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From Jack Harris: The Dodgers have gotten almost nothing but bad news on the pitching injury front this year.
On Tuesday, however, the storm clouds hovering over the staff might have finally — or at least partially — begun to clear.
It wasn’t just that Yoshinobu Yamamoto struck out eight batters in a dazzling four-inning, one-run return from the injured list. Or that Tyler Glasnow took another step in his recovery from elbow tendinitis, throwing a bullpen session ahead of a scheduled simulated game later this week.
Rather, for the first time in months, the team might actually be able to do more than dream about what a potential postseason rotation could look like.
Now only if they could do something about their sloppy defense.
The Dodgers lost 6-3 to the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium, with numerous defensive miscues (including three errors in a decisive five-run eighth inning) contributing to each of the Cubs’ tallies in their series-clinching win.
For a team that manager Dave Roberts hoped would be in “playoff mode” at this point — as they close in on another National League West division title, holding a 4 1/2-game lead at the end of play Tuesday — the maddening mental lapses in the field wasted what was otherwise an encouraging day for the team’s outlook on the mound.
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ANGELS
Kyle Farmer hit a three-run home run in the second inning to provide a well-timed jolt for a sputtering lineup, and Matt Wallner and Carlos Santana also went deep for the Minnesota Twins in a 10-5 victory over the Angels on Tuesday night to stop a four-game losing streak.
Pablo López (15-8) won his fourth straight start on the strength of 10 strikeouts over seven innings without an earned run, withstanding a three-run homer by Zach Neto in the fifth that cut the lead to 6-4.
The Twins (77-68), who had lost 15 of their previous 21 games, preserved a three-game edge with 17 games to go in the chase for the last of three American League wild-card spots in the playoffs that has tightened with their recent slide. Boston, Detroit and Seattle, the closest competitors, all began the night at 73-71.
From Ryan Kartje: When Lake McRee felt a pop in his right knee during bowl practice last December, the USC tight end didn’t think much of it at first. He finished the play, then lined up for another. Even ran a route. McRee may have kept going still, if a coach had not pulled him aside and told him something looked strange in his stride.
The diagnosis, McRee said, was “devastating.” A torn anterior cruciate ligament, his second in just over four years.
The timing was especially cruel. Not only would he miss the Holiday Bowl, which was shaping up to be a breakout moment. Considering when the tear occurred, it wasn’t clear, at the time, if McRee would be back for the start of USC’s 2024 campaign.
Beyond that, it was a major blow to the trajectory of the Trojans’ tight end room. Any hope that the position would suddenly play a major role in USC’s offense this season seemed to be put to rest with the injury.
But eight months later, McRee was miraculously back to full speed. And two games into this season, his fourth at USC, no pass catcher has had a bigger impact on the Trojans’ offense than the redshirt junior tight end, who leads the team in both receptions (nine) and receiving yards (137) and ranks eighth in the nation in both categories among tight ends.
How?
LAKERS
The Lakers will honor the late Jerry West on opening night with a ceremony and all season with a band on the left shoulder of their uniforms, the team announced Tuesday.
The purple jersey patch has No. 44 in gold at the center in honor of West, a 14-time All-Star guard known as Mr. Clutch and architect of the Showtime era as a team executive. He died in June at 86.
The Lakers will honor Jerry West on opening night and all season with a special jersey patch with his No. 44. pic.twitter.com/OiLXzw87CY— Dan Woike (@DanWoikeSports) September 10, 2024
The Lakers won five NBA championships and reached nine NBA Finals in a 12-year span under West’s direction, with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fortifying the roster.
Lakers hire Zach Guthrie to coach G League team
SPARKS
From Andrés Soto: It was just another one of those nights for the Sparks, a feeling that’s been all too familiar this season as they were dominated on their home floor by the Connecticut Sun 86-66 Tuesday night at Crypto.com Arena.
The Sparks, who had been approaching this two-game series with Connecticut as their unofficial “playoffs,” kept up for the most part in the first quarter, trailing by only two points at the end of the period and appearing ready to compete with the second-best team in the league for the second time in three nights.
“When we came out in the first quarter, I thought we did a lot of things that we wanted to accomplish,” Sparks head coach Curt Miller said. “[We] felt like we made some good adjustments going into what we considered our game two of the playoffs.”
It took 80 seconds for it to all fall apart.
U.S. MEN’S SOCCER
From Kevin Baxter: U.S. Soccer finally got its man Tuesday, announcing it has hired Mauricio Pochettino to coach the men’s national team.
Pochettino, a former player who grew up in Argentina and most recently coached Chelsea in the English Premier League, reportedly reached an agreement weeks ago to coach the U.S. men through the 2026 World Cup. But the deal couldn’t be closed until the final details of his departure from Chelsea last May were cleaned up.
With those issues resolved, he will be formally introduced as the team’s new coach at a news conference Friday morning in New York and will manage the U.S. for the first time in next month’s friendlies with Panama in Austin, Texas, and Mexico in Guadalajara. Mikey Varas, who formerly coached the U.S. under-20 team, managed the senior national team in this month’s games with Canada and New Zealand.
In three-nation coaching carousel, Canada has the best seat
THIS DATE IN SPORTS
1937 — Don Budge beats Gottfried von Cramm in five sets to win his first U.S. Open men’s singles title. Budge wins 6-1, 7-9, 6-1, 3-6, 6-1.
1964 — ABC television cancels Fight of the Week, ending 18 years of regularly scheduled prime-time boxing on U.S. broadcast network television.
1977 — In the last U.S. Open match played at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York, Guillermo Vilas beats Jimmy Connors, 2-6, 6-3, 7-6, 6-0, for the men’s singles title
1982 — Chris Evert wins her sixth U.S. Open singles title, defeating Hana Mandlikova, 6-3, 6-1.
1983 — Pittsburgh running back Franco Harris runs for 118 yards in Steelers 25-21 win at Green Bay to become the only the third player in NFL history to rush for 11,000 yards.
1985 — Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the all-time hit leader with his 4,192nd hit, breaking Ty Cobb’s record. Rose lines a 2-1 pitch off San Diego pitcher Eric Show to left-center field for a single in the first inning. It’s the 57th anniversary of Ty Cobb’s last game in the majors.
1988 — Mats Wilander wins the longest men’s final in U.S. Open history, edging Ivan Lendl, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4.
1994 — Andre Agassi wins the U.S. Open with a three-set victory over Michael Stich and becomes the first unseeded player to beat five seeded players in a Grand Slam and the first unseeded champion since Fred Stolle in 1966. Andre wins 6-1, 7-6, 7-5.
1999 — U.S. Open Women’s Tennis: Serena Williams wins her first Grand Slam title; beats World #1 Martina Hingis 6-3, 7-6.
2010 — James Madison, a top team in the Football Championship Subdivision, beats No. 13 Virginia Tech 21-16. The last time Virginia Tech lost to a I-AA team was 1985, when Richmond beat the Hokies 24-14 at Lane Stadium.
2010 — The Penn State women’s volleyball team has its record winning streak ends at 109 matches with a 28-26, 25-12, 25-18 loss to Stanford in a tournament at Florida.
2011 — Carolina’s Cam Newton becomes the first rookie to throw for more than 400 yards in his NFL opener in a 28-21 loss to Arizona.
2021 — Milwaukee Brewers throw a combined no-hitter to beat the Cleveland Indians 3-0. It was the record ninth no-hitter of the season.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com, and follow me on Twitter at @latimeshouston. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.