WHEN A TEAM finds a successful strategy in pro sports, it has long been the expectation that its competition will shift toward that strategy. The typical refrain: "It's a copycat league."

If that's the case in Major League Baseball, shouldn't the replicating felines be conducting thorough investigations of last season's Kansas City Royals?

The 2024 Royals were a historically remarkable team. Kansas City won 30 more games than it did in 2023. If you prorate every past team to a 162-game season for comparison, the Royals authored just the 14th year-over-year leap of at least 30 wins since 1901. It was just the fourth such leap in the three decades since the advent of the wild card. Kansas City joined the 1946 Boston Red Sox and the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays as the only teams to improve by at least 30 games, then go on to win more than one game in the playoffs.

How could such a thing possibly happen? It's not as if the Royals were like the 2022 Baltimore Orioles -- another 30-win leaper -- who turned the corner after years of topping the prospect rankings. Entering the season, the prospect mavens remained very much down on the Royals' system. Yet they broke out anyway. Wouldn't the answer to this particular "how" question have some repercussions on baseball's hypercompetitive, eager-to-innovate landscape?

The answers have a lot to do with the fading status of the starting pitcher -- and how, when it comes to managing a rotation, there's more than one way worth copying.

THEY TRIED. THAT'S what you heard so often about Kansas City's success. It's true. Despite losing 106 games the season before, the Royals went about building the best 26-man roster they could, displaying an aggression during free agency that surprised everyone. They tried, sure, but they also tried in a very specific way.

The sexy part of the Royals' breakout was the amazing-but-expected rise of star shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. But the Royals scored only 59 more runs in 2024 than the season before. The rocket fuel for the turnaround came on the other side of the ball, where K.C. slashed 215 runs off of its 28th-ranked runs allowed total of 2023.

While the bullpen performed better, the rotation accounted for most of this, cutting its collective ERA from 5.17 to 3.76. The group didn't have a Paul Skenes ascend to the majors, nor did it have a high-profile international addition. The Royals did introduce two solid veteran free agents to the group in Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha.

"We felt like we had a lot of holes to fill and everything in this game starts and ends with starting pitching," Royals GM J.J. Picollo told ESPN during the team's hot start last year. "So that was clearly the No. 1 objective, trying to secure two starting pitchers."

That's an old-school statement, the type of thing baseball execs have been saying for eons. Still, while Lugo and Wacha had good enough track records that Kansas City was far from their only option, between them they had accounted for one All-Star appearance (Wacha in 2015) over 19 combined big-league campaigns. It's not the kind of thing that takes a team from 106 losses to playing the New York Yankees in October.

But it did. The Royals did play into October, and everything did begin with those two signings. Lugo (16-9, 3.00 ERA over 206 innings, second in AL Cy Young balloting) and Wacha (13-8, 3.35 ERA, 166 innings) were outstanding. Just as important, though, were the downhill effects of their dual arrival.

"Wacha and Lugo are great," said the budding ace the Royals already had in their deck, fireballing lefty Cole Ragans. "They are two great guys who you look up to and try to understand how they go about their game."

Well, how do they go about their games?

The most important statistic about the Kansas City rotation might simply have been 908 -- the number of innings the Royals got from their starting pitchers. That total ranked second in the majors behind Seattle, but 95% of that figure came from K.C.'s five most-used starters, the highest percentage in the majors. Lugo led the way with an AL-leading 836 batters faced.

"Lugo threw 206 innings, I think, last year," Ragans said, correctly. "That's where you want to be. The goal is 200 innings. You just watch him, how he goes about his business, how he thinks about pitching. He knows he can get swing-and-miss when he needs it, but he's trying to get guys off balance and get some weak contact."

Lugo led the way, but his approach was Kansas City's approach -- even for Ragans, who has elite swing-and-miss ability. These aren't new ideas, but they felt kind of like it during a season when pitcher injuries -- and the widespread focus on max-effort pitching that likely contributes to them -- dominated the headlines. The Royals simply did not participate in that narrative.

With five core starters -- Lugo, Wacha, Ragans, Brady Singer (now with the Cincinnati Reds) and Alec Marsh -- doing most of the work, the Royals' rotation still managed to work deeper into games than any other team in an era of two-times-through-the-order starters. Some facts:

Royals starters faced 23.4 batters per outing, most in the majors, making the trip into the third time through the order a standard, not a rarity.

Kansas City tied for third in quality starts (76), which of course entails going at least six innings in an outing.

The Royals' starters threw just 16.2 pitches per frame, ranking 23rd in the majors.

The Royals ranked 21st in total payroll, but 14th in payroll allotted for starting pitchers. Their core five starters accounted for 30.7% of the outpay, the second-largest percentage allocated for that group in the majors, behind Toronto (34.4%).

Of the Royals' 86 wins, 58 resulted in winning decisions for a core-five starter, the highest total in the majors.

The core five started 151 of the Royals' 162 games, another big-league-leading total.

Obviously, a lot has to go your way for this to happen. It's not as if the Royals have figured out how to sidestep pitching injuries. But this was all very much by design, not just in roster construction, but in terms of game-by-game, inning-by-inning, pitch-by-pitch approach.

Call it a season approach, rather than a game approach. To achieve maximum results over 162 games, don't leave it all out there in any one situation with a barrage of 100 mph fastballs and a focus on the strikeout column. Much of it has to do with managing effort, not the easiest skill to learn in the era of Statcast and Rapsodo, but it's one even the game's best strikeout pitchers can hone over time.

"It's trying to rein in when somebody steps in there," said the Texas Rangers' Jacob deGrom, a two-time Cy Young winner with a career strikeout rate of 11 whiffs per nine innings. Yet, after a string of injury-plagued seasons, deGrom is focused on easing up on the throttle. "When somebody steps in, it's go time. But you have to trust that your stuff plays at maybe not 100% effort. There's a lot of times you'll actually locate the ball better. So it can be a plus in both ways, health wise, and maybe some location stuff."

These are lessons taken to heart by the newest member of the Royals' rotation, lefty Kris Bubic, who is transitioning back to starting pitching after Kansas City traded Singer over the winter.

"I don't want to say pitching to contact," Bubic said. "But we're not relying on velocity. We're relying on change of speeds, throwing a lot of strikes."

This sentiment is borne out in the data. The Royals' starters ranked in the middle of the pack in terms of average velocity, with Ragans' ability to crack 100 with his four-seamer leading the way, so it's not like they were a bunch of Jamie Moyers. But the Royals' reliance on softer stuff resulted in the second-highest aggregate spin rate among rotations.

Forget the radar. Get in, get out.

"There's always a philosophy of 'an out in three pitches,'" Bubic said, repeating it like a mantra. "You want a guy out on three pitches. You want a guy out on three pitches. You just continue that attacking mindset."

THIS WINTER'S TOP free agent starting pitchers had plenty of suitors. Based on data from Roster Resources at FanGraphs, we can estimate that about $1.38 billion in committed salary went to free agent starters -- highlighted by nine-figure commitments for Max Fried, Corbin Burnes and Blake Snell.

After the Royals' success in 2024, you might have expected a bit more activity from baseball's also-rans and low-revenue teams, which saw how the right couple of rotation additions can not just infuse the win column but can paper over an organization's lack of depth.

Yet it was mostly the usual suspects doing all of that spending. Teams that finished .500 or better last year accounted for 78% of the collective rotation investment. If you look at it from a revenue standpoint, the 12 highest-grossing teams (or 40% of the league) accounted for 58% of the spending on starters.

There were exceptions in the Athletics and Los Angeles Angels. The low-ish revenue Arizona Diamondbacks doled out $210 million for Burnes. Still, by and large, there wasn't a deluge of teams following in the Royals' path. Ranking eighth in spending on starters were the Royals themselves, who committed $58 million to bring back Wacha and Michael Lorenzen.

If you love the traditional models of starting pitching, this might be disappointing. As we've alluded to, while the Royals didn't reinvent the rotation wheel, they did at least show us that some of the old ways can still work. But so, too, do the new ways.

Case in point: If the Royals took a season approach to running their rotation, other teams won with a game-based approach -- and none more so than the Milwaukee Brewers.

"We don't have the firepower to give up one game, you know?" said Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy, the reigning National League Manager of the Year. "I mean, we just don't. We're not built that way."

The Brewers have been one of baseball's great innovators for years now, but much of their recent run of success has been due to a foundation of starting pitching, led by Burnes, Brandon Woodruff and Freddy Peralta. But Burnes was traded before last season and Woodruff was recovering from a shoulder injury.

Still, the revamped Brewers won 93 games and the NL Central title, and they did it by winning one game at a time in about the most anti-Royals way possible.

Only three teams used fewer starters than the Royals' nine, but only two clubs used more than the Brewers' 17. Only three teams got fewer rotation innings than Milwaukee, and only six teams saw their starters throw more pitches per inning.

Instead of riding a group of old-school starters and preserving them as much as possible for the long haul, the Brewers improvised their way along, day after day. And it worked.

"Of course, we want the length," said Milwaukee pitching coach Chris Hook. "But that's not necessarily how you put 27 outs together."

In terms of managing effort, this approach focuses a starting pitcher in that he doesn't have to worry about the later innings, as starters once did. Still, the notion of managing effort at all might be an individual pitcher thing, as opposed to an explicit message from an organization. Brewers starter Aaron Civale has spent his career taking a tour of some of baseball's most cutting-edge pitching programs, moving from Cleveland to Tampa Bay to Milwaukee.

"I've never been instructed to not have the foot on the gas," Civale said. "I've also never been instructed to have my foot on the gas. I think that if you're a competitor and you're at this level, you're going pitch to pitch, and you're trying to win that moment versus the hitter. And the hitter is doing the same thing."

In a sense, the Brewers maintained that kind of postseason mindset from the first pitch on Opening Day. Worry about getting the win today. Then worry about tomorrow.

"It'd be great to have five dudes," Hook said, "but I don't think that's the norm. Throughout the league, it's not the norm. For us even more so, because we do things a little different in how we construct a roster."

That roster construction works because of Milwaukee's ability to consistently build deep, dominant bullpens, often with the considerable help of pitchers who have struggled in other organizations. It also involves finding what former manager Craig Counsell always called "out getters" -- pitchers who fill a variety of roles from short, high-leverage spots to multi-inning stints in the middle of winnable games.

"It's about winning the F'ing game tonight," Hook said. "That's basically Murph's mantra, and I think that's how we play the system."

EVERYTHING WENT RIGHT for the Royals' rotation in 2024, just as pretty much everything went right for the Brewers' bullpen, at least once closer Devin Williams returned from injury. The teams went about it very differently but ultimately both approaches paid off in postseason appearances.

Now they are running it back, trying to repeat dynamics that are so hard to pin down. Can the Royals get 151 starts from five starting pitchers? Can the Brewers continue to spin almost every bullpen arm they acquire into high-leverage gold, especially after trading Williams to the Yankees in December?

With lock Sam Monaghan missing the championship through injury and Edel McMahon starting on the bench for the opener, Ireland will have a new captain against France with Amee-Leigh Costigan leading the side out for the first time.

Like Lane, Costigan was an Olympian last year and does have previous captaincy experience in the sevens game.

"It's a huge honour, I'm so excited about it," the new skipper told BBC Sport.

"I've been guided really well by Tricky [McMahon] and Sam, the co-captains.

"They've given me really good advice over the last 48 hours."

The game will again be staged in Belfast, where Ireland have beaten both Scotland and Australia in the last 12 months.

Having finished runners-up to England in each of the past five seasons, however, France will be viewed as a step up in opposition.

Ireland have not beaten their visitors since 2017 and Costigan knows a result against a side they could potentially meet in a World Cup quarter-final later this year would be viewed as a significant marker.

"It would be a huge statement but we've to stick to our gameplan, do our very best out there, and give the fans something to cheer on," she added.

"We want this to be very competitive, to set teams up going into the World Cup in September."

"That [whether she plays inside or outside centre] is probably more of a conversation for Mitch. Certainly in this Six Nations, it's definitely a focus on 13," Scarratt said.

"Jade Shekells has come in to fill a bit of that 12 gap behind Tatyana [Heard], and Holly [Aitchison] is playing there this weekend.

"There are times where I will fit into that, whether it's in training or in games. We're blessed with a few people that can float into different positions.

"Playing 13, trying to compete for a shirt with Megan Jones is tough at the moment, so if there's another opportunity to potentially play, I'll definitely take it. But at the moment, the focus is definitely on 13."

Asked if she feels more comfortable playing at outside centre, she added: "I think so, just looking at the numbers and the amount of times I've played there compared to everywhere else.

"I was getting into a little groove at 12 and I don't mind it. The way England play and bits at Loughborough where it's a bit more interchangeable, they kind of blend into one a little bit.

"I do prefer perhaps being one out, especially defensively - I think there are more problems to be solved out a channel wider. But I just would want to be on the field, to be honest."

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Rick Pitino vs. John Calipari, Round 5. It's on.

The two decorated, animated coaches will be center stage when Pitino leads No. 2 seed St. John's against Calipari and No. 10 Arkansas in the second round of the men's NCAA basketball tournament Saturday at Amica Mutual Pavilion.

Mutual respect? Absolutely.

A friendship? Not so fast.

"I certainly have great respect for him, but we're not really close. Everybody tried to talk that way," Pitino said Friday, the day after St. John's overcame early jitters against No. 15 seed Omaha before pulling away with a dominant second half to win by 30 and set up the matchup with Arkansas.

"I don't know a whole lot about him except he's a terrific basketball coach. At a very young age, I knew him really well ... but years have gone by and I don't think we have been to dinner one time in our lifetime."

But they've been on the sideline as opposing collegiate head coaches 23 times overall, with Calipari holding a 13-10 edge.

As for the NCAA tournament, Saturday's fifth matchup between the 72-year-old Pitino and 66-year-old Calipari ties for the second most between two head coaches in tourney history -- one behind Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and Michigan State's Tom Izzo. Pitino won the first two, Calipari the most recent two.

"He's on Chapter 2 of his new book, and we're on Chapter 1," Calipari said, in reference to Pitino's second season at St. John's and his first at Arkansas, which pulled away in the final minutes to beat No. 7 seed Kansas on Thursday to advance. "It's both of us writing another story and being able to come back here."

St. John's (31-4) has the country's No. 1 defense and is on a nine-game winning streak. Arkansas (21-13) played one of its best games of the season Thursday, led by Jonas Aidoo's 22 points.

Both coaches reflected Friday on the story of how they initially connected -- at the Five-Star Basketball Camp when Calipari was a camper and Pitino a counselor. Calipari said he looked up to Pitino at that time, and later remembered Pitino returning as a speaker when he became a counselor.

Pitino recalled how he advocated for Calipari to land his first head-coaching job at UMass, his alma mater, in 1988. He acknowledged he never would have imagined Calipari would lead the once-dormant program to a No. 1 ranking, which included a trip to the Final Four in 1996 when Pitino's Kentucky squad defeated Calipari's upstart Minutemen.

"We're both Italian. We both love the game. I think that's pretty much where the similarities end." Rick Pitino on John Calipari

Calipari's time at Memphis (2000-09) and then Kentucky (2009-24) coincided with Pitino's at Louisville (2001-17), which added more compelling chapters to the history between them.

"He was at Louisville, I was at Kentucky -- you're not going to be friends when you got those two jobs," Calipari said Friday. "You're not going to be enemies but ... you know, I respect coaches that can really do this well, and if you can do it over a long, long period of time, I really respect you."

Calipari said he has long studied Pitino and noted how his teams always "play hard and with a winning attitude." At the same time, the distance between them was evident when Calipari was asked Friday what he thought about Pitino imploring Kentucky fans not to boo Calipari upon his return to Rupp Arena for the first time since his departure in early February.

"I would rather have a Christmas card, but that was nice of him," Calipari said.

Said Pitino: "We're both Italian. We both love the game. I think that's pretty much where the similarities end."

RALEIGH, N.C. -- UConn coach Dan Hurley was asked how it felt after his team rallied to a 67-59 win over Oklahoma in the first round of the NCAA tournament Friday night.

He offered the obvious: "It felt normal."

Indeed, Friday night's win for the two-time defending national champion Huskies was their 13th straight in the tournament, tied with the 1991-93 Duke Blue Devils for the longest streak since the tournament expanded in 1985. Hurley said this year's run up to the tournament has been more dramatic -- close losses, more stress -- but the ability to keep winning showcases how special it's been.

"If it wasn't for all of my antics and viral moments," said Hurley, who's repeatedly earned attention for outspoken commentary, "there would be more focus on just what we've accomplished as a program the last three years. It's been an amazing run, one of the best runs anyone's had."

Friday's win was, Hurley said, a microcosm of UConn's 2024-25 campaign -- one far different than what the program enjoyed in the past two years.

No. 8 seed UConn led by as many as 10 points in the first half but saw No. 9 Oklahoma storm back to take the lead. And with 3:20 left in the game and without a field goal in more than three minutes, the Huskies were up just a point.

That's when Alex Karaban drained a critical 3-pointer, giving UConn a cushion it never relinquished.

"Whenever we've been able to start playing good basketball and getting separation, we've tended to shoot ourselves in the foot," Hurley said. "But the thing about this team is we're really battle tested, and we've had to fight so hard all year that we showed a lot of toughness down the stretch to execute some things and make some critical shots and make some critical stops."

UConn is one of just three programs to win back-to-back national titles, and each is playing in Raleigh this weekend. The last to double dip before UConn was Florida, whom the Huskies will face on Sunday with a ticket to the Sweet 16 at stake and a chance to set the tournament record for consecutive victories. (Duke is the other to repeat.)

"Just to be able to come here and, No. 1, to make the tournament and fight our way in, come out here and fight with some honor and get ourselves an opportunity to play one of the best teams in the country," Hurley said, "there's a lot of honor in us being able to face the last team that went back to back."

NEW YORK -- The NBA fined Brooklyn Nets swingman Trendon Watford and Indiana Pacers forward Myles Turner $35,000 each on Friday for an altercation in a game this week.

Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard also was fined $20,000 for his role in initiating the altercation in the Pacers' 105-99 overtime victory over the Nets on Thursday.

The tensions started with about five minutes left in the fourth quarter when Watford ran toward Nembhard after a made basket and hit him with a forearm to the chest. Watford also shoved Turner after he ran toward the scuffle.

Players and team personnel joined the fracas, but it did not escalate further.

Watford was assessed two technical fouls and ejected, while Turner and Nembhard were each assessed technical fouls.

Sometimes, it's about more than just basketball.

Friday night in Minneapolis was one of those times.

Among those in attendance for the Pelicans-Timberwolves game at Target Center was Jacob Ingles, the son of Minnesota veteran Joe Ingles. Jacob has autism, and earlier this week, he achieved the milestone of watching an entire game in person. The only downside: His dad didn't play.

But that changed Friday night.

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch not only made sure Ingles played but he gave him his first start since Jan. 30, 2022, and Jacob -- along with his mother and two siblings -- watched proudly as his father inspired Minnesota to a 134-93 win.

"It's emotional," Finch said. "Sometimes, you have to do the human thing. And you always talk about all these minutes matter. Those minutes matter for another reason."

Finch said the idea of starting Ingles was floated to him earlier Friday.

"And I figured if we're going to do it, let's do it in style," he said.

"Guys were behind it, and I think it gave us just the right boost that we needed and a change of energy.

"It's not often you get to do those types of things, but we're really happy that we could."

Ingles finished scoreless in six minutes, but the night was about much more than a box score. He said his goal has, and will continue to be, raising awareness for autism.

"The s---'s real. It doesn't matter who you are or the lifestyle or the money," he told reporters in Minnesota.

"We'll keep doing what we do. The awareness, and we'll keep doing whatever we can to help other families. But I think people just need to understand this is a real thing. It doesn't go away with money. It doesn't go away with situations we're in. All we can do is talk about it. And then obviously for us, give Jacob the best chance to fit in in this crazy world that we're in."

Argentina didn't miss Lionel Messi, Lautaro Martínez and other key players on Friday and beat Uruguay away 1-0 in convincing fashion in their South American World Cup qualifying match.

Thiago Almada scored the winner with a powerful curled shot from the edge of the box, putting the defending champions one point away from its direct spot in the tournament next year.

Argentina leads the round robin competition with 28 points after 13 matches, and could secure its place with a home draw with Brazil on Tuesday. The team of coach Lionel Scaloni already has 15 points ahead of seventh-placed Bolívia, with only five rounds to the end of the competition.

The last time the two soccer powerhouses clashed, Argentina won 1-0 at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil is third with 21 points, one ahead of Uruguay and Paraguay. Colombia, with 19 points, has the sixth position.

The top six teams will secure direct berths to the tournament in the United States, Mexico and Canada. The seventh-place team among the 10 of the region will still have a chance to qualify through an international playoff.

 Argentina had to accommodate key absences beyond Messi. Lautaro Martínez, Lisandro Martínez, and Rodrigo De Paul did not play in Montevideo. So coach Lionel Scaloni gave a place to Giuliano Simeone in the starting lineup, with Julián Álvarez and Almada up front.

Uruguay, playing in a full Centenario Stadium against its archrival, took the initiative and had the clearest chances in the first half. But Argentina managed to hold its ground and started getting the better opportunities after halftime.

Almada's goal in the 68th minute, after Argentina had wasted several other opportunities in front of goalkeeper Sergio Rochet, still didn't push Uruguay forward as Marcelo Bielsa's team finished the match with only four shots on goal.

"I was a little anxious, very willing to play and to show why I was making the squad," said Almada, a world champion with Argentina in 2022. "Now we have to rest and wait for this match against Brazil, they will rest one more day than us."

Argentina's Nico Gonzalez will miss the match against Brazil. He was sent off after a challenge against Nahitan Nández in injury time.

Brazil has selection problems of its own for Tuesday's match at the Monumental de Nunez Stadium, as starting goalkeeper Alisson, defender Gabriel Magalhães and midfielder Bruno Guimarães are all ineligible to play.

Argentina coach Scaloni celebrated his team's performance despite so many absences.

"We made a complete match, we absorbed the pressure. When we had to play, we did it. And when we had to defend, we did it too," Scaloni said in a press conference. "I am happy not only for our win, but also for how the team behaves."

Uruguay will have a chance to recover against Bolivia on Tuesday. If the Bolivians fail to beat the Uruguayans, Argentina will qualify for the World Cup even if it loses against Brazil.