In the aftermath of Monday’s Game 3 loss (well, really it ended up being almost as much Tuesday’s Game 3 loss, at least on the East Coast), I encountered an unexpected sentiment floating around on the internet, and I’d like to unpack it.

Somewhere around the 32nd inning of that game, I noted that Toronto’s lineup had been shortened quite dramatically by a series of in-game substitutions.

I am amazed the Jays have lasted this long after taking out their second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-best hitters, in two cases for guys who absolutely cannot hit even a little. The Dodgers should've been walking Guerrero every time up too

— Michael Baumann (@baumann.bsky.social) October 28, 2025 at 2:35 AM

I meant this as nothing more than a statement of fact; George Springer got hurt mid-game, and Bo Bichette had to be removed because he came pre-injured and is currently running like the “before” clip in a commercial for a physical therapy practice. Toronto manager John Schneider’s options were quite limited. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to preface this post with two important caveats. First: Complaining about the fairness of the officiating, in any sport, in any circumstance, is loser behavior. For better or worse, the calls usually even out. And even in the vanishingly rare circumstances where a single call genuinely costs a team a victory, harping on about it isn’t going to change anything.

Second: I’m more lukewarm about the oncoming challenge system, and ABS in general, than a lot of people are. I think the umpires usually do a good job calling balls and strikes, and calling the rulebook zone isn’t going to do much to placate fans who pore over umpire scorecards. They don’t want the rulebook zone; they want their team to get all the calls. Overall, I think it’ll be a positive for the game, I’m just less geeked about it than I was about the pitch clock, for instance.

With all that said, there’s one specific thing I’m looking forward to with the challenge system. It’s going to eliminate my least favorite play in baseball, one we saw with disastrous effect during Game 3 of the World Series, and with any luck for the last time on a major league diamond. Read the rest of this entry »

Opportunity knocks for everyone. In some cases, opportunity knocks, rings the doorbell, shouts into your Ring camera, tosses pebbles at your bedroom window, then goes out to its convertible in the driveway and starts singing “Thunder Road.”

Kevin Gausman and Yoshinobu Yamamoto were both terrific, but all duels end with one man standing and the other getting stabbed. Yamamoto twirled his second straight complete game, giving him the first streak of playoff complete games in 24 years. Gausman fell off the tightrope in the seventh inning, as home runs by Will Smith and Max Muncy put the visiting team in front for good. The Dodgers’ 5-1 win wasn’t as splashy as Toronto’s home run party the night before, but it evens the series.

Gausman was all but out of the first inning. He had two strikes on Freddie Freeman, who’d fouled off a splitter at his ankles, then a middle-middle fastball, then another heater up at his hands. Gausman went back to the splitter, the pitch that made him famous, and buried another. Read the rest of this entry »

You can’t win if you don’t score. The Brewers, who scored exactly one run in each game of their doomed NLCS campaign, learned that the hard way. The Phillies scored eight runs in their single NLDS victory — five of those coming as tack-on runs against mopup relievers — and a total of seven in their three losses.

The Dodgers have a 2.45 ERA this postseason. Among 21st century World Series contestants, that’s tied for the third-best mark with the 2012 Tigers, who had three World Series winners in their rotation. The only pennant winners to allow fewer runs per game were the 2001 Diamondbacks (who had a rather famous 1-2 punch at the top of their rotation) and the 2022 Astros, who threw a combined no-hitter in the World Series. Read the rest of this entry »

Forgive me for getting excited about this one, because even in sports, it’s not every day that the most interesting outcome happens. But the Giants are, according to The Athletic, “closing in on” hiring a new manager: Tony Vitello.

Two offseasons ago, I wrote about the five categories of major league manager: The hot assistant to a successful skipper; the grizzled baseball lifer; the front office liaison; the recent ex-player who’d been talked up as a future coach since his late 20s; and Aaron Boone.

Vitello is none of those things. When I run the player linker for this post, Vitello’s name is not going to come up in bold. Not only has he never played in the majors, he’s never drawn a paycheck from a professional baseball team in any capacity — not as a player, or a coach, or a scout, or a special assistant. Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani had quite a night, didn’t he?

Let’s be more direct: Ohtani just had the greatest individual game in postseason history. On the mound, he threw six scoreless innings, allowing two hits and three walks while striking out 10. He got pulled after giving up two straight baserunners to start the seventh, which kind of mucked up his line, which is ironic, because that’s what the Dodgers offense has been doing to other starting pitchers over the past two weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, that was fun while it lasted.

Home-field advantage has been a bit of a booby prize this postseason, with the home team losing all five LCS games heading into Thursday evening’s action. The Dodgers’ Game 3 starter, Tyler Glasnow, is arguably the closest thing this rotation has to a weak link. So maybe the Brewers weren’t as dead as the series standings made it seem. Win one and you’re back in it.

Unfortunately for the Brewers, and for neutrals hoping for this series to go six or seven exciting games, that wasn’t in the cards. The Dodgers put a run on the board within their first two batters of the game, and while Milwaukee tied it the next inning, Glasnow shut the door afterward. A couple singles, a walk, and a throwing error in the sixth inning were all the Dodgers needed to win the game, 3-1, and take a 3-0 lead in the series. You already know what the odds are at this point. Read the rest of this entry »

Philadelphia, late in a must-win road game in a tightly contested playoff series, has all but gotten a stop. The team has held serve, against all odds blanking its opponent to force another frame and extend the season. Then, all of a sudden, the ball does something weird. It goes in a direction nobody anticipated, and as the entire Delaware Valley looks on in disbelieving horror, the home team scores to seal a walk-off win and advance to the next round.

I’m sure you’ve deduced from the lack of proper nouns in the previous paragraph that I’m not talking about the recently concluded Phillies-Dodgers NLDS, or the Orion Kerkering throwing error that ended it. No, I’m talking about this.

Oh yeah, Phillies fans, we’re gonna feel even worse than you thought today. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeez, I thought the Cubs were dead. These guys got torched both games in Milwaukee, then nearly contrived to blow Game 3 after jumping out to a 4-1 first-inning lead.

Game 4 started much the same way for Chicago, with a three-run first-inning homer by Ian Happ, only this time they didn’t let up. Matthew Boyd slung breaking balls around Milwaukee bats for 4 2/3 scoreless innings, and rather than rest on their first-inning output, as they did in Game 3, the Cubs put up a late-inning picket fence to stretch the final score to a serene 6-0. A decisive Game 5 in Milwaukee awaits. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA – If the lesson to learn from Game 1 of the NLDS is that nobody’s perfect, the lesson to learn from Game 2 is that some pitchers come close. Blake Snell and Jesús Luzardo delivered the kind of pitchers’ duel to warm the hearts of dyspeptic ex-pros who should have to drop a quarter in the swear jar whenever they start a sentence with, “Back in my day…” Snell allowed only a single hit against four walks and nine strikeouts in six innings of work; Luzardo, after a tricky first inning, recorded 17 straight outs.

After watching a blank scoreboard for the first two-thirds of the game, both teams cracked under the strain in the endgame. The two clubs followed this pair of near-perfect pitching performances with a manifestly imperfect bottom of the ninth, as both teams committed blunders in tactics and execution that threw a settled game into chaos.

The final score: Dodgers 4, Phillies 3. In this heavyweight bout, the Dodgers are one win away from a knockout victory. Read the rest of this entry »