The Brewers earned a 3-2 victory over the Padres in Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday. With this year’s presumptive Cy Young winner starting for the Brewers and a former Cy Young winner (and still an above-average starter) going for the Padres, a low-scoring affair was not a surprising outcome. Still, the game script didn’t exactly play out as anticipated. Instead, the contest took on a late-inning feel almost from the beginning, and with both emotions and the leverage index consistently running high, perhaps the best way to tell the story of Game 1 is via reactions sourced from one of the most emotive players in either dugout — Milwaukee outfielder Sal Frelick.
The Frelick shown above was struggling to process an unusual double play that he initiated during last year’s NLCS, but that confused sentiment also applies to the experience of watching Brewers starter Jacob Misiorowski allow three consecutive singles during the second inning on Saturday. In over half of Misiorowski’s 30 starts this season, he allowed three or fewer hits across the entire outing, making three hits over three plate appearances feel fairly baffling. The trouble began with a one-out, infield single off the bat of shortstop Xander Bogaerts. The hit was the culmination of a six-pitch skirmish. Bogaerts took the first four pitches he saw (two four-seamers were called balls, while another four-seamer and a cutter were called strikes). He fouled off a 2-2 fastball, then rolled over a slider for a groundball that forced shortstop Cooper Pratt to range far enough to his right that by the time he made the diving stop, he couldn’t get the throw to first in time to beat Bogaerts to the bag.
Though Misiorowski got the type of batted ball that pitchers are usually pleased with, the whole interaction with Bogaerts highlighted a burgeoning problem for the Milwaukee righty. For the flamethrower’s fastball to function, he needs hitters to swing through it, and relatedly, he needs hitters to be willing to offer at it, even when it’s a touch out of the zone. On the season, his four-seamer averaged a 40.2% whiff rate and a 34.3% chase rate. But on Saturday night, it was generating whiffs only 14.3% of the time and getting hitters to chase just 24.1% of the time. Bogaerts was content to watch three heaters from The Miz and then fouled off the fourth. Since the San Diego batters were often fouling off fastballs in the zone and laying off the pitch when it missed the zone, Misiorowski pivoted to his 96-mph cutter as a pitch he could more reliably throw in the zone for called strikes in order to counter the obnoxiously patient Padres. Read the rest of this entry »
Ike Irish is among the more intriguing prospects currently playing in the Arizona Fall League — and not just because of a promising bat that produced a .286/.388/.528 slash line with 15 home runs and a 135 wRC+ over 343 plate appearances with High-A Frederick. Ranked seventh in the Baltimore Orioles system with a 45 FV, the 23-year-old outfielder/first baseman got a new lease on life when he moved out from behind the dish.
The story behind Irish’s positional change isn’t as simple as his not possessing the requisite skills to one day catch at the highest level. He had already begun transitioning by the time the Orioles drafted him 19th overall in 2025 out of Auburn University, and one of the reasons was an issue that is clinically defined as a psycho-neuromuscular impediment affecting the execution of fine motor skills during sport performance.
More on that in moment.
“It was always in the back of my head,” said Irish, who is in the AFL partly to make up at-bats lost due to a torn meniscus suffered in late July. “In college, we had conversations after my sophomore year: Is catching what we really want to do? At the end of the day, I believe in my bat, and I didn’t really believe in my defense. I want my bat to perform, so I think the decision for me was a no-brainer. I play this game because I love to hit.”
It reached the point where he hated to catch. Struggling to master mechanical intricacies played a part, but as he went on to explain, it wasn’t the main reason. Read the rest of this entry »
Generally picked to win the AL East before the 2026 season, the New York Yankees spent the final four months of the season looking up at the Tampa Bay Rays in the standings. If the Bombers were hoping to avenge their second-place finish in their Division Series matchup with their AL East foe, they got off to a poor start on Saturday evening, losing 1-0 in a game that felt more lopsided than the one-run margin would suggest. Taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning, Drew Rasmussen dominated the Yankees, with his bid for history only spoiled by an Austin Wells two-out double that the New York catcher unsuccessfully tried to stretch into a triple. Bryan Baker quickly dispatched the Yankees in the ninth to give the Rays a 1-0 series lead to match the final score.
In a game without much in the way of offense, Rasmussen was the biggest story. Unfazed by a New York lineup that consisted almost entirely of lefties — not entirely surprising as Rasmussen has shown no platoon differential over his major league career — he freely mixed his four pitches, with the Yankees not having an answer for any of them. Rasmussen struck out 10 batters over eight innings and still cruised enough that, if the Rays’ cushion had been larger, he may very well have been sent out for the complete game in the ninth.
As playoff starts go, Rasmussen’s stands out not just as a pretty darn good start, but one that was good enough to rank with the best in recent history. Bill James’ Game Score is useful for this kind of thing, and Rasmussen’s Game Score of 88 is tied for the 15th-best playoff start of the Wild Card era (1995-present). Among games of the last decade, only Blake Snell’s 2025 NLCS Game 1 start ranks higher. Snell’s performance featured a final line that was nearly identical to Rasmussen’s (8 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 10 K, but no walks).
It certainly wasn’t passivity that caused the Yankees to fail against Rasmussen. It’s well known that the Yankees are a low-contact team, with the fourth-lowest contact rate in baseball in 2026, and ahead of only the White Sox among playoff clubs. But they also weren’t as selective as usual with their swings against Rasmussen, chasing 37% of his out-of-zone pitches, including 69% of the changeups. For the game, the Yankees had a 43.1% whiff rate, their second-worst number in 2026, and the 24th worst out of the 3,082 games they’ve played since the start of the 2008 season.
There were, of course, a few productive moments in a night of offensive woes. George Lombard Jr. hit a couple of scorchers where they could be easily caught by outfielders, and I’d argue that both could very well have been home runs if his swing had connected with the ball a whisper of an instant earlier. Jazz Chisholm Jr. worked a nine-pitch walk, though it turned out to be moot; the Yankees left him at first and the additional pitches had no noticeable impact on Rasmussen, who never seemed to tire. He was throwing as hard in the eighth as he was in the first. Behind the plate, Wells nailed two ABS challenges in the first inning, including a strike three on the teensiest edge of the strike zone to Chandler Simpson that ended the first with the Rays stranding two runners.
Meanwhile, the Yankees’ excellent pitching staff was about as good as advertised. Gerrit Cole pitched well in his first postseason start since 2024; he just didn’t quite match Rasmussen’s dominance. His game plan was a heavy dose of fastballs and knuckle-curves, and after the first inning, the Rays weren’t particularly successful at stringing hits together. Cole’s lone blemish came with one out in the third inning, when Jonathan Aranda barreled up a thigh-high changeup on the outside edge of the plate for a home run.
As the night went, it was almost fitting that New York’s sole bit of offense, a Wells double, was also arguably the team’s worst moment. In the eighth, with two out, Wells rocketed a Rasmussen sinker down and in and right in his wheelhouse into the right field corner, the hardest hit of the night at 107.8 mph. The hit not only broke Rasmussen’s no-hitter; it also broke the hearts of Yankee fans, as Wells decided that with two outs, he was going to try and leg out the triple. Suffice it to say, the guy who looks like a no-nonsense police captain on a 1970s TV show did not successfully channel Rickey Henderson. Any reasonable relay would’ve nailed Wells at third, and the one from right fielder Victor Mesa Jr. to shortstop Taylor Walls to third baseman Junior Caminero proved to be more than reasonable.
Baker came out in the ninth, whiffed pinch-hitter Giancarlo Stanton in his first plate appearance since April, froze Ben Rice on a changeup, and got Cody Bellinger to ground out to end the game. Part of me wonders whether Rays manager Kevin Cash was secretly relieved that Rasmussen’s no-hitter was broken up, as letting a pitcher try to finish a no-hitter in a 1-0 game is a whole lot scarier than in an 8-0 laugher.
It may not be remembered in light of Rasmussen’s performance, but after Mesa’s single in the fourth inning, Cole and three relievers (Ryan Weathers, Paul Blackburn, Brent Headrick) held the Rays hitless for the rest of the game, preventing any inconvenient insurance runs from scoring. Those insurance runs were not needed.
If there’s any silver lining, it’s that this was the game in the best-of-five series that ZiPS projected the Yankees to have the lowest probability of winning. I believe Cole is a future Hall of Famer, but at this point of his career, I think he’s no better than the fourth-best starting pitcher in the New York rotation. Losing any game in a short series is bad, of course, but it’s less impactful on the Yankees’ chances of advancing than if the Rays had spoiled a Cam Schlittler start. It would be dangerous to count the Yankees out, but the Rays simply looked like the better team in the opening battle.
Remember that brief period of time when Tarik Skubal didn’t look like Tarik Skubal? In June, in his first three starts after returning from tiny-needle surgery, Skubal went 0-2 with a 4.96 ERA and a 5.86 FIP. He struck out as many batters as ever, but he just kept giving up home runs, and everyone whispered to their neighbors with alarm, “Maybe the needle wasn’t as tiny as we thought it was. Is it possible that it was just a regular needle with a good publicist?” Well, that period of time was shorter than you might remember. It was, in fact, just 12 days long. Over his final 16 starts, Skubal regained his form. He went 9-3 with a 2.36 ERA and a 2.14 FIP. Only once over that period did he allow even four runs in a start.
With Game 1 of the NLDS in the books, Skubal has extended that unhittable stretch to 17 starts. Under an oppressively hot midday sun in Los Angeles, the Dodgers quashed the Braves by a score of 5-3. The game started out looking like a pitcher’s duel, spent a few innings looking like it might be a rout, and ended up surprisingly close. All eight runs scored by way of the home run. Skubal was brilliant, striking out seven, walking two, and allowing two hits across six innings. At one point he retired 15 Braves in a row. The effort allowed him to lower his career postseason ERA of 2.04 even further. With a 1-0 series lead, the Dodgers have rounded into form, and the two-time defending champs look every bit the juggernaut we expected back in the spring. Read the rest of this entry »
When the Chicago White Sox pushed aside the Houston Astros in a Wild Card sweep, they set up a tilt against a familiar opponent. The Cleveland Guardians are the hereditary rulers of the AL Central, and they nipped the Sox by a single game this year. But other than playing in the same division and having nearly the same record, the two teams present quite the clash in styles. The White Sox are a group of young guys who hit home runs. The Guardians are a group of veterans who play small ball. It’s so compelling that it’s hard to find any other way to look at the series.
The difference between the two teams was on display immediately in Game 1. The Guardians sent Parker Messick to the mound for his first playoff start. He’s one of the best starters in baseball, and he’d be the Rookie of the Year favorite if Kevin McGonigle weren’t from another planet. The White Sox countered with opener Hagen Smith, coming off of an electric three innings against Houston. The White Sox aren’t deploying a “rotation” in the way you’d normally think of one; they’re heavy on multi-inning relievers and light on true starters, so their games are mix-and-match, while the Guardians hope to run their starter out for a decent stretch, then turn the game over to a series of one-inning relievers.
That’s the kind of game plan you can execute against the White Sox if you’re sharp enough. Messick came out a bit scattershot, walking Miguel Vargas and surrendering a hard-hit single to Munetaka Murakami in the first. But he also posted six strikeouts through the first three scoreless innings, the exact kind of numbers you’d expect against the aggressive White Sox lineup. Messick leans on his fastball, and he works the edges. That mattered more today, because to put it charitably, home plate umpire Cory Blaser’s strike zone was uneven. Five of those six strikeouts came on called strike threes, though White Sox hitters were clearly under dugout orders not to challenge early. A particularly egregious pitch to Randal Grichuk – 3-2 count, two inches off the plate outside – got Messick out of the third, and quite frankly, the combination of stuff and zone looked incredibly inhospitable to the White Sox. Read the rest of this entry »
The 34th Arizona Fall League season opens today with three games staggered across the Phoenix metro area. There are future stars in the Fall League every year, as well as many more workmanlike players who are competing for a 40-man roster spot on next year’s club. It’s a wonderful league for teams to develop and scout prospects because of the cross section of talent it tends to include (there are usually lots of good position player prospects), its timing (which allows players who were injured during the regular season to catch up on reps), and its structure (which allows for six weeks of steady looks). Teams almost always take the AFL seriously and send players who they want to see more of, or want to test. Being on the roster is, on its own, a flare for people like me who are looking for future big leaguers. It’s an indication that a player is worth paying attention to from a scouting standpoint even if I didn’t know the guy’s name until I saw the roster.
Previewing this league with prospects’ scouting reports risks putting the cart before the horse because the scouting part has yet to happen. I want to give you the notes I already have, to play the hits and make sure you have Jarlin Susana and Arjun Nimmala reports and tool grades in front of you right now (don’t worry, you will), but a huge part of the pro scouting exercise that is the Arizona Fall League is mining for the deeper-cut prospects, and I can’t tell you who those guys are going to be just yet. Still, I can show you the initial steps I take to prepare to go to the field and try to systematically unearth these guys, give you the tools to do so on your own, and, in the process, let know you who it is I’m most curious and excited to learn more about for the next six weeks.
The players who become scouting “targets” tend to fall into a handful of categories: famous players, potential dudes, statistical performers, and players in a key roster situation. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Clemens’ managerialreportcards have become a postseason staple here at FanGraphs. We’re continuing the tradition this year, while expanding the pool of writers who’ll contribute, and I’ll be stepping in with grades for the abbreviated Wild Card Series. Since I’m only going over two or three games per manager, these will be briefer than the report cards for the managers who are eliminated from the playoffs in later rounds. We’ll start with the two eliminated National League managers today, and then get into Joe Espada’s and Chad Tracy’s decisions in a couple of days.
Like Ben, I care about process and not results here. It’s easy to say “that was a great move because it worked” or “that was a bad move because it failed,” but managers obviously can’t know the result of their decision as they’re making it. I’ve tried my best to transport myself back to the moment of each decision — taking into account the pitches, innings, and plate appearances that led up to it — while ignoring the outcomes.
Before we get into it, I’ll caution that while these are ostensibly manager report cards, there’s a much larger group of people behind the manager who give input that helps to inform his decisions. Before the game, that includes discussions with the front office, which provides the reams of data that every manager has at his disposal during play; in-game, he’s getting feedback from his coaching staff and players on their levels of health and readiness. It really does take a village to get through a baseball game, and realistically, the praise and scorn doesn’t belong to the manager alone.
And now, away we go.
Craig Counsell
Batting: Incomplete
I was going to give Craig Counsell an A here because the moves he did make were perfectly fine, but that’s giving him far too much credit for three pinch-hitting decisions. The Cubs didn’t hit well this series, through no fault of Counsell’s own, and they have a pretty plug-and-play lineup that became even more rigid after Alex Bregman’s facial fractures limited him to DHing during the team’s anemic offensive showing.
The lineup mirrored the one that had made the Cubs successful basically all season, and the three pinch-hit opportunities Counsell did pull the trigger on were obvious platoon-advantage layups. In Game 1, he hit Michael Conforto (113 wRC+ against righties this season) for catcher Carson Kelly (84) down by eight runs; at that point, leaving Kelly in wouldn’t really have mattered anyway. In Game 2, Tyrone Taylor and his 153 wRC+ against southpaws hit for Michael Busch (who had a still-solid 117 wRC+ against lefties this year) against extremely tough lefty Adrian Morejon; Conforto was used again to hit for Matt Shaw against ninth-inning demigod Mason Miller. Shaw had just 90 plate appearances against righties this year and was 21% below league average by wRC+.
Pitching: C
Normally, I really enjoy watching Counsell manage a pitching staff in the postseason. He’s aggressive. Roles and innings go out the window, and the idea that a starter has to go at least a time or two through the order is nowhere to be found. But I really didn’t see that level of urgency in this series. In Game 1, Matthew Boyd was shaky from literally the first pitch, a changeup that Fernando Tatis Jr. deposited over the center field wall. It didn’t get any better after that; he gave up another homer on another changeup to Manny Machado two batters later. I wouldn’t have necessarily gotten the bullpen up at that point, but I certainly would not have given Boyd the rope to go through the order almost a full second time before pulling him after 17 batters.
Game 2 was a similar story, with Kevin Gausman laboring through the second inning after a strong first. He clearly lacked the higher-end velocity that I thought might show up with the adrenaline of the playoffs but (unfortunately for the Cubs) never did. That created a tighter velocity band between his fastball and splitter, and his whiff rate was a rather mediocre 23%. And yet, he too was permitted to face the top of the order for a second time.
Perhaps Counsell’s reticence to call for a reliever was due to the bullpen’s personnel. The Cubs pitching staff was injury-ravaged the entire season and came into the playoffs without a closer; trade deadline acquisition Ryan Zeferjahn didn’t stabilize the bullpen as hoped, taking a step back after his acquisition from the Angels. But the Cubs had length options in spades, namely David Peterson, Aaron Civale, Shota Imanaga, and Clay Holmes. Imanaga or Holmes may well have been earmarked to start a potential Game 3, but the other options were underutilized. Pairing the righty Civale with the lefty Boyd, or the lefty Peterson with the righty Gausman, and more aggressively managing the starters would have created more inflection points for opposing manager Craig Stammen to have to sort through as he thought about deploying his bench.
Instead, the shaky starters were pushed too far, leading to Game 1 being all but decided by the time Javier Assad was first out of the bullpen, while Daniel Palencia was forced into a dirty inning in Game 2.
Don Mattingly
Batting: B+
The Phillies lineup limped down the stretch, almost blowing the team’s playoff spot in the process. To add injury to insult, Luis Arraez’s badly sprained ankle kept him off the Wild Card roster entirely. That left Don Mattingly with a restricted bench and a handcuffed set of in-game options, not to mention a somewhat makeshift starting lineup. Shielding Brandon Marsh and Justin Crawford from lefties almost entirely in favor of Derek Hill and Bryan De La Cruz made sense, and considering the tools he had at his disposal, I have no qualms with how Mattingly handled his in-game platooning.
Ultimately, I bumped Mattingly down just a hair here for sticking with Trea Turner in the leadoff spot, as he did for the last few games of the regular season while the Phillies were spiraling. I know that a single lineup spot in a handful of games doesn’t actually matter that much, but having a struggling batter guaranteed to get as many or more plate appearances as anyone else on the team still doesn’t sit quite right with me. Additionally, having Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper hit back-to-back (with Bryson Stott just two spots later) created an obvious pocket for Walt Weiss to deploy southpaw Dylan Lee, and even Chris Sale, out of the bullpen. For as bad as Turner’s struggles had been, having a righty amidst the two big lefties may have given Weiss just a little bit more pause when making pitching changes.
Pitching: D+
Like Counsell, Mattingly didn’t have a whole lot to work with here. Jesús Luzardo, Cristopher Sánchez, and Zack Wheeler are awesome. Beyond that, well… it seemed like Jhoan Duran was the only reliever Mattingly thought he could truly trust, and he used him like it in Game 1.
Duran came in to start the seventh inning with the Phillies ahead by a run and Atlanta’s 9-1-2 hitters due up. If things went perfectly, Drake Baldwin and Ronald Acuña Jr.’s last plate appearances — in a Phillies win — would come against Duran in that inning, with Matt Olson looming. With that in mind, I fully endorse using Duran in that spot — and sending him back out for the eighth — with the information Mattingly had at the time. Your best reliever has to face the meat of the lineup and not whoever is due to hit with three outs left in the game. Starting Duran with the nine spot and a clean inning rather than going batter-to-batter with Alex McFarlane or another reliever was perfectly sensical considering Duran’s regular season usage, which almost invariably started with nobody on base.
We have no way of knowing if Duran would have gone three innings and taken it to the house had Austin Riley not taken him deep in the eighth, but there weren’t obvious warning signs showing that he shouldn’t have been allowed to face Riley. Riley was coming off a horrible regular season, and his three-run homer was set up by a well-placed but poorly-hit groundball by Michael Harris II and a yanked knuckle-curve Ozzie Albies hit-by-pitch, this after having secured two outs on three pitches. One poorly-placed fastball doesn’t make leaving Duran in a bad decision; it’s not as if he had thrown 40 pitches and was clearly tiring.
The crushing Game 1 loss left the Phillies with their backs against the wall and Duran unavailable after 27 pitches and nine batters, and considering Donnie Baseball’s hands were tied even more, I thought he mostly did a passable job with his choices in Game 2. If I had been in Mattingly’s shoes, I would have pulled Sánchez immediately after a Baldwin RBI double gave the Braves the lead in the seventh rather than intentionally walking Albies to set up a platoon-advantaged matchup of a gassed Sánchez facing Matt Olson. As the manager there, I’d much prefer a fresher McFarlane against the worse bat of Albies than Sánchez against Olson for a fourth time; that non-move was overly deferential to left-on-left and living and dying with your ace rather than recognizing how little Sánchez had left.
Mattingly and pitching coach Caleb Cotham redeemed themselves to some extent by recognizing that with Duran unavailable, Andrew Painter was the best option out of the bullpen for the eighth and beyond. Sending Painter back out there for the 10th and ultimately letting him face Riley and Harris a second time later in the inning was not without risk, but Painter’s velocity and stuff held, and again, who else did the Phillies really have at that point?
If the series had ended after two games, I’d give Mattingly a solid B or B+ for his moves. But Game 3 was so baffling in its entirety that I tanked his grade a full two letters. The decision to start Aaron Nola over Wheeler frankly defied logic in its reasoning. Nola purportedly got the nod because he was the more rested of the two, with the NBC broadcast also noting that the Phillies thought Wheeler profiled better in relief. But the sequencing of pitcher usage should prioritize the best pitcher, not the guy who’s the most-rested or has the best relief profile. Plus, Wheeler ultimately proved he could be stretched to four innings and 68 pitches — he didn’t exactly turn in a traditional relief outing. (I know, I said I would operate based on the information known to the managers at the time and not what ended up happening, but Wheeler’s eventual workload shows that he had a good amount in the tank, which the Phillies would have been aware of before the game.)
Regardless of how much he had to give, Wheeler having anything at all meant he should have started the game; it guaranteed that his outing would start with the Phillies tied or ahead, not when the club was already playing catch-up. To be clear, Nola was almost surely going to have to pitch at some point in the game — the Phillies put themselves in this mess by taking so long to clinch that Wheeler had to pitch the last game of the season, and he was on short rest in Game 3 — but using him as the opening salvo was the wrong move.
Mattingly was sufficiently aggressive in pulling Nola for Tim Mayza after nine batters faced, though while I’m picking nits, I’ll say I would have brought Mayza (or José Alvarado) in for Dominic Smith in the nine spot rather than have Nola face him. Weiss had been aggressive with pinch-hitting with his down-lineup hitters to that point in the series, and it would’ve been worth finding out if he’d go to his bench early and take one of his weapons for later in the game off the board. Even if Weiss had countered, I’d rather have had a lefty reliever against a righty than Nola against a lefty, as shaky as he had looked to that point.
From there, I can’t quibble with much. Wheeler gave what he could and Duran’s availability was evidently limited to a single inning, with Jonathan Bowlan filling the space between the two arms. Bowlan was a fine choice down by three runs, with McFarlane having pitched the prior two games and presumably available but potentially considerably less sharp. Luzardo was reportedly available for an inning or two despite starting Game 1 and throwing 77 pitches coming back from shoulder inflammation, but I’m okay with not using him as a Hail Mary at that point in the game. Perhaps Wheeler or Duran could’ve instead been stretched to cover the gap that Bowlan filled, but at that point the Phillies were chasing runs, and I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to Mattingly and Cotham for knowing their pitchers’ limits better than I do. The decision to start Nola ultimately had the team playing from behind and using its best arms while trailing, not exactly an unforeseeable outcome.
Today marks the start of the Division Series, and we can only hope that these four matchups are more exciting than three of the four first-round series. Excluding the Braves-Phillies series — which went the full three games, two of which featured late lead changes — the closest scoring margin in a Wild Card Series game was three runs, and there were more games decided by at least seven runs (three) than by three (two).
That’s not to say that these other series were snoozers. I covered the Yankees-Red Sox series, and the atmosphere in the Bronx made for an electric experience regardless of the final scores, while the energy pulsing through Petco Park for the Padres-Cubs games was palpable on the broadcast. That wasn’t the case in Houston, where the Astros fell behind early in both games and got booed for their poor play. But those two games were at least a bit closer, and it was still enjoyable enough to watch the White Sox win after three consecutive 100-loss seasons. The real issue was that the result of those three series never really felt in doubt after the winning teams jumped out to early leads. Here’s to more back-and-forth affairs and outcomes that hang in the balance.
In this week’s mailbag, we’re answering your questions about the ideal playoff format, whether the White Sox are benefiting from divine intervention, whether it’s better to have elite hitting and below-average pitching or vice versa in the postseason, and the highest single-season WAR for a player who finished in the negative. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley tease their first playoff livestream and banter about a listener suggestion for how to refer to a postseason that spans multiple months, Jason Benetti’s relationship with Liberty Biberty (including a real-time text exchange), the true alcohol intoxication levels of Munetaka Murakami and other players in clubhouse clinching celebrations (BAC Blast?), and whether MLB should schedule overlapping playoff games, then (35:21) recap the end of the wild card round, opine on the futures of the eliminated teams, lament the latest recurrence of the annual anti-analytics October backlash, preview the various Division Series (1:13:07), discuss the World Series matchups they most want to see, and much more.
The “mediocrity” of the American League made their muddled standings and September races for the postseason an object of derision. At least as far as the AL Central was concerned, though, that was not the case on my couch. All four of the division’s competitive clubs were must-watch TV down the stretch. Three of the Central’s teams finished with positive run differentials. Minnesota and Detroit had frustrating and disappointing seasons, but both have cores of exciting young talent that made them incredibly watchable, and despite taking different routes at the trade deadline, both fought to stay in the postseason picture through August.
However, had either of those teams usurped the White Sox or Guardians, both of which hovered around the division lead all season, it would have felt unjust. The White Sox got off to a bad start and were 6-12 in mid-April, then went on a heater in May (pummeling Seattle, Detroit and Minnesota) and began to jockey with Cleveland for the division lead. The Guardians hit a snag and fell away from the Sox in July, only to resurge after the trade deadline and ultimately claim the division title on the regular season’s penultimate day. It gave Cleveland a playoff bye and forced the White Sox to play a road Wild Card Series in Houston, home of the AL West (an actually bad division) champion Astros. The White Sox swept Houston with relative ease and now head to Cleveland to settle the score after both their head-to-head season series (which the Guardians won 7-6) and overall records were separated by just one game.
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