
Cubs announce extension for baseball operations boss Jed Hoyer
But with the Cubs sharing the National League's best record with the Milwaukee Brewers entering Monday's play, Hoyer has been rewarded with a multiyear extension announced prior to the Cubs' series opener at Milwaukee.
Hoyer was hired by Theo Epstein to serve as the team's general manager after the 2011 season. After the Cubs won the 2016 World Series and made five playoff appearances in a six-year stretch with the duo at the top of the organization, Hoyer was asked to assume Epstein's president of baseball operations responsibilities when Epstein left following the 2021 season.
Hoyer signed a five-year contract at the time. Specifics on his extension were not released.
"I'm so grateful for the Ricketts family's trust and support for 14 years," Hoyer said in a statement. "The Cubs are a special organization with an amazing fan base. I'm excited to keep building on the momentum we have and to work with a terrific baseball operations staff to consistently deliver a championship-caliber team for this great city."
The Cubs failed to reach the playoffs and posted a 311-337 record (.480) in Hoyer's first four seasons at the helm. But with trade acquisitions such as All-Star outfielders Pete Crow-Armstrong and Kyle Tucker leading the way, the Cubs have fashioned a 62-43 record and sat atop the National League Central most of this season.
The announcement of Hoyer's contract extension provides extra stability in the final days before Major League Baseball's trading deadline. If any rival general managers believed he might need to be more aggressive in order to keep his job -- and demand more in deals as a result -- then that bargaining angle has been quashed.
--Field Level Media

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Telegraph
23 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Tesla Model Y review: Long overdue revamp fails to address the world's favourite EV's main flaws
There have certainly been better years for Tesla, and scarcely a day goes by without more doomslaying for the electric car maker founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Elon Musk became the company's largest shareholder in 2004 and chief executive in 2008. In 22 years, the company has become a phenomenon, with growth partly fuelled by the undoubted virtuosity of its cars, but also profits driven by environmental grants and CO2 trading with traditional car makers. Tesla has seen whopping share-value growth and made life-changing amounts for its investors, which perhaps also fuels the fan-boy hype. One estimate suggested that $1,000 invested in 2010 would now be worth almost $270,000 (£203,000), and in February this year Tesla's worth exceeded one trillion US dollars. Where rival car manufacturers have been worthy-but-dull investments, Tesla took off like a SpaceX rocket, at times the 11th and then the sixth most valuable company in the world. Then there's the Preston Tucker -like hucksterism of Musk, adored as a visionary engineer and rainmaker by some, loathed by others for his grant-aid grabbing and Bitcoin-investments hypocrisy, his toadying up to President Trump, his bullying behaviour and vote-buying in Wisconsin, among others. Oh, and that straight-arm salute at Trump's inauguration… Backlash against Musk The backlash has been a while coming, but it has been furious, with the share price tumbling by 10 per cent at the time of writing, sales plummeting, pickets around North American dealerships and the questioning of Musk's Panglossian announcements, which increasingly fail to materialise. As rivals including Waymo, Volkswagen and others take the lead in self-driving cars; established car makers and the Chinese catch up with the EV revolution just at a time when the public becomes disenchanted with them; and Trump halts the EV grants that have been so crucial to Tesla's success. Investors are questioning Musk's commitment to Tesla, and even he admits that it's a 'rocky road ahead'. As for the Model Y, Tesla's SUV mainstay and in 2023 the world's best-selling car, a revamp earlier this year hasn't exactly been a runaway success. In the first six months of this year, Tesla's European market share plummeted from 2.4 per cent to 1.6 per cent, and sales of the Model Y, while still the best-selling BEV in Europe, were about 50 per cent down in the first five months, although they picked up in June. Current owners speak out While I was waiting for a Tesla Supercharger at a motorway service station, the owner of a current Model Y came up to talk. 'Is that the new Y?' he asked. 'How's it going?' He assailed me with his car's issues: software glitches, patchy build quality, terrible ride quality, uncomfortable seats, poor dealer servicing – along with massive depreciation, after Tesla dropped the price of the Model Y by up to £8,000 in January 2023. This is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it revamp; a blade-type front light bar and a shuffling of panel gaps at the rear to make repairs simpler and cheaper. It has the same steel and aluminium bodyshell but it is more aerodynamic. The suspension consists of front wishbones, with a multi-link rear and passive damping. Yet overall the Model Y is still weirdly dumpy, with a mysteriously high, bowed roofline. Our test car had £2,100-worth of 20in wheels (the standard items are 19in), £1,300 for the white paint (now a priced option – only black and grey are standard) and the £3,400 enhanced Auto Pilot system, all of which takes the price from the standard £48,990 to £55,790 on the road. Business contracts, which are where many of these cars are sold, start at £531 per month for a three-year/8,000 miles-a-year deal. Competition, which when the Model Y was launched five years ago was scant, is now myriad. So think of the Skoda Enyaq, Polestar 4, BYD Sealion 7, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV9 or Renault Scenic E-Tech – and that's before you get to the Germans. Inside information Using the credit card-sized key or a programmed mobile phone, opening the car requires a tap in an unmarked place on the driver's side centre pillar. The interior resembles a Hollywood version of an evil computer boss's office, stark with grey and matt black fabrics, along with plastics interspersed with aluminium. Warm and welcoming it is not. With acoustic glass all round, the sound-deadening is eerie and your ears pop with the pressure change as the doors shut. Accommodation is generous, with copious leg and head room front and rear, although the front seats are mounted quite high. It only has five seats; there's no word yet on whether the AWD Long Range will get a seven-seat option as before. It takes a while to find an ostensibly comfortable driving position, partly because the steering column adjustment is buried in the touchscreen. The low base of the windscreen gives the impression of looking down at the road but, much worse, the front seats are spectacularly uncomfortable during a long journey, due to a strange shape on the backrest and an unsupportive squab. At 2,138 litres with the rear seats folded, the load space is massive, and there's further storage under the boot floor and beneath the bonnet. The electric folding rear seats should be shown to rivals as an example of how to do it; the amateur-hour folding-plank luggage space cover as an example of how not to… It weighs 1,901kg and tows up to 1.6 tons. Too clever by half 'They've given you an indicator stalk,' said the PR in hushed tones, as if Tesla had actually invented the steering-column stalk instead of removing it from its cars and then, when drivers didn't like that, reinstating it. Apart from that, there are few buttons and the central touchscreen dominates the driving experience, by turns brilliant and ingenious and at others exasperating, stupid and distracting. Much of the innovation is too clever by half and a quarter as useful. Take the Auto Shift system, which automatically changes between reverse and forward gears and vice versa when manoeuvring, but quite often leaves you in the wrong gear. The Autopilot 'self-driving' system works all right, but is a poor driver, braking in the middle of corners, slamming on the brakes at nothing, taking its speed limit cue from slip roads and steering erratically through bends. There's no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in a Tesla for a variety of reasons, not all of them understandable, and the mobile-to-car pairing is far from seamless. The automatic tilting mirrors are useful when reverse parking next to a kerb, but not when reversing normally; changing between the two is a finger-stabbing chore. On the road Changes to the drivetrain are few; improved lubrication for the motor and step-down transmission means less parasitic losses, while the motor magnets have better isolation to reduce flux interference. The range is improved to 387 miles with a commendable efficiency of 4.4 miles per kWh; during a week and 800 miles of mixed use, I achieved 4m/kWh, which equates to a range of 312 miles. Buttons to operate the transmission are in the roof lining, or there's an on-screen control graphic – of course there is. The accelerator action is not linear, so you get a bit of surging. It's a similar story with the unprogressive brakes; the blended electrical retardation and friction lining brake-by-wire system feels as though it would have been better with another six months of development. The Model Y is certainly fast and overtaking holds no fears, although as with any EV, if you spend too long with the accelerator to the floor you'll pay for it in reduced range. The ride is pretty terrible and noisy. The springing feels soft yet the damping is abrupt and harsh, while the bodyshell feels less than the last word in stiffness. This might be due to the 20in wheel option, but it clumps and crashes noisily and never quite settles on motorways. Similarly, and despite the massive tyres, the handling doesn't inspire confidence. The turn-in to corners feels inconsistent and the softly sprung front end reacts badly if you back out halfway through, or adjust your chosen line. The Telegraph verdict The revamped Model Y is efficient, relatively light, well priced and swooshes with the best of EV rivals. It's not much fun to drive, although that also applies to a lot of rivals. But then, as James Carville, Bill Clinton's strategist, once said: 'It's the economy, stupid.' Tesla's Supercharger network costs 36-39p per kW compared with the highway robbery of some providers charging upwards of 85p per kW for rival battery-powered SUVs I could recommend as decent drives. In addition, the tax savings for those running a car through the business are generous (under salary sacrifice, some can save hundreds per month in tax). Small wonder it's so popular; during my week-long test I saw a lot of Tesla taxis, and cabbies know a cheap-to-run vehicle better than most. I just find it hard to forgive the ride and handling and the bloody uncomfortable seats. I would love to spend a couple of days with Tesla's vehicle attributes team to address those issues, but as we know, the firm doesn't speak to anyone, it simply sells cars. The facts On test: Model Y Long Range Rear-Wheel-Drive Body style: five-door, five-seat SUV/crossover On sale: now How much? from £48,990 (£55,790 as tested) How fast? 125mph, 0-62mph in 5.4sec How efficient? 4.38m/kWh (WLTP Combined); 4m/kWh on test Powertrain: 83kWh net (78kWh) lithium-ion NMC battery with single AC permanent magnet synchronous motor, rear-wheel drive Range: 387 miles (WLTP), 312 miles on test Charging: 11kW on-board charger; DC charging up to 250kW with 20-80 per cent in 27min Maximum power/torque: 335bhp/332lb ft CO2 emissions: 0g/km (tailpipe), 23.6g/km (CO2 equivalent well-to-wheel) VED: £10 first year, £620 next five years, then £195 Warranty: four years/60,000 miles on vehicle, eight years/150,000 miles on battery The rivals Skoda Enyaq SportLine 85kW RWD From £46,585 While prices start at £39,010, this is the closest version to the Model Y, with an 85kWh battery, 354-mile range, a top speed of 111mph and 0-62mph in 6.5 sec. The optics are a bit mumsy, but it rides well and has comfortable seats. Kia EV9 RWD From £65,920 A striking seven-seat electric SUV, with a range of 349 miles from its 99.8kWh battery, with a top speed of 114mph and 0-62mph in 9.4sec. Pretty good to drive, but most buyers choose the more expensive all-wheel drive versions.


Reuters
23 minutes ago
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UK's Smith+Nephew first-half profit jumps 11.2%, launches $500 million buyback
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Reuters
23 minutes ago
- Reuters
Oil little changed as OPEC+ output hikes counter Russia disruption concerns
Aug 5 (Reuters) - Oil prices were little changed on Tuesday as traders assessed rising supply by OPEC+ against worries of weaker demand and U.S. President Donald Trump's new threats on India over its Russian oil purchases. Brent crude futures dipped 1 cent to $68.75 a barrel by 0631 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was down 2 cents at $66.28. Both contracts fell by more than 1% in the previous session to settle at their lowest in a week. Both benchmarks have receded because extra capacity from OPEC+ is acting as a buffer for any shortfalls in Russian supplies, said Priyanka Sachdeva, a senior market analyst at Phillip Nova. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, together known as OPEC+, agreed on Sunday to raise oil production by 547,000 barrels per day for September. It marks a full and early reversal of the group's largest tranche of output cuts, amounting to about 2.5 million bpd, or around 2.4% of global demand, though analysts caution the actual amount returning to the market will be less. The rising supplies come amid renewed concerns about demand, with some analysts expecting faltering economic growth in the second half of the year. JPMorgan analysts said on Tuesday the risk of a U.S. recession was high as labour demand has stalled. In addition, China's July Politburo meeting signalled no additional policy easing, with the focus shifting to structural rebalancing of the world's second-largest economy, the analysts wrote in a note. At the same time, investors are eyeing possible supply disruptions. U.S. President Donald Trump has said he could impose 100% secondary tariffs on Russian crude buyers such as India after announcing a 25% tariff on Indian imports in July. On Monday, Trump again threatened higher tariffs on Indian goods over the Russian oil purchases. New Delhi called his attack "unjustified" and vowed to protect its economic interests, deepening the trade rift between the two countries. India is the biggest buyer of seaborne crude from Russia, importing about 1.75 million bpd from January to June this year, up 1% from a year ago, according to data provided to Reuters by trade sources. Traders are also awaiting any developments on the latest U.S. tariffs on its trading partners, which analysts fear could slow economic growth and dampen fuel demand.