Good morning! San Diego got the loudest ownership introduction in baseball on Monday and the quietest offense in weeks a few hours later. Fernando Ramirez was at Petco for both. In Anaheim, rookie George Klassen fought his command all night and still gave the Angels a chance they didn’t take. At Crypto.com Arena, Angel Reese pulled down 26 rebounds — a WNBA record — and Nneka Ogwumike answered with a performance that looked like 2016. And this afternoon in Atlanta, Tyler Glasnow pitches for the first time since May. Let’s get into it.
🚨 HEADLINES
💰 All in. New Padres owners promised a World Series in their first press conference — Fernando Ramirez at Petco Park.
⚾ Twelve innings, one hit that mattered. San Diego wasted chance after chance in a 3-2 loss — Fernando Ramirez at Petco Park.
🏀 Twenty-six. Angel Reese set the WNBA record for rebounds in a game as the Dream beat the Sparks 78-71 — Rey Moralde at Crypto.com Arena.
⚾ Growing up. Klassen didn’t have it and kept the Angels alive anyway in a 4-2 loss — Jack Janes at Angel Stadium.
⚾ Full circle. Kurt Suzuki on what managing the Angels has meant to him — Jack Janes at Angel Stadium.
🏈 Year Two. Dan Mullen is more comfortable heading into his second season at UNLV — Steve Carp at the Fertitta Football Complex.
See what else is trending at The Sporting Tribune.
📋 SCOREBOARD — MONDAY
⚾ MLB: Pirates 3, Padres 2 (12) · Guardians 4, Angels 2 · Dodgers idle
🏀 WNBA: Dream 78, Sparks 71
💰 A RECORD PRICE AND A PROMISE
They walked in to their own theme music. Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano entered their introductory press conference to “We All In,” a dance track Jones recorded herself, and then said the thing every Padres fan has been waiting years to hear.
“We gonna win. We gonna win! We gonna win it all!” Jones said.
“I’m a lifelong baseball fan,” Feliciano said. “I won’t tell you which team I used to root for, but right now I root for the Padres, and we need to win the World Series. It’s that simple. That’s what we’re going to do.”
The price was an MLB record: $3.9 billion for the franchise and 30 percent of Petco Park, with an estimated $1.7 billion coming from Jones and Feliciano personally. On payroll, they were more measured — year to year, evaluated each season, aggressive when the moment calls for it. “We’re always going to do it kind of with keeping the long-term health of the team in mind,” Feliciano said.
They spoke to the players after the media cleared out. “They’re super excited to be a part of the Padres family, and they want to do it together,” manager Craig Stammen said. “That’s a message that we’ve been talking about all year.”
Both invoked Peter Seidler, whose ambition is the reason this franchise spends like it does. “We understand that sports is much more than sports,” Feliciano said. “The Padres are, I think, one of the pillars of this city.”
And Feliciano was careful about the one thing owners usually overpromise: “We cannot promise that we’re going to win. We hope that we’re going to win, but we can promise that you’re going to have our full dedication.”
GO DEEPER
› Fernando Ramirez: Padres new owners are ‘All In’ on bringing a championship to San Diego (The Sporting Tribune)
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⚾ AND THEN THE TWELFTH INNING
“What was supposed to be the start of a new era under new ownership ended on a sour note,” Ramirez wrote, and the box score is brutal about it. The Padres went 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position and lost 3-2 in 12 innings to a Pittsburgh club 15 games worse than them.
Robbie Ray gave San Diego one of his best starts since the trade — 5⅓ innings, five hits, two earned, five strikeouts — and blamed exactly one pitch, a four-seamer that Esmerlyn Valdez drove to center for his 15th homer. “Honestly, probably the only pitch that I’d like back the whole game,” Ray said.
Jake Cronenworth nearly won it twice. His single up the middle in the eighth, on the eighth pitch of the at-bat, tied the game. In the ninth, with the go-ahead run 90 feet away and two on, he laid out for a diving grab on a Jake Mangum liner and threw to first to end the inning. “Those defensive plays that he made really saved the game,” Stammen said.
The kill shot was the 11th: bases loaded, fewer than two out, and Xander Bogaerts lined out against Kirby Yates — a former Padres closer. “Our old friend Kirby got out,” Stammen said. An inning later Jeremiah Estrada gave up a Nick Gonzales single that scored Jared Triolo.
San Diego fell to 71-61 but caught a break: the Cubs shut out Arizona 7-0, so the two-game wild-card cushion survives. Paul Skenes faces Michael King tonight.
GO DEEPER
› Fernando Ramirez: Padres waste scoring opportunities in 12th inning loss to Pirates (The Sporting Tribune)
🍔 THE DEALS BOARD — A THIN DAY
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🥤 Mountain Dew — free 20-oz Baja Blast. Three homers cleared 420 feet Monday: Michael Conforto at 431, Rafael Devers at 427, Daylen Lile at 420. Wallet pass at OTC Network stores; the pass covers up to $4.
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Dark today: Panda Express, Jack in the Box, ampm, Sunright, El Portal, Con Azúcar and Habit Burger all need a Dodgers game, and there wasn’t one. The McDonald’s Angels deal needed a win over Cleveland. The board refills tonight.
🏀 TWENTY-SIX REBOUNDS
Angel Reese grabbed 26 rebounds Monday night in Los Angeles, the most anyone has ever pulled down in a WNBA game. Eight came on the offensive glass. The entire Sparks roster finished with 32.
“She’s elite,” Sparks coach Lynne Roberts said. “I think she’s the best in the world at it. I really do. She has a way of… her timing is good, she’s strong, she’s got great physicality, but she knows how to kind of lean to get you out of position. She does a good job tipping it to herself.” Reese added 11 points for her 27th double-double, one shy of Alyssa Thomas’s single-season record.
The Sparks lost 78-71, but the night belonged to Nneka Ogwumike too — 27 points and 16 rebounds in what Rey Moralde called a vintage performance, in the final season of her career.
“I’ve always been kind of the type of player that said that I didn’t want to get dragged off the court,” Ogwumike said. “But I do feel like what I do have left I’m pouring into these last few games.”
Cameron Brink, who matched her career high with five blocks and scored 15, got emotional talking about her. “There was a couple plays where I wanted her to be the one to set a down screen for the post-up look and she was like, ‘no, you go.’ I feel like I get really emotional thinking that I’m not going to have that next year.”
Los Angeles shot 3-for-18 from three. That, more than Reese, is why the Sparks are 13-25.
GO DEEPER
› Rey Moralde: Sparks lose to Dream as Reese sets record for most rebounds in WNBA game (The Sporting Tribune)
⚾ KLASSEN DIDN’T HAVE IT, AND IT DIDN’T MATTER
A week ago in Houston, George Klassen threw seven scoreless innings on one hit. On Monday the 24-year-old rookie had almost none of it — a 6 percent whiff rate on a fastball that usually misses bats at 27 percent, first-pitch strikes to just 44 percent of the hitters he faced, and 11 hard-hit balls out of 18 put in play.
He gave up two earned runs in 5⅓ innings anyway. With the bases loaded and one out in the third, he escaped on a sacrifice fly.
“The maturity is starting to show,” Kurt Suzuki said. “A start like that, maybe earlier in the year, might have blown up. For him to pitch it to the sixth inning, giving us a chance to win, I thought was a good step in the right direction.”
Klassen put it more plainly: “Biggest thing is not to let stuff spiral out of control. When something happens, just try to put the foot down and end it there.”
The chance went unused. Cleveland’s Parker Messick, an American League Rookie of the Year candidate, held the Angels to one run on three hits over six innings, and Anaheim managed four hard-hit balls all night in a 4-2 loss. “He really kind of had us on our heels the whole night,” Suzuki said.
GO DEEPER
› Jack Janes: Klassen battles command, offense gets shut down (The Sporting Tribune)
⚾ GLASNOW, FINALLY
The Dodgers were off Monday. They open a three-game set in Atlanta this afternoon, and Tyler Glasnow takes the ball for the first time since May 6 after more than three months out with lower-back spasms.
He was 3-0 with a 2.72 ERA through seven starts before the injury, and the rehab numbers at Oklahoma City were emphatic: a 1.32 ERA, a 0.51 WHIP and 20 strikeouts in 13⅔ innings across four appearances. Behind him, Shohei Ohtani throws another bullpen in Atlanta this week as the Dodgers decide whether his next step is a live session or an actual start.
Los Angeles is 80-51 and comes in off a six-game winning streak and a sweep of Pittsburgh. First pitch is 4:15 p.m. PT on TBS.
GO DEEPER
› Fredo Cervantes: The Dodgers are getting healthy and building something terrifying (The Sporting Tribune)
🎰 MULLEN, YEAR TWO
Steve Carp went out to the Fertitta Football Complex and found a coach in a different frame of mind than a year ago. Dan Mullen opens his second season at UNLV more comfortable — with the roster, the program and the job.
GO DEEPER
› Steve Carp: Mullen starts Year Two more comfortable (The Sporting Tribune)
📺 WATCHLIST — TUESDAY, AUGUST 25
⚾ MLB: Dodgers at Braves — Truist Park — 4:15 p.m. — TBS (Glasnow’s return)
⚾ MLB: Guardians at Angels — Angel Stadium — 6:38 p.m. — ABTV
⚾ MLB: Pirates at Padres — Petco Park — 6:40 p.m. — Padres TV (Skenes vs. King)
Coming up: The Rams close the preseason Thursday against the Chargers at SoFi — BZZR carries it, with The Sporting Tribune’s live postgame show to follow. Roster cuts come after that.
🎟️ GOING TO A GAME?
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⚾ Guardians at Angels — Angel Stadium — $3
⚾ Pirates at Padres — Petco Park — $13
🏈 Rams at Chargers — SoFi Stadium (Thursday) — $8
🌴 TST TRIVIA
Angel Reese set a WNBA record with 26 rebounds at Crypto.com Arena on Monday. How many did the entire Sparks roster grab in the same game?
Answer at the bottom.
🎧 THE SPORTING TRIBUNE TODAY
Today’s episode: a record $3.9 billion sale and a promise of a World Series in San Diego, followed immediately by a twelfth-inning loss; Angel Reese’s record night at Crypto; George Klassen growing up in Anaheim; and Tyler Glasnow’s return in Atlanta this afternoon. Hear it on the radio across Southern California, Las Vegas and Hawaii via Westwood One Sports, The Bet Las Vegas, Hawaii Sports Radio Network and KIRN in Los Angeles.
› Listen to the latest episode
Trivia answer: Thirty-two — six more than Reese had by herself.
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