surprising twist, the uptick in changeup and sinker usage has lessened the presence of his once-renowned splinker, with its usage cut in half from 28% to 14% this season. Skenes insists these usage patterns are strictly the product of game-to-game circumstances, rather than any sort of purposeful change in pitch diet, but he acknowledges that how all his pitches function in concert with one another is a work in progress and something he’s constantly monitoring.
“We’re learning a lot about the changeup and splinker and how the relationship can be,” he said, “because we didn’t throw the changeup as much last year.”
As for the mystery of the changeup’s increased heat, Skenes is confident he’ll figure it out soon enough.
“The biggest difference is just pitching with it differently,” he mused. “It comes down to knowing my stuff and knowing how to pitch with my stuff, no matter where it is.”
‘When you’re looking for the best pitch, and there’s four of them …”
While his arsenal continues to evolve in remarkable and unexpected ways, one thing has remained fairly constant throughout Skenes’ sophomore season: his catcher, Henry Davis. In April, Davis and Skenes became the first battery in MLB history consisting of two former No. 1 picks. Davis, the top selection in the 2021 draft, has not enjoyed anywhere near the immediate major-league success that Skenes has. But this year, while his offensive production has underwhelmed, Davis has established himself as an integral part of Pittsburgh’s run-prevention efforts. He has been excellent at controlling the running game, and Pirates pitchers have combined to post a 2.92 ERA with Davis catching, the second-lowest mark for any qualified catcher behind only the Padres’ Freddy Fermin (2.88 ERA).
Most importantly, Davis has become Skenes’ preferred backstop. He did not catch Skenes once during his rookie season; that responsibility primarily belonged to veteran Yasmani Grandal, while Davis spent most of 2024 in Triple-A. But the top-pick duo has worked together behind the scenes since Skenes joined the organization, setting the stage for a partnership that is flourishing in 2025. After Joey Bart and Endy Rodriguez caught Skenes’ first four starts, Davis has gotten the nod in every outing since.
One key to their success: Each is similarly driven to do whatever it takes to win at the highest level.
As Skenes joked of Davis last month, “He’s probably the second-hardest worker in the building, if you know what I mean.”
With comparable determination and work ethic, the duo is constantly collaborating on Skenes’ adaptations between starts and his in-game plans of attack. The result is a notable amount of synergy for a battery in its first year together in the majors.
“Rarely do you see Paul shake Henry off and go to something else, which is pretty impressive, given the pitch selection that Paul has,” Pirates interim manager Don Kelly said. “And I just think it speaks to Henry’s preparation — but also the trust and chemistry that Paul and Henry have together.”
Added Marin: “Catching him as much as he has, he’s going to be able to see different things at different moments, specifically during games, how stuff looks, how it doesn’t look. But one thing they do really well as a group, in between innings, there’s a lot of communication between both of them on how things are working or if they need to go off-script a little bit, depending on what they’re seeing.”
While his preparation and aptitude for calling games have become clear strengths for Davis no matter whom he’s catching, he is also fully cognizant of the specific luxury he enjoys every time it’s Skenes’ day to pitch.
“It’s obviously interesting calling a game for [Skenes], right?” Davis said. “He has so many weapons. … Is this the best pitch for this moment? But you know, when you’re looking for the best pitch, and there’s four of them …”
This sentiment might sound like hyperbole, but it’s supported by the data: With so many pitches performing at outlier levels, Skenes’ “best” pitch can vary with the outing. Beyond his breakout changeup, Skenes’ four-seamer has the fourth-highest Run Value of any pitch in baseball. His sweeper has the lowest hard-hit rate allowed on any pitch thrown at least 400 times in 2025. Ask Skenes himself what pitch’s development he has been most pleased with this year, and he’ll point to the sinker. But he hasn’t forgotten about his old favorite toy: Skenes threw his vaunted splinker (which Statcast now labels as a splitter) 20% of the time vs. the Orioles on Wednesday, wryly joking afterward that he just wanted to show everybody he still has it.
Even at such an early stage of his career, Skenes’ cerebral approach is readily apparent in the way he thinks and speaks about pitching. Yes, he studies scouting reports, with Davis helping craft game plans. And yes, he is especially in tune with how his motions on the mound influence how his pitches move. And yes, Skenes’ arsenal is constantly expanding and evolving based on which pitches are performing at their best.
But at the end of the day, with stuff this good, it’s all about execution.
“I think when you get into pro ball, it’s a little bit intoxicating when you look at the numbers and the information available, and you want to be as prepared as you can be,” Davis said. But with a pitcher like Skenes, it’s also easy to lean on a mantra passed down to him by longtime Pirates backstop Jason Kendall.
“He said to me, for seven out of nine hitters, it’s going to be 95% about the pitcher’s strengths, 4% game situation, 1% hitter,” he said. Sure, there are exceptions when teams such as the Dodgers roll into town; certain stars require extra attention to detail. But even in those instances, Davis says, the calculus might just shift to 90% pitcher, 5% situation, 5% hitter.
It is this reality that empowers Skenes and Davis to focus so intensely on Skenes’ own capabilities, rather than worrying too much about how opposing hitters might try to counter. Because arguably no pitcher’s strengths are as varied and as imposing as Skenes’ — and if he throws the right pitches to the right spots, no hitter is likely to have much of a chance.
A common refrain about the 2025 WNBA season has been how much more parity exists across the league than in recent years. There’s an argument to be made that potentially five out of the eight teams currently in the playoffs have a fair shot to contend for the WNBA championship due to how rosters are constructed and the coaches for those teams.
Because of that parity and due to some unfortunate injuries to key players around the league throughout the season, determining season-ending awards has been more difficult than in recent memory. This was the fourth season that I cast my vote across the variety of awards that the league gives out to those who performed exceptionally during the 2025 regular season.
Ballots were officially due from voters by noon ET on Friday, September 12. The league will roll out the winners of these awards as the WNBA playoffs continue. Who probably will win and who should win? In this article, I’ll reveal my ballot as well as who I expect will actually take home the various awards.
WNBA Most Valuable Player Award
Who should win:Napheesa Collier — F, Minnesota Lynx
My vote went to Collier simply because she was incredibly consistent throughout the entire season. She was the best player on the most consistent team all season long. But also Collier made league history in a really meaningful way and became the first player in WNBA history to record a 50-40-90 (overall field goal percentage, three-point field goal percentage and free throw percentage) while averaging over 20 points per game. A 50-40-90 has only been accomplished one other time in league history when Elena Delle Donne did the same in 2019 while averaging 19.5 points per game. She won her second MVP award that very season.
Who will win: A’ja Wilson — C, Las Vegas Aces
Wilson will win because of how recency bias has often swayed WNBA voters. Wilson’s ability alongside her head coach Becky Hammon to rally the troops to start performing at their potential after the Aces fell 111-58 to Collier’s Minnesota Lynx has made a significant impression on voters. The Aces haven’t lost a game since that August 2 blowout game.
Also, Collier missed a bit over three weeks following that blowout. She sprained her right ankle in the third quarter of that game and for a while the Lynx kept their head above water and didn’t endure a huge amount of drop off. Since the Aces’ entire way of playing is based upon Wilson and her strengths, her team is much less capable and performs a lot worse without her. The on-off numbers don’t lie here.
Being a great defender isn’t incumbent on just how many blocks and steals a player has or if they lead the league in defensive rebounding. Those are worthwhile numbers to consider, but those aren’t the be-all and end-all to determine who has been the most impactful defender in the league. I voted for Smith because of how much she anchors the Lynx’s defense and style of play even while Napheesa Collier was out with an ankle injury.
I think [Alanna Smith] does more for us that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet than probably any other player in the league. – Kayla McBride
Kayla thinks Smith should be in the DPOY convo and also talked about Maria Kliundikova’s minutes today. pic.twitter.com/MtVqfBL66M
“I think [Smith] does more for us that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet than probably any other player in the league,” Kayla McBride said on August 10 during the three weeks Collier was out with her ankle sprain. “Her ability to put her body on the line and just the awareness and the competition level that she has on a nightly basis for us is priceless. We can put her on anybody.”
Smith has been the anchor of the team that was the top defense all season long. She’s an undersized center that often takes a lot of contact and uses her competitive nature in addition to her high basketball instincts to make some of the most dominant players in the league feel uncomfortable.
Who will win: A’ja Wilson — C, Las Vegas Aces
Defensive player of the year is one of the most difficult awards to assess simply because defensive aptitude is really difficult to determine just by box score stats like blocks, steals and defensive rebounds. Wilson averaged the most blocks this season with 2.3 and she averaged the second most defensive rebounds (7.9) to just Angel Reese with 8.5. Without her on the floor, the Aces’ defensive rating drops around 10 points.
The case for Wilson as DPOY is really quite similar to hers for MVP. While the Aces’ defense finished the regular season ranked eighth overall, along the last 15 games of the season it was ranked second led by Wilson. If recency bias prevails, I wouldn’t be shocked if Wilson wins her third DPOY.
Who should win: Veronica Burton — G, Golden State Valkyries
Who will win: Veronica Burton
Note: Burton was announced as the winner in overwhelming fashion on Monday afternoon, taking 68 out of the 74 votes.
Burton took such a huge jump as a player who got waived by the Wings a season ago, to a backup point guard on a veteran heavy Connecticut Sun team during the second half of the 2024 season to now the starting point guard on a playoff team in the Golden State Valkyries.
Burton has not only the narrative on her side but also the numbers. Her minutes have gone up year over year by over 131%, her scoring increased year or year by over 283% and her average assists also went up year over year by over 215%
While candidates like Azura Stevens, Allisha Gray, and Aliyah Boston all made fair cases when it came to their improved ceilings as players, there wasn’t a more dramatic year over year jump that overcame Burton’s. She earned my vote for that very reason and it is fair to assume that she earned the majority of the voting pool’s votes for that reason as well.
Golden State Valkyries guard Veronica Burton is the 2025 WNBA Kia Most Improved Player! pic.twitter.com/GJtx1kXQiJ
Who should win: Natisha Hiedeman — G, Minnesota Lynx
The only rule the WNBA has to qualify for this award is that the player must come off the bench in more games than she has started. While Naz Hillmon only started in 17 games out of the 44 games she played, Hiedeman has only come off the bench this season. Hideman’s role all season long has been about providing a lot of energy off the bench when Courtney Williams isn’t playing her best. To me that’s a textbook definition of a sixth player of the year.
Although, Hiedeman definitely had some recency bias on her side when it came to getting my vote. In her last ten games of the season including the Lynx’s first playoff win against the Valkyries, Hiedeman has averaged 12.8 points, 52.3% shooting and 48.6% shooting from three-point range.
Who will win: Naz Hillmon — F, Atlanta Dream
The sixth player of the year and most improved awards can sometimes overlap. Is this an award about who is the best player coming off the bench or is this about which player has stood out the most in their role coming off the bench? Hillmon’s case as sixth player of the year is confusing to me simply because she was elevated off the bench with over a month left of the season. Once Brittney Griner injured her neck, Dream head coach Karl Smesko moved Hillmon to the starting lineup and didn’t really look back. Hillmon is starting in the playoffs.
Hillmon is such an important connector for the Dream and her development starting off as a back-to-the-basket post in college and then completely transforming her game so that she’s a tweener who can do a little bit of everything is incredibly impressive. There might be a desire to award a player on the Dream especially with Smesko most likely losing out on coach of the year and Allisha Gray not being in top contention for MVP.
Make that 4 TRIPLES for Naz Hillmon
She’s up to 12 PTS (4-6 3PT) in 20 minutes for the @atlantadream
Bueckers proved to be exactly who many thought she would be while a star in college at Uconn. She’s a generational talent who plays on both sides of the ball who can create at a high level for herself and others. She’s someone who coaches and GMs build a team around and that’s exactly what I expect to be in the future of the Wings all things being equal.
Bueckers’ ability to take over a game was put on display on August 20 against the Sparks when she set a WNBA rookie record for points scored in a game with 44. She recorded the most points by player during the 2025 regular season in addition to becoming the first player in WNBA history to score over 40 points while shooting at least 80% from the field.
While Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen had impressive rookie seasons, they didn’t have to carry the load that Bueckers did when it came to scoring and distributing the basketball. Bueckers still managed a super high level of play all the while her team had 28 total injuries and 121 games lost to injury, some of the highest margins in the league.
OH MY BUECKERS
Paige has the ball on an absolute string as she gets herself an open jumper!
Who should win: Natalie Nakase — Golden State Valkyries
Who will win: Natalie Nakase
While I voted for Nakase and believe she’s the front runner, Karl Smekso achieved a huge feat. Not only did he transform one of the most inconsistent offenses in 2024 into a powerhouse in 2025, but he did so with players that didn’t fit his vision for how he likes to play. General Manager Dan Padover signed two back-to-the-basket centers for a team that was expected to play at a high pace and get up a ton of three-pointers. Smesko made lemonade out of lemons.
But the reason I voted for Nakase and why this is a relatively simple pick to make is because she took an expansion team without any top end talent to the postseason and coached that team to have the third-best defense in the league. No other expansion in league history has ever reached the playoffs. That’s a story in itself that reflects the buy-in that Nakase got from her players. Also, the Valkyries had some of the most injuries this season in the WNBA and the team still performed well enough to make the playoffs.
2025 All-WNBA Teams
I truly believe that Collier, Wilson, Thomas, Mitchell and Gray were the most consistently great players this season and that’s what All-WNBA ought to be about. The second team, however, is so difficult to judge just because Stewart and Ionescu both had moments where they were brilliant and had to uplift their heavily injured stricken team. Boston took a massive leap this year as a scorer and facilitator but also struggled when the Fever were absolutely decimated by injuries.
Nneka Ogwumike’s efficiency and consistency and the fact that she shot 51.9% from the field this season on a team that really struggled to create open looks on offense in the Storm is part of why she earned my second team vote here. While Young started out less efficient and potent than she’s expected to be just like the majority of that Las Vegas Aces team to start the season, she embraced her new role as the Aces’ primary ball handler and facilitator. Her pick-and-roll chemistry with A’ja Wilson has been untenable at points during the regular season.
The Lynx, the Dream, and the Valkyries all had the top three defenses in the league during the regular season. And as a result, my ballot reflected that. My first team included two Lynx players in Smith and Collier, two of the best defenders on the best defensive team in the league.
My second team was littered with players from the Dream and the Valkyries for that very reason. Brionna Jones anchored the Dream’s paint defense while Rhyne Howard took a step forward defensively proving she could competently defend forwards and guards. Burton was an excellent point of attack defender this year and Fágbénlé made it so difficult for centers like Aliyah Boston, Brionna Jones and Jonquel Jones to play well. Gabby Williams made my ballot because of how she averaged 2.3 steals a game while the Storm’s defensive rating drops 7 points without her on the floor.
Breanna Stewart earned my vote simply because of how much the Liberty’s defense suffered without her on the floor. Her ability to roam everywhere, help her teammates and then recover to hold her assignment which can be any player type of the floor, was something that stood out in particular this year.
Also, I expect that players like Ezi Magbegor and rookie Saniya Rivers are going to get votes simply because of their defensive reputation. Magbegor is known for her defensive excellence while Rivers also had a ton of stocks (steals and blocks combined) and became the second rookie in league history to have 100 steals and 100 blocks in a season.
My votes
First Team
Alanna Smith, A’ja Wilson, Napheesa Collier, Gabby Williams, Breanna Stewart
Second Team
Alyssa Thomas, Brionna Jones, Temi Fágbénlé, Veronica Burton, Rhyne Howard
The 2025 rookie class will be one remembered for how deep it truly was. There are some years when it’s difficult to fill out an All-Rookie team just because so few rookies registered meaningful impacts, see 2021 and 2022. But 2025’s rookie class was not only highlighted by college draftees, but it also was highlighted by some international players who came over as a result of smart front office scouting.
The first three in Bueckers, Citron, and Iriafen are a given, but the final two spots were much more difficult. My decision came down to how Monique Akoa Makani and Te-Hina Paopao impacted their teams during critical moments rather than the rookies that scored the most points. Ako Makani has burst onto the scene as a really solid two-way presence able to lock-down an opponent’s best offensive threat. Paopao filled in at backup point guard multiple times when Dream starting point guard Jordin Canada dealt with multiple injuries during the regular season.
Battling for the National League’s third wild-card playoff berth, the San Francisco Giants are reportedly calling up their top minor-league prospect, first baseman Bryce Eldridge.
Eldridge, 20, advanced from Double-A to Triple-A in the Giants’ system this season, batting .260/.333/.510 with 21 doubles, 25 home runs and 84 RBI. Ranked by MLB.com as the team’s No. 1 prospect and No. 13 overall in baseball, the 6-foot-7, 240-pound slugger was San Francisco’s 2023 first-round draft pick (No. 16 overall) out of James Madison High School in Fairfax, Virginia. The roster move was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser.
At 75-74, the Giants are 1.5 games behind the New York Mets (77-73) for the NL’s final postseason spot going into Monday’s matchup with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The D-backs (75-75) are only a half-game behind San Francisco in the wild-card standings as the teams begin the three-game series.
Bryce Eldridge uses his 70-grade power to go oppo for his 25th homer of the season 💪
Dominic Smith going on the 10-day IL due to a strained right hamstring necessitated Eldridge’s call-up. The Giants could benefit from the production his left-handed bat could bring to the lineup. Smith batted .284/.333/.417 with 12 doubles, 5 home runs and 33 RBI in 63 games this season.
Overall, Giants’ first basemen have a combined .206 batting average, .615 OPS and 12 homers this year, ranking last in MLB in those categories.
Whether Eldridge will play first base full-time or fill it as a DH with Rafael Devers at the position has yet to be determined. Devers has played 21 games at first base for the Giants this season after refusing to play there for the Boston Red Sox before he was traded.
At 20 years old, Eldridge is the youngest position player to debut with the Giants since Jeff Ransom in 1981, according to MLB.com. Pitcher Madison Bumgarner was also 20 years old when he was called up in 2009.
Battling for the National League’s third wild-card playoff berth, the San Francisco Giants are reportedly calling up their top minor-league prospect, first baseman Bryce Eldridge.
Eldridge, 20, advanced from Double-A to Triple-A in the Giants’ system this season, batting .260/.333/.510 with 21 doubles, 25 home runs and 84 RBI. Ranked by MLB.com as the team’s No. 1 prospect and No. 13 overall in baseball, the 6-foot-7, 240-pound slugger was San Francisco’s 2023 first-round draft pick (No. 16 overall) out of James Madison High School in Fairfax, Virginia. The roster move was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser.
At 75-74, the Giants are 1.5 games behind the New York Mets (77-73) for the NL’s final postseason spot going into Monday’s matchup with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The D-backs (75-75) are only a half-game behind San Francisco in the wild-card standings as the teams begin the three-game series.
Bryce Eldridge uses his 70-grade power to go oppo for his 25th homer of the season 💪
Dominic Smith going on the 10-day IL due to a strained right hamstring necessitated Eldridge’s call-up. The Giants could benefit from the production his left-handed bat could bring to the lineup. Smith batted .284/.333/.417 with 12 doubles, 5 home runs and 33 RBI in 63 games this season.
Overall, Giants’ first basemen have a combined .206 batting average, .615 OPS and 12 homers this year, ranking last in MLB in those categories.
Whether Eldridge will play first base full-time or fill it as a DH with Rafael Devers at the position has yet to be determined. Devers has played 21 games at first base for the Giants this season after refusing to play there for the Boston Red Sox before he was traded.
At 20 years old, Eldridge is the youngest position player to debut with the Giants since Jeff Ransom in 1981, according to MLB.com. Pitcher Madison Bumgarner was also 20 years old when he was called up in 2009.
Spotify is finally giving its free-tier customers a feature that’s been requested since the music streaming platform launched nearly 20 years ago: the ability to listen to any song they choose. That’s right: The days of searching for a song, then hitting “skip” until it rolls around on a Spotify-generated playlist are over.
Free-tier users can choose songs in three ways: through the search function, by clicking on any song from the Spotify interface, or by clicking on a link shared by other users. Free-tier users can also listen to podcasts through Spotify, and create and listen to playlists too. Spotify’s previous “six skips per hour” rule also appears to be no more.
There are still limitations to Spotify’s free accounts, of course. The most obvious is that you still have to listen to ads. Free users will also face a cap on how many minutes of music they can listen to on demand, won’t be able to queue tracks, and won’t be able to access Spotify’s “AI DJ” feature. (No great loss; trust me.)
They also won’t have access to another new Spotify feature exclusive to paid accounts: lossless audio.
Premium Spotify customers to get lossless audio
“Premium” Spotify perks are improving too. The first, most important upgrade in the long-awaited launch of lossless audio on the service. Lossless audio (streaming files that are bit-for-bit copies of the source material) is rolling out to over 50 Spotify markets from now through October.
Premium users will also be able to send private messaging, to make music-sharing easier, and add and customize transitions between songs within a playlist.
The changes make Spotify more competitive
The upgrades to both levels of Spotify’s service aren’t really about making life better for users; they’re about staying relevant and profitable in a crowded and ever-changing marketplace. The hope from Spotify is to increase ad revenue by increasing the number of ears listening to ads, entice more free users to upgrade to pay services, and shed fewer customers who leave for other services.
Until the change, Spotify’s free tier was close to a radio service—you could listen to music that you kind of wanted to hear, maybe, if you also put up with frequent ads. This model may have made sense when streaming was newer, but more and more younger users are turning to YouTube, where you can listen to whatever song you want (and see a video for it) on demand, and for free. And young people are discovering music on TikTok, not on Spotify.
Changes to Spotify’s premium service are aimed at the more “mature” listener. Lossless audio doesn’t make a ton of difference without decent headphones or speakers. But “our music is lossless” has long been a selling point for Apple Music and Tidal, but it won’t be anymore.
Apple’s iOS 26 drops today, and with it comes a bunch of small tweaks and improvements to how your iPhone works. The catch? A lot of them are opt-in, so you need to turn them on before you can reap their benefits. Here are the settings you should turn on after updating your iPhone to Apple’s latest operating system, although note that some of them require an iPhone 15 Pro or later, as they rely on Apple Intelligence.
Adaptive battery mode
If you’re like me, you can never decide whether it’s worth it to swap your phone over to Battery Saver mode. Now, if you have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, your iPhone can make the decision for you.
Apple’s new Adaptive Power mode uses Apple Intelligence to intelligently determine when your battery usage is running higher than usual, and makes small tweaks to bring it back under control. These might include slightly dimming your display or slowing down less important tasks, like those that are running in the background or are particularly intensive. Then, once your phone’s been on an even keel for a while, it’ll start turning things back to normal. Think of it as a less aggressive “low power” mode that only affects certain processes, and can make adjustments based on more than your phone’s remaining charge. To try it out, simply navigate to Settings > Battery > Power Mode. Just don’t forget to turn it back off if you find its compromises aren’t worth the extra battery life.
Turn on call screening
Credit: Apple
I’ll be honest—I barely pick up phone calls anymore. Instead, I usually prefer to wait until after the call, and then call back if the caller was someone I knew or if it was important enough to leave a message. This usually works out for me, but I’ll admit, sometimes I do feel a bit bad for leaving people who call me in the lurch, especially if it turns out they had a good reason to dial me up. That’s where Apple’s new Call Screening feature comes in.
This one doesn’t require Apple Intelligence, so it’ll work on any iPhone running iOS 26. Simply open your Settings, then under Apps, tap Phone and look for the Screen Unknown Callers option.
You’ll have three choices. Never will work just like before, with calls ringing for a bit before they go to your Recents list. But now, you’ve got two additional options you can choose instead.
First is Silence, which will turn off your ringer for calls from unsaved numbers, then send them to Voicemail and display them in the Recents list. Essentially, it just cuts out the middle-man of having to wait for the caller to give up before you move on with figuring out what they wanted.
But the more exciting addition is Ask Reason for Calling. Choose this, and your iPhone will pick up calls from unsaved numbers for you, then ask the caller a few questions about their reason for calling. You’ll see a transcript of their answers on screen, and then you’ll be able to choose whether you want to pick up.
It’s a clever trick, and should make me feel a little less bad for anyone who tries to chat with me over the phone. I do wish it worked for Contacts as well, to be honest, but I can understand why my family might not be enthused to call me and get a robot secretary instead.
Try out the new ringtones
With iOS 26, Apple’s added a few new default ringtones to pick from. Six are variations of the classic “Reflection” ringtone, but there’s also a new one called “Little Bird.” You can find them all under Settings > Sound & Haptics > Ringtone, or check out the embeds below to hear them for yourself.
Personally, “Bouyant” is probably my favorite, although my colleague Jake Peterson likes “Dreamer” the most. I’ll probably still stick with my custom ringtone, but if you’d rather not bother downloading a ringtone manually, you now have more choice than ever.
Fix Liquid Glass
This next one is technically about turning a feature off instead of turning it on, but I couldn’t ignore it. With iOS 26, Apple’s redesigned its design language to focus on transparency, and not everyone’s a fan. If you remember the transparent bezels Microsoft added to app windows in Windows Vista, it’s a lot like that, but more aggressive. Essentially, instead of showing a solid background, many buttons and overlays will now appear clear, allowing a blurred version of whatever is underneath them to bleed through.
Luckily, there’s a pre-existing accessibility control that essentially sets your iPhone back to how it was before. Simply navigate to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size, then toggle on Reduce Transparency. This will bring back solid background across your entire iPhone, which you can see in effect here. Notice how the play button no longer allows blurred album artwork to bleed into it? If you prefer that flatter, more contrast-y look, this could be for you.
Custom backgrounds in iMessage
This one’s just fun. Now, in iMessage, you set custom backgrounds for your conversations and group chats on a per-chat basis. These include presets, like Water and Sky, but you can also pick solid colors, choose a photo from your library, or if you have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, generate a background using Apple Intelligence.
To get started, open a chat, click its title towards the top of the page, then choose Backgrounds.
Note that your chosen background will appear for everyone in the chat, but if you don’t like a background someone else set, you don’t have to live with it. Go to Settings > Apps > Messages and disable Conversation Backgrounds to turn the feature off.
Notification summaries for news
If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, Apple is actually bringing back a previously deleted feature with iOS 26: Notification summaries for news and entertainment apps.
These initially launched in the iOS 18.3 beta, but were quickly pulled after Apple’s AI had misrepresented some major BBC headlines, including one about United Healthcare shooting suspect Luigi Mangione.
Now, Apple is confident enough to bring these notification summaries back, although with a new warning that says “Summarization may change the meaning of the original headlines. Verify information.”
If you’re comfortable with that, according to my colleagues over at CNET, you don’t have to do much to turn them on. Apple will actually greet you with a splash screen once you download the iOS 26 update, which will ask your preferences for which apps will get notification summaries. You’ll have three options, and you can select as many as you wish. All other apps will summarize notifications from non-social apps, like Maps, while Communication & Social will throw in notification summaries for apps like TikTok and Mail. These were available already. What’s new (again) is the News & Entertainment option, whichwill add notification summaries for apps including BBC or Netflix.
Simply make your choices, and you’re good to go. If you change your mind later, you can adjust your summaries under Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications. You can also adjust notification summaries on a per-app basis here, which isn’t available in the splash screen you get after installing iOS 26.
Get clear icons in iOS 26
Credit: Apple
Let’s say you actually like Liquid Glass, but think it doesn’t go far enough. In that case, you might want to turn your icons clear too, so you can see your background through them. I promise I won’t judge.
To turn your app icons clear in iOS 26, simply long press on your home screen’s background until your apps start jiggling. Then, tap Edit in the top-left corner, followed by Customize. Then, choose Clear. You can also choose between Clear Light or Clear Dark, with the dark mode opting for a more subdued tint.
This will make your app icons look like frosted glass, similar to iOS 26’s new lock screen clock. You do you.
(If you’re like me, you might prefer the new Tinted Light Mode option instead, which finally allows you to set a custom color for your app icons’ graphical elements alongside a bright background. You can find it in the Tinted option next to Clear while selecting your app icon appearance).
New ways to customize your lock screen
iOS 26 gives you more control over how your phone looks while locked than ever before. To get started, lock your phone, then press the power button, tap and hold on the lock screen, and tap Customize.
First off, you can now adjust the size of your clock by grabbing one of its corners and dragging it down, although this will only work with certain fonts.
Second, you can now justify your widgets box to the bottom of the lock screen, as well as add an Apple Music search widget to it, if you like. If you actually start playing something, you’ll notice it’ll enable a large Now Playing interface that shows album art.
Finally, there’s support for Spatial Scenes. When selecting a Photo wallpaper, you can now tap on a small icon of a mountain and a sun to separate the photo’s subject from the background. Now, when moving your iPhone, the subject will move with it, to help them pop. Your clock might also move to fill up space in the photo, including slightly behind the subject, to help give an illusion of depth. Or, your widgets might automatically shift to the bottom of the screen if placed elsewhere, to better frame the photo subject.
Other settings you can enable
There’s plenty more you can do to make iOS 26 truly yours. If the above changes aren’t enough for you, here are 36 other tweaks you can make to get the most out of your iPhone’s new operating system.
It won’t exactly make up for the 1990 World Series — won by Cincinnati in a sweep over Oakland — but the Athletics played the role of spoiler to perfection after they won three straight over the Reds.
The A’s have shown this potential for a while.
The Athletics were above .500 in mid-May before a horrendous stretch of 20 losses in 21 games. But since the All-Star break, the A’s are 29-23, and they have the third-best run differential in baseball. Nick Kurtz is having a sensational rookie season, and Jacob Wilson has an outside shot to win the franchise’s first batting title since 1952, when it was playing in Philadelphia.
With the Reds inching closer to a wild card in the National League, the A’s outscored Cincinnati 21-9 in the series. Perhaps fittingly, the Athletics have a better record on the road (37-38) than at their minor league home ballpark in West Sacramento, California (33-42). They’ve already reached 70 wins for the first time since 2021.
It’s hard to say whether the A’s should be considered a possible contender next year, given how unstable the franchise feels as it eyes a permanent move to Las Vegas. But right now, contending teams should be wary. The Athletics have series with the Red Sox and Astros still to come.
Batting races
While Wilson (.318) tries to chase down Aaron Judge (.326) in the American League, Trea Turner of Philadelphia is leading the NL batting race with a .305 average. He’s the only qualifying hitter in the league above .300, with Chicago’s Nico Hoerner (.299) the nearest competitor.
The lowest average by a batting champion is Carl Yastrzemski’s .301 in the AL in 1968. The lowest in NL history is Tony Gwynn’s .313 in 1988, but that record seems likely to fall.
Avoiding history
After losing 50 of their first 59 games, the Colorado Rockies looked like a threat to break the modern record of 121 losses, set just last year by the Chicago White Sox. But the Rockies have improved enough to earn their 41st victory at San Diego. That means the worst they can do is tie the White Sox, and that would require losing every remaining game.
Trivia time
Kurtz is a near-lock to become the first Athletics player to win Rookie of the Year honors since Andrew Bailey in 2009. Also during their Oakland tenure, the A’s were the only AL team to date to produce three Rookie of the Year winners in a row. Who were they?
Line of the week
Kody Clemens hit three home runs and a double, including a solo shot in the top of the ninth inning that helped the Minnesota Twins to a 9-8 win over Arizona. Clemens’ father, former pitcher Roger Clemens, allowed at least three homers 17 times in 707 career starts.
Comeback of the week
Milwaukee trailed St. Louis 6-1 in the sixth and 7-4 in the ninth before rallying to win 9-8 in 10 innings. After two hit batters to start the bottom of the ninth, Sal Frelick hit an RBI double. Two more infield singles tied it at 7, and after the Cardinals turned a bases-loaded, nobody-out situation into just one run in the 10th, Caleb Durbin hit an RBI double and Andruw Monasterio followed with the game-winning single.
Milwaukee’s win probability was just 1.9% in the ninth, according to Baseball Savant. The Brewers have 11 walk-off victories this year, tied with San Francisco for the most in baseball.
Trivia answer
From 1986-88, Oakland had Rookie of the Year winners Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Walt Weiss.
Two weeks are left in MLB’s regular season and the postseason picture is starting to become a bit more clear. A couple of rivalry matchups had playoff implications as the Yankees defeated the Red Sox and the Dodgers defeated the Giants. Three of the four teams currently sit in playoff positions while the Giants are just 1.5 games out of the final NL Wild Card spot. Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman discuss each series and look at what the final two weeks hold for these teams. Are the Yankees and Red Sox destined to meet in the postseason? Can the Dodgers maintain their control of the NL West? Can the Giants claw their way into the final Wild Card spot? The guys answer all of these and more.
Those two series were not the only ones from the weekend with postseason implications. There were four sweeps that saw the Mariners, Blue Jays, Guardians and A’s take home victories. The Mariners completed a 4-game mop and put themselves into the drivers seat for the AL West as they overtook the Astros for first place. Plus, Cal Raleigh is looking like he may just take the MVP trophy from Aaron Judge. The guys dive into every series and look at how each one affects the postseason picture.
Later, Jake and Jordan recap the Brewers and Phillies clinching playoff berths. What will the last two weeks look like for each team, and how well are they positioned for a postseason run? Plus, the Mets continue to struggle as they dropped their series to the Rangers over the weekend. New York currently holds the last NL Wild Card spot, but can they hang on to it for two more weeks? Jake and Jordan talk about what they see for any postseason future in Queens.
All of this and more as every series from the weekend is recapped on Monday’s Baseball Bar-B-Cast.
