Padres avoid 5th consecutive loss with late game comeback
Padres find a win to end their homestand, NBA Playoffs wraps up its first round, SDFC loses focus, Wave coach loses his cool, a new San Diego sports arena moves closer to reality, and more!
Everyone knew that the San Diego Padres were not going to keep winning in spectacular and thrilling ways all season long. Eventually, the magic runs out. At least temporarily.
I still like a lot of what I have seen from this year’s Padres team and its new coaching staff. I’m also painfully aware that, especially in baseball, long-term success usually comes with learning some lessons the hard way.
The Padres went 16-3 over a stretch of 19 games, many of them on the road and many of them against pretty good competition. However, since returning from their two-game series in Mexico City, San Diego has gone 2-4.
They also needed to rally back from behind against the White Sox on Sunday to avoid being swept by Chicago in what would’ve been their 5th straight loss. Still, the team seems to be taking it all in stride, celebrating the wins and trying to not get too down about the losses. That should, hopefully, serve them well going forward.
Now, onto the links…
San Diego Padres
Canning’s impressive debut snaps Padres’ losing streak - MLB.com
The Padres have spent most of the season with major questions at the back end of their starting rotation. Griffin Canning might help answer some of those.
Canning made his Padres debut on Sunday afternoon, working five innings of one-run ball. He punched out seven White Sox hitters in his first start since an Achilles injury ended his season last June.
“I just had a lot of fun being back out there and competing again,” Canning said.
Padres come back to beat White Sox, stop losing streak - San Diego Union-Tribune
A four-game losing streak came to an end Sunday in large part because Bogaerts hit a check-swing grounder straight down, off the plate and then out toward the left side of the infield to bring home the decisive run from third base with two outs in the eighth inning of what ended up a 4-3 victory over the White Sox.
When Ramón Laureano ran past home plate and Bogaerts was nearing first with no throw attempted by White Sox third baseman Colson Montgomery, the Padres’ dugout reacted as if Bogaerts had cleared the Western Metal Supply Co. building with a towering home run.
They raised their fists and high-fived and slammed their palms down on the railing and clapped as they shouted with joy.
“That was so good,” Miguel Andujar said. “We needed that.”
Probably Still Nothing - Letters to A.J.
Peralta is a likely target for relaying tipped pitches, for a couple of reasons. He doesn’t have a huge pitch mix, rarely throwing anything other than changeup or sinker. And the changeup is one of the easiest pitches to inadvertently tip because the grip requires the pitcher to essentially engulf the ball with the entire hand.
Padres announce agreement for ownership transfer to Jones-Feliciano group - The Athletic
The San Diego Padres announced Saturday that the Seidler family has entered into a definitive agreement for the transfer of control of the franchise to a group led by Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano, the couple who made a record-setting bid for the team.
“The Padres are more than a baseball team; they are a unifying force in San Diego, rooted in community, connection, and belonging,” Jones and Feliciano said in a joint statement released by the Padres. “As life and business partners, and as a family, we are honored to lead this next chapter together.
San Diego FC
Tom Krasovic: San Diego FC misses chance to get unstuck against overworked LAFC and frustrated coach - San Diego Union-Tribune
With its 2-2 tie before an announced crowd of 28,458 via Marcus Ingvartsen’s two goals off assists from fellow Danish forward Anders Dreyer, San Diego is unbeaten in three matches versus LAFC.
The competing demands of club schedules and international events create severe attrition tests throughout the world’s game.
If SDFC benefited Saturday from Dos Santos withholding star forward Son Heung-min until the 60th minute, while LAFC played its fifth match in 14 days, the task of ending a five-game MLS losing streak remained unchanged.
San Diego FC and LAFC Share the Points in Hard-Fought Match - Chromatic FC
While the first half was a success, the second half saw San Diego manage only 2 shots compared to LAFC’s 8. SDFC also had only 5 touches in the opposition’s box while LAFC had 18, suggesting the team took their foot off the gas. San Diego now has an MLS-worst record of losing 7 points after the 75th minute this season. The team must learn to play a full 90 minutes and close out matches. Looking forward, the health of Bombino and Pellegrino remains a major factor, as does the goalkeeper situation; with Dos Santos and Pablo Sisniega potentially injured, SDFC may need to call up SuperDraft pick Kyle Durham. With 4 tough matches left before the break, figuring out if the roster is healthy enough to compete is now the top priority.
San Diego Wave FC
Coach sent off as Wave fall to Bay FC at home - San Diego Union-Tribune
Wave head coach Jonas Eidevall walked off the pitch enraged after being shown a red card 10 minutes before his team suffered a 1-0 loss to Bay FC.
Eidevall didn’t agree with referee Ekaterina Koroleva when she stopped play in the 86th minute while the Wave were building up offensively as Bay FC left back Anouk Denton was down on the field.
As soon as Koroleva blew her whistle, Eidevall lost his cool, taking off his jacket and throwing it angrily in response to the decision. She was quick to show him the door.
As he exited the pitch, Eidevall was met with a standing ovation from Snapdragon Stadium.
NBA Playoffs
Celtics’ Jaylen Brown rips refs, calls out Embiid for flopping - ESPN
Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said the officials “had an agenda” against him in Boston’s seven-game first-round loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Appearing on his Twitch stream Sunday, Brown took issue with the officiating during the series, as well as with Sixers big man Joel Embiid, whom he accused of the type of flopping that has “ruined our game.”
“Joel Embiid is a great player. One of the best bigs in basketball history. [But he] flops. He know it,” Brown said. “This ain’t breaking news. It is what it is.”
The NBA’s Gap Between Great and Gone Has Never Been Smaller - The Ringer
It all looks bad in the abstract and through the lens of history. No one wants to be on those lists. But this was a most unusual Celtics campaign, concluding against a most unusual first-round opponent. The Sixers, for all their warts and volatility, are stacked with All-Star talent, from Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey to the aging (but still dangerous) Paul George to the very young (but very dangerous) rookie VJ Edgecombe. “I don’t feel like that was a traditional seventh seed,” Brown said, and he was right.
But then, this entire first round was untraditional—unconventional, unpredictable, weird, occasionally painful, and sometimes bordering on absurd—and it was marked by prolonged series, razor-thin talent margins, and two major upsets. If it felt chaotic, it wasn’t your imagination. By almost every measure, this was the most volatile first round in recent memory.
Fraud Allegations Against Pistons Dismissed - Defector
The issue is that Detroit, despite winning 60 games and playing the Knicks super tough last year, did not profile as a playoff riser due to a concerning lack of two-way players (or, viewed another way, a bounty of one-way players) as well as a style that relied on outhustling opponents on defense and on the glass. In the playoffs everyone is trying hard, and suddenly that Daniss Jenkins second-side stuff stops working, Duncan Robinson’s presence on defense starts to become a problem, and Ausar Thompson’s lack of presence on offense also starts to become a problem. It’s hard to win while covering gaps like that. If you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be working at the circus.
Magic fire coach Jamahl Mosley after first-round playoff defeat - The Athletic
The Orlando Magic entered the 2025-26 season as a clear favorite to finish near the top of the Eastern Conference standings. A comprehensive preseason survey of NBA general managers even ranked the Magic as a top-four team in the East.
Yet the Magic barely qualified for the playoffs and, once they reached the first round, let a 3-1 series lead over the top-seeded Detroit Pistons slip away.
Jamahl Mosley paid a heavy price for that disappointing, perplexing season. After his team was eliminated from the playoffs with a 116-94 Game 7 loss to the Pistons, Magic officials fired Mosley on Monday morning, ending his head-coaching tenure after five seasons, team officials announced.
Cavaliers finally pull away from Raptors in Game 7 to close out series, set up battle with Pistons - Yahoo Sports
After 26 quarters, the series between the Cavaliers and the Raptors had been about as even as it could possibly be. The Cavaliers rallied every time the Raptors appeared to take a step ahead Sunday night, and they mounted an 11-2 run to tie the game 49-49 by halftime. As the two teams entered the locker room, they had each put up exactly 718 total points and were each shooting 47% from the field at that point in the series.
But finally, Cleveland made a move and started controlling the game in the third quarter. Donovan Mitchell got the Cavs up by nine points early, and then Sam Merrill drilled a wide-open 3-pointer late in the period to push their lead to 12. The surge continued after a Raptors timeout when Max Strus picked the ball away from Scottie Barnes and tossed it up to Jarrett Allen for a breakaway dunk.
Anthony Edwards upgraded to questionable for Timberwolves-Spurs series - The Athletic
Anthony Edwards was upgraded to questionable on the Minnesota Timberwolves’ injury report Sunday evening, further indication he is pushing to get into this second-round series against the San Antonio Spurs as quickly as possible. He suffered a hyperextension of his left knee in Game 4 of Minnesota’s first-round series against the Denver Nuggets, missing the final two-plus games.
Edwards has been laying the groundwork for a faster-than-expected return since he went down in Game 4, but he ramped it up Sunday when his team posted a video to his YouTube channel titled “Don’t count me out.”
Odds & Ends
Winners and losers from F1’s eventful Miami Grand Prix - Yahoo Sports
With every passing week, young Kimi Antonelli is convincing more and more sceptics about whether he is really ready to take the title fight all the way in what is only his sophomore F1 season as a teenager.
There is no doubt that Antonelli is still a raw diamond rather than a polished product. But he has paired his obvious talent and speed with more maturity this year and has not flinched when the pressure is on, as evidenced by the various wheel-to-wheel battles for the lead in Miami.
Midway Rising bill rewritten to override court ruling on building height limits - San Diego Union-Tribune
A bill working its way through the state Legislature centered on making the Midway Rising mega project possible is now more narrowly focused on rendering moot a court order that seems to prohibit the developer’s ability to erect buildings taller than 30 feet in San Diego’s Midway District.
In recent weeks, Senate Bill 958, authored by state Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, D-La Mesa, was rewritten to block the designation of environmental impacts associated with increased building heights as significant for select projects under California’s Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. Previously, the bill sought to provide blanket protection for the Midway Rising project from legal challenges linked to the state environmental law.
If signed into law, the bill, championed by San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, would give Midway Rising a statutory override to the court-imposed height limit in the Midway District, making the project’s 165-foot-tall sports arena and 105-foot-tall residential buildings legally permissible.
John Sterling, legendary Yankees broadcaster, dies at age 87 - The Athletic
Sterling became the Yankees’ play-by-play announcer in 1989 and spent 36 years in the position, calling 5,060 consecutive games (plus 211 more in the postseason) until he missed his first game in July of 2019. He called 5,631 Yankees games, including eight World Series appearances. By the time he retired in 2024, he was known as “The Voice of the Yankees.”