ANAHEIM, Calif. — Another game, another lead lost by the bullpen. sport-tr.bet

The Angels held a 3-0 lead heading into the sixth inning, but right-handed starting pitcher Walber Ureña left the game with an injury after taking a 103-mph line drive off the shin on the first pitch of the inning.

From there, the Angels’ bullpen surrendered three earned runs in four innings en route to a 4-3 loss against the New York Mets on Friday night to extend the Angels’ losing streak to seven games.

“We're going to take accountability for it,” left-hander Brent Suter said on behalf of the bullpen amidst the losing streak. “We're going to make some adjustments and keep on attacking. But the key is we've got to keep wanting the ball.

“Once you fold the tent and don't want the ball or don't want accountability, that's when stuff really goes wrong. So you've got to keep warrior effort and warrior mentality and keep wanting the ball.”

Ureña threw a couple of warm-up pitches before leaving the game, and he walked off the field under his own power. After the game, manager Kurt Suzuki said Ureña was taken out as a precaution. Suzuki also said it looks like it’ll just be a bruise and that no further testing is needed.

He was effectively wild before his outing was abruptly ended.

Ureña tossed five innings and the only run that scored was third baseman Bo Bichette, who hit the comebacker off Ureña. He only allowed two hits and struck out four, but also walked three batters.

“You can see him settling in a little bit now,” Suzuki said. “A few starts under his belt. Not pressure, but with the anxiety of going out there, you see him kind of moving slower, and it's fun to watch when he's like this.

Despite only being in the strike zone 44% of the time, 60% of Ureña’s pitches were strikes because of his ability to get batters to chase out of the zone.

“Back in Kansas City, I tried to do much there,” Ureña said. “Here, I'm trying to be quiet, be aggressive, stay calm every time.”

The Angels’ bullpen has now allowed 28 earned runs in their last 28 ⅓ innings pitched, which comes out to an 8.89 ERA. For the entire season, the bullpen’s ERA is now 5.69.

“What we can't do is fold the tent,” Suter said. “Can't do it. This is too hard of a league to fold the tent. We've got to stay the course, keep fighting, keep wanting the ball, and then it'll turn around, but it's heavy right now, for sure.”

It all started with Suter, who relieved Ureña. Suter recorded two outs, but also allowed a pair of hits, including an RBI two-strike single by catcher Francisco Alvarez to get the Mets on the board.

“Obviously, the pitch I want back is that 0-2 changeup to Alvarez,” Suter said. “Kind of had him where I wanted to. It was outside, but if I get that down and away, it's a foul ball or a ground ball or a swing and miss. Instead, he had a chance to get some bat to it and get it up out of the infield.”

Right-hander Chase Silseth then came in and allowed a two-strike single to second baseman Marcus Semien, which scored both runners on base and tied the game at 3-3.

“When we're making those mistakes, we're paying the price,” Suzuki said. “So, it looked like a couple of two-strike pitches up in the zone, and not balls that were smoked, but they put the bat on it, and right now it's finding holes.”

In the seventh, right-hander José Fermin gave up a solo shot to the Mets’ nine-hole hitter, shortstop Ronny Mauricio, to give the Mets a one-run lead.

A lead that was insurmountable because the Angels’ bats went stone cold after the first inning.

After designated hitter Jorge Soler’s two-run home run in the first, the Angels failed to record another hit. Shortstop Zach Neto was the only other baserunner for the Angels when he got hit by a pitch to lead off the third inning. He later scored on a stolen base and a throwing error by Alvarez.

After Neto reached base in the third, the Mets retired the remaining 21 hitters in order. The Angels struck out 14 times on the night, with center fielder Mike Trout, third baseman Yoán Moncada and right fielder Jo Adell each getting hat tricks.

“It almost looked like the pitcher, (Christian)Scott, settled in and executed pitches better,” Suzuki said. “It's hard to tell from the side, in and out, but he looked like he was attacking the strike zone, keeping us off balance, and you could see his confidence growing as the game went on for him.”

The Angels have now lost seven straight games and 11 of their last 12 games. Their seven-game losing streak has come against the 13-19 Kansas City Royals, the 15-17 Chicago White Sox and the 11-21 Mets.

The Angels’ record now sits at 12-21.

Through it all, the clubhouse remains intact and focused on the next day.

“There's no pointing fingers,” Suter said. “There's no blame. If there were, I wouldn't be mad at them. I totally understand it. A lot of these losses you can put right on the bullpen shoulders, and I'll be the first to wear that individually and as a group.

“But this clubhouse is a special group. We've got guys that are just absolute warriors and positive, come in every day ready to give it their all to win a game.”

Benjamin Royer: Marcus Smart said the defensive effort in Game 6, holding the Rockets to 78 points, all starts with Deandre Ayton: “I can sit here and talk all day about DA. I love him. I'm proud of him.”

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Marcus Smart said the defensive effort in Game 6, holding the Rockets to 78 points, all starts with Deandre Ayton:

“I can sit here and talk all day about DA. I love him. I'm proud of him.” pic.twitter.com/gqQiIYQaJC

— Benjamin Royer (@thebenroyer) May 2, 2026

This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: “I can sit here and talk all day about DA. I love him. …

The swirl around LIV Golf’s tenuous state reached the White House on Thursday.

In an Oval Office press conference, President Trump was asked to reflect — against the backdrop of the Saudi Public Investment Fund announcing that it is pulling its LIV funding at the end of the 2026 season — whether he believed the PGA Tour should welcome “the defectors back with open arms”?

Trump, seated at his desk, said that, yes, he would like to see LIV’s top players reintegrated. “I want to see Rory [McIlroy] playing Bryson DeChambeau,” he said. “I want to see big Jon Rahm playing Scottie [Scheffler], who is so great.”

But as for what the future holds for LIV, the president, whose Virginia golf property will play host to a LIV event next week, sounded like he is as uncertain as the rest of us.

“I’m not sure what’s happening with LIV,” he said.

What we do know is that the PIF is out, by way of a larger strategic pivot from the Kingdom’s coffer keepers and oil-revenue stresses caused by the war in the Middle East. The beginnings of a new LIV board also are in place, led by corporate restructuring veterans Gene Davis and Jon Zinman, who LIV said in a statement have been charged with “institutionalizing the league and evaluating the range of strategic opportunities that have emerged with the league’s rise.”

Read: sell it or unwind it.

Selling LIV will, of course, not be easy, at least not in its current form. The league, according to published estimates, has lost anywhere from $5 to $8 billion since its 2021 inception and spends more than $100 million per month. Its own CEO, Scott O’Neil, has said any hope of profitability could be a decade away. You don’t need an accounting degree to understand that the math, at least in the short term and quite possibly in the long term, too, just doesn’t work. So now it’s Davis, Zinman and Co.’s job to put together an offer that will entice an investor or investors. If the board is unsuccessful in that quest, it’ll shift into disassemble mode.

With financial questions suddenly lingering over LIV, I consulted two mergers-and-acquisitions executives to get a better sense for what the league’s next steps might look like; both experts requested anonymity for professional concerns.

“What happens is people come in, they’re independent and they are looking to maximize value,” a corporate restructuring expert with experience in the sports world told me in a phone interview Thursday. “They will identify all the options that there are, and they’ll pursue all those options to a point that what makes the most sense. And then at the end of the day, they prepare a plan for the worst options, whatever that is. That includes a going-out-of-business option, which is the floor value.”

That floor-value figure is anybody’s guess, but the league does have significant assets that include contracted players, 13 team franchises and hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorships. The “LIV Golf” name also is worth something.

“There’s brand equity there,” a second executive, who oversees transactions for a global professional services firm, said on Friday. “You also could argue whether there’s value in the way they run the organization. It’s very different than golf as we know it.” The same executive added that as part of the commercial due-diligence process, a prospective buyer would likely analyze LIV’s fan base. “If it’s 10 percent more people that wouldn’t normally watch the Masters or Players or something like that, then maybe there’s value there.”

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That LIV is a sports property also could benefit it, both executives said. A deep-pocketed “vanity buyer” could emerge, drawn by the appeal of having entrée to the golf world and brand-name golfers. The first executive, who has experience in buying and selling teams, said sports sales typically aren’t driven by traditional economics.

“[Teams] are not based on what their actual cash flow value is,” he said. “It’s based upon somebody wanting to own a sports team. And there’s only so many of them.”

The second executive posited that another “completely outside-of-the-box” suitor also could come along, like, say, a casino or sportsbook. As with any sale, it’s hard to predict who might show interest.

Trouble is, despite LIV’s push to market team golf, the league still is largely known for and powered by its stars, like Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm, who were drawn away from the PGA Tour by nine-figure deals. If a new investor can’t see a path to turning a profit with that kind of recurring outlay, the buyer would be left either trying to convince LIV’s shiniest players to take pay cuts or reimagine the league with a less heralded roster of players. Either route would be challenging. “I’m usually a creative guy,” the first executive told me. “But I’m hard-pressed to come up with a rationale as to why someone would buy something that is hemorrhaging billions with no light at the end of the tunnel.”

Said the other executive: “This could be one of those situations where the purchase price is a dollar, and someone just takes the liabilities off your hands.”

Sports law and business professor Andrew Brandt was wowed when LIV came along. He said he could never have imagined that one of the established U.S. sports leagues could have its stars wooed away by an upstart competitor, but he also could never have imagined that a wooer could have the financial might of the PIF.

“It was just such an extraordinary time in sports,” said Brandt, a former sports agent and NFL executive who is now executive director of the Moorad Center for the Study of Sports Law at Villanova Law. “You have these leagues, you have these tours, you have these elite properties and there’s never any challenges. But the one thing that could make it a challenge, of course, is unlimited funding. That’s what made LIV so different than any other sports league rival. It appeared that there was unlimited funding.”

Until there wasn’t.

“It’s something I never contemplated,” Brandt said of the PIF’s pivot. “I just thought, OK, unlimited funding, throw a few billion at the LIV tour, have your billions for whatever else you want to do. But there’s a change of heart from the PIF and that to me is the most surprising part of all this.”

LIV has seven events left on its 2026 schedule. That number was eight before the Louisiana event, slated for June, was unexpectedly postponed earlier this week. LIV Virginia, at Trump’s course, begins Thursday. Then comes a three-event run overseas (Korea, Spain and England) followed by the season’s final three-event finale back in the U.S. (New Jersey, Indiana and Michigan).

And then? That’s a question to which we might not have an answer for months. If a sale or some kind of merger is unsuccessful, LIV could be no more. In that scenario, one of the executives said, “You would take each of the liabilities and try to negotiate with each of the parties to an end.” If any parties are still owed money, they could potentially file lawsuits, the executive said, “but who wants to get involved with suing a Saudi sovereign fund? That could take a while.”

The post LIV Golf needs money. Here's what next steps might look like appeared first on Golf.

Oh No He Didn't: Marcus Smart: "I know charges get overlooked. A lot of people don't like them...I love charges, it's demoralizing and it just shows how impactful you're going to be and that you're willing to sacrifice for the betterment of the game and for your team and to continue to do it one after another that sets the tone in itself"

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Marcus Smart:

"I know charges get overlooked. A lot of people don't like them...I love charges, it's demoralizing and it just shows how impactful you're going to be and that you're willing to sacrifice for the betterment of the game and for your team and to continue to do it one… pic.twitter.com/uoOYXUq5fc

— Oh No He Didn't (@ohnohedidnt24) May 2, 2026

This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Marcus Smart: "I know charges get overlooked. A lot of …