Times Change, but Mahomes Still Stings Like a Bee

Let’s begin with Muhammad Ali. From 1960 to 1967, he was something out of a comic book. It’s easy to forget just how big the young Ali was—he was 6-foot-3, 215 or so pounds of pure muscle—because he was so incredibly quick. You couldn’t hit him then. He’d dance around the ring, feinting and bobbing, lashing out with cobra jabs, shuffling when he felt like it and then unleashing a blurring combination of 8 or 12 or 23 or 381 punches. The eyes could not keep up.

He then missed three years for refusing to fight in Vietnam. And when he returned, he was a different fighter, slower, heavier, much more attackable. Joe Frazier knocked him to the canvas with a savage left hook that came from Key West. Ken Norton broke his jaw. George Foreman whaled away as Ali leaned back into the ropes. A sledgehammer named Earnie Shavers hurt him badly on multiple occasions—at one point, Ali actually conned Shavers into slowing his attack by PRETENDING to be hurt when he was ACTUALLY hurt. He was some kind of athletic genius.

And that’s the point here—the old Ali was, in his own way, an even greater fighter than the young Ali because he knew things, and because he reached into himself for will and heart and other qualities that he didn’t even need when he was unhittable and invincible, lightning and thunder, butterfly and bee.

I was thinking about Ali on Sunday watching Patrick Mahomes do what Patrick Mahomes does.

By every statistical measure available, Mahomes at 29 is not the comic book superhero he was as a younger man. He rather famously was not chosen for this year’s Pro Bowl—first time in his career—and it’s pretty hard to argue that he should have been. I mean:

• Lamar Jackson: 4,172 passing, 41 TDs, 4 INTs, 119.8 PR, 915 rushing, 4 TDs

• Josh Allen: 3,731 passing, 28 TDs, 6 INTs, 101.4 PR, 531 rushing, 12 TDs

• Joe Burrow: 4,918 passing, 43 TDs, 9 INTs, 108.5 PR, 201 rushing, 2 TDs

• Pat Mahomes: 3,928 passing, 26 TDs, 11 INT, 93.5 PR, 307 rushing, 2 TDs

That’s not especially close. And it isn’t just the numbers. It has often been jarring watching Mahomes the last couple of years. Those impossible and magical plays that marked his career happen a lot less often. He throws more “What was that?” passes than ever before. In 2024, he was sacked 36 times, by far the most of his career. It’s one thing to say—and it’s true—that he is not surrounded by the same sort of playmakers and offensive tackles he had a few years ago. But, at the same time, there’s something different about him. He’s still great. But he’s a slightly different, slightly less thrilling, slightly more vulnerable kind of great.

And, like with the aging Ali, I can’t help but wonder if this version of Mahomes is somehow greater now than ever. On Sunday, he did just enough to lead the Chiefs to a 32-29 victory over Buffalo and head to his fifth Super Bowl in six years. That’s just what he does now—just enough. He has taken the Chiefs on EIGHT fourth-quarter, game-winning drives this year, which ties the all-time record. The Chiefs have won 17 consecutive one-score games, and that is the all-time record. The Chiefs are trying to become the first team in NFL history to win three consecutive Super Bowls, and in two of those years, as mentioned, Mahomes’ overall numbers were quite meh.

So, how do you explain it?

Many will explain it—many have explained it to me the last few hours—by saying that Mahomes is lucky… the league protects him… officials call phantom penalties that help him… teams choke against him… bad spots always go his way, etc. I find a lot of this funny: I can imagine all of the James Bond supervillains getting together on a retreat and complaining, “No matter how many bullets we fire at this guy, none ever hit him!” I can imagine the Empire having countless vigorous target practice sessions with stormtroopers so that, just once, they might actually connect with one of those plasma bolts.

But beyond what’s funny, I think these complaints perfectly explain Mahomes’ brilliance. He always does just enough, doesn’t he? All season, he scored a total of two rushing touchdowns. On Sunday, with the Super Bowl on the line, he scored two rushing touchdowns in a single game.

All during the early season, he threw interceptions, at least one every week, and he had a few dropped over that time, too. The last eight games, with the Super Bowl on the line, he’s thrown zero interceptions.

He has not had a legitimate deep threat at receiver since Tyreek Hill left, and all season long you could see him struggling to find someone downfield who could spread out the defense. On Sunday, with the Super Bowl on the line, he got rookie Xavier Worthy and veteran JuJu Smith Schuster to look like Swann and Stallworth.

Before the playoffs began, I said this to a couple friends: Patrick Mahomes is not the league MVP… but he’s the guy you want going into the playoffs, and nobody else is even close. I love Josh Allen and am heartbroken for him and Bill fans, I really am. But, you know, I can’t imagine anyone being surprised. I saw several memes like this one on BlueSky from No Context College Football.

Sure, there will be complaints about the officiating, and there will be talk about lucky breaks, of course, and there will be plenty of words spilled over how just about everyone outside of 816/913 is flat-out sick of the Chiefs and Mahomes and the whole thing. Our pal Mike Schur says he feels obligated to root for the Eagles, and he REALLY doesn’t like the Eagles. I imagine a lot of people feel that way.

But, in the end, none of that matters much. Patrick Mahomes, I feel sure, is the best to ever play the quarterback position, and the reason is that he always finds a way. It’s like Muhammad Ali himself said: “Ain’t nothing wrong with going down. It’s staying down that’s wrong.”

Patrick Mahomes ain’t staying down.

Let’s take a quick moment to celebrate Madison Keys’ incredible victory at the Australian Open. I just saw Maddy play an exhibition against her dear friend Sloane Stephens here in Charlotte a few weeks ago—a repeat of the 2017 U.S. Open Final!—and she looked good, but there was no way to predict these last two weeks.

Madison Keys started playing tennis when she was 4, because she liked the outfit that Venus Williams was wearing on television. As she grew a bit older, she started asking to go to the Chris Evert tennis academy rather than summer camp. When she was 10, she asked to become a full-time player. Her mother, Christine, said that she would have to prove herself first.

So she became the No. 1 tennis player in Iowa.

With that, the family moved down to Florida, and when Maddy was 12, she destroyed everybody at the Junior Orange Bowl Tournament, winning the final 6-0, 6-1. Maddy turned pro at 14 and beat a Top 100 player in the world in her very first match. In a Team Tennis tournament that year, she beat Serena Williams in a five-game set. Everybody predicted greatness.

And… she was fantastic. She won her first career title at 19. She reached her first grand slam semifinal at 20. She broke into the top 10 at 21. She reached that U.S. Open final at 22. These are all incredible achievements. But, yeah, once people have predicted greatness. once people have predicted multiple grand slam titles and No. 1 in the world, nothing else feels quite good enough.

And it was particularly hard for Keys, as she kept putting herself in position to reach the top… and things just went sideways. She lost that U.S. Open final to Sloane Stephens, and it seemed like the moment was just a little bit too big for her, and then she lost to Stephens again in the French Open semifinal a few months later. She reached the U.S. Open semifinal right after that and was outclassed by Naomi Osaka (as everyone was that year).

The next few years were filled with a series of injuries and inconsistency and upsets. She kept grinding. Keys finished pretty much every year in the Top 20, but she couldn’t quite break back into the Top 10. All the while, she was always one of the most popular players on tour. Every interview with her was a delight.

In 2022, she made the semifinals in Australia and got steamrolled by Ash Barty, who was just destroying everybody then (she didn’t lose a set the entire tournament). Then, later that year, she was up a set and a break against No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka… and lost in a gory third-set tiebreak (she was up a break in the third set, too). In the Wimbledon fourth round last year, she had to retire in the third set. It just seemed like this was her destiny—to be in the photograph but to never be the one holding up the trophy.

And then came this incredible run down under. She came into the tournament seeded 19th, and two rounds in, she had to play former Australian Open finalist Danielle Collins. She won in straight sets. She then played top 10 player and former Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina. She won in three magnificent sets. Next was Elina Svitolina, who has been ranked as high as No. 3 in the world. She came back after losing the opening set to win in three and make it to the semifinal.

In the seminal, she played the No. 2 player in the world, Iga Swiatek, who has won five Grand Slam tournaments and has spent 125 weeks at No. 1. Swiatek won the first set, Keys the second, and then that third set was an incredible back and forth. Keys’ game relies on power and aggression; she has talked often about how difficult it can be for her to stay patient, stay in the point, play defense. But to beat Swiatek, she had to do all of those things, and she did, and she won the third-set tiebreaker to make it to her first grand slam final in eight years.

And then, in the final, she played the best player in the world right now—the very same Aryna Sabalenka she had beaten at the U.S. Open only to lose in heartbreaking fashion. Like that time, Keys won the first set. Like that time, Sabalenka roared back. Sabalenka had won the previous two Australian Opens. Sabalenka had also won the previous three times they had played.

But Maddy found herself in that third set. She kept staying in the points, kept finding ways to fight back. She went up a break, only to see Sabalenka break back. But then, with Sabalenka serving at 6-5, she hit a couple brilliant shots and set up a championship point. Sabalenka served and she absolutely crunched a backhand return that skidded off the baseline. Sabalenka stretched and managed to get the ball back and worked her way back into the point. But then she left a backhand short. Madison Keys has been playing this game since she was 4 years old. She knows what to do with a backhand left short.

She unleashed a forehand into the deuce corner and Sabalenka could do nothing but watch it go by. And now Madison Keys is a grand slam champion. It’s wonderful.

Well, you really seemed to like the back-and-forth with MLB Network over the Top 10 shortstops in baseball RIGHT NOW, so I figure I’ll just do every position, one per day.

As you no doubt know, MLB Network feeds a whole bunch of information into The Shredder, who then spits out their top 10 players at every position in baseball.

Today’s installment: Catchers. This doesn’t feel like an especially great time for catchers in baseball. Three all-timers—Joe Mauer, Buster Posey and Yadi Molina—retired in the last few years, and this seems to be the cycle for catchers. In the 1970s, baseball was loaded with amazing catchers—Bench and Fisk and Carter and Simmons and Munson and the like. In the 1980s, four of them are in the Hall of Fame and there’s a real argument for Munson as well.

Then, in the 1980s, the best catchers were guys like Lance Parrish and Tony Peña and Terry Kennedy and Mike Scioscia and guys like that. Good players. Not Hall of Famers. I think we’re in a similar phase for catchers now.

No. 10

• MLB Network: Austin Wells, New York Yankees

• Me: Tyler Stephenson, Cincinnati Reds

I’m pretty shocked that Stephenson was not on the Network’s Top 10. That was not the BIGGEST shock—you’ll see that one in a bit—but it was a pretty big shock: Stephenson posted a 112 OPS+ and banged 19 home runs while playing more games at catcher than anyone in the National League. I see mixed reviews on his defense; people do run on him, but he seems a pretty good pitch framer and he’s excellent at blocking pitches in the dirt. Not having him on their list was a big miss by The Shredder, I think (but, again, not the biggest).

No. 9

• MLB Network: Sean Murphy, Atlanta Braves

• Me: Alejandro Kirk, Toronto Blue Jays

How can you not love Alejandro Kirk? He’s listed at 5-foot-8, 245 pounds which basically means he’s me-sized (or was before I lost a lot of weight). His bat has fallen off after his excellent 2022 season, but he still walks about as often as he strikes out, and he just hit his first big-league triple somehow. And defensively, he’s a pitch-framing savant, and this year he threw out 31% of base stealers, which is quite good these days.

No. 8

• MLB Network: Alejandro Kirk, Toronto Blue Jays

• Me: Salvador Perez, Kansas City Royals

Salvy can’t get any love at all. He just keeps going and going—last year, at age 34, he posted a 119 OPS+ with 27 home runs, made the All-Star team and had his best defensive season in a good while after he vastly improved his pitch framing. He’s a nine-time All-Star, a five-time Gold Glove winner, he has the single-season record for most home runs by a catcher, he was the inspirational leader for two pennant-winning Royals teams, and he represents the very best of baseball. I mean, sure, I get it, he’s 34 and everybody’s been waiting for the fall off the cliff for a while now—it’s going to happen sooner or later. But can’t a legend like Salvy get a Top 10 spot? The Shredder has no heart.

No. 7

• MLB Network: Gabriel Moreno, Arizona Diamondbacks

• Me: Willson Contreras, St. Louis Cardinals

Again, I’m pretty shocked Willson did not make the Network Top 10. I think it comes down to the fact that he was hurt for a good part of 2024, and in 2023 got some bad publicity after the Cardinals weirdly talked about making him a full-time DH.

But he’s still catching with regularity—and he’s still pounding the ball. He posted a 136 OPS+ in an injury-plagues 2024 season. To give you an idea, that was a considerably higher OPS+ than Will Smith, Adley Rutschman or even his brother William.

Willson is probably not a great defensive catcher, but he has established himself as a veteran leader—you should hear how the younger Cardinals players talk about him—and he will be at the center of the Cardinals’ 2025 season.

No. 6

• MLB Network: Yainer Diaz, Houston Astros

• Me: J.T. Realmuto, Philadelphia Phillies

When considering my Top 10s, I usually put a heavy emphasis on youth—the RIGHT NOW part. As such, I’m not super-comfortable going with some of the older catchers I have on this list—Salvy, Willson, J.T. are all in their 30s and all should be on the decline path.

For that reason, I thought very hard about having Austin Wells on the list, since he’s only 25 and showed flashes of excellence as a rookie for the Yankees both as a hitter and as a defensive player. But for now I’m going to stick with Realmuto—who has just been solidly doing everything for a decade.

No. 5

• MLB Network: J.T. Realmuto, Philadelphia Phillies

• Me: Patrick Bailey, San Francisco Giants

Sure, I might be overestimating Patrick Bailey because of his youth (he’s 25) and savant-like defense—but I feel more sure that The Shredder is vastly underestimating him. I mean, they don’t even have Bailey, who won the Gold Glove for defense last year, in their Top 10? What? The bat admittedly has a long way to go, and it’s hard to say he will ever be a star-quality hitter.

But we’re talking about a guy who converted an absurd 54% of pitches in the shadow zone—those pitches JUST off the plate—into called strikes. He is, as FanGraphs declared him, a “unicorn pitch framer,” and until MLB starts letting robo-umps call balls and strikes, he will be one of the premier catchers in the game.

No. 4

• MLB Network: Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners

• Me: Will Smith, Los Angeles Dodgers

I really do love Will Smith, and my initial instinct was to put him as a Top 3 catcher... but you know what? I don’t think he is a Top 3 catcher. He’s a good hitter with power, but he’s not quite the dominant hitter that he looked to be when he was first called up. In his first two seasons, he looked like he would be an absolute masher—he slugged .574 with 23 home runs in just 333 plate appearances those first two years. He hasn’t slugged .500 in a season since then, though, and last year slugged just .433.

And defensively, he has a great arm and quick release, and as such led the league in caught-stealing percentage. BUT by Statcast numbers, he’s the worst pitch-framer in baseball, and it isn’t even that close. Smith is an outstanding, All-Star-level catcher and the perfect guy for the fully-loaded Dodgers, and I’m a huge fan… but this is as high as I could comfortably rank him.

No. 3

• MLB Network: Will Smith, Los Angeles Dodgers

• Me: Adley Rutschman, Baltimore Orioles

I cannot begin to tell you how much it hurts my heart to put Adley Rutschman at No. 3 rather than No. 1, where I so desperately want him to be. But let’s not kid anybody—Rutschman took a gigantic step backward in 2024. I don’t know what happened to him in late June, but, ugh—after July 27 (when he was hitting the expected .300/.351/.479), he just collapsed. He hit .189/.279/.280. His defense fell off. Maybe he was hurt (though the Orioles deny any injury).

I don’t want to make too much of it—Rutschman is young, he was so good his first two years, I could easily see last season being nothing more than a blip. But I’m always nervous about Orioles catching phenoms. I mean, we all thought Matt Wieters was going to change the world. Adley needs to get back on track in 2025.

No. 2

• MLB Network: Adley Rutschman, Baltimore Orioles

• Me: Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners

Big Dumper is the ultimate 2020s catcher. He hits long home runs. He strikes out a bajillion times. He turns borderline pitches into strikes. What more could anyone want?

No. 1

• MLB Network: William Contreras, Milwaukee Brewers

• Me: William Contreras, Milwaukee Brewers

All of last year, I kept trying to figure out why the Milwaukee Brewers were playing such good baseball. It just didn’t make sense to me. Eventually, I just came to the conclusion that William Contreras was the reason.

He just one of those old-time catchers who does everything well—sort of a modern-day Carlton Fisk. He hits for a pretty good average, he will take a walk, he’s got 20- to 25-home run power but also hits a bunch of doubles, he hasn’t won a Gold Glove but he’s a very good defender, he’s durable, he’s just as solid as they come. William Contreras is the sort of player you can build a winning team around.

Brilliant Reader question from Brilliant Reader Andrew: What’s the greatest baseball team you can assemble of players most fans would know from just their first name?

OK, I’ll give you two lists. First, the best team based entirely on first names—or shortened versions of first names. I asked Margo—who, as you know, is a moderate baseball fan—to confirm that each of these players was immediately recognizable to her.

• Catcher: Josh

• First base: Lou (First base was the hardest one—Lou COULD be Whitaker, Albert COULD be Belle, Frank COULD be Robinson and so on. I went with Lou but don’t feel as good about it as the others).

• Second base: Jackie (ahead of Rogers because that’s too common a last name)

• Third base: Brooks

• Shortstop: Ozzie

• Leftfield: Rickey

• Centerfield: Ty

• Rightfield: Ichiro

• Right-handed pitcher: Nolan

• Left-handed pitcher: Fernando (I originally had Clayton here, but Margo insisted that Fernando is simply more memorable. I can buy that).

• Reliever: Mariano

And, as a bonus, here is the best team I can put together based entirely on nicknames:

• Catcher: Yogi

• First base: Boog (I originally had Big Hurt here, but Margo did not know it—she guessed a few players before giving up. She did know Boog).

• Second base: Rajah

• Third base: Chipper

• Shortstop: Mr. Cub

• Leftfield: The Man (Teddy Ballgame had too many nicknames)

• Centerfield: Cool Papa

• Rightfield: Babe

• Right-handed pitcher: Satchel

• Left-handed pitcher: Big Unit

• Reliever: Goose