Zack Cozart thinks teams starting relievers are planning for the future, and not in a good way.

Jose Bautista was released by the Braves this week after batting .143 in 35 at-bats.

Bryant caught 69 passes for 838 yards and six touchdowns for the Cowboys last season.

Kevin Harvick will be looking to become the eighth driver to win both the NASCAR All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600.

Hackenberg struggled through his first two seasons and never made it on the field for a regular-season game.

Four-star forward Romeo Weems is headed to Chicago.

Vita Vea’s name isn’t Vita Vea anymore, at least not as far as Gerald McCoy’s kids are concerned.

Five days from the finish in Rome and with three mountain stages remaining, Simon Yates is within grasping distance of becoming the first Briton to win the Giro d’Italia after he defended his pink leader’s jersey in the three-week race’s longest and toughest time trial, holding the defending champion Tom Dumoulin to a more than respectable margin over the 34km between Trento and Rovereto.

To have any hope of overall victory, the Dutchman needed to wrestle the pink jersey from Yates’s slender shoulders even if only by a few seconds, but instead the world champion fared slightly worse than might have been predicted – finishing only third on the stage behind the Australian Rohan Dennis – which meant that Yates had only to improve slightly on what was expected in order to take a significant stride towards final victory.

Dom Bess is on the brink of becoming the youngest finger spinner to make his Test debut for England but there appear to be few nerves leading up to this particular slice of history.

The Somerset academy product is just 16 first-class matches into his career and should he win a first cap against Pakistan on Thursday, he will do so at 81 days younger than Derek Underwood when his bow came against West Indies at Trent Bridge in 1966 aged 21 years and 22 days.

Johnny McNicholl has called for artificial pitches to be outlawed after he and a number of his Scarlets team-mates suffered burns and blisters during Friday night’s Guinness Pro14 semi-final in Glasgow and the region’s Scotland captain, John Barclay, ruptured an achilles’ tendon that will keep him out for six months.

The following day the Wasps flanker Jack Willis, who had just been called into the England squad, ruptured ligaments in his right knee on Saracens’ artificial pitch and will be out of action for up to a year. Last month the Pau back-row Steffon Armitage ruptured an achilles’ tendon during the European Challenge Cup semi-final defeat at Cardiff Blues and is unlikely to play again this year.