Hunter Gaddis didn’t want to throw Juan Soto a fastball. With two on and two out in the top of the 10th inning, Gaddis started the fearsome slugger with three sliders in a row: one for a ball, one for a called strike, and one for a foul ball. Behind in the count now, Soto fouled off two changeups and then another slider. This was supposed to work. Opponents batted .135 against the two pitches this season. They whiffed 30% of the time. Gaddis had clipped the edges of the zone with the nastiest stuff he could muster — some of the nastiest stuff in the game — and Soto simply refused to be beaten. Six soft pitches in a row, and Soto was hanging back and spoiling them at the last possible moment. Surely Gaddis could get away with one fastball, right? Right?

Asked after the game about his mindset during the at-bat, Soto said, “I was just saying to myself, ‘You’re all over that guy.’” Gaddis finally threw a fastball. Soto was all over it.

The four-seamer left Gaddis’ hand at 95.2 mph. It left Soto’s bat at 109.7. Soto didn’t leave the batter’s box at all. He watched as the high, arcing blast traveled 402 feet into the Cleveland night and center fielder Lane Thomas, head craned upward, drifted slowly back to the warning track. By the time Thomas had run out of real estate and the ball had landed safely in the standing room section just past the wall, Soto still hadn’t reached first base.

The blast gave the Yankees a 5-2 lead in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series and propelled them to their first World Series since 2009. The 15-year hiatus matches the gap between New York’s 1981 and 1996 appearances, the franchise’s longest stretch away from the Series since it first reached it in 1921. Asked what was going through his mind when Soto hit the go-ahead home run, general manager Brian Cashman said, “I was thanking God.”

New York’s 4-1 series victory belies a tight and thrilling series that featured multiple extra-inning games, riveting reversals, likely heroes, and extremely unlikely goats. For the third straight game, the Yankees and Guardians were tied during the ninth inning. For the second straight game, the Yankees scored the winning runs off Cleveland’s untouchable high-leverage relievers. The vaunted Guardians bullpen, asked to pitch 28 innings over five games, actually ran a slightly better ERA than New York’s relievers, but Cleveland simply needed more from them. As has so often been the case, the Guardians always looked to be a couple solid bats short.

With Tanner Bibee starting on three days’ rest, the Yankees threatened from the very beginning. Gleyber Torres started the game with a single through the right side, then Soto ripped a low liner into the right field gap and all the way to the wall. Third base coach Luis Rojas waved Torres around third, but a perfect relay from Jhonkensy Noel and Andrés Giménez nabbed him just inches before he was able to slide his left hand across the plate. Giménez’s 94-mph laser was on the money, without a hop.

It took an incredible relay to foil the gutsy send, but two batters into the game, it was still a questionable decision. Instead of second and third with no outs, the Yankees had Soto on second with one out. Bibee hit both Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr. to load the bases, but managed to escape the inning unscathed. Just when it looked like the Yankees might run away with things and get to the overtaxed Cleveland bullpen early, Bibee settled down. He retired the next 10 Yankees in order and faced the minimum over the next four innings, consistently inducing chases on changeups and breaking pitches below the zone.

During the first inning, Carlos Rodón looked every bit as sharp as he had in Game 1, striking out two and retiring the side in order. He started the second inning with a strikeout as well, but the Naylor family slowed his roll. Josh Naylor tapped a grounder off the end of the bat to the abandoned left side of the infield, and the charging Chisholm had no shot at catching him at first base. Rodón struck out Noel to notch the second out, then Bo Naylor worked what would’ve been the at-bat of the game if not for what happened later. He pulled the 10th pitch he saw down the right field line for a line drive double. As Alex Speier noted, it was the first time a lefty had hit an extra-base hit off Rodón since July 28. More importantly, with a full count and two outs, Josh Naylor was running on the pitch, allowing him to score easily. Rodón still looked excellent, but after two Naylor hits and zero hard-hit balls, Cleveland led, 1-0.

The Guardians added an insurance run in the fifth inning, when Gimenéz shot a one-out double down the third base line and Steven Kwan singled him home two batters later. David Fry reached out and broke his bat on a changeup, lifting a popup into shallow left center. Judge, Alex Verdugo, and Anthony Volpe converged on the perfectly placed ball, which went in and out of the diving Judge’s glove. Verdugo tried to hurdle Judge, but somehow he didn’t actually leave the ground and was lucky not to injure the prostrate behemoth. Kwan, who had to wait and make sure the ball wasn’t caught, advanced to third, while Fry reached second with a double. Rodón’s reward for obliterating Fry’s bat on a ball that Statcast gave a 90% catch probability was a trip to the showers. He allowed five hits and two runs over 4 2/3 innings, striking out six and walking one. Four of the five hits came off the bats of Cleveland’s left-handed hitters. Rodón wouldn’t be in line for the loss for very long.

Bibee came out to pitch the top of the sixth, which also meant facing the top of the New York lineup for the third time. At the very least, we have to acknowledge that manager Stephen Vogt didn’t have an easy decision in front of him. The Guardians used nine total pitchers in Games 3 and 4 on Thursday and Friday, seven in each game. Five of them appeared in both games, including the team’s big four of Cade Smith, Tim Herrin, Emmanuel Clase, and Gaddis. The options were to leave in the cruising Bibee, to bring in an excellent but possibly gassed reliever for the third straight game, or to bring in a fresher but worse reliever. Vogt chose door number one, and while the call was defensible, well, we talk about the third time through the order penalty for a reason.

Torres reached out and yanked a soft liner over the third baseman for a single, and Soto ripped a more convincing single right back through the box. With runners on first and second, Judge sent a ball right to short for an easy 6-4-3 double play. That prompted a visit from the training staff, which seemed to be a fairly transparent ploy to buy Cade Smith some extra time to warm up, except Smith didn’t come in.

With Giancarlo Stanton at the plate, Bibee looked appropriately scared; he had no intention of attacking Stanton in the zone, even after he got the red-hot slugger to chase his first two pitches, a slider away and a changeup low. Bibee stuck with that approach and tried to tempt the hulking hitter with three soft pitches off the plate, but all three of them missed the zone by too much, and Stanton laid off. For the 3-2 pitch, Naylor set the target a solid 18 inches outside, but Bibee missed in a far worse spot, spinning a slider right over the middle and slightly down. Stanton did what Stanton does, shooting an absolute missile into the left field stands. The line drive left the bat at 117.5 mph and had a projected distance of 446 feet.

If you’re keeping score at home, on Bibee’s third time through the Yankees lineup, he faced four batters and allowed three hard-hit balls, two runs, and one lead. The game was knotted at two.

Vogt brought in Smith, who struck out Chisholm to end the inning. With the seal broken, the score tied, and his season in the balance, Vogt unleashed the rest of the big four. Despite pitching for the third day in a row, the quartet was effective. Smith got the first out of the seventh inning, then allowed a single, and Herrin finished the inning and pitched a perfect eighth. Clase worked a scoreless ninth, and Gaddis worked the fateful 10th. After Volpe lined out weakly to short to lead off the inning, Gaddis walked Austin Wells, then induced a groundball to second base from Verdugo. It was hit a bit too softly to get the double play, but in an attempt to get both outs anyway, Brayan Rocchio rushed through his part of the turn and botched the play altogether. Giménez’s feed clanked off the top of Rocchio’s glove, then bounced harmlessly to the turf. Everyone was safe.

Gaddis struck out Torres, bringing Soto to the plate. “He’s gonna do it,” said Chisholm after the game. “That’s the only thing going through my mind: He’s gonna do it.” None of the three runs Soto drove in was earned.

In the visitor’s dugout, Aaron Boone had the luxury of managing with the knowledge that his back wasn’t against the wall, and it allowed him to choose door number three. Fourteen relievers threw at least 10 relief innings for the Yankees this season. Among those 14, not one of Mark Leiter Jr., Tim Hill, or Jake Cousins – the first four out of the bullpen on Saturday – ranked higher than seventh in terms of leverage index when entering the game. The three combined for 3 1/3 scoreless innings, walking four Guardians but allowing just one hit. Boone finally called on Luke Weaver to pitch the ninth and 10th innings, and the slight star allowed just one hit before ending Cleveland’s season on a lazy fly ball that landed in the glove of – who else? – Juan Soto.

Stanton, who took home ALCS MVP honors, had four hits in the series, all of them home runs. In Game 5, Soto went 3-for-5 with four hard-hit balls, including a double and the series-winning homer, and raised his OPS in the series from 1.159 to 1.373. When asked why he was so sure Soto would deliver, Chisholm said simply, “Because it’s Juan Soto. Pay my guy! Pay Juan Soto!” The World Series starts on Friday, Soto’s 26th birthday.

NEW YORK — Less than 20 minutes before what might have been the final game of the year at Citi Field, the OMG Mets introduced one more good-vibes gimmick. Five, actually.

The Temptations, the legendary Motown band, took the field behind home plate dressed in their signature suits and sang the National Anthem. Moments later, the quintet donned Mets jerseys and performed “My Girl,” their classic song that is played here whenever Francisco Lindor steps to the plate. If the Mets were going to be eliminated in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series, at least they’d go down singing.

Turns out, the Temptations were just the opening act for a three-hour rock revival. When it was over, the Mets had blown out the Dodgers, 12-6, and ensured that their remarkable run would continue for at least another game.

“We’ve played with our backs against the wall the whole year, and we’ve been able to rise to the occasion,” left fielder Brandon Nimmo said. “Some might say we’re at our best at that time. If anybody can do it, we can do it.” Read the rest of this entry »

Managing in the playoffs is all about balancing immediate payoffs and long-term sustainability. Not ultra long-term, mind you, but managing a bullpen for a seven-game series is trickier than simply pressing the same buttons every day until you win or lose. ALCS Game 4 featured three momentous bullpen decisions. The managers chose differently; they both paid the price. In the end, the Yankees got the better of the Guardians in a 14-pitcher, three-and-a-half-hour, 14-run shootout. But a few early decisions absolutely shaped the way the game went, and so they take center stage here tonight.

No Rest for Cade Smith

Cade Smith was one of the best relievers in baseball this year. If he didn’t play on the same team as Emmanuel Clase, we’d call him a lockdown closer. Instead, he’s a dominant fireman, capable of coming in whenever Stephen Vogt needs him to ice the opposition. And Vogt has needed him a lot. He pitched in all five games of the ALDS. He got the first game of this series off, but then he faced the meat of the Yankees lineup in Game 2 and Game 3.

He’s been pitching nearly every day, which hurts. He’s facing the same batters over and over, which hurts. But what are you going to do, not use your best option against a team that has two MVP-level bats stacked together in an otherwise navigable lineup? Juan Soto had already homered and the Yankees were up 3-2 when the top of the order came up in the sixth inning. On came Smith, for the third time in four days. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Though he wasn’t the offensive star of Game 3 of the National League Championship Series — he didn’t hit a moonshot into the second deck like Shohei Ohtani or Max Muncy — Will Smith did collect two hits in the Dodgers’ 8-0 victory over the Mets. They weren’t exactly scorchers, but one was of critical importance, as it drove in the game’s first run. Remarkably, Smith’s performance was just the second time this postseason that a catcher has collected multiple hits in a game, and for as much as Smith has struggled, his numbers still stand out relative to the competition. It’s been an exceptionally difficult October for the men wearing the tools of ignorance.

These days, those tools actually suggest anything but ignorance. Armed with more data than ever, and playing in a pressure-cooker atmosphere where a single pitch can turn a series, Smith and those of his peers who are still standing (or squatting) in October — namely the Yankees’ Austin Wells, the Mets’ Francisco Alvarez, and the Guardians’ tandem of Bo Naylor and Austin Hedges — might be required to navigate a short-working starter and half a dozen relievers through opposing lineups, controlling the tempo of the game when things threaten to spiral out of control, and shaking off untold aches and pains. Hitting? That’s part of the job, but this fall, these catchers’ offensive contributions have felt particularly secondary, not unlike those of pitchers swinging the bat in the days before the universal designated hitter.

The numbers certainly look like those bygone pitchers hacking away. Thus far, the catchers for the 12 postseason teams have collectively hit .169/.236/.255 (40 wRC+) with five homers and a 28.3% strikeout rate through 254 plate appearances. In other words, they’ve been outhit by Madison Bumgarner (.172/.232/.292, 44 wRC+ career). Read the rest of this entry »

Cleveland’s baseball club was known as the Blues when the American League was formed in 1901, but that’s far from what Guardians fans were singing following Thursday’s ALCS Game 3. Two days before A Tribe Called Quest and other musical luminaries are to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Progressive Field erupted in rapture as David Fry circled the bases in the bottom of the 10th inning to cap a stunning comeback and give the Guardians a 7-5 win.

More on that in a moment.

The first inning featured missed opportunities — both teams stranded a pair of runners — as well as a pitch clock violation on a chagrinned Juan Soto and a sliding catch by Guardians center fielder Lane Thomas. That those happenings barely qualify as footnotes says a lot about what would eventually transpire. Ditto a second inning that saw Alex Verdugo chop a ball over first baseman Josh Naylor’s head and leg out a sliding double on a play where second base umpire Jansen Visconti ruled that Brayan Rocchio had a foot blocking the bag (that was debatable). Anthony Volpe advanced to third on the hit, then scored on a Jose Trevino groundball single that made it 1-0 Yankees. Guardians starter Matthew Boyd proceeded to pick off Trevino, which helped to limit the damage. Read the rest of this entry »

In baseball history, there have been 15 players signed to contracts worth a total of $300 million or more. The Dodgers started three of those 15 players on Thursday night — Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. That’s a ridiculous amount of money, especially for such a trivial enterprise as baseball. When a team — even a team as well-resourced as the Dodgers — spends that much money on a trio of players, it means they really want to win.

Well, the syndicate of investors at Guggenheim Baseball Management got their money’s worth on Thursday. Ohtani homered to lead off the game and added three walks, scoring four runs in total. Betts went 4-for-6 with three runs and a homer of his own, which took the Dodgers’ lead from tenuous to comfortable in the sixth. And Yamamoto struck out eight batters in 4 1/3 innings as the Dodgers won 10-2. The World Series is now just one win away. Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani doesn’t have a hit with the bases empty. I kept hearing that throughout FS1’s broadcast of Game 3 of the NLCS. My first thought was, “Wow, I’m old enough to remember when they dogged star players for not hitting well enough with runners on base! I guess some people will find any reason to complain!”

My second thought was, “Huh, I thought Ohtani was having a decent postseason.” It could be better, of course. Ohtani is hitting .226/.351/.419, which I suppose is disappointing from a player with a legitimate case for being the greatest of all time. But if you told most managers that their leadoff hitter would post a .351 OBP through the first eight games of the playoffs, most of them would take it. Out of 58 players with 20 or more plate appearances this postseason, Ohtani is 18th in wRC+ and 11th in WPA. By any objective standard, Ohtani’s been perfectly adequate at the plate overall. Read the rest of this entry »

Once considered the natural successor to Clayton Kershaw as The Man in the Dodgers’ rotation, Walker Buehler’s career hit a rocky stretch in 2022. Coming off arguably his best season in the majors, Buehler was pulled from a June start with elbow pain, starting a journey that ended with a Tommy John surgery, the second of his career, two months later. After some unrelated injury setbacks this spring, Buehler returned to the Dodgers, but as a shadow of his former self. He finished 2024 with a 5.38 ERA and a 5.54 FIP, and might not have even made the postseason roster if not for the fact that most of the organization’s other plausible starters don’t currently have working throwing arms. His no-strikeout, six-run outing against the Padres in Game 3 of the NLDS wasn’t an inspiring sign that he’d turn things around in the playoffs.

And yet, in Game 3 of the NLCS against the Mets at Citi Field, Buehler had opposing batters flailing at his shockingly nasty repertoire in a short but effective four-inning start. He left with a two-run lead, but after the Los Angeles offense kept tacking on and the bullpen threw five scoreless innings, the Dodgers left the ballpark Wednesday night with an 8-0 win and a 2-1 advantage in the best-of-seven series.

One of the problems with Buehler in his return this year was that he was just so darn hittable at times. Before 2022, his four-seamer was the foundation that his out-pitches were built around, but even before his elbow surgery, the effectiveness of the pitch had practically disappeared. From 2021 to 2022, he bled about 200 rpm off his fastball’s average spin rate. Batters apparently took notice, suddenly slugging .618 as his heater lost some of its rise. Buehler returned from surgery, but the four-seamer’s effectiveness did not, and the pitch became a smaller part of his toolset. Read the rest of this entry »

At my old job, my boss occasionally held idea sessions. He wanted everyone to participate, and the point wasn’t to come up with something actionable, just to brainstorm. No suggestion was too ridiculous – sure, it might get picked apart in discussion, but the whole point was to suggest weird stuff and see what came out of it. Still, I can safely say that none of those judgment-free-zone ideas sounded quite as zany to me as “let’s intentionally walk the guy in front of Aaron Judge.”

That didn’t stop Stephen Vogt on Tuesday night. With runners on second and third base and one out in the bottom of the second inning, Vogt didn’t let Juan Soto hit. He put up four fingers to send Soto to first. His reward? A bases-loaded encounter with Judge, the best hitter in baseball. Obviously Vogt had a reason for his decision. I ran the math to see how well that reason agrees with theory.

In a vacuum, it’s pretty clear why this intentional walk was bad: It loaded the bases with only one out, increasing the chance of a big inning, and it did so with the presumptive American League MVP at the plate. But there were two reasons to do it. First, it took the bat out of Soto’s hands, and Soto is himself a phenomenal hitter, particularly against righties. Second, it created the chance for an inning-ending double play, which would have been a huge boon to the Guardians’ chances (they already trailed by two). If you squint, you can kind of see it; maybe these two choices are equal. It didn’t matter in Game 2, because the Yankees won going away, but if the Guardians come back to win the series, they’ll be facing New York’s best hitters in important spots again, so what Vogt chose to do Tuesday night might help us guess what he’ll do in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — For as essential as Aaron Judge and Juan Soto were to driving the Yankees offense this season, the team spent much of the first half waiting for its other hitters to provide complementary production. Circa the July 30 trade deadline, the only other Yankees with a wRC+ in the vicinity of league average were Giancarlo Stanton, who had missed five weeks in June and July due to injury; the catching tandem of Austin Wells and Jose Trevino, only one of whom was in the lineup on a given day; and fill-in first baseman Ben Rice, whose initial success proved fleeting. With the deadline addition of Jazz Chisholm Jr. and a late rebound by Gleyber Torres, the big bashers finally got more support, particularly after the latter returned to the leadoff spot on August 16. So far in the postseason, Torres has been particularly pesky, hitting .292/.433/.500 through six games while scoring seven of the Yankees’ 25 runs.

In their 6-3 victory in Game 2 of the ALCS on Tuesday, Torres paced the Yankees’ 11-hit attack by going 3-for-5 with a double and two runs scored. The 27-year-old leadoff man was one of three Yankees with multiple hits, along with Anthony Rizzo (2-for-4, with a double) and Anthony Volpe (2-for-3). His table-setting was well-timed, as he came around to score after opening the home half of the first inning with a double, and was on base when Judge finally got on the board with a towering two-run homer, his first of the postseason.  Read the rest of this entry »