THIS IS SPORTS SPECTRUM’S WHAT’S UP PODCAST
WITH ANNABELLE HASSELBECK
On today’s episode of Sports Spectrum’s “What’s Up” podcast, we have UCLA pitcher Chris Grothues!
Chris shares his story of faithfully overcoming adversity on and off the field, going to the Men’s College World Series last season, and how it’s been to live his dream of being a UCLA baseball player!
THIS IS THE SPORTS SPECTRUM PODCAST HOSTED BY JASON ROMANO, FEATURING BEN ZOBRIST
Ben Zobrist played 14 seasons in the big leagues with the Tampa Bay Rays, Oakland Athletics, Kansas City Royals and Chicago Cubs. He played in three All-Star Games and three World Series with three different teams, winning in 2015 with Kansas City and 2016 with the Cubs. He was the 2016 World Series MVP.
Today on the podcast, Ben Zobrist reflects 10 years later on the Cubs’ World Series championship, his new book “Prepare for the Pressure” (available July 7), the role his faith in Jesus has played in his life, and how he was able to overcome anxiety and depression after the Cubs won the World Series.
Chicago Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson watches his three-run home run, July 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
The batting average and slugging percentage may not be where Dansby Swanson would like them through the first half of the season. But as the calendar turns to July, the switch on the power numbers has been flipped.
The Chicago Cubs shortstop has five home runs and 11 RBIs the last two games, punctuated by a three-homer, eight-RBI game on Wednesday against the San Diego Padres. He capped that off with a grand slam in the eighth inning for his third home run of the day. Through the first 70 games, he had seven home runs and 28 RBIs. He’s already surpassed both numbers over the past 13 games with nine home runs and 29 RBIs.
He was hitting .195 going into Tuesday’s game, but his average is up to .210 now, and he’s more than halfway (16 and 57) to his home run and RBI totals from last season (24 and 77). The Cubs have won nine of their last 10 games and are 5.5 games back from the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central standings.
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” Swanson said on the Cubs broadcast after the game. “I don’t really have any words for it, other than just I’m incredibly grateful. That’s the only thing that can really come to my mind — just incredibly grateful.”
The No. 1 pick in the 2015 MLB Draft out of Vanderbilt, Swanson is in his fourth season with the Cubs after playing seven seasons with the Atlanta Braves, with whom he won the 2021 World Series. He was named an All-Star and won the Gold Glove Award in 2022 and 2023, his last season with the Braves and first with the Cubs.
Though he was drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Kennesaw, Georgia, native ended up with his childhood-favorite team when he was traded to the Braves in December 2015. He made his debut and played 38 games for the Braves in 2016 before eventually helping lead them to a World Series win.
Being from Georgia, that experience meant even more to him.
“Destiny, I guess,” Swanson told Fox Sports after winning the World Series. “The good Lord, He’s blessed me so much. I wouldn’t be here without Him. Just the peace that He gives me, it’s remarkable. Especially in moments like this, you can never go wrong trusting in that. I’m just so thankful to be here.”
But Swanson entered free agency following the 2022 season, and the Braves elected to let him walk. Instead, he signed a seven-year, $177 million contract with the Cubs. Though it wasn’t his childhood team, there was still some emotional pull to the move — the Cubs were his late grandfather’s team. He passed away about a week before Swanson signed.
And just a day before his grandfather’s passing, Swanson married professional soccer player Mallory Pugh, who has played for the Chicago Red Stars of the NWSL since 2021. Swanson said they spent time in prayer together to discern where he should sign.
Whether it’s been in Atlanta or Chicago, Swanson has been vocal about his faith during the highs and lows of his career. He knows the struggles will come regardless of how strong his faith in God is, but he said it’s that faith that helps him navigate the times where baseball — and life — is tough.
“We assume — and it’s such a worldly view and such a cultural thing — that if we’re at peace with ourselves and we’re at peace with our relationship with God, then everything in life will just be hunky-dory and it will all work out,” he said on the Sports Spectrum Podcast in 2022. “That’s what we think … I’m reminding myself of this too, but that’s such a wrong way to look at it.
“At the end of the day, our purpose is to serve God and ultimately to bring a Heaven-like view to wherever we are on earth and allow Him to do the light shining — to allow Him to use our platform for what it’s supposed to be used for. You can do that and still not play well, but we’re just so wrapped up in if we don’t play well, what does it matter?”
"At the end of the day, our purpose is to serve God."
Join us today on the podcast with @Braves SS Dansby Swanson for a conversation about the lesson God has taught him this year.
“If anything, the lesson that I’ve learned was that you can’t go wrong trusting and growing closer to God,” Swanson said. “Whatever way that works for you is what works for you. But spend time with God. Legitimately spend time in the words that He wrote through people that were on this earth. Spend time in prayer and meditation and silence. Do these things to grow near to Him.”
Swanson will look to stay hot at the plate Friday, when the Cubs begin a three-game series in Chicago against St. Louis.
Los Angeles Dodgers' Tommy Edman, June 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Derrick Tuskan)
Versatility, speed and a flashy glove have always been part of Tommy Edman’s game. But for much of his career, so too have injuries.
The former Gold Glove-winning utility man for the Los Angeles Dodgers recently returned to the lineup after another stint on the injured list delayed his start to the season. A sprained ankle suffered in 2024, while he was rehabbing a wrist injury, has continued to cause issues over the past few seasons, and he underwent surgery for it last offseason.
Since returning, he’s batting .395 (15-for-38) and has already been used in the outfield, at second and third base, and even as a designated hitter. The switch-hitting 31-year-old Californian provides valuable flexibility for manager Dave Roberts.
He can also provide occasional power, as he showed with a three-run home run in Tuesday’s 9-3 win over the Athletics — one of his team-leading four hits on the night.
Edman enjoyed five seasons with the Cardinals (2019-23), who drafted him in the sixth round of the 2016 MLB Draft out of Stanford, winning a Gold Glove Award in 2021. He was then sent to the Dodgers at the trade deadline in 2024, and caught fire during the second half of the season and playoffs. He was named the 2024 National League Championship Series MVP while helping Los Angeles reach the World Series, where the franchise won the first of back-to-back championships.
The Dodgers have a commanding lead in the NL West again this season and are hoping Edman’s return aids in their quest to win a third straight World Series. Meanwhile, after the surgery and recovery, Edman is hoping his ankle woes are finally behind him.
“It’s obviously something I’ve dealt with the past two years, so getting the surgery was a tough decision because I knew I was going to be out for a little bit,” he told reporters last month. “But after speaking with the doctor, we determined it was going to have a high probability of getting back to 100%, I decided to go through with it.
“It’s feeling great now. It took maybe a little bit longer than I expected, but I’m back to feeling normal again.”
Feeling normal hasn’t been as consistent as he’d like. There was a stretch at the beginning of the 2025 season where he “felt pretty good,” until he sprained the ankle again at the end of April. He plans to wear a brace on it indefinitely.
The most challenging part of the injury and recovery process has been patience.
“With surgery, a lot of times it’s not a super linear progression,” Edman told the group of reporters. “So just having some ups and downs and just having the faith that it was going to get back to 100% eventually and just having the patience to let the whole process play out.”
He spoke about that faith while wearing a shirt that read, “Jesus Over Baseball.”
Edman’s journey of faith in Christ began as a younger baseball player, when he had faith in God but felt it get crowded out has he prioritized his sport.
“I saw these people who I aspired to be like, and I realized that the one commonality that they had was that their eyes were fully set on God,” Edman said in an “I Once Was” video produced by Sports Spectrum. “I realized that something needed to change if I wanted to live up to my full potential that God had in store for me.”
One of the turning points in his life was being drafted by St. Louis, which put him in a clubhouse with other believers like Adam Wainwright and Paul Goldschmidt. Edman admired their on-field success, but more so how they represented God.
Another turning point came in 2024. Edman had wrist surgery prior to that season, and when he finally started to feel close to returning to the field, he sprained his ankle.
It appeared as though 2024 would be a wash, and the Cardinals opted to trade him at the deadline to the Dodgers. He eventually made it back, strengthening L.A.’s lineup on its run to the World Series.
“I feel like it’s almost because of those injuries that I ended up getting traded to the Dodgers,” he said on the Sports Spectrum Podcast in 2024. “Fortunately, that led to a great postseason and us winning the championship. So now looking back on that, I can kind of see what God’s plan was all along. It seemed very frustrating at the time, but it led to even greater plans than I could’ve imagined.”
Edman experienced another turning point of a very different sort in 2024, when his son, Eli, was born. Edman was already maturing as a follower of Christ, and becoming a father helped him understand God’s love in a more profound way.
“I want the best for my son. I want all the best things in the world for him,” he said on the podcast. “So understanding that God wants the same for us, it kind of makes it a little easier to contextualize and understand that even though we may not be going through the best things right now, like an injury or something like that, in the end, God wants the best for us.”
He continued later, saying, “It can be easy in baseball to look ahead to what’s to come, whether that’s free agency or even just playoffs, World Series, that kind of thing. But we have a special chance every single day when we walk into the locker room to make an impact on one of your teammates.”
"We have a special chance every single day when you walk into the locker room to make an impact on one of your teammates."
Dodgers NLCS MVP and World Series champion Tommy Edman on the latest Sports Spectrum podcast pic.twitter.com/2sdkIFLiYN
With his faith-filled approach, Edman and the Dodgers (56-30) will go for a sweep of the A’s (40-46) on Wednesday in their three-game road series. First pitch is set for 9:40 p.m. ET.
San Diego Padres pitcher Mason Miller, June 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
The San Diego Padres (43-40) have been bolstered in their quest for a third consecutive trip to the postseason by the pitching of 27-year-old closer Mason Miller, in his first full season with the Padres.
Miller is tied for second in MLB behind Cleveland’s Cade Smith with 21 saves, posting a ridiculous 0.78 ERA in 33 appearances, which is the lowest among qualified closers. He’s the only pitcher in the majors with more than 20 save opportunities to convert every one of them. A second career All-Star selection should soon be headed his way.
Yet on Monday against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, Miller showed that he is, in fact, human. He surrendered a walk-off hit to give the Cubs (47-38) a 3-2 win (the game was tied when Miller entered, so it wasn’t a save opportunity) and a little more breathing room in the National League wild-card race.
But then again, the Padres might not even be factors in that race without their hard-throwing righty.
Mason Miller's stuff is the best any reliever has posted this season at a 119 proStuff+, and a 0.79 ERA says the results are matching the nasty. Ryan Helsley grades next at 115 with the arsenal to back it up. pic.twitter.com/1UR1egEDKO
“I don’t think the numbers are lying,” Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman said of Miller to The Athletic earlier this season. “… I think Mason might be the most unhittable pitcher ever.”
Miller talked a bit about that record-setting pitch as a guest on the Sports Spectrum Podcast earlier this month, as well as his diagnosis of Type I diabetes as a sophomore at Division-III Waynesburg University. Waynesburg is a private Christian school in Miller’s home state of Pennsylvania.
After Miller was diagnosed with the disease and his blood glucose was being managed, his baseball performance took off. He completed his four-year career at Waynesburg and played a fifth at Division-I Gardner Webb before being drafted in the third round of the 2021 MLB Draft by the Oakland Athletics. He rocketed through the minor leagues and made his MLB debut in 2023, spending two full seasons with the A’s before being traded to San Diego part-way through 2025.
“My story as a whole is a testament of God placing you in places that you’re supposed to be, putting you through challenges and journeys that you need to go through to become the person that you are today,” he said on the podcast. “… I have a platform now that allows me to reach a lot of people, and [my wife Jordan and I] fully intend on making good on that and imparting good into the world.”
Miller said he was raised with believing parents who brought him to church often, but as he grew up, he also grew disillusioned with church and distanced himself from Christian community. But Jesus didn’t distance Himself from Miller. He drew him back to Himself, and ultimately, to the church that He died to save.
“Jesus won in the battle against sin,” Miller said on the podcast. “All the sin, all the wrongdoing, all the evil in the world, Jesus’ blood on the cross washes that away with you accepting Him as your Savior and living your life and honoring Him as such.”
The 6-foot-5, 200-pounder has already pitched in the 2024 All-Star Game, and he’s already represented his country in this year’s World Baseball Classic. The scary part? He still might be getting better.
“What we’re rooted in and what brings us back to why we want to do all these things is what Jesus did for us on the cross,” Miller said on the podcast. “Our ability to live this life knowing that we are loved, we are forgiven, and — although we are not perfect people — that we are able to live with the goal of living like Christ and serving others.”
Miller will seek to serve others because Jesus first served him, even during a busy MLB season that sees his team just one game back of an NL wild-card spot.
San Diego continues its road series against the Cubs on Tuesday at 8:05 p.m. ET.
