Dear baseball fans and Jonas Brothers fans,

It has come to our attention that not all of you loved our performance during Game 2 of the World Series. This hurt us deeply, as we truly love to be loved. It has also come to our attention that some of you even blame us for the fact that the Dodgers ended up winning the game, and, well, we can’t really help you with that one. Even after much reflection and soul-searching, it’s still unclear how it could be our fault that Will Smith hit a home run 19 minutes and more than a full inning after we stopped playing. Nevertheless, all of us here at Jonas Brothers, Inc. want to make it very clear that we hear you. It had not occurred to us until our prerecorded backing track kicked in that maybe it was weird to interrupt the most important baseball game of the year for a performance that had nothing to do with baseball and little to do with anything. But we get it now. We promise to do better in the future, and we would like to explain how we found ourselves in this situation.

It’s important to understand that this is kind of a big production. We do a lot of shows. We’ve played at Rogers Centre four times now, which puts us just one behind Trey Yesavage. All those big shows require a lot of logistics. We have managers. We have handlers. We have managers for our handlers. (We call them manhandlers. It is our favorite joke.) Once you’ve gotten to the point where you’re singing into a microphone with a giant MasterCard logo on it, you’re not necessarily the one making all the decisions. The point is, we stopped asking questions a long time ago. We’ve performed at the White House Easter Egg Roll. That constituted a normal day in the life of the Jonas Brothers. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes Shohei Ohtani pulls his elbows gently to the left. He stands there at the plate still as a statue, the bat way out in front of him and his arms spread wide like they’re wrapped around an invisible trash can lid. Sometimes, every once in a while, he’ll gently rock the whole package – the elbows, the invisible trash can lid, the handle of the bat, his broad shoulders – to the left, back toward the catcher, the bat head dipping to describe a quiet circle in the air. And then he rocks the whole package to the right again, just as gently, toward the pitcher. It’s a matter of an inch or two. It’s the only sign that he’s human.

Once he’s settled into his batting stance, that little reset, rocking back and then forward like he’s absorbing a wave that no one else on the field is attuned enough to feel, is the only movement Ohtani will make. He doesn’t have a bat waggle. He doesn’t flex and unflex his fingers like Max Muncy. He doesn’t flare his back elbow like Bobby Witt Jr. He doesn’t rock his shoulders like Alex Bregman, lean back like Rowdy Tellez, twitch his hips like Juan Soto, fire his back knee toward the pitcher like Marcus Semien, or test the dirt with his front foot like Cal Raleigh. He’s a mountain, unapproachable, indecipherable. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s alright. I’ve run the numbers, and you’re not imagining it. People really are bunting more during the playoffs. You really have been screaming “WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT DROPPING DOWN A BUNT RIGHT NOW?” at your television more often than usual. Your neighbors have noticed. The homeowners association is going to get involved. This is an intervention.

But you’re not wrong. So far, 1.1% of all postseason plate appearances have ended with a bunt. That’s 0.4 percentage points above the regular season mark of 0.7%, an increase of 57%. It’s also the highest postseason bunt rate since 2017. Not only are we seeing more bunts than we did in the regular season, we’re seeing more postseason bunts than we have in years! That 0.4-point gap is the highest we’ve seen since at least 2008.

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My job is to write about baseball, which means that in large part, my job is to generate novel circumlocutions for the word “jump.” How many times can you say that somebody’s exit velocity jumped, their whiff rate jumped, their outfield jump jumped into the 82nd percentile before your editor is tempted to bludgeon you with a thesaurus? I would prefer not to find out, as I bruise easily.

I would estimate that I write the word jump about 20 times more often than I actually jump. Nobody jumps all that much on any given day. Unless you’re at the gym, unless you’re playing sports, unless you’re a child, life just doesn’t involve much jumping. This is intentional. It is a result of the way we have structured our lives. We keep things in reach. We have downstairs neighbors. We wear complicated shoes. With the notable exception of the décor at Barnes & Noble, nearly every aspect of our lives encourages us to remain seated. Jumping in jeans is a rare occurrence. All in all, this seems like a bad thing.

Every once in a while, jumping is a matter of practicality. There’s no way I’m lugging the stepladder out from the laundry room just to get this stupid cake pan off the top shelf. I’m not tracking back five blocks just because a tiny part of this walkway is blocked by a low fence. I’ve been staring at the backs of various heads for this entire concert and I just want to get one good, unobstructed look at the band. It never occurs to us at that moment, jumping out of some mixture of desperation and exasperation, that what we’re doing could be beautiful, graceful. Read the rest of this entry »

The year of the splitter has come and gone. Actually, those of us who follow these things closely know that both 2023 and 2024 were considered the years of the splitter, and then we established back in March that 2025 would be the year of the kick change. While major league pitchers ran a 3.3% splitter rate in 2025, the highest mark since the pitch tracking era started in 2008, that represented a jump of just 0.21 percentage points from 2024. It’s a difference of less than one splitter per team every three games. While the number is still going up, the big increases came in 2023 and 2024, and the pace fell off this year.

That graph makes it official. This isn’t the year of the splitter. But now let me add another line to that graph. That was the regular season. We’re in the thick of the playoffs, so let’s throw the postseason in the mix, too. If you saw that first graph and wondered why I left all that empty space at the top, well, now you know.

That’s more like it. October 2025 has seen a splitter explosion. The red line is always going to be more volatile than the blue line because the postseason is such a small sample, but even so, the playoffs have seen a 6.6% splitter rate. That’s not just the highest we’ve ever seen. It’s twice the rate for any regular season or postseason in the past 23 years. Maybe 2025 was the year of the kick change, but October 2025 is very definitely shaping up to be the month of the splitter. The playoffs aren’t even over, and we’ve already seen more splitters this October than in the postseasons of 2023 and 2024 combined. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners and Blue Jays came into Game 5 of the American League Championship Series knowing a five-hour flight lay in their future. What they didn’t know was which team would have a happy flight from Seattle to Toronto and which team would spend the time in the air stewing. It took a long while to figure it out. It wasn’t until the eighth inning that Seattle third baseman Eugenio Suárez finally decided to take matters into his own hands. With a two-homer, five-RBI performance, including a go-ahead grand slam in that decisive frame, Suárez powered the Mariners to a 6-2 win. They now have a 3-2 lead in the series, leaving them one win from the first World Series appearance in franchise history. They will no doubt slumber peacefully as they wing their way to Toronto for Game 6 on Sunday.

Both managers were looking to mix things up on Friday. Toronto’s John Schneider mentioned in both the pregame and postgame press conferences that he wanted to avoid the familiarity penalty by making sure his relievers didn’t face the same batters over and over again. On the other side, Dan Wilson rejiggered his lineup with the goal of “just kind of jumbling it up and creating a different look.” He moved Julio Rodríguez into the leadoff spot, dropped the struggling Randy Arozarena to fifth, kept Cal Raleigh in the two-hole, and pushed Jorge Polanco and Josh Naylor up to third and fourth. Suárez, struggling just as badly as Arozarena with a .162 batting average in the postseason, stayed in the sixth spot.

Friday’s contest featured a pitching rematch of Game 1 between Kevin Gausman and Bryce Miller, when the two starters combined for just three earned runs over a combined 11 2/3 innings. They allowed even fewer runs on Friday. Their two approaches couldn’t have been different. Gausman avoided the top half of the zone at all costs, looking to induce chases on splitters that dived below the zone and earn called strikes on four-seamers that held their plane. Miller threw some splitters of his own, but he attacked with fastballs at and above the top of the zone. He also pitched with abandon. With ace Bryan Woo in the bullpen ready to pitch for the first time since September 19 due to pectoral inflammation, Miller emptied the tank. Both his fastballs averaged roughly 2 mph above their regular season marks. The starters picked up right where they left off in Game 1, facing four hitters apiece in the first inning and pitching around doubles to the opposing lineup’s big star. Miller touched 98 mph, struck out two and gave up a double to Vladimir Guerrero Jr., while Gausman rode his trademark splitter and allowed his own double to Raleigh. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve got some terrible news for you. The crime rate is way down. I know that sounds like it should be good news, but when it comes to baseball, it’s just boring. Nobody’s stealing any bases during the playoffs (except for Randy Arozarena and, of course, Josh Naylor). The 34 total playoff games have seen just 26 steals on 35 total attempts. That’s 0.51 attempts per team per game, a huge drop-off from a regular season that averaged 0.91. The Blue Jays and Dodgers have combined for just two steals on two attempts. Boring.

On its own, that doesn’t seem too surprising. This is the fourth year in a row that teams have attempted fewer steals per game in the playoffs than in the regular season. The reasons behind this are easy enough to understand. First, we have a logistical hurdle. Runs are harder to come by during the playoffs. This year, we’ve seen 4.45 runs per team game during the regular season and just 4.02 during the playoffs. On-base percentage is down 11 points, which means fewer baserunners and fewer stolen base opportunities to start with. Next, we’ve got the risk aversion angle. Those baserunners are a more precious commodity at a time when the stakes are at their highest. Running into an out on the bases is a very loud unforced error, the kind of thing you get roasted for in the papers the next morning. It’s a lot harder to see how much potential value you’re leaving on the table by just staying put. I feel confident that I’ve never read an article roasting a player for not trying to steal.

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Say what you want about Blake Snell. You may not find his Only Use Strike Zone in Case of Emergency pitching style fun to watch, but in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series, the Brewers found it even less pleasant to hit against. Snell carved through a Milwaukee lineup that scored 22 runs in the NLDS like a knife through nothing at all, ending his night by retiring 17 straight. He faced the minimum over eight innings in an absolutely dominant performance as the Dodgers beat the Brewers, 2-1, to take a 1-0 lead in the NLCS.

A prolonged bout of shoulder inflammation limited Snell to just 11 starts and 61 1/3 innings this season, but over those 11 starts, he was excellent, running a 2.35 ERA and 2.69 FIP. He’d been even better in the playoffs, earning wins against the Reds and Phillies and allowing just two runs, five hits, and five walks while striking out 18. On Monday night, he made those performances look like warmup outings. Snell went eight innings for just the second time in his entire career, and finished with 10 strikeouts, no walks, and one hit. That one hit was a weak line drive that third baseman Caleb Durbin dumped into center field in the third inning. Durbin then broke for second way too early, allowing Snell to throw over to first and catch him easily at second. “You gotta disrupt it,” said Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy between innings. “You gotta do something. He looks really sharp.” The Brewers didn’t do anything.

It wasn’t surprising to see Snell dealing, but it was surprising to see him not walking anyone. The game plan for the Brewers was simple, if difficult to execute. They had the lowest chase rate and the sixth-highest walk rate in baseball this season. They needed to be patient and force Snell to throw the ball in the zone. The Dodgers wanted the same thing. “I can’t have him nibble,” said Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts before the game. Snell didn’t nibble. He hit the zone 50% of the time, well above his regular season rate of 44%, and only a hair under the major league average of 51%. It was just the third time in the past two seasons that he’d gone without a base on balls. His changeup was particularly devastating, and he threw it 37% of the time, the second-highest rate of his entire career. Between innings, he sat on the bench and flipped through a half-inch three-ring binder that held either scouting reports or notes for an AP chemistry midterm. Read the rest of this entry »

It was really close. On Sunday, in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, in the top of the first inning, with one out and runners on first and third, once and future hero playoff hero Jorge Polanco hit a bouncer to the third baseman. The runner on third was going on contact, but the runner on third was Cal Raleigh, and while relatively quick for a catcher, the Sultan of Squat is not exactly known for his speed. Had the ball been hit anywhere other than directly at a corner infielder, he might have beaten it easily. Instead, Addison Barger’s throw beat Raleigh to the bag by at least three metres (the game was in Canada, after all). But it was still really close.

The throw arrived in plenty of time, and it was by no means off target. To make sure he ran no risk of hitting the runner, Barger wisely threw the ball toward the right side – the first base side – of catcher Alejandro Kirk’s body. The throw wasn’t high either, but it did arrive at shoulder height. Raleigh was running as hard as he could, and in the time it took Kirk to swing his catcher’s mitt from high on his right side to low on his left side, he’d closed the distance to roughly one metre. Then Kirk made an important decision. With Raleigh bearing down on him, he chose not to keep swinging the glove down and toward the plate. He reached out for a high tag and swept the left side of his body out of the way in the same moment. Self-preservation undoubtedly played a role in the decision. It cost him valuable centimetres (God, this feels wrong), and it very nearly allowed Raleigh to sneak his right cleat between Kirk’s legs and onto home plate before his torso crashed into the mitt. For the briefest of moments, the two catchers looked like colliding galaxies, smashing then spinning together as their gravitational fields intertwined:

In real time, the play went from looking like a sure out to an impossibly close call. Maybe Raleigh got his foot in there and maybe he didn’t. The call on the field was out, and unbelievably, the Mariners declined to challenge it. The video never got dissected by the replay room in New York. The chief marketing officer of Zoom Communications, Inc. surely wept. Read the rest of this entry »

The house always wins. In the National League Divisional Series between the Brewers and the Cubs, the home team won every game. Game 5, in which both teams ran out of trusted starters and turned to their bullpens, ended up being the lowest scoring game of the series. The scoring was limited to four solo home runs, and although the Cubs hit 57 more homers than the Brewers during the regular season and two more during this NLDS, the Brewers powered up when it counted. With home runs from William Contreras, Andrew Vaughn, and Brice Turang, they beat the Cubs, 3-1, and will host the Dodgers in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series on Monday.

Just as they’d done during the regular season, the two teams came as close as they possibly could to splitting the series. The Cubs took the regular season series, 7-6, and the Brewers have now taken the Divisional Series, 3-2, leaving the teams tied at nine. The Cubs will return to Chicago and ponder how to improve a roster that now has a massive, Kyle Tucker-shaped hole in the outfield. The Brewers are headed to the Championship Series for the fourth time in franchise history and the first time since 2018, when they lost to the Dodgers. After seven years, they’ll have the chance for revenge.

Although bullpen games involve plenty of mixing and matching, the early plans seemed pretty well scripted. Milwaukee came out of the gate with the big guns, hoping Trevor Megill could be the first pitcher of the entire series to hold the Cubs scoreless in the first inning, before Pat Murphy looked to Jacob Misiorowski for four. After that, the Brewers had the rest of their bullpen ready to match up, thanks to an off day on Friday. “The pitching guys, myself and Matt Arnold, we just sat in a room and just talked about the possibilities and considered a ton of factors,” said Murphy in the pregame press conference. “But we settled on Megill. He’s going to pitch tonight, regardless.” Read the rest of this entry »