— Houston Astros traded OF Kyle Tucker to the Cubs Friday, for 3B/1B Isaac Paredes, P Hayden Wesneski and IF prospect Cam Smith.
Tucker has a career OPS of .870, hitting 112 homers the last four years; he is a free agent after next season.
— Cubs also added C Carson Kelly on a 2-year, $11.5M contract; Kelly has played most of his career with Arizona- he is .224 career hitter who is well thought of defensively.
— Milwaukee Brewers traded closer Devin Williams to Bronx for P Nestor Cortes and a prospect; New York apparently also tossed $4.5M in to complete the deal.
Williams had 36 saves in 2023, was hurt a lot of last year, had only 14 saves- he had a 1.25 ERA in his 21.2 IP last year.
Cortes was 9-10, 3.77 in 30 starts last year; he was 33-20, 3.61 in 84 starts for New York the last four seasons.
— Two short years ago, Juan Soto turned down a 15-year, $440M deal with Washington; now he has a 15-year contract worth $325M more than that.
— Nebraska 85, Indiana 68
Cornhuskers shot 62.9% inside arc, scored 1.23 points/possession.
Indiana is 2-3 vs top 100 teams; they shot 8-35 on the arc.
— Seattle Redhawks are bolting from the WAC to the WCC next year; Seattle is off to a slow 3-6 start this season, but the last three years, they were 66-35, 36-20 in WAC games.
— Bronny James played in his first road game in the G-League Thursday; he scored 30 points for the South Bay Lakers in a 106-100 loss to the Valley Suns. ,Lakers are 4-9, 0-6 on the road. Not really sure why James didn’t play in their first five road games.
Famous birthdays, December 14th:
Dee Wallace, 76
Cynthia Gibb, 61
Craig Biggio, 59
Scott Hatteberg, 55
Billy Koch, 50
Nicolas Batum, 36
Adam Frazier, 33
Ryan McMahon, 30
DK Metcalf, 27
— I’m not a fan of Thursday night NFL games; I think the product isn’t as good- football wasn’t meant to be played on three days’ rest.
Understood that NFL owners just want to wring as much $$$ as they can out of the TV system and Amazon is helping them with the Thursday package, but at same point, the quality of the product needs to matter.
I’d be in favor of Monday night NFL doubleheaders instead of Thursday games.
— As far as I can tell, there are seven teams playing in bowls this month who have changed head coaches, either firing theirs or having them move on to a different job.
Irony for $500, Alex: North Carolina’s bowl game is in Fenway Park, where a long time ago, the Patriots used to play home games. Bill Belichick is UNC’s new head coach; am guessing he’ll do the TV rounds to get publicity to help their recruiting.
— QB Hank Brown is bolting from Auburn to Iowa; he threw for 403 yards, six TD’s for Auburn this season. He has three years of eligibility left. Brown played high school ball at Lipscomb Academy in Tennessee, where his coach was former NFL QB Trent Dilfer.
— UNLV named ESPN analyst Dan Mullen its new football coach; he worked on ESPN the last three years (and was very good) after going 69-46 as the coach at Mississippi State, 34-15 at Florida. He has a 7-3 record in bowl games.
— Florida Atlantic named 33-year old Zach Kittley their new football coach; he is the youngest I-A head coach in the country. Kittley originally went to Abilene Christian to play basketball, but transferred to Texas Tech and worked as a student assistant to coach Sonny Cumbie, then became a grad assistant, where he worked with a QB named Patrick Mahomes.
He’s been Tech’s offensive coordinator the last three years. Red Raiders are 8-4 this season; they scored 56-52 points in their last two games.
— Kenny Dillingham is Arizona State’s 34-year old football coach; he started coaching when he was 17 years old, after tearing his ACL in high school. ASU is 11-2 this season and won the Big X title in their first year in the league.
2007-12- Chaparral HS, QB coach
2013- Chaparral HS, offensive coordinator (age 21)
2014-15- Offensive assistant, Arizona State
2016- Grad assistant, Memphis
2017- QB/TE coach, Memphis
2018- Offensive coordinator/QB coach, Memphis
2019- Offensive coordinator/QB coach, Auburn
2020-21- Offensive coordinator/QB coach, Florida State
2022- Offensive coordinator/QB coach, Oregon
2023-present- Head coach, Arizona State
