CLEVELAND — Austin Martin was one of the last players sent down as the Twins made their final roster cuts during spring training. He was in line to have been one of the first players called back up, too.

Unfortunately for Martin, his right hamstring wouldn’t cooperate. Martin first strained the hamstring chasing after a fly ball in center field on April 10. That injury left him out for nearly a month. He returned on May 6, hitting a single in his first at-bat. He didn’t make it around the bases before re-injuring the same leg. His return lasted less than a full inning as Martin once again landed on the injured list with a hamstring strain, not returning again until June 26.

It was a frustrating start to the season for Martin, once a top prospect after being selected fifth overall in the 2020 draft. But now, after the Twins traded much of their roster at the deadline creating space at the major league level, there’s an opportunity for Martin, who debuted last season, to show the Twins what he can do and the utilityman intends to make the most of it.

“That’s all I’ve ever needed was just an opportunity,” Martin said. “All I want to do is just go out and play my game.”

He certainly had been at Triple-A. Martin was hitting .306 with a .420 on-base percentage before his call up on Friday. He had three hits in his first major league game of the season on Friday and singled and scored a run on Sunday in the Twins’ 5-4 win over the Guardians, as he tries to salvage the latter part to his season.

“I knew some good would come out of it. Even in the negative situations, there’s always going to be some positives that come out of it,” Martin said. “As frustrating as it was to try to build up to get  back and first game back, first inning back, reinjuring it, it was frustrating for sure but that’s baseball. Sometimes things are going to happen.”

The positives, he said, were that he went back to the team’s complex in Fort Myers, Florida, and was able to work on his game. The tweaks he made during the offseason, he’s been able to implement and now, he feels exactly how he wants to feel in the batter’s box.

Now, it’s about showing it at the major league level as he tries to carve a role out for himself on the Twins moving forward.

“He handles everything comes his way – successes, disappointments, everything because you see a lot in this game – he handles it all well,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He doesn’t let things get in his way. He just keeps his head down. He works very hard. He demands a lot of himself and he just keeps going.”

Woods Richardson pushed back

The Twins had to shuffle their pitching plans this week to account for the fact that Simeon Woods Richardson is dealing with a stomach issue. The starter, who was scheduled to start the series finale in Cleveland, is now listed as the starting pitcher for Wednesday’s series finale in Detroit against the first-place Tigers.

On Sunday, he was replaced by José Ureña, who was called up on Friday and threw four innings, giving up two runs in the start. The Twins have yet to name a starter for the series opener in Detroit, though they are likely to run some kind of bullpen game.

Briefly

Second baseman Luke Keaschall is very close to rejoining the Twins with his return likely to happen this week in Detroit. Keaschall, one of the team’s top prospects, has been out since April 25 when he was hit by a pitch, fracturing his forearm. In his first seven major league games, Keaschall had provided a spark in the Twins’ lineup, hitting .368 with five stolen bases.

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By Brian K. Sullivan, Bloomberg News

Smoke and grit from hundreds of forest fires have spread across large parts of Canada and the northern U.S., sending air quality across the Midwest and northeast U.S. and Toronto to unhealthy levels.

Air quality deteriorated to moderate in Chicago early Sunday with some areas deemed unhealthy for sensitive groups, and to unhealthy in Milwaukee and downtown Toronto, Canada’s largest city, according to AirNow.gov. Alerts were raised across Canada from the Northwest Territories to Quebec, as well as in 10 U.S. states from Minnesota to Maine.

Through Sunday, the area covered has spread to include almost all of New York except the Hudson Valley from Albany to New York City, as well as all of Vermont and nearly all of Maine. In addition, conditions have deteriorated in Montreal, Canada’s second most populous city, with levels dropping to unhealthy for sensitive people.

With weather patterns expected to hold steady, there is little chance of immediate relief, forecasters noted.

“The overall flow is still out of the west; it doesn’t look like it is going to change much overall,” said Bob Oravec, a senior branch forecaster with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. “It goes out through the week.”

More than 730 forest fires are raging across Canada with at least 210 out of control, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. The smoke from the blazes, which have consumed 6.6 million hectares (16.3 million acres), have often drifted south in the U.S. at various times this spring and summer, including casting a pall over the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago on Friday.

In recent years, the massive smoke clouds drifting from Canadian fires have triggered a series of emergencies across the eastern U.S., and at one point turned Manhattan’s skies an apocalyptic orange. The smoke has crossed the Atlantic at times, clouding European skies and dropping soot across the Arctic. Scientists are looking into whether the smoke is contributing to melting ice there and rising temperatures.

Steady wind out of the northwest will keep the smoke drifting into the U.S. for at least the coming week, Oravec said. The conditions that broke the hot, humid weather across the eastern U.S. are also partially to blame for the spreading smoke, he said. Temperatures in New York’s Central Park, for instance, dropped from the mid to high 90sF last week to just 80F Saturday, the National Weather Service said.

Oravec said until the fires are extinguished, there will likely be continued rounds of smoke and ash drifting south.

_____

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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CLEVELAND — There was little time for president of baseball operations Derek Falvey, general manager Jeremy Zoll and company to rest after a stressful, emotional day on Thursday. Following a trade deadline in which they executed nine trades — including seven alone on Thursday — they had a major league roster to rebuild.

That roster scored four runs in the first inning on their way to a 5-4 win over the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field in the series finale on Sunday afternoon. A group made primarily of players who had already been in the majors — Austin Martin, Ryan Jeffers, Matt Wallner, Royce Lewis and Trevor Larnach — each singled in the first inning to give the Twins a lead they would hold all game.

But who are their new teammates?

Five of the call ups had played for the Twins before this weekend — four of them already this year. The other three hadn’t but only one, Alan Roden, was included in the group of players acquired at the deadline. The rest of the players the Twins traded for have been sent to various minor league affiliates.

José Ureña, a 33-year-old right-handed pitcher, who has now pitched for 10 different major league teams, got the start on Sunday for the Twins in place of Simeon Woods Richardson, who is dealing with a stomach issue. When the veteran took the mound for the Twins, it marked the fourth different team he had pitched for this season. In four innings on Sunday, he allowed two runs, both coming on a José Ramírez two-run home run in the first inning.

The Twins’ other new bullpen additions include Erasmo Ramírez, another veteran who has pitched in parts of 13 different major league seasons and who picked up the save Sunday after Michael Tonkin gave up two ninth-inning runs, and rookies Travis Adams and Pierson Ohl.

Both Adams, the team’s No. 26 prospect per MLB Pipeline, and Ohl have been part of an experiment the Twins have been running in the minor leagues during which select pitchers have been throwing about four innings every four days instead of pitching on a more traditional starter schedule. Both will likely be used in multi-inning outings, perhaps sometimes in piggyback situations. Adams, 25, debuted in early June and Ohl on Tuesday, coming up to start after Chris Paddack was dealt to the Detroit Tigers a day earlier.

On the position-player side, the Twins added Edouard Julien and Martin, two players whom they are very familiar with, as well as Roden and Ryan Fitzgerald.

Julien, a second baseman, began the season in the majors but after a tough start to the year, was sent back to Triple-A, where he was hitting .276/.416/.464 with 11 home runs at the time he was recalled. Martin, who had three singles on Friday and began Sunday’s game by singling and scoring a run, likely would have been up earlier if not for two hamstring injuries earlier in the year. He had primarily been playing the outfield for the Saints this year.

“Every opportunity you have to play at this level is a blessing,” Martin said. “I never want to take it for granted and my mentality is just to go out there and play like it’s my last day every day.”

Fitzgerald, an infielder who was briefly up in May, debuted at age 30 and is still searching for his first-career hit after a lengthy-minor league career.

And Roden the final player added to the roster, is a 25-year-old outfielder who hails from Middleton, Wisconsin, and was part of the return in the trade that sent Louie Varland and Ty France to Toronto. The outfielder was at Triple-A Buffalo at the time of the trade, where he had hit .331 with a .918 OPS this season across 32 games. He had also spent 43 games with the Blue Jays in the majors this year.

“(He’s) a guy that we think is a really, really good bat,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “You have a guy that can play all three outfield positions that you think can really hit from the left side and controls the zone a good bit.”

With two months left in the season, that means there’s plenty of time for the newly-called up bunch to make an impression and try to carve out a role moving forward.

“There is going to be a lot of opportunity for people,” Larnach said. “I think the best thing is to look at the positives and not getting caught up in the change and what’s missing or whatever. Get better, work, put your head down and grind.”

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Regan Smith finished her 2025 World Championships in the same manner she concluded her 2024 Olympic games — with a gold medal. With a world record.

With a bang.

Regan Smith, Kate Douglass, Gretchen Walsh and Torri Huske of Team United States celebrate winning gold and setting a new championship record of 3:49.34 in the Women’s 4x100m Medley Relay Final on day 24 of the Singapore 2025 World Aquatics Championships at World Aquatics Championships Arena on Aug. 03, 2025 in Singapore. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Smith led off Team USA’s 4×100 meter medley relay by turning in a swim of 57.57 seconds in the backstroke leg, part of the Americans’ gold medal-winning time of 3 minutes, 49.34 seconds. That was a new world record, besting the time set by the U.S. in the last summer’s Olympics by nearly three tenths of a second. It was three seconds better than second-place Australia on Saturday.

Kate Douglass, Gretchen Walsh and Torri Huske joined Smith in the relay in Saturday’s final.

“It feels really good, ending the season this way with Team USA,” Smith told reporters. “We have so much faith and we’re so proud of this medley relay. We always like ending with a bang. And so we love that and we bring our all every single time, and we wanted to deliver tonight, and that’s what we did.”

The result moved Team USA’s gold medal count to nine on the final day of competition, pushing it one clear of the Australians. The Americans finished with 29 medals in total, including 11 silvers. Four of those belong to Smith, who placed second in the 50-meter backstroke, the 100-meter backstroke, the 200-meter backstroke and the 200-meter butterfly.

Smith claimed five medals in total at the World Championships in Singapore, the same tally she reached in Paris the year prior. While individual gold is always the ultimate goal, Smith’s consistent excellence continues to move her up the pantheon of great American swimmers.

For her career, Smith has already logged 23 medals between World Championship and Olympic competitions, eight of which are gold.

The 23 year old continues to be on a good pace for her career, with three years remaining until the Olympic “home game” in Los Angeles.

She’ll be 26 at that point, which is still well within a swimmer’s competitive window. American breastroker Lilly King is retiring at age 29 following these World Championships. American distance freestyler Katie Ledecky is still a dominant force at age 28.

It’s not absurd to think Smith could swim at as many as two more Olympics, with numerous World Championship appearances mixed within that span. At her current rate of success, who knows how many medals Smith could corral by the end of her career.

The count continues.