Author: rb809rb

UPDATE: Tatsuya Imai and the Houston Astros reportedly agreed Jan. 1 on a 3-year, $54 million deal.

For Tatsuya Imai, this offseason’s top Japanese free-agent pitcher, the clock is ticking.

The 27-year-old right-hander must sign with an MLB team before the expiration of his posting window at 5 p.m. ET Friday. While few teams have been definitively linked to the longtime Seibu Lions hurler, the overwhelming expectation within the industry is that Imai will come to terms with a big-league club before the deadline.

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That’s because he offers an enticing combination of ceiling and floor at a relatively young age for a free-agent pitcher.

To be clear: Yoshinobu Yamamoto he is not. Imai’s athleticism, track record and pitch quality pale in comparison to those of the 2025 World Series MVP. As such, Imai won’t sniff the 12-year, $325 million deal that Yamamoto secured two winters ago. Still, a substantial payday is in order; Imai should eclipse the $100 million mark. That is, at least, what his representative, agent Scott Boras, is gunning for.

And based on Imai’s talent and résumé, that’s a very reasonable goal.

Across the Pacific, Imai has been a known commodity, a famous figure, for quite a while. He rose to fame during the 2016 edition of Summer Koshien, Japan’s immensely popular high school baseball tournament. In the final, Imai delivered a heroic performance as the ace of  Sakushin Gakuin High School, tossing a nine-strikeout, one-run complete game. That propelled him to national prominence and the No. 1 pick in the 2016 NPB Draft.

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Pro success didn’t come right away. As a 20-year-old rookie with Seibu in 2018, Imai struggled to a 4.81 ERA across 78 2/3 innings. Things gradually improved as he got comfortable at the highest level, but injuries and a lack of control limited his production.

Free passes, in particular, were a massive bugaboo. Between 2018 and 2023, Imai posted a total walk rate over 13%. For comparison, just one MLB starter over the past decade (Blake Snell in 2023) has recorded a season with such wildness. This past season, only two qualified starters (Cleveland’s Gavin Williams and Anaheim’s José Soriano) had walk rates north of 10%. Simply put, it was an unsustainable way for Imai to live.

So the 5-foot-11 righty changed course, purposefully altering his mechanics to improve his strike-throwing. In turn, his numbers took a huge step forward, with the walk rate dropping to 9.8% in 2024 and then a tidy 7% in 2025. Even more impressively, Imai’s strikeout numbers increased alongside his boost in control.

It all culminated in a phenomenal 2025 season in which Imai cruised to a 1.92 ERA with more than a strikeout per inning across 24 starts.

That breakout sent Imai zooming up MLB wish lists, as practically every club — except, perhaps, the Dodgers — could use another rotation piece. And unlike fellow Japanese free-agent Munetaka Murakami, whose high-risk profile stunted his market, Imai seems like a reliable proposition.

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Part of that is simply a product of the hitter/pitcher divide in regard to NPB players. Projecting whether or not a Japanese hitter will adjust to MLB pitching is a much trickier exercise than doing the same with a Japanese pitcher. Advances in tracking data mean that we can compare Imai’s arsenal, release points, velocities and pitch shapes to those already present in the bigs. That provides us — and, crucially, MLB teams — a better sense of how arms will translate from the second-best to the best league in the world.

And Imai’s stuff passes the smell test. His heater last year averaged right around 95 mph, above the MLB starter average of 94.1. He leans on that four-seam fastball quite a bit, particularly against right-handed hitters, to whom he threw the pitch 53% of the time. His slider accounted for another 39% against same-sided bats, meaning Imai rarely uses a third pitch against righties. That puts him in a small group of pitchers — think Spencer Strider, Jacob deGrom, Jared Jones — with such a small right-on-right mix.

Facing lefties, Imai turns toward his changeup and splitter to keep opponents off-balance, using those offering 16% and 7% of the time, respectively. It all comes out of a relatively low slot, which adds deception to his heater/slider combo.

The indomitable Yuri Karasawa of JapanBall, the internet’s premier source for English-language Japanese baseball coverage, compared Imai to Mariners righty Luis Castillo in a recent YouTube video. It’s an interesting comp, based on their similar heater/slider reliance and low arm slots.

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One key difference: Castillo has been commendably durable for most of his career, while Imai has never started more than 25 games in a season. But if Imai can match Castillo in terms of efficacy, that would be a massive win for whichever team ends up with the Japanese hurler. No front-runner has yet emerged, as the typical host of deep-pocketed clubs in Los Angeles, New York and Toronto have pretty stocked starting staffs.

The Mets, whose starting pitching woes sank their 2025 season, have been connected to Imai, but they would probably need to subtract from their assortment of arms if they reel him in. The Phillies, potentially without ace Zack Wheeler for the start of the season and around $35 million below last year’s final payroll, would make some sense. The Cubs desperately need another frontline arm but haven’t shown the willingness to push their payroll far beyond $200 million. The same is true for the Giants, who haven’t added much to their big-league roster so far this winter.

To be fair, a player of Imai’s caliber fits pretty much anywhere; playoff hopefuls in Baltimore, Detroit, Miami, Arizona and even Sacramento should all pick up the phone and inquire. His history of gradual, year-over-year improvement, willingness to make adjustments, on-mound athleticism and arsenal all suggest he’ll be a solid mid-rotation hurler in MLB, with the potential for more if he continues to develop.

That’s a pretty exciting player — one who should be a whole lot richer in a few days.

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — What are we doing here?

We’re here, of course, to watch a College Football Playoff quarterfinal on Thursday between Oregon and Texas Tech. But that isn’t the question of the moment.

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What are we doing here?

We’re taking teams from West Texas and the Pacific Northwest and making their fans travel thousands of miles to South Florida, knowing whoever wins will have to do the same thing all over again in nine days with a semifinal in Atlanta. Oh, and if they win that one? They’ll be right back here in Hard Rock Stadium on Jan. 19 for the national championship game.

Can college football end this madness? It’s time for the playoff to put more games on campus. And it needs to happen next year.

“Everybody’s been doing playoffs for a long time before D-I football got involved,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said. “Once we decided we wanted to do playoffs, we should have ultimately followed the format of every other playoff model that exists whether it’s the NFL, FCS football, D-II. There should be home playoff games until you get to the national championship. There should be an advantage to be a higher-seeded team. I’m sure we’ll have a great turnout here at the Orange Bowl, but ultimately, I bet we’d have an unbelievable turnout if this was at Texas Tech or Eugene.”

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No offense to the lovely people who run the Orange Bowl as well as the Rose, Cotton, Sugar, Peach and Fiesta Bowls. For decades, they served a purpose for the larger enterprise of college football and have been unfailingly hospitable to teams, fans and, yes, media members in putting on these events.

But college football has changed. Its postseason is now a month-long marathon, not a one-off trip to a warm weather destination where teams are pampered with a full week of local activities and relaxation in between practices. Even this week, the teams arrived Monday night, took part in a quick media session Tuesday and will spend the rest of their time here preparing for Thursday’s kickoff at noon.

It’s all business.

And as more people have seen the success of the first-round playoff games on campus, whether in the warm sunshine at Ole Miss a couple weeks ago or the sub-freezing temperatures at Ohio State last year, there’s a growing recognition that college football needs more of that.

When the magic of a gameday on campus is what sets college football apart from the NFL, why take your most valuable product and put it in cookie-cutter pro stadiums while letting bowl committees soak up a significant portion of available revenue and making fans budget for two or three road trips in December and January?

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In this era, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

For a long time, the bowl games had a great model. Established as a vehicle to juice local tourism during the holidays by offering sunshine and college football to winter-weary fans, the bowls managed to cling to college football’s various postseason systems like a barnacle. The means with which they did it were sometimes questionable — a lot of lavish wining and dining, golf trips and gifts paid for by organizations that purport to be non-profits — but the bowls made sure whenever administrators had an opportunity to cast them aside, their loyalty was paid for.

So when the CFP began to take shape in 2013, conference commissioners never really considered a world where the bowls weren’t included. The six so-called “access bowls” would rotate every three years as semifinal hosts. When the CFP expanded to 12, those same six bowls were guaranteed to host either a quarterfinal or a semifinal every year.

But now, their place in the system seems to be in question, at least to some degree. The CFP is considering another round of expansion, with a key meeting among the 10 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua set to take place before the national championship game.

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The Big Ten and SEC, who have control over the CFP format in 2026 and beyond, have been at odds for months. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has championed a 24-team format with a load of automatic bids, while the SEC has preferred a 16-team model with five automatic bids and 11 at-larges. If they can’t agree, the playoff will revert to the current 12-team format for 2026.

Sources told Yahoo Sports that the Big Ten position has softened in recent weeks, particularly since it dawned on administrators that Notre Dame had signed a memorandum of understanding in 2024 guaranteeing the Irish a playoff spot in the next contract if they finished among the top 12 in the CFP committee rankings. The practical impact of that provision — under those rules, Notre Dame would have been in this year and Miami would be out — has shaken up several administrators in the league.

There is now renewed optimism that a 16-team compromise can be reached, mitigating the impact of the Notre Dame carve-out. The next debate would be whether quarterfinals — and perhaps even semifinals — would go to campus sites.

But where would that leave the bowls? As of this moment, all the Orange Bowl knows is that it’ll host a game next year. Will it be a quarterfinal? A semifinal? Not involved in the tournament at all?

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Nobody knows.

“It’s fluid right now,” Orange Bowl CEO Eric Poms told Yahoo Sports. “We’ll see how it plays out. But we understand it’s a new world.”

The Orange Bowl believes it still adds value to that world. It’s put on this game since 1935. It knows how to build the infrastructure for a big event. It has a full-time staff dedicated to making it a seamless experience for the teams and fans. There aren’t going to be any hotel snafus or issues getting meals catered.

Putting playoff games on college campuses in December and January, many of them in small towns, comes with some of those complications — not to mention some awful weather in a lot of corners of the country. Administrators at schools that have hosted first-round games the last two years will tell you it’s a significant undertaking — especially on short notice. Imagine doing it two weeks in a row.

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But as college football gets more comfortable in an expanded playoff, what’s the better bet: Working through those issues to put more games in the historic venues that make college football unique, or continuing to delegate responsibility for its postseason (and a lot of the money that comes with it) to organizations like the Orange Bowl and playing these games in antiseptic neutral stadiums?

“I think the industry as a whole is going through a transformative time,” Poms said. “There’s some significant inflection points that take place and there’s different views.”

So what’s the case for the bowl games?

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“There’s the history and tradition of what it means locally, but when you think nationally, you realize people connect to it,” Poms said, pointing to his orange blazer. “I was walking around Oregon last week in this jacket and people know exactly who you are — well, not you, but the brand. It’s hard to build something like that overnight. This is 100 years in the making. Our hope is that’s connected to the decision-making process.”

That brand helped build college football, but moving to a real playoff has changed the dynamic. More schools are thirsting for a playoff game on their campus — something Georgia, for instance, hasn’t experienced because it earned first-round byes each of the last two years. Meanwhile, fans are being squeezed economically by the possibility of three road trips to follow their team to a national championship.

Something’s got to give.

As the sun beams down on Hard Rock Stadium on a perfect 70-degree day, the thought of trading the Atlantic Ocean for the windswept plains of Lubbock, Texas, might not seem like a great deal for those of us who are here to enjoy it.

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But the CFP, still in its adolescent phase, is growing up. Though there should still be some room for the tradition of the Rose Bowl or the Orange Bowl to play a part in determining a national championship, there’s a growing realization across the industry that college football is best played on college campuses.

With the CFP structure still up in the air for 2026, there’s an opening to make that happen. They would be dumb not to grab it as soon as they can.

Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield was listed with a new injury to his right shoulder on Tuesday’s practice report, just days before Tampa Bay’s showdown with the Carolina Panthers that could determine the NFC South champion.

The Buccaneers also listed Mayfield with an undisclosed knee injury. Mayfield suffered an injury to his left shoulder in a Week 12 loss to the Los Angeles Rams. He left that game early, but has played in each game since and hasn’t been listed with the injury in recent weeks.

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The listed injuries to his throwing shoulder and knee on Tuesday were new. Mayfield was listed as a limited participant on an estimated practice report as the Buccaneers conducted a walk-through.

Further details including the nature of the injuries or when Mayfield sustained them were not clear. The Bucs didn’t initially provide more information about the injuries other than listing him as limited at practice.

How will injury impact Saturday’s Panthers-Bucs game?

There’s no indication the injuries threaten Mayfield’s status for Saturday’s game against the Panthers. But they’re cause for further concern around a Bucs team that’s floundered in the second half of the season and enters Week 18 having lost seven of its last eight games to surrender control of the NFC South.

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Mayfield’s play has suffered alongside that of his team. Mayfield posted four games with a quarterback rating higher than 100 as the Bucs got off to a 6-3 start. He’s not eclipsed that number since Week 10 and has four games in that time frame with a rating below 80.

Now he’s dealing with new injuries ahead of Tampa Bay’s biggest game of the season. The Panthers would clinch the NFC South and the division’s only playoff berth with a win by securing the best record at 9-8.

The Bucs would stay alive for the division title with a win, but also need the New Orleans Saints to beat the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. If the Bucs and Falcons win this week, the Panthers would own the three-way tiebreaker with Carolina, Atlanta and Tampa Bay all finishing at 8-9.

For all the angst about large, nine-figure MLB contracts when they’re first signed (welcome to the club, Dylan Cease, Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso), they actually tend to be decent investments.

Sometimes, you get a paradigm-changing superstar who uplifts your franchise to the promised land (e.g. Shohei Ohtani, Corey Seager, Max Scherzer). Other times, you get a guy who never quite reaches the highs of his previous years but manages to be a legitimate MLB player for at least a few years (e.g. Xander Bogaerts, Albert Pujols).

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But rare is the contract in which, almost from the get-go, the player ceases to be a starter-quality MLB player, if he’s playing at all. At the very least, you should be getting a guy who can immediately be an acceptable addition to the lineup or rotation. You can count on one hand the list of big contracts that failed to meet that standard.

So it’s quite surprising when two of those contracts contain the same terms and involved players originally from the same team.

The 2019 Washington Nationals’ dilemma was doomed from the start

Dec. 30, 2025, saw the arrival of news that seemed inevitable for years. Anthony Rendon and the Los Angeles Angels have reportedly agreed to a buyout of the final year of his contract in 2026, paving the way for the third baseman to retire at the age of 35.

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Rendon spent all of 2025 recovering from hip surgery and is still owed $38 million for 2026. It’s unclear how much of that money Rendon will receive, but it will be paid out over the course of the next three-to-five years. Because he has nearly all of the leverage in buyout talks, he likely got most of that money in exchange for freeing up some 2026 cash for the club and ending an Angels career that became a distracting fiasco.

Let’s now rewind back to the end of the 2019 MLB season. The Washington Nationals had broken through for their first World Series title, featuring an array of veterans and young stars. As they entered the offseason, they had two clear items at the top of their to-do list: Re-sign Rendon and World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg.

It was a tough decision. Rendon, at the time, was one of the best third basemen in MLB and theoretically a better long-term bet, despite past injury issues. He had just slashed .319/.412/.598 while leading the NL in doubles (44) and RBI (126). He had also played at least 130 games the previous four seasons.

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Strasburg, meanwhile, had just posted the best season of his career and had the emotional factor of being the first overall draft pick who marked the beginning of the Nationals’ new era. He had been a face of the franchise since he was selected in 2009 and had just led the NL with 209 innings pitched while displaying his usual post-Tommy John surgery effectiveness.

The Nationals would’ve liked to retain both players but ultimately reached an agreement with only Strasburg, for seven years and $245 million. Coincidentally, those were the same terms Rendon agreed to with the Angels only two days later.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that the ideal outcome for Washington would’ve been signing neither of them. Because the identical deals turned out to be arguably the worst deals any MLB team has ever made from a financial perspective.

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Only one other contract compares to Anthony Rendon’s and Stephen Strasburg’s

Let’s keep this simple. Here is Baseball Reference’s list of the 50 largest contracts in MLB history, with deals going back to 2001. It includes both free-agent contracts and extensions.

At the top end is Juan Soto’s record 15-year, $765 million deal with the New York Mets. At the bottom end is Matt Olson’s eight-year, $168 million extension with the Atlanta Braves.

Among those 50 players, Rendon ranks 41st in Baseball Reference’s calculation of Wins Above Replacement, and Strasburg is 46th. That doesn’t sound extravagantly disastrous, but consider that three of the deals (Cease, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Garrett Crochet) haven’t started yet, so those ranks are actually out of 48 players. And it takes only one good season — such as Max Fried’s 2025 — to rank 39th, where Fried is now.

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Then consider that of the five non-Strasburg players below Rendon, three signed their deals in the past two years: Willy Adames, Aaron Nola and Corbin Burnes. It’s far too early to judge them.

That basically leaves two candidates to compare with Rendon and Strasburg for the worst ever: Miguel Cabrera’s eight-year, $240 million extension with the Detroit Tigers and Kris Bryant’s seven-year, $182 million deal with the Colorado Rockies.

At the risk of hand-waving, we can at least say Cabrera had a Silver Slugger-level year in 2016, the first year of that contract, and he’ll go into the Hall of Fame as a Tiger. The Tigers could’ve spent that money more wisely, yes, but Cabrera doesn’t fit in with this group.

That means that among the 50 largest MLB contracts ever, we’re left with Rendon, Strasburg and Bryant as the least rewarding from a financial standpoint, team-wise. All three are players who got enormous paydays — even bigger than Chris Davis’ infamous seven-year, $161 million deal, which might have been the previous low-water mark as far as value — and simply failed to stay on the field with any regularity.

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In the case of Rendon, you have a player who started well — but only in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, in which he slashed .286/.418/.497 in 52 games. Since then, well, he still has yet to play more than 60 games in a season with the club while slashing .231/.329/.336 in 205 games from 2021 to 2025. There was a season-ending hip injury in 2021, a nearly season-ending wrist injury in 2022, a season-ending fractured tibia in 2023, a hamstring tear and oblique injury in 2024, and the hip surgery in 2025.

Strasburg was even more injury-ravaged. Following that 2019 season in which he led the NL in innings pitched, he made seven starts total, across which he posted a 6.89 ERA. That’s worth repeating: seven starts, or the number a pitcher usually makes over the course of less than two months. He experienced a nerve issue in his pitching hand in 2020, then was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome (TAS) in 2021. There might not be a more dreaded issue for a pitcher than TAS, from which successful returns are few and far between. Strasburg never adequately recovered and retired after negotiating a buyout last year.

Bryant’s contract was odd from the start. When the Rockies signed him, he was being sold as a middle-of-the-order bat who could play five different positions. Colorado, in its finite wisdom, decided he should instead be a full-time left-fielder. Like Rendon, the first year was fine when he was on the field, with a .306/.376/.475 slash line in 2022, but back and foot issues limited Bryant to 42 games.

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Since then, Bryant has been barely playable in 128 games across three seasons and was diagnosed with a degenerative disc disease in May. If he plays a full season again, it will be a surprise. Like with Rendon, there are rumors Bryant has played his final game, though he recently insisted he’s not contemplating retirement.

How do you compare these three? That’s ultimately up to you, but let’s say Strasburg is the worst because, again, the Nationals ended up paying nearly that entire $245 million for seven overall bad starts. And the contract was reportedly not insured, so they were on the hook for the full sum minus whatever they saved in the buyout. Rendon and Bryant had similar arcs with good-but-limited first seasons and then a full injury breakdown, with Rendon playing 205 games in five seasons and Bryant playing 128 games in three seasons.

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Now let’s consider two things. One, Rendon’s contract was $63 million more expensive overall, which ain’t nothing. Two, while Bryant has by all accounts been committed to coming back, Rendon has been blasé about his baseball future to an infamous degree. He said baseball wasn’t his top priority in 2024 and has shrugged off attempts by reporters at a status check-in. There was also that 2023 incident in which he took a swing at an opposing fan.

In other words, Rendon has barely played since 2020, hasn’t played well at all since 2020 and has played a central role in the Angels becoming the complete laughingstock they are now. To us, that sounds like a contract worse than Bryant’s, even if the latter is worse by total WAR.

As for other candidates, there are deals such as Davis and Ryan Howard, who got their paydays and simply ceased to be replacement-level players, but they at least stayed on the field. There’s also Josh Hamilton, whose disappointing Angels tenure ended two seasons in after he unfortunately relapsed with his addiction issues. But that’s a very difficult comparison for these purposes, especially when his contract came in tens of millions of dollars less than the three discussed here.

This is all admittedly harsh. None of these players has control over their health and to judge a person by the ratio of their labor to their cost is inherently dehumanizing. These were all good players at one point, and all three have well-deserved World Series rings. They just also happen to be major reasons so many fans get antsy when their teams actually commit to spending in free agency.

So congratulations, 2019 Nationals. You will be remembered for reasons beyond a cathartic World Series title. And those reasons are now beyond mitigation.

The NBA fined Phoenix Suns guard Jalen Green $25,000 for using profanity while playfully interrupting a live on-court interview after a 115-101 road win over the Washington Wizards on Monday night.

Right on cue, as Suns guard Collin Gillespie mentioned how his teammates have been finding him during his third-year breakout, he was flanked by Green and another Phoenix guard, Jordan Goodwin.

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Green came in with an uplifting roar, followed by an encouraging dap and a loud, “Yeah!”

As Goodwin exited the frame, Green hung around and said, “They can’t f*** with you!” to Gillespie, who was visibly surprised by the profanity.

So much so that a smiling Gillespie even said, “Oh, my God. On live TV, bro?”

The interviewer chimed in, “It’s a family show!”

Green responded with a “I don’t care” before dapping up Gillespie once more and then walking off as Gillespie called him “my dawg.”

Gillespie, who went undrafted out of Villanova in 2022, is a microcosm of the Suns’ unexpected success this season. The guard has exceeded expectations, doubling his minutes from the season prior and posting 13.9 points, 5.1 assists, 4 rebounds and 1.4 steals per game while becoming a major contributor to a Suns team that’s 19-13 and seventh in a crowded Western Conference table.

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Phoenix carried the highest payroll in league history last season and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2019-2020. The Suns are off to a better start this time around, without Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal.

First-year head coach Jordan Ott has his group scratching and clawing and, at the same time, jelling.

And that’s continued to happen in the absence of Green, who has been recovering from a right hamstring strain that he aggravated early last month in just his second game of the season.

The Suns acquired the 23-year-old Green from the Houston Rockets in the Durant trade this past offseason. Defensive pest Dillon Brooks landed in Phoenix because of that deal, too.

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Brooks is currently second on the Suns in scoring with 21.5 points per game, behind only four-time All-Star Devin Booker.

Once finally healthy, Green is expected to form an effective duo with Booker in the backcourt. He averaged 20.1 points per game in his four seasons with the Rockets, who selected him No. 2 overall in the 2021 draft.

For now, lesser-known players are stepping up to fill the void — like Gillespie.

And Green seems to be loving it.

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Happy New Year’s Eve-Eve from The Dunker Spot!

Nekias Duncan and Steve Jones discuss the hot play of the Los Angeles Clippers, Miami Heat and surprisingly-plucky Brooklyn Nets. Next, they check in on the San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder, Cleveland Cavaliers and Atlanta Hawks.

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Finally, the guys react to the first return of All-Star voting. There may be a rant included.

If you ever have NBA or WNBA questions, email us at dunkerspot@yahoo.com.

(1:44) — How to evaluate this stage of the NBA season

(7:33) — Los Angeles Clippers

(21:21) — Miami Heat

(27:21) — Quick check-in on the Pistons’ offense

(30:08) — Brooklyn Nets

(36:54) — San Antonio Spurs

(43:18) — Oklahoma City Thunder

(47:40) — Cleveland Cavaliers

(50:34) — Quick Atlanta Hawks disappointment

(52:18) — First All-Star returns are out

(01:10:46) Free Throws

🖥️ Watch this full episode on YouTube

Check out the rest of the Yahoo Sports podcast family at https://apple.co/3zEuTQj or at yahoosports.tv

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In the final Big Number episode of 2025, Tom Haberstroh and Dan Devine discuss the major implications of the Nikola Jokic knee injury and how it affects both the NBA’s MVP race, as well as the Denver Nuggets’ playoff chances.

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Then, they take a look at some of the most trade-eligible players for the new year, leading with Anthony Davis, who despite being one of the most effective players while on the court, still provides question marks on his ability to stay on it. They also look into some other question marks around the league: how good can the Michael Porter Jr trade haul be? Should Zach LaVine get traded, and where to?

Finally, the Trae Young fiasco in Atlanta is picked apart – what should the Hawks do? Is waiving the former superstar guard on the table? That and more on today’s Big Number.

(01:08) The Big Number: 4 – minimum number of weeks Jokic misses with knee injury

(19:08) The Little Numbers: 1.5 – Anthony Davis’ estimated plus minus

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(21:03) New team, new year: potential landing spots for Anthony Davis

(24:06) The Little Numbers: 13 – players avg. 25+ points on .600 true shooting percentage

(26:16) New team, new year: will Michael Porter Jr. have a new team in 2026?

(28:51) The Little Numbers: 10 – Zach LaVine 3-point attempts per possession

(38:18) The Little Numbers: 126.2 – Hawks’ defensive rating with Trae Young

(49:06) Should the Hawks waive Trae Young?

🖥️ Watch this full episode on YouTube

Check out the rest of the Yahoo Sports podcast family at https://apple.co/3zEuTQj or at yahoosports.tv

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Will Matthew Stafford remain the MVP favorite after a disappointing showing on MNF? Yahoo Sports’ Andrew Siciliano, Jori Epstein and Frank Schwab break down the Los Angeles Rams’ loss to the Atlanta Falcons that saw Stafford throw 3 picks. Plus, is it really that surprising that Trevon Diggs was released by the Dallas Cowboys? The crew closes things out with one last look at Frank’s playoff projections before discussing their “One More Thing.”

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(6:34) – Falcons upset Rams on MNF

(23:11) – Cowboys release Trevon Diggs

(32:53) – Should playoff teams sit starters in Week 18?

(47:52) – Frank’s Playoff Projections

(56:45) – NFL coaching hot seats

(1:05:54) – One More Thing

🖥️ Watch this full episode on YouTube

Check out the rest of the Yahoo Sports podcast family at https://apple.co/3zEuTQj or at Yahoo Sports Podcasts

Josh Giddey’s career season will be put on pause for a significant amount of time.

The guard has suffered a left hamstring strain and will miss at least a few weeks, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. Even a three-week absence would mean 12 games missed.

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Giddey sustained the injury early in the third quarter of the Bulls’ 136-101 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday. A seemingly benign play ended in him grabbing at his hamstring and gingerly walking off the court.

The Bulls currently sit at 15-17, good for ninth in the Eastern Conference, and many of those wins are attributable to a breakout performance from Giddey so far this season. At 23 years old, he is averaging career highs across the board and ranks third in the NBA in assists per game with nine, behind only Nikola Jokić (11) and Cade Cunningham (9.6).

That effort landed Giddey in 14th place in the most recent round of NBA All-Star voting in the Eastern Conference. He has been a true do-everything player for Chicago this season, and now it will have to figure out what to do for at least a dozen games without him.

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Before the season, the Bulls made a long-term investment in Giddey with a four-year, $100 million contract in restricted free agency.

Luke Altmyer was an unstoppable force Tuesday night in the Music City Bowl.

Nothing was getting in the way of a milestone victory in his 35th and final start as Illinois’ quarterback: not Tennessee’s 94-yard, go-ahead kickoff return touchdown in the fourth quarter, and especially not an official who found himself in the path of the redshirt senior earlier in the night.

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Altmyer incidentally trucked that ref on a 14-yard run during a third-quarter touchdown drive, and he responded with another touchdown drive after the pixie dust settled from the Volunteers’ special-teams magic.

Altmyer, once an Ole Miss transfer who ended up authoring a three-season legacy at Illinois, already led all active FBS quarterbacks with six career game-winning drives in the final minute or overtime. The Starkville, Mississippi, native had one more in him, as David Olano made a 29-yard field goal as time expired.

With the 30-28 victory, the Fighting Illini (9-4, 5-4 Big Ten) recorded back-to-back nine-plus-win seasons for the first time in program history. They won 10 games in 2024, and Altmyer picked up where he left off to stitch together an impressive 2025 campaign.

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Tennessee (8-5, 4-4 SEC) suffered another gut-wrenching defeat in a season that also included one-score losses to Georgia and Oklahoma, a pair of College Football Playoff teams.

Altmyer threw for 196 yards and a score and ran for 54 yards and a score. He clocks out with 23 wins at Illinois, tied with Jack Trudeau for the second-most victories recorded by a Fighting Illini quarterback. Kurt Kittner is atop that list with 24.

Illinois took a 10-7 lead into the half and went up two scores early in the third quarter, thanks to a strip-sack and fumble recovery.

Fighting Illini outside linebacker Joe Barna flew off the edge, wrapped up Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar and jarred the ball loose.

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It bounced toward the end zone, and Illinois’ Leon Lowery Jr. hopped on it for the touchdown after defensive lineman James Thompson Jr. got a crack at collecting the loose change.

Tennessee entered averaging 40.8 points per game. The Volunteers’ offense had a lot more to offer, starting with a nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that ended with the first of running back DeSean Bishop’s two rushing touchdowns. That rebuttal made it 17-14.

Then came Altmyer’s bowling ball run that knocked over a ref as if he was a pin. Soon after, he paired a 15-yard dart to tight end Tanner Arkin with a 2-yard zone-read touchdown run.

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Tennessee’s next counterpunch was even more methodical. The Vols patiently hummed to the tune of a 14-play, 79-yard touchdown drive that featured a third-and-15 connection between Aguilar and wide receiver Mike Matthews.

Things got rocky for the Illini when Tennessee went on top with 4:58 to go. Following a 28-yard Illinois field goal, true Volunteers freshman wideout Joakim Dodson muffed the ensuing kickoff before quickly redeeming himself with a recovery, a couple moves and a sprint down the left sideline for a touchdown that put his team ahead 28-27.

Altmyer was unfazed, though.

He used his legs for key pickups. And he quarterbacked an offense that executed in short-yardage at the most critical of times.

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Lined up as a fullback, tight end Jordan Anderson plowed forward for 13 yards on a gotta-have-it fourth-and-1. Later in the drive, 255-pound running back Kaden Feagin picked up three yards on third-and-1 deep in Tennessee territory.

That conversion allowed Illinois to chew clock and wait for the game-winning field goal.

Illinois didn’t make a run to the CFP like some thought Bret Bielema’s crew might after turning heads last season. But it did beat an ACC champion in Duke and a ranked USC team as well as Tennessee while making program history.