ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — The Los Angeles Angels made a couple of moves to add pitching depth Tuesday night, signing left-hander Drew Pomeranz and right-hander Jordan Romano to one-year contracts.
Pomeranz gets a $4 million salary next season, and Romano will earn $2 million.
The 37-year-old Pomeranz was 2-2 with a 2.17 ERA and one save in 53 relief appearances and four starts for the Chicago Cubs last season. He struck out 57 batters in 49 2/3 innings.
It was the first major league stint for the oft-injured Pomeranz since 2021 with San Diego. He went 23 1/3 consecutive innings without permitting an earned run over his first 26 games to begin the season.
Pomeranz was selected fifth overall by Cleveland in the 2010 amateur draft from the University of Mississippi and made his big league debut with Colorado in 2011. He was an All-Star in 2016 with the Padres.
Pomeranz is 50-60 with a 3.82 ERA and 940 strikeouts over 908 innings in 12 seasons with the Rockies, Athletics, Padres, Red Sox, Giants, Brewers and Cubs. He won a World Series championship with the 2018 Red Sox, making 26 regular-season appearances, but did not pitch in the postseason that year.
Romano, 32, was a two-time All-Star closer for Toronto but struggled this year in his only season with Philadelphia, going 2-4 with an 8.23 ERA and eight saves in 49 appearances. He struck out 47 batters and served up 10 home runs in 42 2/3 innings.
Romano is 22-21 with a 3.73 ERA and 113 saves in 280 big league games over seven seasons with the Blue Jays and Phillies.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/mlb
FILE - Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Jordan Romano throws during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds, Aug. 11, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
FILE - Chicago Cubs pitcher Drew Pomeranz (45) delivers a pitch against the Milwaukee Brewers during the first inning of Game 5 of baseball's National League Division Series, Oct. 11, 2025, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Kayla Wolf, File)
SYDNEY (AP) — A suspected gunman in Sydney’s Bondi Beach massacre was charged with 59 offenses including 15 charges of murder on Wednesday, as hundreds of mourners gathered in Sydney to begin funerals for the victims.
Two shooters slaughtered 15 people on Sunday in an antisemitic mass shooting targeting Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, and more than 20 other people are still being treated in hospitals. All of the victims identified so far were Jewish.
A police official said the 24-year-old suspected shooter was charged in Sydney hospital on Wednesday, where he has been since police shot him and his gunman father at Bondi. His 50-year-old father died at the scene, a police official said.
The charges include one count of murder for each victim who died and one count of committing a terrorist act.
Funerals began as a country reeling from its deadliest hate-fueled massacre of modern times turned to searching questions, growing in volume since the attack, about how it was able to happen. As investigations unfold, Australia faces a social and political reckoning about antisemitism, gun control and whether police protections for Jews at events such as Sunday's were sufficient for the threats they faced.
First, however, was a day of anguish for families from Sydney's close-knit Jewish community who gathered, one after another, to begin to bury their dead. The victims of the attack ranged in age from a 10-year-old girl to an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor.
The first farewelled was Eli Schlanger, 41, a husband and father of five who served as the assistant rabbi at Chabad-Lubavitch of Bondi and organized Sunday's Chanukah by the Sea event where the attack unfolded. The London-born Schlanger also served as chaplain in prisons across New South Wales state and in a Sydney hospital.
“After what happened, my biggest regret was — apart from, obviously, the obvious – I could have done more to tell Eli more often how much we love him, how much I love him, how much we appreciate everything that he does and how proud we are of him,” said Schlanger's father-in-law, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, who sometimes spoke through tears.
“I hope he knew that. I’m sure he knew it,” Ulman said. "But I think it should've been said more often.”
Outside the funeral, not far from the site of the attack, the mood was hushed and grim, with a heavy police presence. Jews are usually buried within 24 hours from their deaths, but funerals have been delayed by coronial investigations.
One mourner, Dmitry Chlafma, said as he left the service that Schlanger was his longtime rabbi.
“You can tell by the amount of people that are here how much he meant to the community,” Chlafma said. “He was warm, happy, generous, one of a kind.”
Among others killed were Boris and Sofia Gurman, a husband and wife aged in their 60s who were fatally shot as they tried to disarm one of the gunmen when he got out of his car to begin the attack. Another Jewish man in his 60s, Reuven Morrison, was gunned down by one shooter while he threw bricks at the other, his daughter said.
Many children attended the Hanukkah event, which featured face painting, treats and a petting zoo. The youngest killed was Matilda, 10, whose parents urged attendees at a vigil on Tuesday night to remember her name.
“It stays here,” said Matilda's mother, who identified herself only as Valentyna, pressing her hand over her heart. "It just stays here and here.”
The suspects in the massacre were a father and son, aged 50 and 24, who had carried out “a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State,” Australia's federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett said Wednesday. The father, whom state officials named as Sajid Akram, was shot and killed.
His son, who hasn’t been formally named by the authorities, was being treated Wednesday at a hospital, where he had woken from a coma. Mal Lanyon, police commissioner for New South Wales state, where Sydney is located, told reporters that investigators expected to charge the younger suspect when the man had “appropriate cognitive ability” to understand what was happening.
The authorities have said the younger suspect came to the attention of the security services in 2019 but have supplied little detail of their previous investigations. Now authorities will probe what was known about the men.
That includes examining a trip the suspects made to the Philippines in November. The Philippines Bureau of Immigration confirmed Tuesday that Sajid Akram traveled to the country from Nov. 1 to Nov. 28 along with Naveed Akram, 24, giving the city of Davao as their final destination.
Groups of Muslim separatist militants, including Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines, once expressed support for IS and have hosted small numbers of foreign militants from Asia, the Middle East and Europe in the past. Philippine military and police officials say there has been no recent indication of any foreign militants in the country’s south.
The younger suspect was Australian-born. Indian police on Tuesday said the older suspect was originally from the southern city of Hyderabad, migrated to Australia in 1998 and held an Indian passport.
The news that the suspects were apparently inspired by the Islamic State group provoked more questions about whether Australia's government had done enough to stem hate-fueled crimes, especially directed at Jews. In Sydney and Melbourne, where 85% of Australia's Jewish population lives, a wave of antisemitic attacks has been recorded in the past year.
After Jewish leaders and survivors of Sunday's attack lambasted the government for not heeding their warnings of violence, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed Wednesday to take whatever government action was needed to stamp out antisemitism.
Albanese and the leaders of some Australian states have pledged to tighten the country’s already strict gun laws in what would be the most sweeping reforms since a shooter killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996. Mass shootings in Australia have since been rare.
Albanese announced plans to further restrict access to guns, in part because it emerged the older suspect had amassed six weapons legally. Proposed measures include restricting gun ownership to Australian citizens and limiting the number of weapons a person can hold.
Meanwhile, Australians seeking ways to make sense of the horror settled on practical acts. Hours-long lines were reported at blood donation sites and at dawn on Wednesday, hundreds of swimmers formed a circle on the sand, where they held a minute's silence. Then they ran into the sea.
Not far away, part of the beach remained behind police tape as the investigation into the massacre continued, shoes and towels abandoned as people fled still strewn across the sand.
One event that would return to Bondi was the Hanukkah celebration the gunmen targeted, which has run for 31 years, Ulman said. It would be in defiance of the attackers' wish to make people feel like it was dangerous to live as Jews, he added.
“Eli lived and breathed this idea that we can never ever allow them not only to succeed, but anytime that they try something we become greater and stronger,” he said.
“We’re going to show the world that the Jewish people are unbeatable."
Graham-McLay reported from Wellington and McGuirk from Melbourne.
Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, father-in-law of Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a victim in the Bondi Beach mass shooting, speaks at his funeral at a synagogue in Bondi on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Sydney, Australia. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, Pool)
Rabbi Yossi Friedman speaks to people gathering at a flower memorial by the Bondi Pavilion at Bondi Beach on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, following Sunday's shooting in Sydney, Australia. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
Family react at the coffin of Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a victim in the Bondi Beach mass shooting, during his funeral at a synagogue in Bondi on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Sydney, Australia. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, Pool)
