Thanks in part to their offense’s listless performance against a parade of six Braves pitchers — Atlanta’s second bullpen game in a row — the Dodgers squandered a chance to take a 2-0 Division Series lead on Sunday, lending extra urgency to their matchup against Chris Sale in Tuesday’s Game 3. Manager Dave Roberts shook up his lineup in ways both foreign and familiar, most notably dropping Shohei Ohtani in the batting order below the two-hole for his first time as a Dodger, in hopes it would lead to a better approach by the banged-up, slumping slugger. Additionally, Roberts called upon old hands Enrique Hernández and Miguel Rojas, as much for their intensity as for the platoon advantages they provided against the ace lefty. Not all of those moves had a direct impact, but one certainly did, as Hernández broke a scoreless tie with a two-run homer off Sale in the fourth inning. Backed by seven strong innings from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers eked out a 3-1 victory, positioning them to clinch the series on Wednesday.
Through the first two games, Ohtani had gone 2-for-8 with a pair of strikeouts out of the no. 2 spot behind Mookie Betts, with a single in each game and three hard-hit balls in all. Roberts dropped him to fifth behind Betts, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández, and Will Smith — the first time Ohtani had started a game batting lower than fourth since 2020, when he was Angel. I’ll explore the numbers below, but the move made particular sense given Ohtani’s sudden struggles against sliders, Sale’s forte. Elsewhere, Roberts swapped out switch-hitting Tommy Edman at second base in favor of Rojas, batting sixth, and in place of lefty-swinging Max Muncy, he inserted the righty-swinging Hernández at third base, batting him ninth. Ohtani aside, the lineup resembled the one the Dodgers used when they — including Yamamoto — squared off against Sale on August 27 in Atlanta; Hernández played third, and Rojas second, with Edman in center in place of the injured Andy Pages. The Dodgers lost that one, 1-0, as Sale tossed a five-hit, 11-strikeout shutout, with Rojas the only one of the aforementioned moving parts to collect a hit.
Muncy merely ranked second on the team this year in both wRC+ (129) and homers (29), and what’s more, he homered in each of the first two games of the NLDS, running his franchise record for postseason dingers to 18. Coming off one of his best seasons against same-side pitching — .261/.343/.504 (133 wRC+) in 134 plate appearances against lefties, compared to .249/.349/.485 (126 wRC+) in 427 plate appearances against righties — this wasn’t a benching to be taken lightly. Hernández’s small-sample numbers against lefties during an injury-shortened season (.176/.236/.333, 50 wRC+ in 55 PA) didn’t exactly strengthen the case, nor did his 81 wRC+ against lefties over the past three seasons, compared to 75 against righties. Read the rest of this entry »
When the Padres put Mason Miller on the paternity list ahead of NLDS Game 3, it always had to be this way. It’s like Chekhov’s gun; if you show me a missing closer in the first act, you must show me a late-inning situation where he’d normally appear in the final one. The Padres beat the Brewers 4-3 to stay alive, narrowing their NLDS deficit to 2-1, in what has been easily the most entertaining series of the divisional round.
Right from the jump, the Brewers put pressure on the Padres. And right from the jump, the Padres minimized the damage. Jackson Chourio tattooed a line drive to the deep part of the ballpark to open the game. In response, Jackson Merrill took off on a perfect line and slid across the warning track to corral it.
Nick Pivetta couldn’t throw the ball past anybody; Milwaukee swung 37 times at his pitches and missed only twice. The Brewers peppered line drives left and right, making frequent loud contact. But they got less for their troubles than you’d expect, because Pivetta beguiled them and his defense stood tall behind him. Read the rest of this entry »
Sunday night’s encore performance of the Ray Kerr Variety Hour felt like a turning point in this postseason. The Braves had not only survived the Chris Salebullpen fiasco, they were headed back home with the series tied and their two best starting pitchers lined up on full rest. The Dodgers have been on the ropes before during their back-to-back World Series-winning run, but those ropes felt especially menacing against Sale and the resurgent Braves.
Not to worry, Dodgers fans. Los Angeles escaped this crucible with a 3-1 win, and now sit one game from a third straight NLCS appearance. Regularly scheduled programming has resumed. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you ever stop and think about how baseball would be different if the ball smelled delicious? Imagine that Major League Baseball, in its never-ending quest to abase itself for sponsorship dollars, forges an innovative partnership with Willy Wonka. In exchange for the title of Official Chocolate of Major League Baseball and the right to outfit the umpires in his trademark violet velvet coats, the eccentric chocolatier uses his quasi-supernatural confectionary gifts to impart one of several dozen mouthwatering aromas to each and every baseball used in a game. This baseball smells like warm chocolate chip cookies, the next one like toasted marshmallows, and the one after that like snozzberries. You get the idea.
Now imagine you’re pitching in the World Series. The umpire reaches into the pouch that dangles from their belt (but awkwardly, because they first have to flap the side of their knee-length velvet coat out of the way), grabs a new pill, and fires it out to you. Millions of eyes are on you. The game is on the line. The season is on the line. You’d still raise the ball up to your face for a whiff before you got settled on the mound, right? You’d have to. Would you really be able to go without smelling the ball? You know it smells amazing, but you don’t know how. If you didn’t sniff the ball, wouldn’t the curiosity about its scent be so distracting as to have a deleterious effect on your ability to pitch? Could you really say you’re putting your all into each pitch if you’re not acquainting yourself as fully as possible with the one and only tool of your trade?
I imagine that sniffing the ball would be something of a flex for infielders. Those who gloved a grounder with time to spare would earn the right to take a healthy waft before firing it over to first. I further conjecture that throwing the ball around the horn after a strikeout would take longer because the outfielders would insist on being included too. More importantly, I imagine that the error rate might tick down just the slightest bit. I’m not saying that major league fielders lack motivation to hold onto the ball as things stand right now, but I hardly think it would hurt to supply them with an additional reason to give it their all. Letting a ball go right through your legs feels terrible, but it probably feels just a little bit worse when you know that along with hurting your team, you’ve fumbled away a transportive sensorial experience. Maybe that would push you to take that extra round of infield practice, to lock in on every single pitch, to lay out for that ball. Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about in the shower this morning as I reflected on the fact that last night, in the biggest game of the season, the New York Yankees played as if the ball smelled like a butt. Read the rest of this entry »
The Tampa Bay Rays won the most games in the American League this year while running the AL’s second-lowest payroll. That’s a feat of team-building, first and foremost, but it also speaks to how well their players dodged leaks. On offense, they had the lowest strikeout and whiff rates in the majors; their pitchers had the league’s lowest walk rate and just 18 blown saves. You can’t make mistakes if you’re the Rays.
That’s a well-worn cliché, but here’s a novel spin on it: You can’t make mistakes if you’re the Yankees either. Presumptive AL Cy Young winner Cam Schlittler did some terrific work in his first career playoff road start, and no one’s going to remember it, because the other eight guys in gray pajamas played like the ball was covered in dish soap in Game 2.
The Yankees committed three errors in the bottom of the first inning, and another in the fifth. The Rays scored five runs across those two half-innings, and there’s your final score: Rays 5, Yankees 2. Read the rest of this entry »
Playoff losses can follow several different scripts, from the wire-to-wire blowouts that breed prolonged helplessness to the back-and-forth affairs that provide just enough hope before snatching it away at the end. But somewhere in the middle, there is the type of game that seems like a team can and should win, only for a few things to break the other way in such a fashion that its fans do not rage, do not cry, but instead climb aboard the doomsday hamster wheel of here we go again.
With their 4-3 loss to the Chicago White Sox in Game 2 of the American League Division Series, the Cleveland Guardians are now 2-7 in their last nine home playoff games. Those perilously loyal Cleveland fans, clad in red and blue jerseys bearing several different names — both on the front and the back — have seen their team repeatedly fall flat, dating back to that famous rain delay in 2016. But in this decade, they’ve also seen their team lose an ALDS Game 4 to the Yankees in 2022 that would have clinched the series, another loss to the Yankees in 2024 when Juan Soto simply decided he was too good of a hitter not to break their hearts, and two crushing Wild Card Series losses at home in 2025 to a division rival. In 2026, with no guarantee that they’ll be coming back for another game this year, the Guardians have added two more defeats at the hands of an AL Central foe, this time coming off a bye.
The White Sox won this game by eschewing the home run ball they relied on all summer and opting for Guards Ball. They had just three of the 10 hardest-hit balls of the game. Their opening pitcher did not get out of the first inning. But twice they scored from second on a single, went 3-for-8 with runners in scoring position (as opposed to Cleveland’s fatal 0-for-5), and rode a scorching hot reliever to probably their biggest victory since the 2005 championship march.
Ironically, this game began with a bit of Guards Ball from the home team that seemed a little too on the nose. Steven Kwan kicked things off with a roller through the right side that left the bat at 84.8 mph. José Ramírez then worked a walk, and Chase DeLauter followed with a productive out. That spelled the end of the night for Anthony Kay, who was replaced by Sean Newcomb. When Newcomb promptly missed the zone with his first two pitches to Jo Adell, the White Sox bench opted to put Adell on intentionally, loading the bases and setting up a double play. Newcomb was able to induce a grounder from Nathaniel Lowe next, but the type that bounces way up in the air rather than skimming along the dirt. It was also, apparently, the type of grounder that triggers a horrendous throwing error, giving Cleveland two easy runs.
The buildup to that calamitous moment wasn’t entirely Newcomb’s fault, as Kay was responsible for the lead runners and recorded one solitary out on just 17 pitches, both fewer than the four outs on 22 pitches he gave Chicago as a reliever in Game 1. What the White Sox do with Kay for the rest of the series may come down entirely to game situations; his Game 2 performance inspired negative confidence, and it seems he’s better suited for plug-and-play outings out of the bullpen, particularly with Davis Martin, Hagen Smith and/or Erick Fedde, and Sean Burke now lined up for the bulk roles should this series go all the way to Game 5.
For the first half of this game, Newcomb’s blunder looked like it would be the defining play. But the true inflection points came in the bottom of the fifth and the top of the sixth. Cleveland, clinging to a 2-1 lead, sent its best hitters to the plate in the home half of the fifth. Not only did that trio — Kwan, Ramírez, and DeLauter — go down in order, they did so without getting a ball out of the infield. Up to that point, the game was following a favorable script for the Guardians. They were gifted an early lead, had their starting pitcher, Gavin Williams, in the rocking chair, and were primed to put pressure on Chicago’s pitching staff. The exact pocket of the lineup that Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt would want at the plate for that situation wilted, and it felt like the White Sox were headed back to their dugout knowing their opponent had squandered their chance to properly put them away.
Within minutes, things began unraveling in Cleveland like the night Mike Love gave his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame speech. Miguel Vargas chased Williams by thwacking his 98th pitch of the night into left field for a sharp leadoff single. The Guardians then turned to lefty Erik Sabrowski, a very qualified fireman who came oh so close to extinguishing the flames. Sabrowski retired Munetaka Murakami and walked Randal Grichuk. No harm, no foul. But perhaps the biggest pitch of the night was one that did not get put in play or result in a strikeout. Rather, it was a wild pitch that pushed Vargas and Grichuk to third and second base, respectively. While Sabrowski did well to dig out of a 2-0 hole and pop Tommy Pham up for the second out, the next batter ambushed him.
Braden Montgomery’s first-pitch double was a wondrous display of hitting. It also would not have given Chicago the lead if not for Sabrowski’s wild pitch. One inning after Cleveland’s biggest (and some would say only) offensive threats failed to do anything, a defense-first rookie with an 89 wRC+ delivered the biggest blow of the night for Chicago. Fellow youngster Chase Meidroth then slapped an opposite-field single off Hunter Gaddis to make it 4-2 White Sox, and the here we go again feeling blew through Progressive Field like a vicious Lake Erie wind. Both Montgomery and Meidroth’s RBI knocks came on fastballs, pitch selections that Cleveland might like to have back. In the regular season, Montgomery had a .379 xwOBA against fastballs, and he was facing a pitcher in Sabrowski who hadn’t allowed a hit all year to righties on his slider. Meidroth — who whiffs on fastballs just 15.7% of the time, compared to 23.5% on breaking stuff and 29.3% on offspeed pitches — probably should have seen exclusively sliders and changeups from Gaddis.
The cruelty of this game for the Guardians is found in Williams’ stat line. Their flamethrowing Big Rig sat 99 mph on his fastball, generated 22 whiffs on 40 swings, and finished with 11 strikeouts. Apart from the three walks that drove his pitch count up — one of which helped the White Sox plate their first run in the fourth inning — Williams did everything that could have been asked of him, handing things over to a more than capable bullpen. It not only wasn’t enough, but it will be lost to history because of what Burke did.
Burke is a starting pitcher by trade, one who made 27 starts for the White Sox this year and led the team in innings. Starting pitchers, notorious creatures of habit that they are, typically don’t like following an opener. They especially don’t like entering a game mid-inning with a runner on base. But that’s exactly what Burke did in his spectacular Game 2 showing. When White Sox skipper Will Venable gave his early-inning interview on the television broadcast, he plainly stated that the plan was to have Kay and Newcomb get through DeLauter a second time. DeLauter singled in his second at-bat, immediately shooting Venable out of the dugout to go get Newcomb, as planned. But if you pumped Venable with truth serum, he’d likely tell you he was feeling a bit queasy about that plan now putting Burke in a dirty inning. Burke’s response to this adversity wasn’t as sexy as escaping a bases-loaded jam or coming on for a multi-inning save, but his subsequent strikeouts of both Adell and Lowe is the type of thing that should get a proper segment if this White Sox run turns documentary worthy. He goes to bed knowing he covered 5 1/3 innings while surrendering just one hit, and also that the Pope must be thrilled with him.
The Guardians, meanwhile, do not have papal fandom or many shreds of optimism on their side, both narratively and statistically. They lost two home games with their two best pitchers on the hill. Two of the three runs they’ve scored this series have come from a pitcher fielding his position and suddenly contracting Joel Zumaya Disease. They now have to win two games at Rate Field in Chicago, which will not only be completely bananas, but is a venue where they lost four of their six games this year. Maybe they can cling to the idea that Adell’s ultimately fruitless eighth-inning triple will unlock his swing, or that Grant Taylor has been so overworked that he can’t possibly continue pitching this well.
But once you start playing that mental game, it’s probably not going to happen for you, the same way it hasn’t happened for Cleveland in the postseason all decade.
When I’m trying to ground myself in the present, I like to repeat a mantra: No past, no future. I don’t want to dictate personal philosophy to you, but it works great for me. It’s a reminder to focus on the now, that experiencing what’s happening right this instant is more important than whatever mental baggage I’m carrying or whatever I’m worried might take place next week. I wholeheartedly suggest some variation of this phrase when you’re feeling overwhelmed by things that aren’t happening to you in the moment.
Having said that, let me be clear: You can’t ignore the past and future when you’re managing postseason pitching assignments, Walt Weiss. The Braves are five games into the playoffs, and they’ve been living the “no past, no future” life the entire time. Now, I actually think that has some useful consequences. The present really does matter quite a bit in playoff baseball – more than the future, and certainly more than the past. But it’s also caused them plenty of problems. The clearest example is also the most notable move Weiss has made so far. The Braves deployed bullpen games in each of the first two games of the NLDS over the weekend. The first was unavoidable, a consequence of their injury-depleted rotation, but the second was the direct consequence of Weiss’ earlier actions.
I’m talking about Chris Sale, of course. Sale started the Wild Card opener against the Phillies last Tuesday and worked into the seventh, throwing 95 pitches before departing with two on, one out, and the bottom of the Philly lineup coming to the plate. After a little turbulence (Didier Fuentes allowed both inherited runners to score, giving the Phillies the lead), the Braves pulled it out. But after Philadelphia won the second game of the series, Weiss called on Sale to cover the final four outs of the decisive Game 3. Read the rest of this entry »
Ty France fell just short of playing the hero during the ninth inning of Saturday night’s Division Series opener between the Padres and Brewers, and his performance on Sunday at the center of the San Diego offense would have loomed larger if not for Mason Miller’s ninth-inning meltdown. The 32-year-old first baseman has been swinging a hot bat during the postseason, building on an impressive campaign in which he returned to the team that drafted him in 2015 and rediscovered his swing after two years of meandering around replacement level and through the rosters of four teams.
France collected two of the Padres’ five hits in Game 2 and drove in two of their three runs. He put them on the board in the first inning against starter Logan Henderson, ripping a 104.3-mph RBI single to right-center after Manny Machado worked a two-out walk and then took second on a wild pitch. After striking out in the third and being hit on the elbow guard by a Henderson changeup in the sixth, France faced Abner Uribe in the seventh with the Padres up 2-1 and Fernando Tatis Jr. (who had reached on an error) on second and Machado (who had walked again) on first. Ahead in the count 1-0, he smacked a 101.3-mph grounder to right field. Tatis raced home to run the score to 3-1, but Sal Frelick threw Machado out at third base to extinguish the rally.
Alas, the Padres couldn’t hold their two-run lead. The Brewers clawed back a run in the bottom of the seventh with a single, a walk, and a throwing error by second baseman Jake Cronenworth, then rallied for two in the ninth as Miller walked three before surrendering a walk-off single to Jackson Chourio. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the weekend, I graded the managerial performances of the two National League managers eliminated in the Wild Card round. Now, it’s on to the American League. Both Joe Espada’s Astros and Chad Tracy’s Red Sox lasted just two games in the playoffs and didn’t even make it to October, but each still had plenty of decisions to make in their 18 innings at the postseason helm.
I went over this in the NL rundown, but I’ll say again that like Ben Clemens, who originated this series, I care about process and not results here. It’s easy to say “that was a great move because it worked” or “that was a bad move because it failed,” but managers obviously can’t know the result of their decision as they’re making it. I’ve tried my best to transport myself back to the moment of each decision — taking into account the pitches, innings, and plate appearances that led up to it — while ignoring the outcomes.
Before we begin, I’ll also reiterate that while these are ostensibly manager report cards, there’s a much larger group of people behind the manager that helps to inform his decisions. Before the game, that includes discussions with the front office, which provides the reams of data that every manager has at his disposal during play; in-game, he’s getting feedback from his coaching staff and players on their levels of health and readiness. It really does take a village to get through a baseball game, and realistically, the praise and scorn doesn’t belong to the manager alone.
Let’s get into it.
Joe Espada
Batting: Incomplete
None of the managers who lost in the Wild Card round made fewer changes than Espada, who pinch-hit just once in two losses to the White Sox. That one substitution worked brilliantly, with righty Nelson Velázquez hitting for lefty Taylor Trammell against southpaw Sean Newcomb and promptly homering to give the Astros their first two runs of Game 1. That was a no-brainer of a decision for a team that needed runs; Velázquez had an 88 wRC+ against lefties this year to Trammell’s horrendous 12.
Espada’s ability to go to his bench was hamstrung in Game 2, as right knee soreness incurred in Game 1 limited Isaac Paredes to DH duty and forced Nick Allen into the starting lineup at third base. Letting Allen hit in the fifth inning down by a run with a runner on first and one out was understandable. Using a bat like Trammell or Joey Loperfido would have forced Raynel Delgado into the game at third, and no matter the leverage of the situation, Espada would have had to pinch-hit for him when his spot came up, with no backup infielders left at that point.
The overall lack of offensive mixing-and-matching from Espada was more of a roster construction problem than a manager issue, as was the club’s batting order. Espada’s lineup created a pocket of righties from spots three through six, with Yordan Alvarez batting second as the only hard-hitting lefty to plan around. Still, he really couldn’t have put his lineup together any better given the cards he was dealt.
Pitching: C+
When grading the Wild Card managers, I’ve tried to be sympathetic to those without much to work with, and that was absolutely the case for Espada and his pitching staff. I wouldn’t wish a Game 1 bullpen game on a manager even if he was my worst enemy, and especially not one with Houston’s pitching staff. And given that the Astros clinched on the last day of the season, they couldn’t have lined the pitching up any differently, either. But while a bullpen game was necessary, starting the game with AJ Blubaugh on the mound wasn’t.
Blubaugh, who led all relievers in innings pitched this year with 96, was an unsung hero for the Astros during the regular season. But his 2026 was marked more by quantity than quality; his 3.66 ERA outpaced his 4.25 xERA and 4.31 FIP, and he limped to the finish line with 10 runs allowed in his last 10 appearances. Fellow righty Miguel Ullola finished his season stronger and could have provided length similar to the best version of Blubaugh (as he showed later in the game). Or, given the White Sox’s penchant for aggressive in-game platooning, going with a lefty like Josh Hendrickson, Bennett Sousa, or Bryan King may well have forced White Sox manager Will Venable into aggressively substituting once a lefty was out of the game. That might have led to Randal Grichuk starting the game with the platoon advantage and then being pinch-hit for as soon as Espada brought in a righty. Once that happened, Espada would have had a clearer lane of lefty bats to manage against, allowing him to use a second lefty pitcher like Hendrickson, Sousa, or King. Venable may well have countered with someone like Tommy Pham, but getting Grichuk’s lefty-mashing bat out of the game after a single plate appearance would’ve been a big win.
Espada managed from behind for the rest of the game, and once Blubaugh exited, all of his decisions were logical but came too late for the offense to recover. King ended up with a logical pocket of four lefties in six batters before turning the ball over to Ullola, who was a godsend, providing length without Espada having to worry about left-right matchups. Once Ullola was done, it was the standard manager playbook of alternating lefties and righties to play matchups, before giving the ball to his highest-leverage arms in Bryan Abreu and Josh Hader in the eighth and ninth. Houston was down by four runs when Abreu entered and by three runs when Hader came in, but in a best-of-three series, chasing a Game 1 win by using your best arms is what I would have done, too.
Game 2 could not have started more disastrously, with the Astros’ best starter, Hunter Brown, unable to make it out of the first inning. While he was let down by his defense and didn’t pitch quite as badly as his line would suggest, I understand Espada’s urgency in pulling the plug and making it a second straight bullpen game. But Blubaugh again being the first reliever out of the ‘pen was puzzling, and my evaluation doesn’t care that it happened to work out. This was another chance for Espada to bring in a southpaw against a lineup with five lefties in its first six spots, and yet Blubaugh was called upon to face Sam Antonacci and the top of the White Sox lineup for the second time in two days. Doubling down by sending Blubaugh back out for the second was equally perplexing, especially with Peter Lambert available for length.
After the second inning, however, I thought Espada redeemed himself with a near-perfect set of moves given his personnel. Lambert was the best arm available for the middle frames, and with very few trusted arms on staff, I’m giving his manager a pass for allowing him to face more than nine hitters. Batters 10 and 11 drawing walks made it Bryan Abreu time in the sixth with nobody out, again the appropriate move given that the Astros were down by one at the time and it was a must-win game. Abreu is no stranger to coming in and cleaning up messes, and while Chase Meidroth took him deep, he carved through eight outs thereafter before turning the ball over to Hader for four outs.
After Meidroth homered, the Astros trailed by four for the remainder of the game, and knowing that the Astros would need Hader for a third straight game if they miraculously pulled off a Game 2 comeback, I think Espada struck the right balance between getting Hader into the game and being cognizant that he’d need his closer the next day. With the benefit of hindsight, that exposes the danger of chasing a comeback by using Hader in Game 1 — and I certainly wouldn’t have liked using him in that game if the Astros were down four or five — but as I’ve mentioned repeatedly during these report cards, the manager can’t know the future. The best chance of pulling out win in a Game 1 that was still within striking distance comes by using Hader in the ninth, and the same is true for a Game 2 comeback.
Chad Tracy
Batting: Incomplete
Tracy entered the Wild Card Series with his healthiest and most complete offense of the season, and he lined things up about as well as you can against a tough customer like Cam Schlittler in Game 1. The Yankees used two righties in relief of Schlittler, and the only move Tracy made was to pinch-hit Andruw Monasterio for the injured Roman Anthony in the sixth, with Schlittler still in the game.
Anthony was removed from the roster prior to Game 2 due to his hand injury, and the combination of that and a tough opposing lefty in Max Fried led to a very different lineup for Boston, though one that I also didn’t have any problems with. Tracy’s one pinch-hit move of the night was playing the platoon game by swapping Nate Eaton out for Jarren Duran against Will Warren in the eighth. There weren’t many moves, hence the incomplete, but the ones he made were good.
Pitching: C
Out of the eight grades I’ve given to the managers eliminated in the Wild Card round, this was the toughest one to sort out. In a nutshell, I loved what Tracy did with his starting pitchers and strongly disliked which relievers he chose to deploy when.
Payton Tolle faced 19 batters in his Game 1 start, and was presumably allowed to face Paul Goldschmidt for a third time because Tracy would’ve rather had that matchup than likely pinch-hitter Luis García Jr. against a righty pitcher. That allowed Tracy to deploy lefty Erik Miller against Ben Rice… which immediately backfired, as Rice homered. Still, I have no problem with that choice. Rice was worse against lefties this year, and while Miller struggled in September, I understand going with the big stuff against Rice’s big swing. The bullpen arms used after Miller, though, represented baffling choice after baffling choice.
Still down just two runs, Tracy used lower-leverage arms Greg Weissert and Alec Gamboa, with Gamboa, Wyatt Olds and Brayan Bello allowing the Yankees to blow the game wide open on their way to a 9-0 drubbing. In a postgame exchange with the Boston Globe’s Tim Healey, Tracy defended using the pitchers he did — thereby lowering his win probability for that game compared to using better arms like Garrett Whitlock or Aroldis Chapman — as being a consequence of an offense that was, in his estimation, unlikely to come back no matter who pitched.
While I understand taking the long view of potentially needing to play three games in three days, if you aren’t going to chase a win down two runs with Schlittler soon to come out of the game, when are you going to chase a win? A manager can only manage the game in front of him, and for all Tracy knew, the Red Sox could end up winning Game 2 without needing Whitlock or Chapman anyway.
Game 2 ended up having a similar inflection point, with starter Sonny Gray pulled after just 70 pitches and 19 batters. That led to quite the anti-analytics firestorm on social media, but here in my corner of the internet, removing Gray was a clear-cut decision. I don’t care about Gray’s third-time-through-the-order performance being really good this season; he was bad in that scenario last year, and the third-time-through penalty is always going to exist to at least some extent. Gray had also allowed four of the last eight batters to reach and was clearly losing effectiveness. But giving Cody Bellinger another look at Miller a day after the lefty’s own ineffectiveness wasn’t ideal; unless Garrett Crochet was completely uncomfortable coming in with runners on base, I’d have preferred him in that scenario.
Instead, Crochet came in to start the following inning and the game went sideways from there. Spencer Jones reached on a strikeout-wild pitch and the inning spiraled thereafter, and while it wasn’t all Crochet’s fault, his performance all but assured a loss. Tracy then proved my earlier point about not knowing what the next day’s game will hold by using Whitlock down two runs with the bases loaded in the sixth and Chapman down seven runs in the eighth. Using Whitlock there was a coherent attempt to keep the game close, while Chapman was a “well, we need a miracle” pitching change. Had the Red Sox used Chapman and Whitlock to chase a win in Game 1 and ultimately won, Chapman never would’ve pitched down seven runs in Game 2, since Game 3 would be on the horizon. In sum: Yes, it matters when there’s a game tomorrow, but tomorrow’s game can go any which way. If you’re only down a couple runs and have a rested leverage arm, use him.
Cam Schlittler threw the Red Sox a curveball in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card Series. Well, actually, he threw them a lot of curveballs — 32, to be exact.
In the Yankees’ resounding 9-0 win over their archrivals last week at Yankee Stadium, the 25-year-old flamethrower went 6 1/3 scoreless innings, giving up just two hits and one walk while striking out 10 and throwing a career-high 117 pitches. Except for the pitch count, his final line reflects the same dominance we’ve seen repeatedly throughout a 2026 season in which Schlittler went 14-6 with a 1.95 ERA, a 2.56 FIP, and 6.2 WAR across 193 2/3 innings. The difference this time was how he got there, and it poses a new challenge for opposing batters when he starts against the Rays in Game 2 of the ALDS on Monday night at Tropicana Field.
Schlittler turned to the curveball early and often, utterly baffling a Boston lineup that was geared up for his signature three-fastball repertoire. Instead, they got a heavy dose of the hook and couldn’t handle it. In Game 1, he threw his curveball 27.4% of the time. The Red Sox swung at 16 of the 32 curves they saw from Schlittler, whiffing on eight of them, fouling off six, and putting two in play; the first of those two fair balls was a softly hit lineout to shortstop in the fifth inning, while the second came when Wilyer Abreu lined the right-hander’s last pitch of the game to right field for a single. Four of Schlittler’s 10 strikeout pitches were curveballs, all during his first time through the order. Read the rest of this entry »
