AUGUSTA, Georgia -- Ángel Cabrera's controversial return to the Masters this week for the first time since serving a 30-month prison sentence for domestic abuse came to a close Friday as the former champion missed the cut at Augusta National Golf Club.

The 55-year-old Argentine, who was imprisoned for threats and harassment against two of his ex-girlfriends, opened the tournament with a 3-over-par 75 and returned an 8-over 80 in Friday's second round to sit at 11 over on the week.

That left Cabrera, who was released from prison in August 2023, near the bottom of the 95-player starting field in his 21st Masters start.

Augusta National gives a lifetime Masters exemption to past champions, an honor Cabrera earned in 2009 when his playoff win over Kenny Perry and Chad Campbell made him South America's first winner of the tournament.

Cabrera missed the cut in his last Masters appearance in 2019, skipped the next two during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and was unable to play last year due to visa issues.

But the two-time major champion came into the 2025 Masters with pep in his step having earned his first triumph on the PGA Champions Tour last week, which put him back in the winner's circle for the first time since being released from prison.

Cabrera's presence at this week's Masters has drawn some criticism, including from women's rights groups. Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley defended the club's decision in his pre-tournament news conference.

"Well, we certainly abhor domestic violence of any type," Ridley told reporters. "As it relates to Angel, Angel has served the sentence that was prescribed by the Argentine courts, and he is the past champion, and so he was invited."

MiLaysia Fulwiley, a key guard for South Carolina's Final Four women's basketball teams the past two seasons, intends to enter the transfer portal, sources told ESPN.

Fulwiley was the No. 13 recruit as ranked by ESPN HoopGurlz in 2023 and chose to stay in her hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, to start college. She was the SEC tournament MVP as a freshman and helped the Gamecocks to a 38-0 season and the national championship last year.

This season, she was the SEC Sixth Player of the Year as the Gamecocks went 35-4, won the SEC tournament again and were national runners-up to UConn at the Final Four in Tampa, Florida.

Fulwiley, who is 5-foot-10, came off the bench in all but three of her 77 games at South Carolina, averaging 11.7 points, 2.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.6 steals in her two seasons.

The Greenville News earlier reported news of Fulwiley's intention to enter the portal.

SEATTLE -- Backup quarterback Drew Lock is expected to sign with the Seahawks for a second stint with the team, a source confirmed to ESPN on Friday.

Lock is set to sign a two-year, $5 million contract, a source told ESPN's Adam Schefter.

Lock, 28, returns to Seattle after spending last season with the New York Giants. He spent the two seasons before that in Seattle backing up Geno Smith after being acquired from the Denver Broncos in the Russell Wilson trade in 2022.

Lock's return as a potential backup to newly acquired Sam Darnold brings into question Sam Howell's future with the Seahawks. Seattle acquired Howell via trade from the Washington Commanders in March 2024 after losing Lock in free agency. Howell struggled over the offseason and in a disastrous relief appearance in December.

The Seahawks have also been doing homework on quarterback prospects in this year's draft. Their list of 30 visits includes one with Louisville's Tyler Shough, a source told ESPN, while Bleacher Report reported they also have a visit lined up with Alabama's Jalen Milroe. Both quarterbacks are in the top five at the position on Mel Kiper Jr.'s Big Board.

Lock went 1-4 in five starts with the Giants last season, throwing six touchdowns and five interceptions. He also rushed for a pair of touchdowns as the team won just once in his eight appearances.

The inconsistency of the situation in New York played into some of the struggles. Lock was declared the backup to Daniel Jones the moment he signed. He was the backup all summer and through the first 10 games of the season. But when the Giants benched and eventually cut Jones, they skipped Lock and went to third-stringer Tommy DeVito in hope of a spark.

The team jumped back and forth between Lock and DeVito for much of the rest of its 3-14 season. The highlight was Lock's Week 16 win over the Indianapolis Colts, when he had five total touchdowns.

Lock spent his first three seasons with the Broncos after they drafted him in the second round in 2019. He has started 28 games in his six professional seasons and has completed 59.6% of his passes for 6,354 yards with 34 touchdowns and 28 interceptions.

Fox Sports first reported on the Seahawks' reunion with Lock.

ESPN's Jordan Raanan contributed to this report.

FOR THE PAST 10 years, Michael Malone had been the lead narrator of the Denver Nuggets' story. He played the tough guy when his team needed it during its championship run. He was the empathetic loyalist when Jamal Murray suffered a devastating knee injury in 2021. He became Nikola Jokic's hype man during each of his three MVP seasons, chiding anyone who didn't appreciate or vote for the Serbian superstar.

Sunday night, after the Nuggets lost their fourth straight game for the first time since March 2023, Malone was at his acerbic best in assessing the team's issues and just how urgent Denver's predicament had become.

"We haven't lost four in a row in a long time," Malone said after a 125-120 loss to the Indiana Pacers. "It's really easy to be together and say 'family' when you win. But when you're losing games, can you stay together? Do you have the balls, do you have the courage to go home and look in the mirror and say, 'What can I be doing better to help this team?'

"I'll start with me. ... How about me, as a head coach? Not doing my job to the best of my ability."

Little did Malone or anyone in the Denver locker room suspect that team president Josh Kroenke had for months been asking the same questions.

Malone's message wasn't landing. Three weeks earlier, after a blowout loss to a Portland Trail Blazers team missing four rotation players, he sat in front of the postgame lectern and lit into his team.

"That was embarrassing. That was just a joke," he said. "Who are we kidding? Eleven games to go, and that's the effort we put forth?"

He talked about rebounding -- the Nuggets had given up 26 points on the offensive glass -- and turnovers, off of which the Blazers had scored 25.

"I don't think we played with any pride tonight," Malone said.

Asked how the team received that message, the longtime coach was blunt.

"I don't really care," he said. "My job is to be honest, sometimes brutally honest. And the guys that are full of s--- won't hear it. They'll say, 'Coach is trippin.' And the guys who maybe do really care will ... they're not going to go back and watch their minutes. Nobody watches their minutes. Nobody watches film. So we'll have to show them the film. And I said, 'If somebody disagrees with me, please speak up.'

"Nobody said a word. I'm not concerned with how they took that message. My thing is, be honest with how we just played."

The Nuggets are a tepid 12-13 since the All-Star break and have lost some of what made them so dynamic just two years ago, even though they remain in fourth place in the West following Wednesday's win against the Sacramento Kings.

There has been more infighting on the bench and the court than Kroenke had ever seen. And every clip of those arguments seemed to go viral, whether it was Jokic's frustration at the team's defense, a heated exchange between Aaron Gordon and Peyton Watson, or Gordon attempting to huddle on the court and Murray ignoring him.

Moreso, the cold war between Malone and general manager Calvin Booth had become toxic for everyone in the organization.

Coaches, front office staffers and support staff felt compelled to choose sides, multiple team sources said. Instead of focusing on how to get the most out of a team with a three-time MVP having arguably his best season as a professional, energy was being spent on determining which side people were on -- and whether they could be trusted.

"Everybody in the organization was miserable," a team source said. "That's what Josh felt. It's a bad vibe. You can't operate like that. He felt that if he removed those two people, everybody could just focus on doing their job. Change needed to happen."

In interviews with more than a dozen team and league insiders, a theme quickly emerged: Not only was this war between Malone and Booth toxic for the two men, but it had infected the entire organization. For the better part of two years, winning had hidden the toxins coursing through the Nuggets. Then they started losing.

Kroenke made the decision to fire Malone and Booth late Sunday night, sources told ESPN. It wasn't the first time this season that Kroenke seriously pondered parting ways with the winningest coach in franchise history and the executive who had put together the final pieces of the Nuggets' championship puzzle. Kroenke wanted to clean house at the All-Star break, sources said, but an eight-game winning streak spared Malone and Booth.

"There were certain trends that were very worrisome to me at certain points in time, but they would get masked by a few wins here and there," Kroenke said during an in-house interview released Tuesday afternoon. "In the world of professional sports, where winning and losing is your currency, winning can mask a lot of things."

On Monday, he talked it through with his father, Stan Kroenke, and Kevin Demoff, who has become a more influential voice in the organization since ascending to the role of president of team and media operations for Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, which also owns the Los Angeles Rams, Colorado Avalanche and Arsenal FC, a little over a year ago.

Tuesday was an optional day for players to report, but during a four-game losing streak, it is understood that the best "option" is to show up and put in some work.

Every player was there except veteran guard Russell Westbrook, who had flown to Los Angeles where his family lives, multiple sources said. Players and assistant coaches made their way to Ball Arena's practice court at 10:30 a.m. local time. At that point, unbeknownst to everyone but superstar center Nikola Jokic, who had a brief one-on-one discussion with Kroenke beforehand, Malone was packing some of his belongings in his office after being informed that his decade-long tenure in Denver was done.

"He told me, 'We made a decision.' So it was not a discussion. It was a decision," Jokic said Wednesday night. "He told me why. And so I listened. And I accepted it."

Instead of working out, the rest of the players were called to an 11 a.m. meeting with Kroenke, where they learned that the only coach many of them had ever played for had just been fired.

"It's just so disrespectful," one source close to the situation said. "That's not how you treat a championship coach."

It was a shock with just three games left in the regular season.

But that's exactly what Kroenke was going for. "We wanted to try to figure out a way to squeeze as much juice out of the rest of the season as possible," Kroenke said. "Let's try to shake this tree and squeeze as much out of it as we can."

THE NUGGETS HAVE long felt pressure to put Jokic in position to win championships -- plural. Not just the one they claimed in 2023. Booth told ESPN before the season that he felt the Nuggets were halfway through what he hoped would be a 10-year prime for Jokic and his job was to surround him with a roster that could contend in each of those remaining prime years, not simply load up with expensive veterans to contend for one or two more seasons.

In Booth's view, the way to do that was to draft and develop young, cost-controlled players like Christian Braun, Watson, Julian Strawther, Zeke Nnaji and Jalen Pickett.

In Malone's view, the way to do that was to keep as much of the core group -- Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Bruce Brown and Jeff Green -- that had won the franchise's first title in 2023 together and slowly bring along those younger players.

Malone not only resented that Booth didn't retain those players in free agency, but also wondered whether Booth did so as a way to force him to play the younger players he had drafted, multiple sources said.

"They just saw the world completely differently," another team source said.

That tension manifested everywhere.

"The situation was just unsustainable," a team source said. "Coach Malone and Calvin couldn't fix it because they made the situation all about themselves."

Players even questioned whether their playing time was affected by the dysfunction between Malone and Booth, multiple team sources said.

"If you're one of Calvin's guys, Malone doesn't want to play you," a team source said, flatly.

Over time, players tuned out Malone, from the top of the roster down, multiple team sources said.

Said one, "The players were freakin' miserable, man. You could see it. The effort would come and go. I just wish it happened sooner. We wouldn't be in this mess."

Malone is hardly the first veteran coach to be reluctant to give big minutes to younger players. Legendary coach Phil Jackson used to refer to rookies as "lower than pond scum." Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr didn't play the organization's lottery picks as much as the front office and ownership would've liked.

When Malone was reluctant to play Nnaji at power forward, where analytics show he was resoundingly better than as a backup center, more than one staffer wondered whether there was an agenda behind it.

"The numbers are way better [with Nnaji] as a 4 than a 5," one team source said. "But if you play him as a 5, he gets exposed. Who does that make look bad?"

Nnaji was plus-100 when he played power forward and was paired with a center and minus-113 in 235 minutes when he played as a center, according to NBA Advanced Stats.

When Malone put Westbrook into the starting lineup early in the season, pushing Braun back to the bench, even Malone acknowledged it wasn't fair to Braun.

"Never an easy decision," Malone said after a 122-112 loss to the New York Knicks in which he had debuted the new lineup. "Christian Braun has been great for us this year. Not good. He's been great. And he's done everything that's been asked of him. But I just like keeping Russell out there."

In Malone's defense, at the time the Jokic-Westbrook duo had a plus-11.4 net rating on the floor together, fifth among all two-man duos. Jokic-Braun, at 11.3, ranked sixth.

"What else does CB have to do?" a team source said. "Malone even said he's done everything he was asked to do, and now he's being relegated for Russ?"

Jokic may not have sounded off publicly at any of this dysfunction. But he bore witness to it all season and wasn't happy about it, sources said.

"Joker is really good at letting you know how he feels," a team source said, "without saying anything."

JOKIC HAS NEVER given any indication he would look to play anywhere other than Denver. Before the season, he even seemed to give a strong vote of confidence to the organization despite the departure of so many key veterans in free agency over the previous two offseasons.

"I think people in general, they always want more and more and more, but they don't know what they have," Jokic told ESPN. "I'm really happy we have one title -- a lot of very good players don't win."

The only nod that's even resembled an openness to playing anywhere else came Tuesday night, when his longtime agent, Misko Raznatovic, responded on Instagram to a Bovada betting line of where his client's next destination could be.

MINNEAPOLIS -- The Minnesota Twins placed pitcher Pablo López on the 15-day injured list Friday with a strained right hamstring.

The move is retroactive to Wednesday, a day after López was removed from his start against Kansas City following 4 innings because of the injury. López is 1-1 with a 1.62 ERA in three starts this season.

The Twins replaced him on the roster by recalling right-hander David Festa from Triple-A St. Paul. Festa, who will start for Minnesota on Friday night against Detroit, is 1-1 with a 5.40 ERA in two minor league starts this season.

Festa appeared in 14 games for the Twins last season, 13 of them starts, going 2-6 with a 4.90 ERA and 77 strikeouts in 64 innings.

So often in recent years, baseballs have been the subject of controversy. How tightly are they wound? What is the height of their seams? What's inside them that might determine how far they fly? What has been slathered onto them that might impact how slick they are?

In that sense, the sudden furor over so-called torpedo bats is refreshing. At least, for once, we're arguing and conspiracy-theorizing about a different piece of equipment.

But torpedo bats are simply an iteration in the art of bat-making, a practice that has been evolving since the day some long-gone hominid first swatted at a round stone with a stick they found lying on the ground.

In that spirit, let's take a moment to consider the turning-point moments in baseball bat history -- an abridged guide to how we got from sticks to torpedoes.

Wee Willie, wood wars and the wild west of bat experiments

From the beginning, the partnership between players and their bats have been personal affairs, with everything from length to weight to wood preference coming under scrutiny. While the points of emphasis in the game have changed, the choice of bat has always depended on the size of the hitter, the shape of his swing and the kind of batsman he wants to be.

During the early days of baseball, regulations were few and far between and there was a lot of experimentation with the stick. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, some hitters used a flat-faced bat that was supposed to help with bunting but looked more suitable for hammering nails.

Bats were heavier in those days. The style of knob varied, from a ball-shaped knob, a mushroom knob to a barely-there knob at the end of bat handles that were much thicker than the ones we see now. Future Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie used a bat that had two knobs, which seemed to work fine considering he ended with 3,243 career hits, five batting titles and a modern-era record .426 batting average in 1901.

Like many hitters of his time, Ty Cobb swung a heavy bat (40 ounces until late in his career; bats today weigh between 30 and 33 ounces), and he gripped it with his hands apart to maximize control. That was the dominant theme of the era: The ability to control the bat while slapping at the ball, or bunting, was far more important than bat speed. Perhaps the avatar for that kind of baseball was Wee Willie Keeler, the guy who said, "Keep your eye on the ball and hit 'em where they ain't." Keeler, who stood 5-foot-5, slapped the ball around with what was basically an oversized baton.

Keeler's bats measured 30 to 31 inches in length (bats are now typically 33 or 34 inches), with varying weights up to 46 ounces. Such a thing would look comical in today's game. Keeler flourished with his small body and heavy bat, hitting .341 over a long career. Power was simply not the aim for Wee Willie, and only 33 of his 2,932 career hits were homers -- an estimated 30 of which were of the inside-the-park variety.

Even after specifications on what was allowed were codified, there remained plenty of experimentation. A famous take on bat shape was that of Heinie Groh, an on-base machine for the Giants and Reds in the early 20th century. His "bottle bat" had a long, thick barrel and thin handle. It looked like something more apt for cricket than baseball. Groh's teammate, Hall of Famer Edd Roush, used a 48-ounce stick.

There was also a long-standing competition in wood sources, with hickory rivaling ash for supremacy. Cobb used a bat made out of what he claimed was black ash, but was probably just white ash. Perhaps the most famous bat in history was Shoeless Joe Jackson's "Black Betsy," a massive 36-inch, 39-ounce stick Jackson used his entire career. It was made out of a hickory tree from South Carolina, his native state.

Hickory has fallen completely out of favor, and, considering the rise in importance of power and bat speed over the decades, it's not hard to understand why. According to Steven Bratkovich, author of "The Baseball Bat: From Trees to the Major Leagues, 19th Century to Today", Roger Maris used a 33-ounce ash bat when he broke Babe Ruth's home run record in 1961. If he had used a hickory bat of the same dimensions, it would have weighed 42 ounces.

The invention of The Louisville Slugger

The origin story of the Hillerich & Bradsby Co., at least the bat-making portion of it, traces back to a seminal spring day in 1884. As with most of baseball's storied past, details of the story have been questioned -- even the Louisville Slugger Museum refers to it as "company legend" -- but if it's not exactly true, it ought to be.

One of the great hitters of the day, Pete Browning, had a frustrating day at the plate during a home game in Louisville and seemed to be especially irked by a bat that had broken. In the stands was 17-year-old Bud Hillerich, son of a local woodworker and an apprentice in the craft. Browning, having heard of Hillerich's skills, asked the teenager whether he could help. Hillerich could, and the next day Browning rang out three hits with the custom-made bat Hillerich constructed for him out of Northern White Ash.

Browning went on to win two battling titles after that day, adding the nickname "the Louisville Slugger" to his existing moniker "Gladiator." The ramp-up was a bit slow, but by 1894, the company had trademarked "Louisville Slugger" and the bat business was swinging away.

Three years later, Honus Wagner's big league career began with the Louisville Colonels. Just after the turn of the century, when he had become one the game's first true superstars with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he also became what is believed to be the first athlete to endorse athletic gear when he signed on as a pitch man for the Louisville Slugger. His autograph began appearing in the wood of the bat itself -- the beginning of that long-common practice.

For 100 years or more, the Louisville Slugger reigned supreme as the bat of choice in the majors. The Slugger remains a popular choice, but in recent years, it has had to make room for batmakers such as Victus and Marucci atop the leaderboard.

The Babe's thin-handled stick helps change baseball forever

Baseball writer and historian Bill James has often pointed to the continual thinning of the bat handle as a key driver of the game's shift from an emphasis on bat control to one of bat speed. This evolution began in the early 1920s and, yes, it exploded when Ruth clubbed an unthinkable 54 homers in 1920, turning the dead ball era on its ear.

Ruth swung heavy bats -- it's one of the things for which he's most well known. They tended to weigh at least 44 ounces and as heavy as 50, though it's not believed he used the latter much during the regular season. But the handles were thin, allowing him to lash the bat around on the pitchers of his day. There was no one factor that led to the game's transformation to a power-based sport, but the proliferation of thin handle bats in the wake of the Ruth phenomenon was certainly a contributor.

Incidentally, Ruth modeled the bat shape after that of another Hall of Famer, Rogers Hornsby, who didn't use as heavy a stick but favored thin handles, recognizing their value in getting the bat head through the zone more quickly than was possible with thicker handles. Through 1920, Hornsby was already a .328 career hitter but had just 36 career homers in 2,903 plate appearances. During the next nine seasons, he hit .384 with 241 homers.

Other players, including The Babe, tend to notice such things.

Teddy Ballgame's baked bats

If you had to anoint one player as the Albert Einstein of hitting, it would be Ted Williams. Williams had a theory of everything, as long as it pertained to hitting, and there was no detail too small. Naturally, this included his bats.

The story goes that while Williams was still in the minors, using a fairly standard-for-the-time 35-ounce bat, he borrowed a lighter stick from a teammate named Stan Spence. He used it to club a home run to center field and immediately knew that, for him, the lighter bat was the way to go. Initially, when Williams tried to order a lighter-weight model, Hillerich and Bradsby tried to talk him out of it. But you couldn't really talk Teddy Ballgame out of anything.

A few years later, around 1948, a young Red Sox fan named David Pressman -- who must have been a spiritual descendant of Bud Hillerich -- noticed that, one night, after he had left a bat outside overnight in some dew-covered grass, it felt heavier. When he weighed it, sure enough, it had gained about two ounces. Assuming it had absorbed some moisture, he put the bat into a coal oven and -- voila! -- it was back to normal.

The story was recounted in Ben Bradlee Jr.'s "The Kid." The excited Pressman managed to get this information to Williams, his favorite player, who invited him to Fenway Park for a chat. Pressman told him what he had found, and Williams listened. They settled on a system of using clothes dryers in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse to heat up and dry out Williams' bats, and Williams used scales to monitor the weight of his weapons of choice from there on out.

This system of heating up his bats continued during the rest of Williams' Hall of Fame career, during which he hit .336 with 299 homers -- beginning with his age-30 season. Williams and Pressman remained friends and associates for the rest of Teddy Ballgame's life. But Williams insisted Pressman keep the bat-heating ploy a secret until his passing.

However, Williams did ask Pressman to explain the theory of bat-heating one time to Joe DiMaggio. DiMaggio, according to Pressman, looked unconvinced and simply walked away.

Superballs, pine tar -- and an MLB 'Mission: Impossible'

Cheating has a long, inglorious history in baseball, and when it comes to bats, there have been plenty of shenanigans and intrigue. DiMaggio used a bat named "Betsy Ann" during his 56-game hitting streak in 1941. The bat was stolen in the midst of his spree between games of a doubleheader. Despite his despair over losing Betsy Ann, DiMaggio kept his streak alive. Then she returned, arriving a week later in a plain brown package delivered by a courier. It turned out that the thief, a guy from Newark, had bragged about his prize to the wrong people.

One famous incident was the George Brett pine tar episode from 1983, though despite the rule on the books about the substance, it has never really been explained why having extra pine tar on a bat, while messy, would give a hitter any kind of edge.

Numerous players have been rumored to have used corked bats, which seemed to be most prominent from the 1970s through the early 2000s. The goal was simply to lessen the weight of the bat in the never-ending pursuit of bat speed.

There are all sorts of things you can stuff into a bat. On Sept. 7, 1974, Yankees star Graig Nettles homered against the Tigers. His next time up, Nettles stroked a single but broke his bat in the process. While Nettles ran to first, Detroit catcher Bill Freehan was busy chasing the six Superballs that had come tumbling out of Nettles' bat.

Nettles explained that the bat had been a gift from a fan and, apparently, the powers-that-be bought his story. Nettles wasn't suspended.

In another famous incident, a suspension was handed out. During a game at Chicago's Comiskey Park in 1994, White Sox manager Gene Lamont challenged Albert Belle's use of a bat, and it was confiscated by the umpiring crew for later investigation.

Meanwhile, the rest of the game played out. Cleveland reliever Jason Grimsley crawled through the ceiling from the visiting clubhouse to the umpire's room and swapped Belle's bat out for one belonging to Paul Sorrento, leaving behind chunks of ceiling tile and mangled metal. The umpires were not fooled, and Belle was suspended seven games.

An even longer suspension was doled out to Sammy Sosa in 2003, when his bat shattered during a game and revealed the cork that was within. Sosa claimed he picked up the bat by mistake. He did not get the same benefit of the doubt that Nettles did.

Barry, Barry good wood

Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001. It's a record. No, really, you can look it up.

There has been so much clamor about Bonds' training methods over the years that his place in bat evolution tends to be overlooked. When Bonds set that record, he swung bats made out of maple, not ash.

ESPN wrote about this at the time. Bonds said then, "I tried it and I liked it. Ash wood is a softer wood that has a tendency to split and crack easier. Maple gives you the opportunity that if you feel comfortable with it, you've got a chance of keeping it for a while."

It seemed to work out for him. Bonds wasn't the first player to use a maple bat, but many others followed his example once his historic numbers attracted unprecedented attention.

A few years later, after the use of maple bats spread, it became a source of concern. While maple bats were harder to break than bats made out of other wood, including ash, when they did come apart, they tended to shatter. This would send dangerous shards of wood flying through the air around the field. People got hurt. Since then, after some MLB-led investigations into maple bats, the manufacturing processes evolved and the rate of broken bats has improved.

In the years since Bonds largely sparked their proliferation, maple bats raced past ash as the wood of choice in the big league. The trend was accelerated by blight -- a massive infestation of invasive beetles wreaked havoc on the ash trees that companies such as Hillerich & Bradsby so long relied upon. More than three years ago, The Athletic profiled this sea change in the industry, describing Joey Votto as the last of the ash bat advocates. Votto, of course, has since retired.

Even so, more than 150 years since the advent of major league baseball, the source of wood for bats is not a settled, consensus part of the game. Birch is used in some bat models, and bamboo is often cited as a possible competitor. How long before someone tries to bring back hickory?

The only constant is change.

Synthetic sticks

In 2022, commissioner Rob Manfred announced that baseball would be experimenting with aluminum bats in hopes of introducing them for regular-season use in the middle of that campaign.

Except he didn't -- because that story making the rounds three years ago was an April Fools Day concoction, one that has cropped up around that date a few times. But this hoax underscores why it's outlandish to even ponder metal bats rising from Little League and college ball up to the majors. Pitchers might have to wear Kevlar on the mound. Still, while aluminum bats aren't coming to MLB, James wrote about the profound impact the advent of metal bats at other levels of the game has had in the big leagues in "The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract."

In a nutshell, James wrote that it was once dogma that a hitter couldn't prosper by crowding the plate and trying to drive outside pitches to the opposite field, the likely outcome being a stream of ground outs to middle infielders. But then aluminum sticks showed up and amateur batters found they were able to drive outside pitches just fine. Soon, advanced hitters learned that the same approach worked once they made the switch to wood.

Now, it's no longer considered strange to see a hitter trying to drive the ball, in the air, to the opposite field. (See: Aaron Judge.) There's more to it than the rise of the aluminum bat, but the kind of stick a player uses as a kid impacts what they do when they swing wood bats when they reach the big time.

The bat, er, beat goes on

The appearance of the torpedo bat is noteworthy, but the only thing novel about it is that it took so long for someone to think of it. There have been flat bats and round bats. Thin handles, thick handles, V-handles (a Don Mattingly innovation) and axe handles. Heavy bats, heavier bats and light bats. Short bats and long bats. The bat is always changing, and always has.

Twenty-five years ago, the rise of maple seemed like a revolution. Thirty years before that, it was the sudden appearance of cupped bats, a style in which the end of the bat is hollowed out. The origin story of those is another murky area, but it appears that while you could get cupped bats in America as early as the late 1890s, they first became much more popular in Japan's professional leagues. In the late 1960s, onetime Cubs outfielder George Altman played in Japan after his career in the majors wound down, then brought some of the cupped bats back with him, where they attracted the attention of outfielder Jose Cardenal. (Or possibly Lou Brock, and Cardenal saw Brock with them.) The use of cupped bats had been sporadic but spread quickly, and the bats are now ubiquitous.

With companies such as Victus offering painted bats and other modes of aesthetic customization, including the popular pencil bats, bats have become as much about personal expression as they are about productivity. This is on full display on Players Weekend, when players and those who supply their bats can let their creativity fly. While these innovations might not have much competitive impact, they add color and flavor to the old game.

Torpedo bats are just the latest entrant on this ongoing continuum. They are the product of a collaboration between data science, bat manufacturers and each individual player. Just as bats have long been made to spec depending on a player's swing and proclivities, so too is the torpedo bat.

For now, we can't declare one way or another whether the advent of the torpedo bat is going to change the game, but it probably won't. As we collect the data, chances are any tangible effect the bat might have will be subsumed by a thousand other factors that produce the game's statistics. Perhaps we wouldn't even be discussing this if Yankees announcer Michael Kay had not pointed out that New York was using these newfangled bats during a historic game in which the team ultimately went deep nine times against the Milwaukee Brewers.

Torpedo bats won't work for everyone, but for some they will. Will they change the game? Whether they're here to stay or another passing fad, they're part of a sport that is constantly evolving -- and will continue to do so.

Carlos Alcaraz says he "missed" playing on clay after he booked his place in the semi-finals of the Monte Carlo Masters with a spirited fightback.

The Spaniard, 21, came from a set down to clinch a 4-6 7-5 6-3 victory over Frenchman Arthur Fils to secure his spot in the last four.

Alcaraz will now face compatriot Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, who beat Australia's Alexei Popyrin in straight sets, on Saturday for a place in the final.

World number three Alcaraz saved three break points in the 11th game of the second set in a thrilling tussle with 20-year-old Fils.

Alcaraz said he had to "stay strong" and "wait for chances" against Fils before he was able to capitalise on any errors.

"I think his level is high right now and he puts a lot of pressure on his opponents," Alcaraz said.

"Today I could feel it but in some moments he just made a few mistakes and I tried to make the most of those points.

"I have missed clay. It is good to play the drop shot and it is a shot I use a lot and feel comfortable using. In matches like this I won almost every drop shot I hit and it gives me more confidence."

Fils made a stunning start to the match as he surged into a 3-0 lead with two early breaks in the opening set.

Alcaraz managed to draw level at 4-4, only for Fils to break once more and then hold serve to take the set as he saved two break points.

Fils squandered seven break points in the second set, and Alcaraz squared the match with a superb lob to break Fils' serve in the 12th game.

Alcaraz dropped serve once again in the third game of the decider, but managed to break back and then secured another break in the eighth game to the frustration of Fils, who smashed his racket on the clay.

World number 15 Fils failed to regain his composure while Alcaraz kept his cool to seal the match.

Four-time Grand Slam champion Alcaraz is bidding to win his first Masters title since victory at Indian Wells last year.

Great Britain's Sonay Kartal wins a point with a brilliant drop shot during her straight-sets victory against Germany's Jule Niemeier on her Billie Jean King cup debut.

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Kartal watched GB's triumph against France in last year's qualifiers from afar, having spent three months out with a health issue.

However, she has risen up the rankings in the past 12 months, clinching her first WTA title on the way.

A good mover on the clay surface, she played confidently in a first set that saw seven breaks of serve in 10 games, adjusting well to Niemeier's pace.

Kartal served for the opener at 5-3 but was broken, before two double faults from Niemeier handed the Briton the set.

Germany's Niemeier, heavily beaten against the Netherlands and struggling for form, covered her face with her towel at the end of the set as she became visibly upset.

Kartal reeled off five games in a row to lead by a set and a break, redirecting the German's pace around the court, before serving out victory.

"I'm super proud of that debut match," said Kartal.

"It is obviously nerve-wracking when you're the first match on, but I'm proud of my performance."