TThe Buffalo Bills opened training camp Wednesday with nearly their entire roster on the practice field.
Wide receiver Tyrell Shavers, who is recovering from a torn ACL suffered during Buffalo's playoff win over the Jacksonville Jaguars in January, was the lone player to begin camp on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list.
"Tyrell Shavers is PUP so he's the only one that won't be out there today," offensive coordinator Joe Brady said before practice. "There will be some guys that will be on a limited rep count."
That means the Bills are beginning training camp with nearly their entire roster available, a welcome change after injuries piled up late last season.
The news represents a significant turnaround from the offseason, when general manager Brandon Beane said several players were still working their way back from surgeries. Players including Michael Hoecht, DeWayne Carter, Landon Jackson and Jordan Hancock all participated in Wednesday's opening practice, though some worked on limited snap counts.

#practice #nearly

Mariners' Emerson Hancock rumor throws twist into Luis Castillo trade talks originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Seattle Mariners have a lot of starting pitchers.
That surplus has always seemed like a logical place for them to deal from ahead of the MLB trade deadline, regardless of whether moves would be considering "buying" or "selling." In this case, it would simply be the Mariners giving up a loaded position to improve in a different way.
All along, it's been ***** umed that the veteran Luis Castillo would be the most likely trade candidate.
An article on Thursday by The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon, though, suggests that they might actually trade Emerson Hancock.

#hancock

XLK gained 26% and SMH surged 65% YTD as Roland calls Q2 semiconductor earnings growth of 100%+ the best of her career.
SPY's 9% YTD return masks hidden concentration risk. Semiconductors now represent 27% of emerging market indexes, quietly breaking traditional diversification strategies.
Don't wait: the ****** yst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just revealed his top 10 AI stocks. See the full list FREE now.
Emily Roland, Co-Chief Investment Strategist at Manulife John Hancock Investment Management, delivered a two-sided message on CNBC this morning: the fundamentals underpinning technology stocks are the strongest she has ever seen, yet the concentration those returns have created is rewriting the risk profile of nearly every diversified portfolio.
Her framing captured the current market in one line: "This is just a dip buyers' dream market. Anytime news comes across that's even attempting to cause selling pressure to come in, it's almost like a beach ball that's under the water. It just pops right back up," Roland said.

SEATTLE — Emerson Hancock and the Mariners bullpen extended Seattle’s scoreless streak to 24 innings and Mitch Garver hit a two-run homer in a 4-0 win over the Toronto Blue Jays on Sunday.
Hancock (6-4) gave up two hits and two walks while striking out five over seven innings.
He followed Logan Gilbert on Saturday to became Seattle’s first starting pitchers with consecutive outings of seven shutout innings since Bryan Woo and Bryce Miller 2024. Over the weekend, the Hancock and Gilbert duo combined for 14 1/3 innings, no runs, three hits and 12 strikeouts.
Gabe Speier and Andrés Muñoz each threw an inning of relief for Seattle.
Toronto was shut out in consecutive games for the first time this season and has now won just two of its last 10 to drop six games under .500.

SEATTLE (AP) — Emerson Hancock and the Mariners bullpen extended Seattle’s scoreless streak to 24 innings and Mitch Garver hit a two-run homer in a 4-0 win over the Toronto Blue Jays on Sunday.
Hancock (6-4) gave up two hits and two walks while striking out five over seven innings.
He followed Logan Gilbert on Saturday to became Seattle’s first starting pitchers with consecutive outings of seven shutout innings since Bryan Woo and Bryce Miller 2024. Over the weekend, the Hancock and Gilbert duo combined for 14 1/3 innings, no runs, three hits and 12 strikeouts.
Gabe Speier and Andrés Muñoz each threw an inning of relief for Seattle.
Toronto was shut out in consecutive games for the first time this season and has now won just two of its last 10 to drop six games under .500.

Mariners 4, Blue Jays 0
Cool side of the pillow: Emerson Hancock, .33 WPA
Hot side of the fridge: Colt Emerson, -.05 WPA
Game thread comment of the day:
Same, bestie

Game #90 .
It really can't be as bad as yesterday's game, right?
Trey Yesavage is having a good season.
But then Emerson Hancock isn't terrible either. I can't imagine naming someone Emerson. But then I don't have much imagination.
Today's lineups:

The Mariners attempted to prop up their flagging bullpen today, trading out lefty Josh Simpson for righty Cole Wilcox.
With the Mariners past the Oops! All Lefties Guardians lineup, there’s no need for an extra lefty in the ‘pen, but Simpson didn’t make a strong argument to stay, providing the bottom bread in the disaster sandwich that was the Mariners’ meltdown eighth inning in one of the most unpleasant games I’ve recapped yet this season. For Simpson, the issue remains command. Wilcox hasn’t been the picture of pinpoint command – or he has, if that picture was drawn by someone who’d consumed ten double espressos while riding a Gravitron – but the thing Wilcox does bring is an ability to work multiple innings, something that’s useful for the bullpen-impoverished Mariners, down a man due to the fluctuating piggyback strategy.
Wilcox is carrying a rough-looking ERA of over five in Triple-A, but his peripherals are good: his FIP and xERA are both about half that, and he’s striking out over a third of batters faced while keeping his walks in check. It’s the walks that were the pain point for Wilcox in his first go-round with the big-league club in April, when he flashed solid strikeout stuff but also walked almost as many hitters as he struck out. That issue has calmed down significantly in his time at the notoriously hitter-friendly PCL, where he’s also collected a pair of saves.
Wilcox was my Pile Pick this spring training but his command issues caused Alex Hoppe to leapfrog him in the pecking order. Hoppe had his own struggles, however, and was optioned down to Triple-A three days ago. With Hoppe ineligible to be recalled from Triple-A for at least another week, Wilcox has some runway for another audition to the big-league club as they continue to search for consistency in the bullpen. And as a fun bonus, Wilcox has brought along a good luck charm this time that he keeps in his locker: a bobblehead of former Georgia teammate Emerson Hancock given away at Foley Field this May – a reminder from one Bulldog to another that the path to a big-league career doesn’t always run smoothly.

Mariners scrap Logan Gilbert-Emerson Hancock piggyback start originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Seattle Mariners pitcher Logan Gilbert anticipated a longer runway for his start Saturday. Teammate Emerson Hancock appreciated the extra day of rest.
In the midst of a quirky part of their 2026 MLB schedule, the Mariners were scheduled to play 12 games over a 13-game stretch. Their lone off day remains Wednesday, which will uniquely break up a series against the host Los Angeles Angels. The teams are giving way to an FIFA World Cup match at nearby Lumen Field.
About two weeks ago, Mariners manager Dan Wilson announced that the pitching staff had adopted a piggyback formation to give starters extra time and help balance the six-man rotation leading up to the All-Star break in mid-July.
Bryce Miller and Luis Castillo on June 19 engaged in the first adjusted outing, losing a 6-2 decision to the Boston Red Sox at T-Mobile Park. Gilbert and Hancock were slated to make the second of three scheduled piggyback starts, but have been put on hold. George Kirby and Bryan Woo were announced as a potential pair, but their outing has yet to be established.

After taking until the seventh inning to record their first hit last night, the Mariners will look to bounce back today. They’ll pin their hopes on Emerson Hancock, who’s looking to bounce back himself. His last start was his roughest of the year so far, surrendering nine hits and six runs to just three whiffs over four innings in Washington. That continues a downward trend since the gem he spun on the night the Mariners retired Randy Johnson’s number. Since that 14-strikeout performance, Hancock has struck out 29 and walked 11 over seven outings.
He’ll have the luxury of facing off against a Red Sox team tonight that’s cobbled together just an 89 wRC+. If he can’t get right tonight, the team’s going to have some real thinking to do about how he can adjust back to the adjustments the league has clearly made to him. One adjustment he’s made so far is to take a little more control of the game by putting a pitchcom controller on his glove. Manager Dan Wilson said Hancock will probably have it again tonight, though he cautioned that when guys get it, “sometimes it’s a little more than they bargained for.”
On the other side, the Red Sox will bring out another lefty, which has been Mariner kryptonite so far this season. Fortunately, tonight’s flavor is Connelly Early, whose 4.53 xERA compares pretty unfavorably to last night’s starter, Ranger Suarez’s, 3.35. The Mariners can expect to see a lot of fastballs and the lefties in particular will see a lot of sinkers, which has not gone great for them this season.
If the Mariners can get into the bullpen, Luke Raley might be available off the bench after what Dan called “a major step forward” from Raley’s battle with a cold.
It’s unclear whether this weekend’s Ref-erendum is real or just fan wishcasting. But he gets another chance tonight after going 0-4 with a strikeout last night. He, Mitch Garver, and Connor Joe will be the righty platoon bats tonight and Víctor Robles will sit, at least to start.

The good thing about the punishing grind of an MLB season is it doesn’t allow a lot of time for wallowing. Just one day after the Mariners blew a winnable game in Detroit to drop a series against the lowly Tigers, they escaped with a win in Baltimore today in the series opener against the Orioles, 6-3. There were many aspects of this game that mirrored Sunday’s heartbreaking loss, but today the Mariners came out on top thanks to some timely challenges and a big blast from Josh Naylor.
Emerson Hancock was good, not great, today. The Achilles heel in Hancock’s breakout season – aside from some yucky peripherals on his fastball – has been his occasional command outages, something that’s plagued him since he was in the minors, although his struggles with command now seem to be more related to his expanded ******* nal, especially the devastating but finicky sweeper.
That sweeper got away from Hancock in the third: he hit Blaze Alexander to lead off the inning before getting it back to strike out Sam Huff looking on the pitch. But Hancock then lost the handle on his sinker to Taylor Ward, walking him on five pitches, and losing an eight-pitch battle with Gunnar Henderson to walk the bases full. A sacrifice fly from Pete Alonso brought home the first run of the game, but Hancock was able to cap the damage there, getting Colton Cowser to fly out harmlessly to end the Orioles threat.
It wasn’t pretty – Hancock was at 69 pitches by the end of the third before bouncing back with a six-pitch fourth – with Hancock missing his good secondaries, needing to lean heavily on the sinker today, a pitch that has a propensity to get hit hard; he almost doubled up his usage of the pitch today, but also had some extra velo on the sinker, which helped keep the ball finding gloves. The only tick against Hancock was his search for command cost him about an inning of work, going just five innings a day after the Mariners got just 5.2 innings out of their starter yesterday.
Meanwhile, the Mariners hitters struggled against Orioles rookie Trey Gibson (not to be confused with umpire “Power” Tripp Gibson), making a start in place of the injured Chris Bassitt. Gibson poounded the bottom of the zone, eliciting a bunch of weak-contact groundball outs. Finally, in the fifth, Dominic Canzone led off the inning with a single, and then with one out Jhonny Pereda hit a solid line drive single (101.2 mph exit velocity). Ryan Bliss, getting a start after Colt Emerson was a late scratch with back tightness and J.P. Crawford was placed on the 10-day IL after being hit in the hand by Public Enemy #1 Framber Valdez – did his job, knocking in the run with a sac fly. Pretty good, considering Bliss had been ferried to the ballpark with such little fanfare his bags didn’t even arrive (leading to a very cute exchange postgame where similar Short King Brad Adam offered to loan Bliss some of his clothes). Cole Young, pressed into leadoff duty, kept the pressure on, cashing in his Dollar Token o

Emerson Hancock, the breakout star of the vaunted Mariners rotation in 2026, turned in another strong start last night against the Mets, going six innings with seven strikeouts and giving up just two runs, both on solo homers. This, in and of itself, is not particularly surprising; Hancock, one day after his 27th birthday, has settled into a steady hand in the Mariners rotation, and this kind of line now feels like just another day at the office for Hancock.
What is surprising is how he got there: last year, Hancock’s four seam-sinker combo accounted for over two-thirds of his pitches, with his changeup accounting for the bulk of the rest and a slider/sweeper rounding it out. He was a classic ***** ator, working within what Mario Delgado Genzor has termed the “pronator’s triangle.” Here’s Hancock’s pitch mix in 2025, with his particular ***** ator’s triangle skillfully drawn in for you:
A quick review, if you don’t know: Pitchers with a supination bias, or supinators, get on the outside of the ball as they release it (you can remember this by imagining scooping up a big spoonful of delicious soup), leading to glove-side movement. These kinds of pitchers excel at pitches that rely on horizontal movement like sweepers, cutters, and curveballs. Pitchers with ***** ation bias, on the other hand, stay to the inside of the ball, ending palm-out. ***** ators are able to get significant arm-side run. While ***** ators tend to throw a very spin efficient fastball, leading to more ride up in the zone, that comes at a cost of horizontal movement, limiting their options to enhance their ***** nals with things like sweepers or cutters.
But in 2026, Hancock changed up his pitch mix, somehow magically developing all those pitches that are supposed to be off-limits to ***** ators, as Michael Rosen examined in his article on FanGraphs about how Hancock dropped his arm angle and spin efficiency and in doing so escaped “low slot ***** ator jail”. All of a sudden we don’t have a triangle so much as we have…Massachussetts.
The cutter, while still classified as a hard pitch like the fourseam or sinker, has a totally different movement profile – while the sinker and four-seamer move armside, the cutter moves gloveside, although Hancock will still throw it to both sides of the plate, making things even less predictable for hitters.