Texas A&M's Buzz Williams has finalized a six-year deal to become the next coach at Maryland, sources told ESPN.

The move, announced Tuesday by Maryland, brings the veteran head coach from the SEC to the Big Ten and marks one of the highest-profile moves in this coaching carousel.

Williams has reached 11 NCAA tournaments over his 18 years as a head coach -- a run that includes five consecutive NCAA appearances at Marquette, three straight at Virginia Tech and each of the last three years at Texas A&M.

Williams has gone 373-228 as a college head coach, which includes one year at New Orleans in 2006-07. This season, Texas A&M finished 23-11, came in fifth in the rugged SEC and earned a No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament.

Williams will replace Kevin Willard, who left for Villanova after a protracted and awkward exit from Maryland that included a blunt assessment of the program's deficiencies.

Williams' buyout to leave Texas A&M dropped to $1 million on Tuesday, per his contract. Maryland is set to receive $2 million from Villanova for Willard's departure.

Williams takes over a job with national championship expectations, as Gary Williams won the 2002 national title there. Since arriving in the Big Ten in 2014, the results haven't matched the consistent success that Williams delivered in the ACC. The Terrapins have reached the Sweet 16 just twice since joining the Big Ten, once under Mark Turgeon and under Willard this year.

Buzz Williams is a known program builder and brings familiarity with the general recruiting footprint from his time at Virginia Tech. The strength of the Maryland job lies in leveraging the DMV area, where Williams brings familiarity.

Williams was at Virginia Tech from 2014 to '19, going 100-69 over five seasons before leaving for Texas A&M. He led the Hokies to three consecutive NCAA tournaments for the first time in school history.

The move marks the fourth power conference coach to leave one power league for another during this cycle, joining Willard's jump to Villanova, Sean Miller's move from Xavier to Texas and Darian DeVries' jump from West Virginia to Indiana.

Three players from the Detroit Pistons and two from the Minnesota Timberwolves have received suspensions as a result of Sunday night's skirmish between the two teams, the league announced Tuesday.

Pistons center Isaiah Stewart received the stiffest penalty -- a two-game ban -- while teammates Marcus Sasser and Ron Holland II each received a one-game suspension. Minnesota's Donte DiVincenzo and Naz Reid also were hit with one-game bans.

In handing out the penalties, NBA executive vice president Joe Dumars said Stewart received the longer ban because of his "repeated history of unsportsmanlike acts."

Reid and DiVincenzo will serve their suspensions on Tuesday vs. Denver, while Stewart, Holland and Sasser will miss Wednesday's game vs. Oklahoma City.

The skirmish began with 8:36 left in the first half of Sunday's game with the Pistons leading 39-30. Stewart had received a technical foul just moments earlier when he bumped DiVincenzo hard after the whistle. Then Holland was called for a foul as he slapped the ball out of Reid's hands near the baseline.

The two exchanged words, DiVincenzo stepped between them and grabbed Holland's jersey, and soon all 10 players on the court and multiple coaches and trainers were part of the scrum, which included players falling into spectators seated along the baseline.

As the players were being separated, Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff and Timberwolves assistant Pablo Prigioni were screaming at each other and had to be separated by team personnel.

Bickerstaff and Prigioni were among those ejected but didn't receive suspensions.

"Obviously things went too far," Bickerstaff said after the game. "But what you see is guys looking out for one another, guys trying to protect one another, guys trying to have each other's backs. ... Those are nonnegotiables in our locker room."

The game featured 12 technical fouls, the most in an NBA game since March 23, 2005, per Opta Stats.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

With two weeks to go in the NBA's regular season, there are two open head coaching jobs.

On Friday, the Memphis Grizzlies fired longtime coach Taylor Jenkins, almost three months to the day of a similarly abrupt and surprising firing in Sacramento, as the Kings dismissed Mike Brown amid a losing streak in late December.

Will more jobs open over the next several weeks? Last season, seven teams changed coaches, including three -- the Cleveland Cavaliers, Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns -- that did so after making the playoffs.

Here's our annual look at the NBA's coaching carousel, with the pros and cons of each vacancy and who could fill them:

Memphis Grizzlies

• 2024-25 record: 44-31 (No. 5 in West)

• Previous coach: Taylor Jenkins (fired March 28; assistant Tuomas Iisalo takes over on interim basis)

• Lead executive: Zach Kleiman (hired in 2019)

Positive: A promising young core

Despite suffering injuries throughout the season, the Grizzlies are still in the top five in the Western Conference standings, and with the league's fifth-best net rating -- trailing only the Oklahoma City Thunder, Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics and Houston Rockets.

With Ja Morant, Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr., Memphis' core is entering its prime, which should give the Grizzlies runway to contend for the rest of this decade. Kleiman has shown that he can find talented second-round and undrafted players, giving Memphis a deep and versatile roster behind that star talent.

One NBA executive said this is a team that, if things break right, is reminiscent of the Cleveland Cavaliers last season before Kenny Atkinson came in and the franchise improved this season. That's the kind of boost Kleiman and the Grizzlies believe is possible.

Negatives: Small market, recent instability

Memphis is far from an NBA glamour market, and this team has had a lot of friction and uncertainty over the past year.

The Grizzlies fired virtually Jenkins' entire coaching staff last summer, bringing in -- among others -- Iisalo and Noah LaRoche to fill it out. Then, not only was Jenkins dismissed Friday, but so was LaRoche, who hired several player development coaches.

Now, on to the roster. In addition to numerous injuries, the Grizzlies have had some off-court issues with Morant over the years. The team had mitigated Morant's absence thanks to its impressive depth and, until Friday, Jenkins' work on the sidelines.

Now, on to the roster. In addition to numerous injuries, the Grizzlies have had a series of off-court issues with Morant over the years. The team had mitigated Morant's absence thanks to its other two stars, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Desmond Bane, its impressive depth and, until Friday, Jenkins' work on the sidelines.

Who could get the job?

Although he has only an interim tag, the expectation around the league is that Iisalo will get a long look. The Grizzlies brought him from Europe last offseason and put him on Jenkins' staff, and he will get a chance to show what he can do in the playoffs. If Iisalo is not the choice, it's hard to know Memphis' next step.

Sacramento Kings

• 2024-25 record: 36-39 (No. 10 in West)

• Previous coach: Mike Brown (fired in December; assistant Doug Christie takes over on interim basis)

• Lead executive: Monte McNair (hired in 2020)

Positive: Veteran, ready-to-win talent

It's hard to project Sacramento winning a title with its roster. But a coach taking over a team with Domantas Sabonis, DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, Keegan Murray and Malik Monk has a chance to be competitive in each game. That gives the Kings' vacancy a boost, given the typical level of talent at open jobs.

With all of those players under team control for at least a couple of more seasons, there is some runway for them to play together, adding to the appeal for a new coach.

Negatives: Small market, decades of instability

Here's all you need to know about the Kings: Since moving to Sacramento in 1984, two coaches have had at least one full season with a winning record: Rick Adelman, who did it for eight straight seasons from 1999 to 2006, and Mike Brown the past two seasons. Sacramento has made the playoffs in three of the 33 seasons not coached by Adelman, underscoring the difficulty of this job.

The departure of assistant general manager Wes Wilcox, who took the GM job for the Utah Utes earlier this month, also points to potential further destabilization this offseason, and at least the possibility of more changes in the Kings' front office. Another drawback is the club's unwillingness to pay into the luxury tax, something owner Vivek Ranadive has avoided.

Who could get the job?

Christie has long-standing ties to the organization, going back to being a starter on those iconic teams of the early 2000s under Adelman. Christie has done a solid job the past few months since taking over for Brown. Christie will likely get a look to remain as coach, but Ranadive has repeatedly hired big names over the past decade -- including George Karl, Dave Joerger, Luke Walton and Brown -- so there's certainly a chance he pursues a bigger name this summer.

Reporting by Ramona Shelburne, Tim MacMahon and Michael C. Wright

SO MUCH HAS been said in the war of words between Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green and the Memphis Grizzlies organization that it's hard to believe just how close he came to signing there as a free agent in the summer of 2023.

"Very," a source close to Green told ESPN, when asked how serious Green was about leaving the franchise he'd won four titles with to join the young upstarts he'd feuded with so publicly during a heated six-game playoff series a year earlier.

Green had even called Warriors coach Steve Kerr and teammates Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson to warn them that he was close to joining the Grizzlies via a lucrative sign-and-trade deal, sources told ESPN, before Warriors owner Joe Lacob and new general manager Mike Dunleavy swooped in with a four-year, $100 million extension to keep him in the Bay.

The Grizzlies were just as serious about acquiring Green, sources said, believing his experience, basketball intelligence and toughness were what the franchise needed as it tried to move past a disastrous season in which superstar point guard Ja Morant had been suspended eight games by NBA commissioner Adam Silver for brandishing a firearm in a social media post, and then the Grizzlies endured a disappointing first-round series loss to the seventh-seeded Los Angeles Lakers.

Every analysis the team did on its season called for swapping out brash, bruising forward Dillon Brooks for a more mature veteran, someone with a similar edge whom Morant and uber-talented young power forward Jaren Jackson Jr. would respect and learn from.

Green, who'd had a controversial year of his own in Golden State, was the Grizzlies' top choice and Memphis did everything it could -- even offering more than he ultimately signed for in Golden State, sources said -- to lure him away.

They wanted Green so badly, sources said, because he saw not only how good the Grizzlies were during their epic 2022 playoff series, but also how far they still had to go.

"Memphis is going to get their reality check," Green said after that series.

And indeed, everything that has happened in Memphis since that high-water mark in 2022 has been something of a reality check.

Ultimately, Memphis pivoted to sign veteran Derrick Rose and trade for guard Marcus Smart in an attempt to fill the void left by Brooks, whose toughness and work ethic were critical, but perhaps underappreciated, cultural tone-setters for the young Grizzlies. But the Smart deal didn't pay dividends, prompting the Grizzlies to trade him to Washington in a salary-dump deal before this year's deadline.

They'd also tried to trade for Mikal Bridges and Dorian Finney-Smith, sources said, because they knew they needed an elite wing defender to replace Brooks.

It remains to be seen whether Morant, Jackson and Desmond Bane are good enough to develop into the kind of championship contenders they once seemed destined to become.

If they are, what will it take to get them back on that track?

The short answer, the Grizzlies believe, was the decision they made that longtime coach Taylor Jenkins would not be the man to lead them there. He was fired, in one of the more shockingly timed firings in recent NBA history, just nine games before the playoffs were set to begin.

The long answer is more complicated, but it still centers on optimizing Morant. And they're running out of time to find the right leadership and direction to do so.

ONE DAY AFTER the team fired Jenkins, Memphis general manager Zach Kleiman stood in front of a lectern and explained his decision to fire his head coach and two assistants so late in the season.

"Urgency is a core principle of ours," he said. "My expectations are clarity of direction."

He didn't elaborate beyond those two main points.

But anyone close to the team this season knows the lack of clarity he was referring to.

Offensively, the Grizzlies had become something of a science experiment this season, offering glimpses at how several radical offensive concepts from Europe, and spacing principles found in hockey and soccer, would work in the NBA, but also how difficult it is to get full buy-in from players to implement them.

There were two architects and one supervisor -- Jenkins -- charged with blending the competing visions. One was Tuomas Iisalo, a Finnish coach who'd had a meteoric rise in Europe by implementing innovative offensive concepts around pick-and-roll schemes, pacing and offensive rebounding. Another was player development specialist Noah LaRoche, whom the Grizzlies had lured from a consulting role with the San Antonio Spurs and charged with teaching an offense that prioritized spacing and largely did away with pick-and-rolls and dribble handoffs.

Jenkins, the fifth-longest-tenured NBA coach, had never met either of the assistants before interviewing them, one source said.

Still, the Grizzlies paid a seven-figure buyout to Paris Basketball, which Iisalo (pronounced EE-za-lo) coached to a EuroCup championship last season. Memphis also gave Iisalo and LaRoche seven-figure salaries. That's especially lucrative for a second-row assistant such as LaRoche, but it's also extraordinarily unusual for a second-row assistant to have his fingerprints all over the revamping of a team's offensive system. In fact, Memphis hired LaRoche first (in May 2024) with the intention of building the staff of assistants around him, one source said. The club wouldn't bring in Iisalo until nearly two months later.

To make room for these new voices, Kleiman insisted Jenkins replace five of the assistant coaches who'd been with him throughout his time in Memphis: Brad Jones, Blake Ahearn, Scoonie Penn, Vitaly Potapenko and Sonia Raman.

Jenkins went along with the request, in an effort to be a good partner, said a league source, who added, "Taylor shouldn't have allowed that to happen."

The coach was so upset at the news he'd have to deliver to each of his longtime assistants, he invited each over to his house in Memphis for individual sessions.

The front office felt the new approach needed space to get off the ground, according to a source. So the club cut ties with virtually everyone associated with the team's ways of the past.

"It was a total shock because we'd already had our exit meetings and were preparing for the summer," one former assistant said. "We'd all gone away for a few weeks and came back to start work again. Taylor felt so bad about it. But apparently they decided to go in another direction."

"Going in another direction" has become cliché -- a nice way of glossing over a difficult situation and avoiding specific issues. But in this case that's exactly what it was.

"They were going all-in on these new concepts," another source close to the situation said.

The immediate, unintended effect was to signal to the rest of the league, and the Grizzlies' players, that Jenkins was on thin ice.

"Players aren't stupid," another source said. "They know where this is heading when you fire five assistants after the season."

And when the job is getting players to buy into new offensive concepts, already uncomfortable for most NBA players, being taught different schemes by two assistant coaches immediately undercut Jenkins' authority.

He had overcome that already after Kleiman hired him as a first-time head coach in 2018. Jenkins had established a strong reputation as an assistant on Mike Budenholzer's staff in Atlanta and Milwaukee. But he had a nontraditional background to say the least, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton School of Business and eschewing a career on Wall Street for NBA coaching.

He had played high school ball and intramural basketball at Penn, but that was it. Still, players routinely said he won them over with his work ethic, basketball IQ and affable personality. It didn't hurt that he was a burly, 6-foot-3 guy who could jump in against anyone on the court.

But this was an entirely different challenge.

"The principles that we're talking about, the amount of movement that we're going to have from off of the ball is going to be significantly different," Jenkins said on the first day of training camp, which was held at the Ensworth School, a luxurious private school on the outskirts of Nashville.

"But some of our lead core guys that drive our offense, we have to react to how they're adopting the system and make sure that we're all fitting in the right place."

Simplified, Memphis' offense consisted of utilizing pace with purpose and keeping the ball off the floor. If there's an easy bucket to be had, take it immediately, otherwise morph into attack mode to break down and tax the opposing defense. Some of the offense was predicated on a player breaking down his man one-on-one without a screen. Initially, Morant seemed open to the new concepts that Jenkins and Kleiman had considered a year before implementing them. "I'm seeing a lot of different looks now," Morant said. "I'm getting a lot of catch-and-shoot opportunities, back cuts, catch on the run, so I feel like it plays right into my hands and allows me to get better looks and not have to create so much."

But when asked how he felt about playing off the ball more, which is what the new offense called for, Morant seemed less enthusiastic.

"If that's what it is," he said. "Whatever coach wanna call, man, I'm fine with it."

FOR ALL OF his individual gifts, Morant has never been a great pick-and-roll player. He's not even above average, according to ESPN Research.

Morant averages just 0.99 points per direct pick as the ball handler in his career when using an on-ball screen. That ranks 39th among 56 players to run at least 5,000 on-ball screens as the ball handler since 2019-20.

He also has just a 44.7% effective field goal percentage on jumpers when coming off an on-ball screen in his career. Only Russell Westbrook has been worse among 111 players to take at least 750 jumpers when coming off an on-ball screen since 2019-20.

The appeal of an offense that doesn't rely on pick-and-rolls is obvious for a franchise built around Morant's offensive talents.

LaRoche's system replaces pick-and-rolls with relocations. Players move away from the ball handler into space, instead of bringing their defender toward the player with the ball. The goal is to create space and quality shots in the shortest time possible.

Iisalo's expertise was to be deployed in coaching pace and the transition offense, where Morant excels.

Statistically, the results were immediate and impressive. The Grizzlies led the NBA in scoring, pace and ranked second in offensive rebounding rate as they bolted to a 35-16 record. Jackson's versatile skill set also shined, the big man averaging 22.4 points with a true shooting percentage of 59.7%, both near his career bests.

The Grizzlies set the fewest ball screens in the league by a wide margin -- 40.4 per game, almost 10 fewer than any other team, according to Second Spectrum data. The Grizzlies have run a total of 49.8 ball screens and dribble handoffs per game, the fewest in the NBA since tracking began in the 2013-14 season.

Opponents seemed confused by the new offense and Memphis was making them pay. Green seemed genuinely impressed.

"They run an unconventional offense. ... What they're doing is weird," Green told reporters after Golden State's home win over Memphis on Nov. 15, a little more than a month before the Grizzlies routed the Warriors by 51 points in Memphis. "In the NBA, most rotations and patterns are pretty similar. What they're doing is, like, I haven't seen it."

After a while, though, the novelty wore off. Opponents adjusted. Injuries mounted. Jackson sat out five games in March because of a sprained ankle. Morant has been in and out of the lineup all season, sitting out extended stretches because of a hip subluxation, sprained AC joint in his surgically repaired right shoulder and a hamstring strain that sidelined him for the final six games of Jenkins' tenure. Morant returned for Saturday's home loss to the Lakers, the first game after Jenkins' firing.

And as the sample size grew larger, other issues and side effects started to emerge. The new offense worked great against bad teams but not against good ones. Memphis' loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Feb. 8, when Morant finished with 16 points on 7-of-19 shooting, started a discouraging trend. Since that game, the Grizzlies have lost their past 11 games against teams that currently have winning records.

Perhaps most concerning was how Morant was functioning in the offense. Instead of freeing him up in transition and for moments of individual brilliance, the system was effectively taking the ball out of his hands. This season, Morant is averaging career lows in touches, average touch length and dribbles per touch this season. Morant's 22.4 points per game is his lowest scoring average since 2020-21, his second season, and his field goal percentage (.448) is the worst of his career.

That didn't sit well with him, and he voiced his frustrations publicly and privately, sources said. As the Grizzlies spiraled, losing six of eight after the All-Star break, pressure mounted to the point where one Western Conference general manager believed, until the firings, that the team would be forced to shop Morant this summer.

Jenkins tried to adjust and compromise. He started calling for more pick-and-roll sets. In March, Memphis ran 59.8 on-ball screens and handoffs per game, up significantly from the earlier months of the season.

On March 7, Morant capped a comeback road win over the injury-ravaged Dallas Mavericks by scoring 11 of his 31 points in the final 6:15. All five of his buckets down the stretch came off of pick-and-roll or isolation, the sort of dribble-centric plays the Grizzlies had gone away from for most of the season. Morant had exhibited his delight in the final minute by flexing in the paint after making a floater and dancing while pretending to play guitar after drilling a dagger 3-pointer, a stark contrast to his often dour mood this season.

"A little bit of Ja, the old Ja," Morant said postgame while describing those moments.

How often had Morant felt like that this season?

"Not at all," he said.

Had Memphis won more during this stretch, this could've gone down as a good adjustment. But the Grizzlies weren't winning much. They were regressing, offensively and defensively -- once the strength of the team. The Grizzlies rank 20th in defense since the All-Star break, giving up 117.1 points per 100 possessions. Memphis is 8-13 since the break, including a 6-7 record with Morant on the court.

The feeling within the Grizzlies' organization was that Jenkins had "lost the locker room," a predictable development after the summer reconstruction of his coaching staff. The internal perception was that players, most importantly Morant, had tuned out Jenkins.

"That team has lost all of [its] swagger," a rival Western Conference player told ESPN. Players started to bicker in huddles. A heated exchange unfolded on the bench during a March 25 win over the Utah Jazz, when Bane shoved forward Santi Aldama during an incident that quickly went viral.

"You could just tell no one was on the same page," one team source said.

STILL, THE GRIZZLIES seemed to be in a relatively good place. On the day they fired Jenkins, they were fifth in the Western Conference with nine games to play and Morant about to return from his hamstring injury.

Their likely first-round opponent, the Lakers, had also been scuffling, losing four of five games in March, and struggling against younger teams such as the Chicago Bulls and Orlando Magic.

Kleiman weighed all of his options and decided the urgency to see what this core group could do together outweighed the benefits of letting Morant come back from injury and hoping Jenkins could reconnect the team and get it back on track before the playoffs. The anticipation had been that Jenkins would be fired after a first-round playoff exit. Kleiman decided there was no benefit to waiting.

So he fired Jenkins, LaRoche and assistant Patrick St. Andrews, who'd joined the staff the previous season to also work on the offense. Iisalo was promoted to interim head coach and tasked with clarifying the vision offensively, which had become muddled in its attempt at radical simplicity.

The hope is a new voice will connect with and elevate a core that has stagnated since that epic series against the Warriors in 2022.

That the Grizzlies will be rewarded, just as the Cavaliers have this season under new coach Kenny Atkinson, for sticking with a core group they believe in and making the right adjustments around the margins and at the top.

Memphis is committed to extending Jackson and Aldama this summer, sources said. And Kleiman publicly denied trade rumors and affirmed the commitment to Morant in February.

But those decisions -- and leaning into a pick-and-roll-heavy offensive system again under Iisalo -- signal Memphis' commitment to Morant is much more than lip service. There are doubts throughout the league about whether Morant, whose superstar ascension has been interrupted by off-court issues and injuries, can be the face of a contending franchise.

"Does he sell tickets? Yes," the rival GM told ESPN. "Is he a top-25 player when healthy? Yes. Can he win multiple series as the best player? No. Not sure most years you can win even one. Plus he is always hurt."

Another question remains, and that one has no easy answer:

The Grizzlies are committed to this core, but is it good enough to contend for a title?

Three years ago there was little question -- or urgency -- about that. But time moves fast in the NBA. And another "reality check" is coming in Memphis.

ESPN Research's Matt Williams contributed to this report.

The Pittsburgh Pirates called up right-handed prospect Thomas Harrington to make his major league debut on Tuesday against the host Tampa Bay Rays.

Harrington, who will get the start versus the Rays, rated No. 73 among Baseball America's top 100 prospects (No. 78 by MLB Pipeline).

He recorded a 7-3 record with a 2.61 ERA and 0.96 WHIP in 22 combined appearances (21 starts) between Low-A Bradenton, Double-A Altoona and Triple-A Indianapolis.

Harrington, 23, was selected by the Pirates with the 36th overall pick of the 2022 MLB June amateur draft from Campbell.

Also on Tuesday, the Pirates designated catcher Jason Delay for assignment to make room on the 40-man roster and optioned two-time All-Star right-hander David Bednar to Indianapolis.

Delay, 30, batted .231 with two homers and 35 RBIs in 134 career games with the Pirates.

Bednar, 30, is 0-2 with one save and a 27.00 ERA in three appearances this season.

NEW YORK -- Right-handed reliever Adam Ottavino is returning to the New York Yankees, agreeing Tuesday to a one-year contract.

Ottavino gets $1 million while in the major leagues and $150,000 while in the minors.

A 39-year-old sidearmer, Ottavino agreed to a minor league contract with Boston on Feb. 18 and exercised his right to be released on March 23 after compiling a 10.80 ERA in five spring training appearances.

"I felt like I was kind of in a little bit of no man's land for the last week or so, but it all came together pretty quickly," Ottavino said before the Yankees opened a three-game series with the Diamondbacks. "Obviously I'm grateful for the opportunity. I'm very lucky for it."

He was 2-2 with one save and a 4.34 ERA in 60 relief appearances for the New York Mets last year, stranding 15 of 20 inherited runners.

Ottavino pitched for the Yankees in 2019 and 2020, going 8-8 with a 2.76 ERA in 97 relief appearances. He is 41-43 with 46 saves and a 3.49 ERA in 14 big league seasons with St. Louis, Colorado (2012-18), the Yankees (2019-20), Boston (2021) and the Mets (2022-24).

"He's kind of on our board a little bit," manager Aaron Boone said. "I know the front office has been talking about him the last couple of weeks but felt like what he was doing at the back end of spring training was in line with who Otto is."

The Yankees transferred right-hander JT Brubaker to the 60-day injured list and placed closer Devin Williams on the paternity list.

Longtime St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Lance Lynn announced Tuesday that he has retired from Major League Baseball after 13 seasons.

"Baseball season is upon us and I'm right here on the couch and that is where I'm gonna stay," Lynn said on his wife's podcast, "Dymin in the Rough."

"I am officially retiring from baseball right here, right now."

Lynn, 37, spent much of his career with the Cardinals (2011-17, 2024) but also has pitched for the Minnesota Twins (2018), New York Yankees (2018), Texas Rangers (2019-20), Chicago White Sox (2021-23) and Los Angeles Dodgers (2023).

Last season with the Cardinals, he started 23 games and had a 7-4 record with a 3.84 ERA, throwing 117 innings and striking out 109.

The two-time All-Star has a career record of 143-99 with a 3.74 ERA in 364 games (340 starts), tossing 2,006 innings. He ranks sixth in that category, as well as in wins, among active pitchers. Ahead of him in each category are three sure Hall of Famers -- Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw.

Lynn, on Tuesday, made it clear that he may be spotted on the baseball field ... just not in a major league game.

"There might be something a little fun around the corner upcoming weekend, so stayed tuned," Lynn said. "But from Major League Baseball, I am done pitching."

There are slow starts, there are slumps, and then there is whatever Rafael Devers is going through.

The 28-year-old three-time All-Star for the Boston Red Sox has been one of baseball's best hitters since 2019, posting three 30-homer seasons, three 100-RBI seasons and a whole bunch of doubles.

His first five games of 2025 have been a nightmare. It's the early-season equivalent of dealing Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Johnny Pesky holding the ball. Bucky Dent. The ball rolling through Bill Buckner's legs. Aaron Boone. Just to name a few Red Sox references. Here's how those games unfolded for Devers:

Game 1: 0-for-4, three strikeouts
Game 2: 0-for-4, four strikeouts
Game 3: 0-for-4, three strikeouts, walk, RBI
Game 4: 0-for-4, two strikeouts, walk
Game 5: 0-for-3, three strikeouts, two walks

Along the way, Devers became the first player to strike out 10 times in a team's first three games of a season -- and that's not all.

He became the first player to strike out 12 times in a team's first four games. And, yes, with 15 strikeouts through five games he shattered the old record of 13, shared by Pat Burrell in 2001 and Byron Buxton in 2017. Going back to the end of 2024, when Devers fanned 11 times over his final four games, he became the fourth player with multiple strikeouts in nine straight games -- and one of those was a pitcher (the other two were a rookie named Aaron Judge in 2016 and Michael A. Taylor in 2021).

With Devers struggling, the Red Sox have likewise stumbled out of the gate, going 1-4 after some lofty preseason expectations, including an 8-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles in the home opener Monday. To be fair, it's not all on Devers: Jarren Duran, Devers and Alex Bregman, the top three hitters in the lineup, are a combined 11-for-62 (.177) with no home runs.

But there is one question weighing heaviest on the minds of Red Sox Nation right now: What is really going on with Devers?

It's easy to say his head simply isn't in the right space. Devers made headlines early in spring training after the Red Sox signed Bregman, saying he didn't want to move to DH and that "third base is my position." He pointed out that when he signed his $331 million extension in January of 2023, the front office promised he would be the team's third baseman.

That, however, was when a different regime was in charge. Bregman, a Gold Glove winner in 2024, is the better defensive third baseman, so it makes sense to play him there and move Devers -- except many players don't like to DH. Some analysts even build in a "DH penalty," assuming a player will hit worse there than when he plays the field. While Devers eventually relented and said he'd do whatever will help the team, it was a rocky situation for a few weeks.

But maybe it's something else. While Devers avoided surgery this offseason, he spent it trying to rebuild strength in both shoulders after dealing with soreness and inflammation throughout 2024. He didn't play the field in spring training and had just 15 plate appearances. So maybe he is still rusty -- or the shoulder(s) are bothering him.

Indeed, Statcast metrics show his average bat speed has dropped from 72.5 mph in 2024 to 70.3 mph so far in 2025 (and those are down from 73.4 mph in 2023). His "fast-swing rate" has dropped from 34.2% in 2023 to 27.9% to 12.2%. Obviously, we're talking an extremely small sample size for this season, but it's clear Devers isn't generating the bat speed we're used to seeing from him.

That, however, doesn't explain the complete inability to make contact. Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters after the series in Texas that Devers had made alterations with his foot placement -- but was having trouble catching up to fastballs. Following Monday's game, Devers told reporters (via his interpreter) that, "Obviously this is not a position that I've done in the past. So I need to get used to it. But I feel good, I feel good."

Which leads to this question: Does this historic bad start mean anything? Since the DH began in 1973, three DHs began the season with a longer hitless streak than Devers' 0-for-19 mark, so let's dig into how the rest of their seasons played out:

• Don Baylor with the 1982 Angels (0-for-20). Baylor ended up with a pretty typical season for him: .263/.329/.424, 24 home runs.

• Evan Gattis of the 2015 Astros (0-for-23). Gattis hit .246 with 27 home runs -- not as good as he hit in 2014 or 2016, but in line with his career numbers.

• Curtis Terry with the Rangers in 2021 (0-for-20). Terry was a rookie who ended up playing just 13 games in the majors.

Expanding beyond just the DH position, I searched Baseball-Reference for players in the wild-card era (since 1995) who started a season hitless in at least 20 plate appearances through five games. That gave us a list of ... just seven players, including Evan Carter (0-for-22) and Anthony Rendon (0-for-20) last season. Both ended up with injury-plagued seasons. The list also includes Hall of Famer Craig Biggio, who was 0-for-24 for the Houston Astros in 1995. He was fine: He hit .302/.406/.483 that season, made the All-Star team and finished 10th in the MVP voting. J.D. Drew started 0-for-25 through five games with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2005; he hit .286/.412/.520, although an injury limited him to 72 games.

But none of those hitters struck out nearly as often as Devers has.

So let's focus on the strikeouts and expand our search to most strikeouts through the 15 first games of a season. Given his already astronomical total, Devers is likely to rank high on such a list even if he starts making more contact. Seventeen players struck out at least 25 times through 15 games, topped by Yoan Moncada and Miguel Sano with 29, both in 2018. Not surprisingly, all these seasons have come since 2006 and 12 since 2018.

How did that group fare?

They were actually OK, averaging a .767 OPS and 20 home runs. The best of the group was Matt Olson in 2023, who struck out 25 times in 15 games, but was also hitting well with a .317/.423/.650 line. He went on to hit 53 home runs. The next best season belongs to Giancarlo Stanton in 2018, his first with the Yankees. He finished with 38 home runs and an .852 OPS -- but that was a big drop from his MVP season in 2017, when he mashed 59 home runs. His strikeout rate increased from 23.6% in 2017 to 29.9% -- and he's never been as good.

Indeed, that's the worrisome thing for Devers: Of the 16 players who played the season before (Trevor Story was a rookie in 2016 when he struck out 25 times in 15 games, albeit with eight home runs), 13 had a higher OPS the previous season, many significantly so.

As Cora argued Monday, it's a small sample size. "You know, this happens in July or August, we'd not even be talking about it," he said.

That doesn't really sound quite forthright. A slump, even a five-game slump, with this many strikeouts would absolutely be a topic of discussion. Still, that's all the Red Sox and Devers have to go on right now: It's just a few games, nothing one big game won't fix. They just hope it comes soon.

Kasatkina, the only openly gay woman in the top 100 of singles on the WTA Tour, revealed her sexuality in a video interview in 2022 before leaving Russia, which has strict laws on LGBTQ+ rights.

After also criticising the war in Ukraine in the interview, a Russian politician unsuccessfully called for her to be listed as a 'foreign agent' - someone acting against Russian interests.

Last year, she said she was expecting "consequences" following her actions.

"With everything going on in my previous country, I didn't have much choice [to switch allegiance]," she told reporters on Monday.

"For me, being openly gay, if I want to be myself, I have to make this step, and I did it.

"I have to get used to it a little bit, because for a couple of years I didn't hear anything. But it's something nice to get used to."

Natela Dzalamidze and Alexander Shevchenko are among other Russia-born tennis players to switch nationality in recent years, now representing Georgia and Kazakhstan respectively.

Saracens have opted to pursue domestic success over their continental ambitions this season.

The three-time Champions Cup winners have decided to rest several of their England internationals, including Maro Itoje and Tom Willis, for their trip to Toulon.

Director of rugby Mark McCall says he is prioritising making the Premiership play-offs over the chance at a fourth European crown.

Northampton Saints, meanwhile, are the only English side with a home tie after finishing top of Pool 3.

Saints are eighth in the Premiership table after enduring a dismal defence of their title, but Phil Dowson's side will host Clermont in a welcome reprieve from their domestic campaign.

The visitors are sixth in France's Top 14 table after their recent victory over La Rochelle ended a run of five consecutive league defeats.

Clermont booked their place in the knockout stages by snatching a dramatic 33-26 victory in the sixth minute of overtime to qualify at Bath and Bristol's expense.

Elsewhere, Sale Sharks face a daunting trip to six-time winners and defending champions Toulouse, who will be without injured talisman Antoine Dupont after he ruptured cruciate ligaments in his knee during France's Six Nations win over Ireland last month.

Harlequins face an equally difficult task at four-time winners Leinster, while Leicester Tigers travel north to take on Glasgow Warriors.