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New York Times
21 hours ago
- Climate
- New York Times
Sweat science: MLB players, teams devise methods to stay cool as temperatures rise
In between innings on the mound, Tampa Bay Rays starter Ryan Pepiot disappears into the dugout tunnel and parks himself near a portable air conditioning unit prepared for the right-hander's arrival. He places his pitching hand inside a device designed to cool his body's core temperature. With his left hand, he hydrates. First he sips from a bottle that is 'very salty and doesn't taste great,' he said. After the first out is recorded, he switches to a more appetizing mixture that includes DripDrop electrolyte packets. Advertisement Pepiot developed this routine last summer. It has become even more imperative with his team spending this season playing in the sweltering humidity of Tampa's George M. Steinbrenner Field. He used to finish the two bottles every four innings. Now he estimates he is consuming nearly twice as much. 'They've had to make extra ones for me this year,' Pepiot said. Unlike the other major North American sports — and European soccer — baseball plays the heart of its season under the summer sun, putting it in a uniquely difficult position as those summers continue to get hotter. As June now turns to July, baseball players across the country are dealing with different versions of the same question: How do you stay cool in this heat? Or, more to the point, how do you keep playing without cramping and vomiting? There are devices like the CoolMitt and regular hydration tests. There are precise instructions for how to consume liquids. There are ways to train your body to prepare for the elements. But sometimes, the best approach is the simple one: 'Drink as much water as possible and pray to God it's enough,' Rays starter Drew Rasmussen said. The heat has begun to make its mark on this season. Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz vomited in the outfield on a 96-degree late June afternoon in St. Louis. A day later, Detroit Tigers starter Casey Mize exited an outing in Tampa while suffering from cramps. The Atlanta Braves visited Citi Field last week in the midst of an East Coast heat wave that saw temperatures surpass 100 in certain parts of New York. A video board in the New York Mets clubhouse featured an illustration of a droplet with a two-word admonition: DRINK WATER. That was what Braves starter Spencer Schwellenbach did before facing the Mets a week ago Monday in the teeth of the heat wave. He hydrated 'way more than usual,' draining four or five bottles of water in the morning before flooding his system with sodium tablets and electrolytes at the ballpark. With the temperature hovering in the mid-80s that night, he logged seven scoreless innings. Advertisement 'I was peeing, like, every 30 minutes,' Schwellenbach said. 'It was unbelievable. But during the game I felt good.' The next day, with triple-digit heat before the game and a 97-degree first pitch, Mets outfielder Tyrone Taylor pointed to a Vitamin Water bottle with a pinkish hue sitting in his locker. The drink came courtesy of Jeremy Chiang, the club's performance nutrition coordinator. The coloring came from a hydration packet called Right Stuff. During the game, Chiang packed individual coolers of these drinks for each player. 'We get a lot of reminders just to drink a lot of water and take those,' Taylor said. The state of athletic nutrition has advanced to the point where teams can test players for hydration levels, measure the rates at which they sweat and devise specific plans for each individual. They can replace fluid and electrolytes with specialized drinks designed for each player, and they can bring down elevated body temperatures with ice baths and frozen towels. 'In baseball, it only takes being a little proactive to overcome it because you have opportunities to cool and to drink and to be in shade, especially at the pro level,' said Douglas Casa, CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute and one of the leading experts on heat management for athletes. 'It has to be more than taking a sip of fluid. It has to be meaningful.' In the not-so-distant future, Casa said, teams might have a dugout iPad showing each player's real-time hydration level — eventually, their body temperature, too — but even then, it will be imperative that teams prepare ahead of time. Casa said he worries first about a player's pregame hydration level — it's hard to make up ground, especially in difficult conditions — and he stressed that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for addressing it. Advertisement The Mets provided a series of guidelines for making it through last week's games. Not every suggestion made sense for every player. Mets starter Clay Holmes said he did not require cold towels in between innings. 'I don't really like getting, like, more wet,' Holmes said. 'I try to dry off a little bit.' The training staff advised players to build a base of cool liquids in the morning and consider taking a cold shower in the evening. During the games, the players were told to consume five to eight ounces of liquid every inning, even if they weren't thirsty. Chugging was not recommended. That might have been what went wrong for De La Cruz. After getting thrown out at the plate in the bottom of the third inning on June 21, he 'drank a bunch of water — I mean a bunch,' Reds manager Terry Francona said after the game. 'He went right out and got rid of it.' Mize, who lives in Tampa during the offseason, could not discern a similar cause for his own heat-related issues. 'I feel like we're pretty buttoned up, man,' Mize said. 'I drink half my body weight in ounces of water every day.' He embarked on his usual routine before his outing against the Rays: He ate a banana before the game and three more during it. A plethora of Gatorade, water and cold towels could not prevent his body from locking up with cramps after five innings. 'Get me out of Steinbrenner Field, I guess,' Mize said.'That place is rough.' In deference to the facility's lack of a roof and the instability of south Florida weather, Major League Baseball front-loaded Tampa Bay's schedule with home games this year as Tropicana Field undergoes repairs for damage sustained during Hurricane Milton. The Rays will play at Steinbrenner Field only 16 times in July and August. On Monday, the team welcomed the Athletics, the other club using a minor-league stadium as its home ballpark in 2025. The issues at Sutter Health Ballpark in Sacramento are well-documented, as Athletics pitcher Luis Severino relayed to The Athletic this past weekend: Sparse crowds, a lack of air conditioning, minimal cover from the sun during day games. The Athletics plan to play in Sacramento through at least 2027. By then, the organization hopes, construction will be complete on a new stadium in Las Vegas. The design plans released by the team describe the Vegas ballpark as 'climate-controlled,' with a roof to ward off the hellish desert sun. In the meantime, designated hitter Brent Rooker said, the days in Sacramento may be tough, but at the very least, the temperature at night has been tolerable. Advertisement 'Honestly, it hasn't been too bad at home,' Rooker said. 'What we've found at Sac is no matter how hot it has been during the day, it cools down a ton at night. So the night games have been, generally, fine.' The same cannot be said for the humidity in Tampa. Experts refer to something called the WetBulb Globe Temperature, which the National Weather Service describes as 'a measure of the heat stress in direct sunlight, which takes into account: temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover.' It's basically the WAR of heat — an advanced metric reducing multiple factors into a single number. FIFA has introduced guidelines calling for additional mid-game cooling breaks when the Wetbulb temperature exceeds 32 degrees Celsius (a little over 89 degrees Fahrenheit) — they have been a regular feature at this year's Club World Cup — and American football teams and long-distance runners have also become familiar with the Wetbulb concept while working with experts like Casa to keep athletes from overheating when the measurement gets too high. Baseball isn't as fraught as soccer and football, largely because each half-inning provides an opportunity for players to cool and hydrate. (In fact, Casa said he worries at least as much about the umpires who do not get regular breaks and often — ahem — are not in professional athlete shape.) It's imperative, Casa said, that players begin each game fully hydrated, replace lost fluids in-game, and keep their core temperature well shy of the 104-degree extreme danger zone. Each player handles heat differently, and simply cooling by a degree or two, Casa said, can improve physical, emotional and cognitive function. Or, more to the point: it can keep a player from puking in left field. 'That's why these people are making the effort,' Casa said. 'Like the Tampa Bay Rays, they're making the effort to figure it out because of the individual variability.' The Rays understood the elements would be unkind this season. The training staff recommends players drink tart cherry juice, beet juice and water mixed with a recovery pack called Juven. During spring training, the Rays tested each player's sweat rate — second baseman Brandon Lowe discovered that he was a 'Tier 2 sweater' — and Pepiot tried to acclimate to the heat by taking his dog on longer walks. The players try to spend time outside before games, 'so when it's time to go to work, I'm not getting kicked in the teeth because I've been sitting in the air conditioning all day,' Pepiot said. Advertisement The group has responded to the challenge. The team entered Monday trailing the New York Yankees by only a half game in the American League East. Tampa Bay has a winning record at home. Several Rays suggested those early months at Steinbrenner Field have prepared the club well for future heat waves this summer. 'It kind of seemed like a curse,' Rasmussen said. 'But maybe it was more of a blessing in disguise.' On Saturday afternoon, as the temperature at Baltimore's Camden Yards inched into the 90s, there were Rays swarmed across the infield for optional pregame fielding drills. The team had grown comfortable being uncomfortable. 'We're used to it now,' Pepiot said. 'We're playing outdoors in Tampa, Fla. It is not cool at all.' With reports from The Athletic's Cody Stavenhagen (Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; Photo: William Purnell / Getty Images)
Yahoo
23-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Tampa Bay Rays Waste Zack Littell Start
Tampa Bay Rays Waste Zack Littell Start originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The Tampa Bay Rays got some good news on Sunday with starter Zack Littell looking awesome through five innings of work. But Rays manager Kevin Cash made the call to pull Littell and put the game's outcome in the hands of his bullpen. Advertisement It did not work out. Tampa Bay's bullpen could not keep the Detroit Tigers in check as the visitors notched a 9-3 win at George M. Steinbrenner Field. The news, though, was not all bad for the Rays, who won the weekend series over the Tigers. What about Littell, though? He only threw 69 pitches in his Sunday outing, according to Littell had his splitter working overtime, keeping Tigers hitters off-balance with it. He faced 19 Detroit batters and did not throw one pitch in a three-ball count. Littell only gave up one earned run on Dillon Dingler's second-inning RBI single. As for the Rays' bullpen? It allowed eight earned runs late, putting Littell's hopes for a victory out of reach. Zack Littell not disappointed in start against Tigers 'Kind of felt like the culmination of all the stuff that I've kind of been trying to improve on,' Littell said after the game. 'Kind of came together today, so definitely want to build on that one.' Advertisement Tampa Bay has won 22 of its last 31 games and sits 2.5 games behind the New York Yankees in the American League East standings. The Rays will enjoy an off day on Monday. 'It would have been nice to get a sweep, but you kind of have to lean on what we've done and [that we are] playing some really good ball and just keep it going,' reliever Garrett Cleavinger said. Cash looked back on his choices after taking Littell out and gave his reasons for making such a move. 'Just given the off-day, the matchup, them turning the lineup back over with (Kerry) Carpenter and (Riley) Greene -- those guys are really good,' Cash said. Advertisement 'I thought Lit gave us every opportunity and felt like, where our bullpen was, that we could try to shorten the game a little bit.' With the day off, Tampa Bay has a chance to gives its players some rest and get ready for a postseason push this summer. This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 23, 2025, where it first appeared.
CBS News
07-06-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
Rays edge Marlins 4-3
Jonathan Aranda drove in two runs Friday to lead the Tampa Bay Rays over the Miami Marlins 4-3 at George M. Steinbrenner Field. It was the Rays' fourth straight win to improve to 34-29, and the Marlins' fifth consecutive loss to drop to 23-38. Aranda is hitting .379 at the Rays' temporary home ballpark. He drove in the first run on a single in the first inning, just one of two hits the Rays got with runners in scoring position in 14 chances. He drove in another run on a groundout in the two-run third inning. Aranda singled again in the seventh and scored what turned out to be the winning run after singles by Jake Mangum and Matt Thaiss. Zack Littell (6-5) held the Marlins to one run on six hits over six innings. Agustin Ramirez homered off Littell in the fourth inning and Otto Lopez hit a two-run homer in the top of the eighth inning off Edwin Uceta. Edward Cabrera (2-2) took the loss for the Marlins. Pete Fairbanks got his 12th save in front of a crowd of 8,448. With a runner on third base, Marlins second baseman Xavier Edwards laid down a bunt to Littell, who threw to first. Edwards beat the throw, but first-base umpire Ben May called him out for running through Aranda's glove even though the ball was dropped. The tying run was waved off. Marlins manager Clayton McCullough and Edwards were both ejected for arguing the non-reviewable call. It was the first career ejection for both. It was the Rays' eighth straight win in a Littell start, tying Shane McClanahan's 2023 streak for the fourth-longest such run in team history. Littell is 6-0 during that stretch. The Marlins will go with lefty Ryan Weathers, who will be making his first career start against Tampa Bay, on Saturday afternoon. Rays right-hander Taj Bradley (4-5, 3.95), who is 0-2 against the Marlins in his career, will start for the host team.
Washington Post
06-06-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
Jonathan Aranda drives in two and the Rays win their fourth straight, 4-3 over the Marlins
TAMPA, Fla. — Jonathan Aranda drove in two runs Friday to lead the Tampa Bay Rays over the Miami Marlins 4-3 at George M. Steinbrenner Field. It was the Rays' fourth straight win to improve to 34-29, and the Marlins' fifth consecutive loss to drop to 23-38. Aranda is hitting .379 at the Rays' temporary home ballpark. He drove in the first run on a single in the first inning, just one of two hits the Rays got with runners in scoring position in 14 chances. He drove in another run on a groundout in the two-run third inning.
New York Times
28-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
Twins takeaways: Hard-hit luck, Royce Lewis' slump, Carson McCusker's moment, injury updates
TAMPA, Fla. — For a team that scored 22 runs over its past eight games including Wednesday's shutout loss, the Minnesota Twins sound anything but defeated. No, they're not happy with the results. Yes, they understand they must do more to win games. But as they took stock of a 5-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the Twins recognized they deserved better after suffering their first series defeat since a month ago in Cleveland. Advertisement Although they've experienced plenty of good fortune in several recent victories over a 17-5 hot stretch, Lady Luck wasn't on the Twins' side Wednesday, which was only the fourth time they've been shut out this season and the first since April 24. Despite metrics showing the balls they hit carried a .308 expected batting average, the Twins finished with six base hits. The team's 15 hard-hit balls, 11 of which found gloves accounting for 12 outs, tied for its fifth-best output of the season. 'We had a tough time getting it going,' Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. 'I will say, the first three or four innings, we hit line drives all over the field. The name of the game is obviously scoring runs, but the way you score runs is by getting base runners and hitting line drives. We hit a ton of line drives, and they amounted to zilch. That's life in this game and it's going to happen sometimes. We had some days we didn't blast the ball all around the park, get a few base runners, make it happen and score a bunch of runs. (Wednesday) was the opposite.' Line drives were plentiful against Tampa Bay starter Drew Rasmussen. So were balls hit right at defenders. The Twins produced two hard-hit balls in each of the game's first four innings, but only one went for a hit: Trevor Larnach's leadoff single in the first. They had another hard-hit ball in the fifth, Royce Lewis' ground-ball double play, and none in the sixth. Rasmussen exited with one hit and one walk allowed and five strikeouts across six scoreless innings. The hard-hit misfortune continued against the Tampa Bay bullpen as the Twins singled twice to start the seventh and eighth innings, but had two more balls hit 95 mph or harder that found gloves, which killed each rally. Of the 25 balls put in play by the Twins, 15 were hard-hit. 'I thought we stayed through the middle of the field very well as a team,' Lewis said. 'The at-bats are competitive. We're always one swing away or we're putting up good at-bats. We've just got to get a little more runners in scoring position and we'll do that eventually.' The Twins might be far more concerned about their current stretch if not for several factors. During the eight-game run, the Twins went 4-4. Their pitchers yielded 30 runs during the span, about 3.8 per game. The poor output has come against Kansas City and Tampa Bay, two teams whose staff ERAs are better than the league average. The other, Cleveland, always plays tightly contested games against the Twins. Advertisement The Twins hope Matt Wallner and Byron Buxton can return to the lineup soon from injury. Adding one or both should provide a boost. 'There will be better days than we just experienced,' Baldelli said. 'If we have the same offensive game the next time we step on the field, we're going to score a few runs. There is no way we're going to hit line drives and not score runs.' Here are several more Twins takeaways after a hot, outdoor series in Tampa. • Lewis is taking his current 0-for-24 slump hard. He used a more open stance on Wednesday simply to try to have fun. In that sense, Lewis acknowledged an 0-for-4 effort in which he had a 106.3 mph lineout, a 103.4 mph double play, a 97.2 mph flyout and a 99.7 mph flyout made the hitless day a little easier to accept. Lewis was blunt as he explained a frustrating stretch that has him hitting .138/.200/.215 on the season. 'I'm at a point where the hope is gone,' Lewis said. 'I just do my job as best as I can. If I keep hitting the ball hard, they say it's going to find a hole, but I haven't seen it yet. … Feels like a Wiffle Ball game right now truly because you know how the Wiffle Ball stays up? That's what my ball feels like. I'm hitting it. It feels good and it's just staying up a little bit. Hopefully, I can produce for the team soon.' • After he played nine innings in right field Tuesday at Triple-A St. Paul, Wallner is scheduled to play nine innings as the Saints' designated hitter Wednesday and nine more in right field Thursday. If he completes the run without a setback, Wallner, who has been out since April 16 with a left hamstring strain, could join the Twins when they open a three-game series in Seattle on Friday. Through Tuesday, Wallner was 6-for-16 with a double, three homers and seven RBIs during his rehab assignment. Advertisement • Out with a concussion, Buxton took batting practice on the field with his teammates Wednesday. Even though he hasn't played since May 15 in Baltimore, the Twins' center fielder is unlikely to require a rehab assignment, as long as he returns to the lineup soon. The Twins are optimistic Buxton is on the verge of returning from the concussion list. • Known for his raw power and prodigious homers, even Carson McCusker found it funny his first major-league hit was a bloop single. After an 0-for-5 stretch with four strikeouts to start his career, McCusker hit a 66.7 mph blooper to right for a pinch-hit single in the eighth inning. Congratulations to Carson McCusker on his first Major League hit!!! 👏 — Minnesota Twins (@Twins) May 28, 2025 McCusker has made only two starts since his May 18 promotion. He said learning how to prepare for a pinch-hit appearance is a work in progress. 'It's definitely a learning curve for sure, at first not really knowing,' McCusker said. 'I hadn't really done it in my career before. Just trying to figure it out, knowing when to go get ready in the cage, how to do it and kind of keep the body hot. Over the past week or so, I've learned how to do it a little better.' McCusker eventually plans to give his first hit ball, which sat in a Ziploc bag on Baldelli's desk after Wednesday's game, to his father. (Top photo of Carlos Correa: Kevin Sabitus / Getty Images)
