NEW YORK — Ernie Clement simply wore out Yankees pitchers during the Division Series. After collecting three hits in Game 2 — including a two-run homer off Max Fried that opened the scoring — in a Blue Jays win, then four more hits in their Game 3 defeat, the 29-year-old infielder sparked rallies in Game 4 with a pair of singles that led to the go-ahead run in the fifth inning and then two more runs in the seventh, helping Toronto break the game open. Backed by opener Louis Varland and seven other relievers who combined to hold the Yankees to six hits and two runs, the Blue Jays bounced their AL East rivals with a 5-2 victory in Game 4.

While Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (.529/.550/1.059) and Daulton Varsho (.438/.471/1.000) were the Blue Jays’ heaviest hitters in the series, combining for five homers and 13 RBI, Clement — who spent time at all four infield positions this year and started games at both second and third base in this series — hit .643/.625/.929 himself while scoring and driving in five runs apiece. Though he showed a wide platoon split during the regular season, producing a 146 wRC+ (.326/.351/.549) against lefties and 75 wRC+ (.254/.295/.327) against righties, both of his Game 4 singles were off fireballing righty Cam Schlittler, who was very good if not nearly as dominant as he had been against the Red Sox in the Wild Card Series finale.

“I think Ernie Clement has made everyone aware of how good he is,” said manager John Schneider after the game. “It’s been like that the whole year for the bottom part of our lineup. You try to navigate it to where guys can put the ball in play, guys can get on base for guys at the top.

“Ernie had an unbelievable first postseason series for a guy that has been through it a little bit,” he continued. “I think he kind of epitomizes what we are in terms of how we play. So I’m thrilled for him, but the bottom part of our lineup has been relentless the entire season.”

Schneider was alluding to the path Clement took to the Blue Jays. Drafted out of the University of Virginia in the fourth round by Cleveland in 2017, he reached the majors in ’21, but hit just .214/.273/.274 in 103 games in that season and the next before being released in September 2022. He caught on with the A’s but played just six games for them late in the season, then drew his release in the middle of spring training in 2023. He signed with the Blue Jays but spent most of that season at Triple-A Buffalo, then went from battling for the 26th roster spot in the spring of 2024 to playing 139 games in the majors, mainly at third base and shortstop. This year, he spent substantial stretches at third and second, the latter while Andrés Giménez was sidelined due to an ankle sprain, and late in the season dabbled at shortstop after Bo Bichette went down with a left knee sprain. With combined totals of 21 DRS and 9 FRV, Clement was a key cog in one of the majors’ best defenses.

On the offensive side, Clement is something of a study in extremes. In addition to his wide platoon split — which followed up a large reverse split last year (104 wRC+ in 307 PA against righties, 72 wRC+ in 145 PA against lefties) — he ranked in just the eighth percentile in average exit velocity (86.6 mph) and sixth percentile in barrel rate (2.4%), but in the 97th percentile in squared-up rate (36.9%). Among qualifiers, both his 4.6% walk rate and 10.4% strikeout rate ranked among the majors’ seven-lowest marks.

“Ernie has elite bat-to-ball skills, and I’ve seen him cover a foot above the zone and a foot below the zone. With that comes a little bit of volatility with the results,” said Schneider prior to Game 4. “Ernie is not scared of any situation. I think his play kind of shows that, the way he plays the game, whether it’s on the bases, on defense, or at the plate.”

Despite losing the battle of the bullpens on Tuesday night, Schneider and the Blue Jays projected no shortage of confidence, starting with choice of Varland to serve as an opener for a bullpen game after said bullpen had finished the job of coughing up a 6-1 lead by allowing six runs in 5 1/3 innings. Varland himself served up Aaron Judge’s game-tying three-run homer in Game 3, and Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s go-ahead solo shot the best hitter on the planet needed the cooperation of the wind and the Yankee Stadium ghosts to turn a 99.7-mph four-seamer 1.2 feet off the center of the plate into some timely runs. With Max Scherzer having struggled down the stretch and both Chris Bassitt and José Berríos ending the regular season sidelined due to injuries, the Blue Jays brought only three starters into the series, hence the choice to go with an all-reliever approach for Game 4. Though Schneider mentioned that Game 2 starter Trey Yesavage, who no-hit the Yankees for 5 1/3 innings in just his fourth major league start, was available for certain scenarios, he never had to call his number.

One other reason for confidence, or at least optimism on the Blue Jays’ part, was their previous success against Schlittler, who himself was making just his 16th major league start since getting called up on July 9. On August 30 in New York, the Jays chased him after he’d allowed five hits, two walks and four runs in 1 2/3 innings — the worst start of his stellar half-season.

The Blue Jays quickly did what the Red Sox could not in his eight-inning start last week: score a run on Schlittler. Leadoff hitter George Springer scalded his first second pitch, a 97.2-mph four-seam fastball, into the left field corner for a 107.5-mph double. After Nathan Lukes flied out, Guerrero sliced a cutter down the right field line for an RBI single; six pitches in, the Blue Jays led 1-0. Addison Barger singled to right to send Guerrero to third, but Alejandro Kirk popped out foul to catcher Austin Wells, and then Cody Bellinger slid into foul territory to catch Varsho’s fly ball down the left field line.

Varland, making his fourth appearance in the series, allowed a loud single to Judge in the first inning and hit Paul Goldschmidt in the back with a 98-mph sinker with one out in the second before yielding to lefty Mason Fluharty, who struck out both Wells and Anthony Volpe. Fluharty served up a solo homer to Ryan McMahon, just the third he hit off a lefty all season and his first such homer since being acquired from the Rockies on July 25. But the Yankees couldn’t do any other damage against the next five relievers Schneider called upon, namely Seranthony Domínguez, Eric Lauer, Yariel Rodríguez, Brendon Little and Braydon Fisher, who combined to hold the Yankees to two hits and five walks over the next 5 1/3 innings. Not until the sixth did the Yankees even put two men on base at the same time; they did so in that inning when Lauer intentionally walked Judge with one out and then Yariel Rodríguez entered and walked Giancarlo Stanton before retiring Chisholm on a groundball.

Schlittler did not have the same kind of swing-and-miss stuff on Wednesday night as he did against the Red Sox, but his four-seam fastball still averaged a sizzling 98 mph and reached as high as 99.7 mph, and what he lacked in dominance, he made up for in efficiency. Through four innings, he threw just 47 pitches, generating five whiffs and seven called strikes, and from the second through the fourth gave up just one hit, a leadoff double to Barger in the fourth. He retired Clement, the eighth hitter in the lineup, in the second inning, but it required a great over-the-shoulder grab on a dying quail by Volpe in shallow left field to do so.

Clement led off the fifth by taking a 97.6-mph four-seamer for a strike, then flaring a 94.6-mph cutter in the lower third of the zone into left field for a single. He sped to third when Giménez followed with a single to center field, and scored on a sacrifice fly when Springer flied out to center.

The score was still 2-1, and Schlittler still on the mound, when Clement batted again with one out in the seventh, after Anthony Santander had fouled out to McMahon. On the first pitch, Schlittler left a 98.4-mph fastball in the middle of the zone, and Clement drilled it into right field for a single. Giménez followed with a hot grounder up the middle that deflected off the glove of Chisholm, who was clearly thinking double play; the ball caromed into center field as Clement took third.

That ended Schlittler’s night at 88 pitches, 69 of which were strikes. In 6 2/3 innings, he surrendered eight hits and struck out two, and for the second start in a row didn’t walk anybody. Devin Williams, who threw 26 pitches in Game 3, came in and threw Springer seven straight changeups at the bottom of the zone or just below it, finally striking him out, but Giménez stole second on the last of those. Two pitches later, Lukes singled to center, bringing both runners home (the runs were unearned), extending the Blue Jays lead to 4-1.

The Blue Jays added another in the eighth against Camilo Doval thanks to a leadoff double by Kirk and then, one out later, a bloop into right field by Myles Straw; Doval then hit Clement in the back with a 95.7-mph cutter, but he was soon erased on a forceout.

Now trailing 5-1, the Yankees had their chance to tie the game in the eighth. With two outs, Stanton singled off Fisher, and both Chisholm and pinch-hitter Ben Rice drew walks, the latter against closer Jeff Hoffman, who nonetheless got Wells to hit a routine flyball to left field on the first pitch of his plate appearance. Though the Yankees tacked on a run in the ninth on to a pinch-double by Jasson Domínguez and a long single off the left field wall by Judge, he was the last baserunner of their season; Bellinger struck out chasing a low-and-away splitter, and that was that. The Blue Jays won their first playoff series since 2016, when they beat the Orioles in the AL Wild Card Game and then swept the Rangers in the Division Series before falling to Cleveland in a five-game ALCS.

Clement, who hit ninth against righty Luis Gil in Game 1 and sixth against lefties Fried and Carlos Rodón in Games 2 and 3, wasn’t alone in stirring up trouble at the bottom of the lineup. For the series, the Blue Jays’ six through nine hitters — a cast that at times included Varsho, Barger, Straw, and Giménez — combined to bat .322/.390/.424 with 10 RBI, leaving Yankees pitchers fewer places to turn for outs and the Blue Jays to 8.5 runs per game for the series. What they lacked in power (Clement was the only one to homer from one of those spots), they made up for with their extreme penchant for contact, striking out just eight times in 68 plate appearances (11.7%), which in this case forced a wobbly Yankees defense to make play — and sometimes they didn’t. During the regular season, the Blue Jays’ six through nine hitters combined to bat .253/.320/.388 for a 99 wRC+, fourth in the majors from those spots; their 18.7% strikeout rate was the majors’ lowest, just as the team’s overall rate of 17.8% was the lowest as well. Clement himself didn’t strike out once in 16 plate appearances.

“I got a lot of responsibility down at the bottom of that lineup trying to get on for our big guns,” Clement said. “Giménez [who went 4-for-15 with a double] has also done a tremendous job getting on base. It feels like the bottom of our order does something to help us win literally every game. So I think it’s been huge.”

Amid the postgame celebration in the visitors’ clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, where players made beer angels on the floor, Clement was lost the revelry. “I don’t know where I am right now!” he exclaimed. Soon enough, he and the Blue Jays — the AL’s number one seed for the postseason — will find themselves back at the Rogers Centre, waiting to play the winner of the Mariners-Tigers Division Series.

Davy Andrews contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — The ovation that Devin Williams received from the crowd of 47,399 at Yankee Stadium as he departed in the eighth inning on Tuesday night after recording five crucial outs — his longest outing in more than two years — did not go unnoticed. “It’s nice to feel appreciated sometimes. It was definitely a lot better than what I’ve heard for much of the year,” said the 31-year-old righty in the wake of the Yankees’ dramatic 9-6 comeback victory over the Blue Jays in Game 3 of the American League Division Series. Acquired from Milwaukee last December, the two-time All-Star was supposed to serve as the closer of the defending AL champions, but early struggles bumped him out of that role, and he was booed vociferously. Over the past month, he’s tried to salvage his season, and with the Yankees in danger of being swept by their division rivals, he was one of five relievers who held the Blue Jays scoreless over the final 6 2/3 innings while the Bronx Bombers bashed out eight unanswered runs, six of them against Toronto’s bullpen.

When starter Carlos Rodón left Game 3 with one out in the third inning, the Yankees trailed 6-1 and appeared perilously close to being eliminated. They quickly clawed their way back against a wobbly Shane Bieber, however, chasing the Blue Jays’ starter with two outs in the third with the score 6-3. From there, a unit that was torched for 14 runs in 10 1/3 innings in Games 1 and 2 in Toronto won the battle of the bullpens. While Fernando Cruz, Camilo Doval, Tim Hill, Williams, and David Bednar quieted an offense that had been humming on all cylinders, four straight Blue Jays relievers allowed runs, with Louis Varland serving up both Aaron Judge’s game-tying three-run homer in the fourth inning and Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s go-ahead solo shot in the fifth. Now, while the Yankees will call upon Wild Card Series hero Cam Schlittler to start Thursday’s Game 4, the Blue Jays — gulp — counter with a bullpen game started by Varland, a development that could help send this series back to Toronto.

“That’s just what’s on the table,” said Williams of the bullpen’s collective mindset given the situation when Rodón departed. “We really don’t have any other option but to put up zeros and give our guys a chance to take the lead.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees got absolutely thrashed by the Blue Jays during the first two games of the Division Series, losing Saturday’s opener 10-1 and then again on Sunday, 13-7. To be fair, the first game was tight right up to the seventh-inning stretch, after which the Blue Jays expanded their 2-1 lead with four runs apiece in the seventh and eighth innings, but by the same token, Game 2 wasn’t even as close as that six-run margin suggests. The Yankees not only trailed 12-0 through five innings, but also were no-hit by Trey Yesavage through 5 1/3 innings before breaking through against reliever Justin Bruihl in the sixth. Now, for the second time in less than a week, they’ll turn to Carlos Rodón to face an AL East rival with their season on the line.

The 32-year-old Rodón started Game 2 of the Wild Card Series against the Red Sox, one night after Garrett Crochet and Aroldis Chapman stifled the Yankees in the opener. Rodón held the Red Sox to three runs in six-plus innings, getting by with more than a little help from his friends. He retired the first six batters he faced before running into trouble in the third inning. Jarren Duran, the lone lefty in the lineup, singled, then Ceddanne Rafaela worked a walk, with Rodón exacerbating the situation with a throwing error on switch-hitter Nick Sogard’s sacrifice bunt. Though he recovered to strike out lefty-masher Rob Refsnyder, both runners scored on a sharp single by Trevor Story. Rodón escaped further damage when he induced Alex Bregman to ground into a double play that began with an acrobatic spin move by second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr.

After a clean top of the fifth, Rodón was briefly staked to a 3-2 lead thanks to Aaron Judge’s RBI single, but it proved short-lived. Rodón fell behind Story 2-0 to lead off the fifth, then threw him a meatball, a 95.2-mph four-seamer that ended up in the middle of the strike zone and was hammered 381 feet to left field for a game-tying home run. A four-pitch walk to Bregman put him on the ropes, but he recovered by retiring Romy Gonzalez on a popout, then getting Carlos Narváez to ground into an around-the-horn double play. With his pitch count at a reasonable 82, manager Aaron Boone sent Rodón back out to start the seventh, but he walked Nate Eaton on four pitches, threw a wild pitch that sent him to second, then grazed Duran with a 3-0 pitch. Reliever Fernando Cruz managed to clean up the mess without further damage, aided by a stellar diving stop by Chisholm on a Masataka Yoshida infield single that, had it not been stopped, probably would have plated both Duran and Eaton. The Yankees scored what proved to be the decisive run in the eighth, when Chisholm worked a walk against Garrett Whitlock, then raced home on a long single into the right field corner by Austin Wells. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — In just the second winner-take-all postseason matchup started by two rookies — in one of the sport’s most storied rivalries, no less — 24-year-old Yankees righty Cam Schlittler utterly dominated the Red Sox lineup on Thursday, striking out 12 without a walk while scattering just five hits over eight scoreless innings. His opposite number, 23-year-old lefty Connelly Early, matched Schlittler zero for zero through the first three frames, making up with deception what he lacked in velocity, at least relative to the New York starter. Alas, a mistake by the Red Sox defense opened the door to trouble in the fourth inning, as five of the first six Yankees reached base en route to a 4-0 lead. Boston manager Alex Cora, who pulled starter Brayan Bello after 28 pitches in Game 2, left Early to throw 33 pitches in the fourth inning alone. That outburst was more than enough, as the Yankees eliminated the Red Sox from the postseason for the first time since 2003, when current manager Aaron Boone hit a walk-off home run off Tim Wakefield.

This was the sixth time the two AL East rivals squared off in the postseason, with the Red Sox riding a series winning streak that included the 2004 American League Championship Series, the 2018 AL Division Series, and the 2021 AL Wild Card Game. The only other time two rookie starters met in a winner-take-all game was in Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS, when the Dodgers’ Dustin May and the Braves’ Ian Anderson went head to head, though May pitched just one inning and Anderson three, and neither figured in the decision.

The two starters in this one began the season in Double-A, and didn’t figure to contribute substantially this season. Schlittler joined a banged-up Yankees rotation on July 9 and pitched brilliantly during the second half, overpowering batters with a four-seam fastball that averaged 98.0 mph as well as an effective cutter. He posted a 2.96 ERA and 3.74 FIP with a 27.6% strikeout rate in 14 starts, and was an easy choice for Boone to start Game 3 following Max Fried and Carlos Rodón. By contrast, Early only debuted on September 9, and pitched brilliantly (2.33 ERA, 0.91 FIP) but might not have made the postseason roster — or at least would not have started — had Lucas Giolito not been sidelined by elbow trouble. While Garrett Crochet’s 7 2/3 innings in Game 1 required Cora to use only closer Aroldis Chapman in relief, the manager didn’t like what he saw from Bello in Game 2 and pulled him with one out in the third, leaving him to call upon six relievers, one of whom (Garrett Whitlock) threw a season-high 47 pitches and gave up the winning run. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Jazz Chisholm Jr. was not a happy camper on Tuesday night. Despite a 31-homer, 31-steal season that included a solid showing against left-handed pitching, he spent the first seven innings of the Wild Card Series opener against the Red Sox on the bench instead of facing lefty Garrett Crochet. After the Yankees’ 3-1 loss, he was left muttering almost inaudibly at his locker with his back to reporters — a surreal scene. Back in the lineup on Wednesday night against righty Brayan Bello, Chisholm went 0-for-3 but made huge contributions on both sides of the ball, with two standout defensive plays and an eighth-inning walk that turned into the decisive run when he motored home from first base on Austin Wells’ long go-ahead single. The Yankees’ 4-3 win kept their season alive, pushing the series to Game 3.

Despite hitting a respectable .248/.322/.411 (106 wRC+) against lefties this year (compared to .240/.336/.508, 134 wRC+ against righties), Chisholm sat on Tuesday night in favor of righty Amed Rosario — who played just one game at second base after being acquired from the Nationals on July 26 — apparently on the basis of Rosario’s owning a 6-for-9 career line with two extra-base hits against Crochet entering play Tuesday. Rosario went hitless in three plate appearances against the Boston ace before yielding to Chisholm in the eighth inning; Chisholm flied out with the bases loaded in the ninth against Aroldis Chapman.

Manager Aaron Boone wasn’t worried that Chisholm’s disappointment at being left out of the lineup would carry over into Game 2. “I don’t need him to put a happy face on,” Boone said Wednesday afternoon. “I need him to go out and play his butt off for us tonight. That’s what I expect to happen.” Read the rest of this entry »

Dansby Swanson brought home back-to-back Gold Gloves in 2022 with the Braves and ’23 with the Cubs while leading the majors in Statcast’s Fielding Run Value in both seasons. Although he hasn’t added any hardware to his collection since then, and while his defensive metrics have slipped, he still grades out as comfortably above average in both FRV and Defensive Runs Saved. His defensive acumen was on display in Tuesday’s Wild Card Series opener between the Cubs and Padres, as he made a couple of pivotal, run-saving plays in Chicago’s 3-1 victory.

The Padres had taken the lead in the second inning, when Jackson Merrill and Xander Bogaerts opened the frame with back-to-back doubles off Matthew Boyd; Bogaerts took third when center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong’s relay spurted away from Nico Hoerner at second base. Ryan O’Hearn then hit a sizzling 101-mph groundball, and Swanson, who was shaded up the middle, dove to his right to stop it. He looked Bogaerts back to third base, then threw to first for the out. The play loomed large as Bogaerts ended up stranded.

The Padres threatened again in the fourth, when Manny Machado drew a leadoff walk and took second on Merrill’s sacrifice bunt. Bogaerts legged out a chopper into the no-man’s land to the right of the mound for an infield single, and San Diego appeared poised to capitalize when O’Hearn hit a flare into shallow center field. Swanson had other ideas, making a great over-the-shoulder snag of the ball, then in one motion turning to fire home to keep Machado honest.

Read the rest of this entry »

For the third time in the past eight seasons, and the sixth time since 1999, one of the game’s most storied rivalries has spilled over into the playoffs. In the matchup of the top two AL Wild Card seeds, the Yankees (94-68) host the Red Sox (89-73) for a best-of-three series at Yankee Stadium. Though they won 11 of their last 12 to erase a five-game lead in the AL East by the Blue Jays, the Yankees lost their season series tiebreaker to Toronto, 8-5, bumping them into the Wild Card round, making their road to return to the World Series that much harder.

The Red Sox have taken the past three postseason matchups between the two clubs, most recently beating the Yankees in the 2021 AL Wild Card Game at Fenway Park and before that the 2018 Division Series. You have to dial back to 2003 for the last time the Yankees defeated the Red Sox in October — with current manager Aaron Boone hitting a walk-off homer off Tim Wakefield to send New York to the World Series.

In terms of more recent and somewhat more relevant history, the Red Sox did win the season series, 9-4, and took seven out of nine at Yankee Stadium. That said, the Yankees won three of the final four games between the two teams. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers have muddled their way through September, winning just often enough to maintain a narrow lead over the Padres. It’s no mystery why the defending champions needed until Thursday to secure the NL West title or, for the first time since the new playoff structure was implemented, failed to secure a first-round bye. While their rotation has been stellar lately, their bullpen has been absolutely brutal. On Wednesday night at Chase Field, even as they flirted with losing in walk-off fashion for the second night in a row and the fifth time this month, they uncovered perhaps their best hope for a deep October run, as both Roki Sasaki and Clayton Kershaw turned in clean innings in their first relief appearances of the season. While there are some caveats to those performances — neither pitcher was facing Murderer’s Row, both allowed hard contact, and Sasaki benefited from a blown call on strike three — both appearances were eye-opening and offered cause for optimism.

Just the night before the two auditions, the Dodgers squandered Shohei Ohtani‘s season-high six scoreless innings and a 4-0 lead against the Diamondbacks when Jack Dreyer, Edgardo Henriquez, Alex Vesia, and Tanner Scott combined to allow five runs over the final three innings. Scott started the ninth by hitting Ildemaro Vargas, then walking Tim Tawa; two batters later, the former scored the tying run on Jorge Barrosa‘s sacrifice fly and then the latter came home with the winning run on Geraldo Perdomo‘s single. It was the second time in three days the Dodgers had wasted a scoreless start of six innings or more; Emmet Sheehan’s seven innings of one-hit shutout work against the Giants on Sunday went for naught when Blake Treinen allowed three runs while retiring just two of seven hitters in the eighth. That loss made Treinen the first pitcher since at least 1912 to wear five of his team’s losses in a row, according to MLB.com’s Mike Petriello. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, after a trade deadline sell-off, the Tigers snagged a Wild Card spot thanks to the combination of a late surge and a gruesome collapse by the Twins. This year, it’s the Tigers who are in danger of fumbling away a playoff berth, as they’ve lost 11 out of 15 since September 3, while the Guardians have won 15 out of 18. Meanwhile, the Mets have lost 12 out of 19 this month, slipping from the third NL Wild Card spot to being on the outside looking in due to the tiebreaker with the Reds.

Particularly with that tiebreaker looming so large, with six days to go in the regular season, it’s time for another look at what’s at stake. This used to be Team Entropy territory, but alas in the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, Major League Baseball and the players’ union traded the potential excitement and scheduling mayhem created by on-field tiebreakers and sudden-death Wild Card games in exchange for a larger inventory of playoff games. The 12-team, two-bye format was designed to reward the top two teams in each league by allowing them to bypass the possibility of being eliminated in a best-of-three series. Those bye teams are just 6-6 under the new format, but across a larger sample going back to 1981, research by Dan Szymborski, freshly updated for this article, shows that in matchups where with one playoff team had a layoff of four or more days while its opponent had two or fewer days off, the team with more rest went 27-13 in its next game. It’s an advantage.

Anyway, as we head into the season’s final days, here’s a look at the various scenarios still in play when it comes to playoff seeding, and how the tiebreaker rules could determine who plays on into October and who goes home. Read the rest of this entry »

By the time the first half of the season ended, Pete Crow-Armstrong appeared to be a lock to join the 30-home run, 30-stolen base club. Elected to start the All-Star Game in center field for the NL in his first full major league season, the 23-year-old phenom had already totaled 25 homers and 27 steals. Things have not come easily since then, however; with one week to go in the regular season, Crow-Armstrong is stuck on 29 home runs, though he does have 35 stolen bases.

It was a fruitful weekend for joining the 30/30 club, with Jazz Chisholm Jr. doing so on Friday, José Ramírez on Saturday, and Corbin Carroll on Sunday; the three of them joined — improbably enough — Juan Soto. This is the fifth season in which four players have attained the dual milestones, and the second in three years, aided by the rules changes that have accompanied the introduction of the pitch clock. Any one of Crow-Armstrong, Julio Rodríguez (who has 31 home runs and 28 stolen bases), Francisco Lindor (28 HR, 31 SB), or Randy Arozarena (27 HR, 28 SB) reaching their needed thresholds would set a major league record.

Although Crow-Armstrong didn’t start against the Reds on Sunday, he came off the bench and had two chances to join the party. He flied out in one and, with the tying run at second base and two outs in the ninth, struck out looking at a borderline four-seamer to end the game. Read the rest of this entry »