Throughout the 2019 postseason, the Washington Nationals made a habit of using their entire margin of error. They needed a three-run, last-ditch rally to get out of the Wild Card game, then another 11th-hour comeback to get past the Dodgers in Game 5 of the NLDS. Dave Martinez tried to shorten his pitching staff as much as possible, a desperation move that’s backfired on manager after manager as long as there have been playoffs.

By the time Game 6 of the World Series rolled around, the Nationals were facing elimination once again. They’d lost three straight to the 107-win Astros and needed to beat Justin Verlander on the road to stay alive. Patrick Corbin had been run ragged. Max Scherzer’s body had locked up to the point where he couldn’t dress himself. Martinez had already gambled with the likes of Tanner Rainey and Wander Suero more than anyone was comfortable with.

Then Stephen Strasburg stepped up and did something you don’t see pitchers do much anymore. He handled it.

After a rocky first inning, Strasburg kept the irrepressible Astros offense off the board into the ninth. The Nats once again scored bunches of runs late, and the next evening they were hoisting the proverbial piece of metal. Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox are going to miss the playoffs in the AL Central, which is the baseball equivalent of failing driver’s ed. It’s disappointing but not particularly surprising; since winning the World Series in 2005, the Sox have made the postseason just three times and won a grand total of three games across all of those trips.

Shockingly, the White Sox have enjoyed remarkable front office continuity over that time. For most of the 21st century, the duo of Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn, in some combination of titles, was running the show. I say “was” because, as you well know, Williams and Hahn were fired on Tuesday.

There’s no structural reason the White Sox can’t be successful. They have history and branding half the league would kill for. They play in the third-largest media market in the U.S., and though they share it with a richer and more popular neighbor, if Houston and Philadelphia and Toronto can spend enough to put out a winning team, so can the White Sox. Most important, they play in the easiest division in baseball, where the last-place club in the AL East would have a decent shot at winning the division.

They’re also lucky enough to have an owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, who cares whether the team wins. Not every team can say the same. Unfortunately, Reinsdorf seems to care how the White Sox win. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2020, the Washington Nationals succumbed to one of the worst championship hangovers of all time. They’re on course to finish in last place in the NL East for the fourth year running (though by God, the Mets are going to make them earn it this year!), and while signs of rejuvenation are on the horizon, they are only signs at this point. Since that pandemic-shortened season, Patrick Corbin has existed mostly as a study in contrast, a reminder that the ruins of now used to be the enviable bastion of then. In 2019, Corbin was one of three bona fide front-of-the-rotation starters in Washington, along with Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg. Now, Strasburg is on the IL indefinitely as he recovers from thoracic outlet syndrome. Scherzer is gone. So are Juan Soto, Trea Turner, Anthony Rendon, Ryan Zimmerman, Daniel Hudson, and Sean Doolittle. Victor Robles has been limited to just 36 games this season due to injury. For all intents and purposes, Corbin is the only championship National left.

Last year, Corbin pitched as an act of self-abnegation, posting a 6.31 ERA and leading all of baseball in losses, hits, and earned runs allowed. His name was a metonym for futility.

But right now? Things aren’t that bad. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone loves a beginning — the christening of a new battleship, the birth of a new zoo giraffe, the major league debut of a top pitching prospect. On Tuesday night in Philadelphia, San Francisco Giants lefty Kyle Harrison emerged from his pupal stage. It went… pretty well: 3 1/3 innings, two earned runs, five hits, one walk, five strikeouts, one hit batter.

In a short start, Harrison pared his repertoire down to — with very few exceptions — just his fastball and slider. He gave up lots of hard contact, including a home run, but also, said manager Gabe Kapler, Harrison “missed a lot of bats. He missed bats in the zone. His fastball was carrying.”

Harrison entered the night as the no. 17 overall prospect on The Board, and the no. 5 overall pitching prospect. Every team in the playoff hunt could use a fresh, talented starter, the Giants more so than just about anyone. San Francisco is running a rotation out of the mid-20th century: Two very good starting pitchers and then a lot of improvisation. Webb, Cobb, and pray for fog. Or something like that. If you can do better than a slant rhyme, I’m all ears. Read the rest of this entry »

It shouldn’t be terribly surprising that Jose Altuve is at it again. The man is running a wRC+ of 160 or better for the third time in his career; in one of those seasons, 2017, he was voted AL MVP. The other was just last year. Rumors of his demise, which circulated throughout a disastrous 2020 season, have long since subsided.

And not a moment too soon, I might add. The Astros, held in check by the Rangers most of the season, are back on their heels after a three-game sweep at the hands of division rival Seattle over the weekend. The pitching staff has taken a step back from its unhittable late-2022 apotheosis. Primary offseason acquisition José Abreu was hitting like a utility infielder before a back injury put him on the shelf. Jeremy Peña’s power stroke has deserted him, as has Cristian Javier’s unique brand of fastball-heavy trickeration.

Houston looks a little wobbly, for the first time since at least 2020; setting aside that season’s unique circumstances (and the Astros made it to Game 7 of the ALCS anyway), the team has not wobbled this much since 2016. But Altuve, hitting .327/.420/.529 since his return from a broken thumb suffered during the World Baseball Classic, has held things together.

If that really is Jose Altuve. Read the rest of this entry »

Look at the top of the leaguewide standings and you’ll find both types of elite teams: First, the Braves, an all-conquering, all-chewing-up-and-spitting-out combine harvester that sits atop the standings. After them: an Orioles club that’s outplaying its Pythagorean record by eight games.

That’s not to take anything away from the Orioles, who are dogwalking the hardest division in baseball thanks to a dizzying collection of talented young hitters and the best bullpen in the sport. Besides, they don’t ask how — they ask how many. But this is yet another reboot of a classic from the generation prior; in 2012, the O’s romped to the playoffs with a 93–69 record and the run differential of an 82–80 team. Now they’re doing the same thing, with Félix Bautista as Jim Johnson, Gunnar Henderson as Manny Machado, and Kyle Bradish as… Wei-Yin Chen, I guess?

It’s not just the Orioles: the Marlins (minus-37 run differential) are beating the Cubs (plus-62) to the last Wild Card spot. The Brewers are 10 games over .500 with the run differential of a .500 team. Every year, it seems like a low-payroll team with a good bullpen smashes its expected record to smithereens and barges into the playoffs. Is there an actual pattern here, or is this just trivia? Read the rest of this entry »

If I have one criticism of Shohei Ohtani, it’s that he has singlehandedly ruined baseball’s great parlor discussions. Admittedly, this is the only valid criticism of Ohtani that I can think of. But questions like “Which player would you want to start a franchise with?” or “Who’s the most talented ballplayer you’ve ever seen?” are so much less fun now than they were a decade ago. First person to answer just says, “Ohtani,” and there’s a brief but grave silence until someone pipes up and asks if anyone is watching the new season of Billions.

Setting Ohtani aside, Fernando Tatis Jr. would be on my short list of most talented or dynamic baseball players I’ve had the good fortune to witness. In the past, I’d compared his physicality to that of a 3–4 outside linebacker, but watching him scramble around the diamond is like watching an alien who’s holding something in reserve so he doesn’t get outed by the humans. If that is his goal, Tatis is not doing a great job of blending in.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lenin might not have actually said: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” But that doesn’t mean not-Lenin was wrong. College football just lived through such a week, as the Big Ten’s addition of UCLA and USC for the coming football season snowballed into an all-out raid on the Pac-12. Oregon and Washington are following the two Los Angeles schools to richer pastures. The Big 12, already in the process of adding four mid-major schools to replace the outgoing Texas and Oklahoma, is swooping in to pick Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah from off the curb. Left with the proposition of propping up a rump four-team conference, Cal and Stanford are being courted by the ACC. Those schools, with their sterling academic reputations, are considered a good cultural fit for a conference that already includes Duke and Virginia; the same could be said about UCLA and the Big Ten.

If those institutions want to keep up the pretense of looking smart, they’re going to have to rename these conferences. An Atlantic Coast Conference with two teams in California? An 18-team Big Ten? A 16-team Big 12? People are going to start to think these jokers can’t count or read a map. But that’s of secondary importance. What this audience wants to know, surely, is what this means for college baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

The Toronto Blue Jays have devoted huge resources to their rotation, spending a first-round pick on Alek Manoah, doling out huge free agent contracts to Chris Bassitt and Kevin Gausman, and trading the farm for José Berríos. (And then giving Berríos a huge contract extension as well.)

But Toronto’s best starting pitcher over the past month — and in a three-way tie for the best pitcher in all of baseball, by WAR — has been Yusei Kikuchi, the guy who couldn’t stay in the rotation a year ago. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago Cubs are white hot. Shortly after the All-Star break, the Cubbies were as many as 8 1/2 games out of first place in the NL Central and six games under .500. About three weeks later, they’re a little better than an even-money bet to grab a playoff spot.

So let’s talk about Ian Happ, who has been a key offensive player for the Cubs over that span, and the odd season he’s having. If you make a habit of checking the major league walk rate leaderboards regularly, as I’m sure we all do, you will no doubt have noticed that Happ is in the top five with a 16.1% walk rate. (All stats current through Tuesday’s action.)

Now, Happ has always been capable of drawing a walk; his career walk rate heading into this season was 11.2%, which is pretty high. But you wouldn’t think of him as one of the most discerning hitters in baseball — Juan Soto, Kyle Schwarber, Max Muncy, and so on. Until this season. Read the rest of this entry »