The heat has begun to make its mark on this season. Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz vomited in the outfield<\/a> on a 96-degree late June afternoon in St. Louis. A day later, Detroit Tigers starter Casey Mize exited an outing in Tampa while suffering from cramps. The Atlanta Braves visited Citi Field last week in the midst of an East Coast heat wave that saw temperatures surpass 100 in certain parts of New York. A video board in the New York Mets clubhouse featured an illustration of a droplet with a two-word admonition: DRINK WATER.<\/p>\n That was what Braves starter Spencer Schwellenbach did before facing the Mets a week ago Monday in the teeth of the heat wave. He hydrated \u201cway more than usual,\u201d draining four or five bottles of water in the morning before flooding his system with sodium tablets and electrolytes at the ballpark. With the temperature hovering in the mid-80s that night, he logged seven scoreless innings.<\/p>\n \u201cI was peeing, like, every 30 minutes,\u201d Schwellenbach said. \u201cIt was unbelievable. But during the game I felt good.\u201d<\/p>\n The next day, with triple-digit heat before the game and a 97-degree first pitch, Mets outfielder Tyrone Taylor pointed to a Vitamin Water bottle with a pinkish hue sitting in his locker. The drink came courtesy of Jeremy Chiang, the club\u2019s performance nutrition coordinator. The coloring came from a hydration packet called Right Stuff. During the game, Chiang packed individual coolers of these drinks for each player. \u201cWe get a lot of reminders just to drink a lot of water and take those,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n Players like Ryan Pepiot have had to work hard to overcome the heat. (Kevin Sabitus \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n The state of athletic nutrition has advanced to the point where teams can test players for hydration levels, measure the rates at which they sweat and devise specific plans for each individual. They can replace fluid and electrolytes with specialized drinks designed for each player, and they can bring down elevated body temperatures with ice baths and frozen towels.<\/p>\n \u201cIn baseball, it only takes being a little proactive to overcome it because you have opportunities to cool and to drink and to be in shade, especially at the pro level,\u201d said Douglas Casa, CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute and one of the leading experts on heat management for athletes. \u201cIt has to be more than taking a sip of fluid. It has to be meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n In the not-so-distant future, Casa said, teams might have a dugout iPad showing each player\u2019s real-time hydration level \u2014 eventually, their body temperature, too \u2014 but even then, it will be imperative that teams prepare ahead of time. Casa said he worries first about a player\u2019s pregame hydration level \u2014 it\u2019s hard to make up ground, especially in difficult conditions \u2014 and he stressed that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for addressing it.<\/p>\n The Mets provided a series of guidelines for making it through last week\u2019s games. Not every suggestion made sense for every player. Mets starter Clay Holmes said he did not require cold towels in between innings. \u201cI don\u2019t really like getting, like, more wet,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cI try to dry off a little bit.\u201d The training staff advised players to build a base of cool liquids in the morning and consider taking a cold shower in the evening. During the games, the players were told to consume five to eight ounces of liquid every inning, even if they weren\u2019t thirsty. Chugging was not recommended.<\/p>\n That might have been what went wrong for De La Cruz. After getting thrown out at the plate in the bottom of the third inning on June 21, he \u201cdrank a bunch of water \u2014 I mean a bunch,\u201d Reds manager Terry Francona said after the game. \u201cHe went right out and got rid of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Mize, who lives in Tampa during the offseason, could not discern a similar cause for his own heat-related issues. \u201cI feel like we\u2019re pretty buttoned up, man,\u201d Mize said. \u201cI drink half my body weight in ounces of water every day.\u201d He embarked on his usual routine before his outing against the Rays: He ate a banana before the game and three more during it. A plethora of Gatorade, water and cold towels could not prevent his body from locking up with cramps after five innings.<\/p>\n \u201cGet me out of Steinbrenner Field, I guess,\u201d Mize said.\u201dThat place is rough.\u201d<\/p>\n In deference to the facility\u2019s lack of a roof and the instability of south Florida weather, Major League Baseball front-loaded Tampa Bay\u2019s schedule with home games this year as Tropicana Field undergoes repairs for damage sustained during Hurricane Milton. The Rays will play at Steinbrenner Field only 16 times in July and August. On Monday, the team welcomed the Athletics, the other club using a minor-league stadium as its home ballpark in 2025.<\/p>\n The Rays and A\u2019s, the two teams most familiar with hot conditions, faced off Monday at Tampa\u2019s Steinbrenner Field; temperature at first pitch was 82 degrees. (Mike Ehrmann \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n The issues<\/a> at Sutter Health Ballpark in Sacramento<\/a> are well-documented<\/a>, as Athletics pitcher Luis Severino relayed to The Athletic<\/a> this past weekend: Sparse crowds, a lack of air conditioning, minimal cover from the sun during day games. The Athletics plan to play in Sacramento through at least 2027. By then, the organization hopes, construction will be complete on a new stadium in Las Vegas. The design plans released by the team describe the Vegas ballpark as \u201cclimate-controlled,\u201d with a roof to ward off the hellish desert sun.<\/p>\n In the meantime, designated hitter Brent Rooker said, the days in Sacramento may be tough, but at the very least, the temperature at night has been tolerable.<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly, it hasn\u2019t been too bad at home,\u201d Rooker said. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve found at Sac is no matter how hot it has been during the day, it cools down a ton at night. So the night games have been, generally, fine.\u201d<\/p>\n The same cannot be said for the humidity in Tampa.<\/p>\n Experts refer to something called the WetBulb Globe Temperature, which the National Weather Service describes as<\/a> \u201ca measure of the heat stress in direct sunlight, which takes into account: temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover.\u201d It\u2019s basically the WAR of heat \u2014 an advanced metric reducing multiple factors into a single number. FIFA has introduced guidelines calling for additional mid-game cooling breaks when the Wetbulb temperature exceeds 32 degrees Celsius (a little over 89 degrees Fahrenheit) \u2014 they have been a regular feature at this year\u2019s Club World Cup<\/a> \u2014 and American football teams and long-distance runners have also become familiar with the Wetbulb concept while working with experts like Casa to keep athletes from overheating when the measurement gets too high.<\/p>\n Baseball isn\u2019t as fraught as soccer and football, largely because each half-inning provides an opportunity for players to cool and hydrate. (In fact, Casa said he worries at least as much about the umpires who do not get regular breaks and often \u2014 ahem \u2014 are not in professional athlete shape.) It\u2019s imperative, Casa said, that players begin each game fully hydrated, replace lost fluids in-game, and keep their core temperature well shy of the 104-degree extreme danger zone. Each player handles heat differently, and simply cooling by a degree or two, Casa said, can improve physical, emotional and cognitive function.<\/p>\n Or, more to the point: it can keep a player from puking in left field.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why these people are making the effort,\u201d Casa said. \u201cLike the Tampa Bay Rays, they\u2019re making the effort to figure it out because of the individual variability.\u201d<\/p>\n The Rays understood the elements would be unkind this season. The training staff recommends players drink tart cherry juice, beet juice and water mixed with a recovery pack called Juven. During spring training, the Rays tested each player\u2019s sweat rate \u2014 second baseman Brandon Lowe discovered that he was a \u201cTier 2 sweater\u201d \u2014 and Pepiot tried to acclimate to the heat by taking his dog on longer walks. The players try to spend time outside before games, \u201cso when it\u2019s time to go to work, I\u2019m not getting kicked in the teeth because I\u2019ve been sitting in the air conditioning all day,\u201d Pepiot said.<\/p>\n The group has responded to the challenge. The team entered Monday trailing the New York Yankees by only a half game in the American League East. Tampa Bay has a winning record at home. Several Rays suggested those early months at Steinbrenner Field have prepared the club well for future heat waves this summer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt kind of seemed like a curse,\u201d Rasmussen said. \u201cBut maybe it was more of a blessing in disguise.\u201d<\/p>\n On Saturday afternoon, as the temperature at Baltimore\u2019s Camden Yards inched into the 90s, there were Rays swarmed across the infield for optional pregame fielding drills. The team\u00a0 had grown comfortable being uncomfortable.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re used to it now,\u201d Pepiot said. \u201cWe\u2019re playing outdoors in Tampa, Fla. It is not cool at all.\u201d<\/p>\n With reports from <\/strong>The Athletic<\/strong>\u2018s Cody Stavenhagen<\/strong><\/p>\n (Illustration: Will Tullos \/ The Athletic; Photo: William Purnell \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In between innings on the mound, Tampa Bay Rays starter Ryan Pepiot disappears into the dugout tunnel and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1280,392,1266,1305,5055,62,222,1289,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-30481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-atlanta-braves","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-new-york-mets","12":"tag-oakland-athletics","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-sports-business","15":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114779302688830672","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2215465195-scaled.jpg\")
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