Cade Smith is one of the game’s most dominant closers. Since debuting with the Cleveland Guardians in 2024, the 27-year-old right-hander from Abbotsford, British Columbia boasts a 2.26 ERA, a 1.84 FIP, and a 35.5% strikeout rate over 219 appearances comprising 233 innings. Moreover, he enters October on the heels of his best season to date. Not only did Smith forge a 1.95 ERA over 74 frames, his 41 saves tied him with Tampa Bay’s Bryan Baker for the most in the majors.
His development is a testament to his raw talent and work ethic, but also to the Guardians’ highly regarded pitching program. When Smith signed with Cleveland as an amateur free agent in 2020 following the pandemic-truncated five-round draft, he barely resembled the pitcher he is today. The University of Hawaii product now features a 97.5-mph heater that ranked in the 91st percentile for velocity this year, a devastating bat-missing splitter, and a sweeper that elicited a .133 xBA.
A lot has changed over the years.
“When Cade entered the organization he was a low-90s pitcher with no secondary stuff,” explained Guardians bullpen coach Caleb Longshore, who previously tutored Smith as both a minor league pitching coach and coordinator. “We identified some things in his delivery that he has leaned into over the years, and we’ve seen a steady year-over-year increase in velocity. He started working on the splitter in 2023, in [Double-A] Akron, when [now big league assistant pitching coach] Brad Goldberg was there.”
Smith’s relationship with Longshore and Goldberg was a point of interest when I spoke with him in the final week of the regular season. Read the rest of this entry »
On April 12, 1862, a group of 24 Union spies — most of them volunteer soldiers, led by civilian James Andrews — commandeered a locomotive in Big Shanty, Georgia, and headed north. Their goal was to rendezvous with Union forces in Chattanooga, destroying rail and telegraph lines as they went. Andrews and his men ran out of fuel less than 18 miles from their destination; all of the raiders were captured and eight, including Andrews, were executed.
They fared little better than the Andrews Raiders. Michael Harris II put Atlanta ahead with a three-run first-inning home run, and Ray Kerr turned in an improbably spectacular spot start that kept the Braves on top the rest of the way for an eventual 6-2 win. None of Don Mattingly’s men were hanged, at least not yet. We’ll see what kind of a reception they get back home. Read the rest of this entry »
On Wednesday night, the San Diego Padres eliminated the Chicago Cubs from the playoffs with a 4-1 win. A sold-out, frenzied crowd watched the Friars get to Kevin Gausman early, scoring two runs in the second after a double from Ty France, singles from Jackson Merrill and Xander Bogaerts, and a sacrifice fly from Ethan Salas. A two-run homer from pinch-hitter Gavin Sheets in the fourth put San Diego up by three, and from there, the Cubs barely threatened. It was just the latest big moment in a summer full of them for the Padres: A team that saw its playoff odds drop to 7% in late July will now head to Milwaukee for the NLDS.
When you think about this generation of the San Diego Padres, a number of descriptors may spring to mind. “Exciting” works, for all the stars they’ve rostered and playoff runs they’ve made. “Unpredictable” captures the spirit of a front office bold enough to empty the farm year after year, postseason probability be damned. “Competitive” — you heard all those F-bombs during the game last night, yes? — applies, as might “brash,” particularly if you’re from Los Angeles or Phoenix.
But watching this game, I kept thinking about how poised they looked. It’s an unfamiliar feeling watching this group: Fernando Tatis Jr. is many wonderful things, but there’s very little mellow to him or the team he headlines. In an emotional game, though, which is exactly how they looked, and nobody epitomized that more than San Diego’s young catcher. Read the rest of this entry »
NEW YORK — Lefty? Righty? The platoon-heavy Yankees will beat your frontline starter regardless of handedness, and their frontline starter will shut your offense down. That was the case, at least, in this year’s Wild Card Series between the Yankees and the Red Sox. After fireballing righty Cam Schlittler overwhelmed Boston in Tuesday night’s opener, lefty Max Fried stifled the Sox for six innings on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a lineup stacked with eight lefty hitters — and again, no Aaron Judge — pressed Red Sox manager Chad Tracy to pull starter Sonny Gray after just 70 pitches, trailing 1-0. As on Tuesday night, the Yankees broke the game open against Boston’s lefty relievers. New York cruised to a 9-2 victory and a series sweep.
As he did in Game 1 of the 2025 Wild Card Series against the Red Sox, Fried pitched brilliantly. He held Boston scoreless through the first five innings on just two hits before allowing a solo home run to Willson Contreras with two outs in the sixth. It wasn’t just Boston’s first home run of the series, it was the team’s first run in a playoff game since the sixth inning of Game 2 of last year’s series, a span of 26 2/3 innings. Fried struck out six while walking one; though he got just nine whiffs (18.8%) and a 23.5% called strike and whiff rate, he allowed just three hard-hit balls and an average exit velocity of 85.3 mph. He threw 98 pitches, and when the Yankees broke through for six runs in the bottom of the sixth inning, it was an easy call for manager Aaron Boone to go to his bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »
The fan bases with rooting interest in the White Sox-Astros Wild Card Series entered the postseason with differing perspectives on their teams’ relative talent and season quality. Chicagoans, though perhaps irked at how the division slipped away from them at the end of the season, were likely thrilled to be here after multiple consecutive 100-loss seasons. However, Houston fans, who have enjoyed a higher standard of living for the last decade, aren’t content with parallel parking into the top spot of a bad division, then bowing out in the Wild Card round. That was apparent during Houston’s Game 1 loss, which tasted sour enough to Astros fans that they let the kitchen know about it, and some of the players and manager Joe Espada acknowledged hearing it with varying levels of annoyance.
That set the tone for a mid-afternoon Game 2 at Daikin Park, in which the White Sox landed decisive blows in two big innings and sent Houston packing to win their first postseason series since they won the 2005 World Series. The Sox will now chart a Division Series course for Cleveland. Read the rest of this entry »
On September 6 and then again on September 12, Tyler Mahle squared off with the Phillies. Both times, he left them frustrated and flailing; he allowed three runs across 13 innings in two Atlanta victories. In each of those games, Mahle leaned on his splitter quite a bit, something he’s done more frequently since joining the Braves at the trade deadline. That set up an interesting mind game in Wednesday’s Game 2. Seeing the same opponent for the third time in a month, would Mahle change his ways? Would the Phillies change their own approach? And could they overcome the Braves, who had been their nemeses throughout the year, and prolong their season for another day with their Kryptonite on the mound?
Mahle’s splitter was devastating last outing, so clearly the Phillies would have to sit on it. But wait! Mahle knows that the Phillies know that they won’t beat his splitter unless they key on it. So clearly, he should throw them fewer splitters. But wait! The Phillies know that Mahle knows that they will probably be sitting on the splitter. So clearly, they can’t look for splitters. But wait! Mahle knows that the Phillies know that… Well, you get the idea. There are levels to this, to paraphrase Kendrick Lamar.
Or maybe not. The Phillies either went too many levels up, or they didn’t even get into the endless iocaine powder reasoning loop I just described. Because Mahle came out leaning on his splitter, just as you’d expect, and the Phillies came out with absolutely no solutions. As Arthur C. Clarke said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And to Philadelphia, Mahle’s splitter might as well have been Power Word: Whiff. They surely knew it was coming – it just didn’t matter. Read the rest of this entry »
Major league baseball’s postseason derives its spine-tingling intrigue from many sources. There’s the tension — and inherent cruelty — of a months-long season coming down to a handful of games. Perhaps nothing in sports is better than a tightly-contested postseason game entering its final innings, the score so close and the stakes so high that it’s impossible to look away, while also leaving even the most devoted fans wondering if they can bear to watch. From these theatrics we often get epic performances and precise execution. Cam Schlittler dismantling the Red Sox with coiling curveballs and unfair fastballs in front of a bloodthirsty Yankee Stadium crowd, for instance. Grant Taylor’s dastardly 3-2 slider to strike out the potential tying run and end the eighth inning in Tuesday’s Game 1 against the Astros also comes to mind, as does the Braves’ note-perfect double play to squash the Phillies’ ninth-inning rally in their opening round first game.
But sometimes, well, sometimes a similar type of joy comes from the baseball equivalent of a windmill dunk.
The scene? Petco Park, Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres. The Padres hold a comfortable 7-0 lead in the bottom of the seventh inning. The actor? Fernando Tatis Jr., arguably the most exhilarating player in the game when he’s hitting all his marks. Looking to extend the lead — or maybe just have a little fun — Tatis takes off from first base on a 2-1 pitch and is rewarded with a curveball in the dirt, a basestealer’s delight. Tatis not only beats the throw to second, it pings off his sliding leg and into no man’s land, dribbling slowly into shallow left field as the Friar Faithful slowly ascertain what’s about to happen. Tatis is going turbo mode.
Moments like this bring fans to their feet and opponents to their knees. Tatis — who reached first on an infield single, and saw the opportunity to turn that hit’s 49.7 mph exit velocity into a run — seemed hellbent on scoring as soon as the ball caromed away from the Cubs’ infield. Is stealing a base with a touchdown-sized lead sort of reckless and unnecessary? Sure. But these are the playoffs, where it’s never a bad idea to add on, especially when presented with the opportunity to exploit a catcher like Carson Kelly, who struggled with the running game all year. We can assume Tatis merely read the scouting report and was putting that knowledge to good use. But once he took second, surely he’d chill there (with no outs!) and give the heart of the Padres’ order a chance to drive him in. Right? Wrong:
Tatis did not stop at third, and probably didn’t even consider doing so. Why would he? Because his third base coach explicitly told him to, long before Tatis even reached third base? That’s super boring. And Tatis, ever the entertainer, sensed that this blowout needed a little extra oomph before people started leaving to beat the traffic. Flying into third base, completely ignoring Bob Henley’s stop sign, and rounding for home are the sorts of moves that only the game’s great showmen have the ability to recognize, and even fewer have the aplomb to pull off. Lurking backlash for running up the score be damned (thankfully, the internet seemed to agree that this play was so awesome that he was spared any criticism), Tatis wants to remind everyone that he’s capable of things other ballplayers are not.
The Padres’ rambunctious right fielder, who has an 89th-percentile sprint speed, correctly identified that his speed would provide much more exhilaration in this situation than scoring from second on a Dustin Harris single would. Again, pretty unnecessary given the circumstance, but people don’t pay postseason ticket prices to see the mundane. They want to see superstars do superstar things, punctuated with the type of emotional outburst that makes postseason baseball so special. Does one man’s primal scream after diving across home plate register as much of a sound when 47,000 San Diegans are also screaming? Probably not, but it makes for one hell of a highlight:
None of this even accounts for the fact that Tatis started this baseball bash with a leadoff home run, giving him seven in 17 playoff games and boosting his lifetime postseason OPS to a nirvanic 1.178. All this from a man who finished April with a 75 wRC+ but who put up a 143 the rest of the way, giving him a strong chance to finish in the top five of MVP voting. His 2026 statistics will show yet another season with at least 25 homers and 25 steals — the fourth time he’s done that — with the lowest strikeout rate of his still-ascendant career to boot. But the numbers won’t tell the full narrative arc. His first home run of the regular season famously did not come until late May, and his team’s playoff odds sagged to a season-low 7.4% in July. The Padres were under .500 as late as July 25, and their deadline acquisitions of Casey Mize and Robbie Ray didn’t do much to help. But thanks to a bullpen unit that tied for second all-time in collective WAR, Jackson Merrill’s second-half revitalization, the surprise production of Harris, Ty France, and Samad Taylor, plus Tatis finding some sort of flow state (which may or may not have something to do with planetary alignment), the Padres are poised to advance into October.
The lesson here? Chase wild, thrill-seeking endeavors over playing it safe. This style of play might just be what San Diego needs in a hypothetical Division Series against the Milwaukee Brewers and their tight, fundamentally sound, 103-win operation. Run free, Fernando Tatis Jr., and deal with the consequences later. At the very least, you gave everyone something to marvel at and helped your team to a convincing win. Which is kind of the whole point of playing postseason baseball.
Big league front offices are, for the most part, populated by cowards. They say they want to win, but what they want most of all is to keep their jobs and not get yelled at. OK, maybe I came on too strong. That’s not cowardice, that’s just life under capitalism. A clever observer might note that one of the major sources of “getting yelled at” for major league GMs is the media — i.e., people like me. Maybe I should be nicer.
Two decades after the sabermetrics revolution shook up baseball’s norms, 30 GMs and/or Ps of BO have converged on a new conventional wisdom: You can never have enough pitchers.
During the regular season, sure. The 162-game slate is a siege by design. Teams play six times a week for six months, and most of the innings of most of those games are pretty pointless. Let’s say the average team plays about 55 defensive innings per week; the team’s top three starters and top two relievers might combine to throw, what, 25 of those innings? Read the rest of this entry »
“He’s not coming out of this game” was the comment from NBC play-by-play announcer Dave Flemming while the broadcast lingered on a shot of Padres Game 1 starter Michael King as he sat in the dugout looking through a notebook during the bottom of the sixth inning. “He’s not reading War and Peace either,” added color commentator Mark Grant. “He’s studying hitters.”
But that’s not to say King and the Padres wouldn’t find certain aspects of War and Peace relatable. Speaking in reference to his own work, Leo Tolstoy acknowledged that War and Peace defies conventional attempts at classification, saying it is “not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle.” Comparatively, analysts have struggled all season to properly define the 2026 Padres. If Tolstoy had scripted the Friars, he might have said they are “not a playoff team, much less a contender, and still less a club in the midst of a rebuild.”
Instead, the Padres were a team that went 30-20 in its first 50 games, 19-31 over the next 50 games, and then finished out the season by going 42-20. On July 22, their odds of making the playoffs bottomed out at 7.4%. Then they went on a run, and just one month later, their odds had surged to 68.9%. But rather than continue that upward trajectory en route to clinching a playoff spot, they first endured a backslide that shrank their odds to 39.2% as recently as September 2. It would have been logical for San Diego to sell at the trade deadline, but Padres POBO A.J. Preller was born without the specific bit of genetic code that allows humans to understand selling as a strategic concept. Instead, they added starting pitchers Robbie Ray and Casey Mize and finished the year as the top-seeded Wild Card team in the National League. Read the rest of this entry »
NEW YORK — Cam Schlittler and Ben Rice may be Massachusetts natives, but the two Yankee stars did nothing to help the Red Sox during Tuesday night’s Wild Card Series opener against their archrivals. In a start reminiscent of his performance in last year’s do-or-die Game 3 between the two teams, Schlittler, the fireballing 25-year-old righty from Walpole, dominated the Red Sox hitters, throwing 6 1/3 shutout innings and striking out 10 while allowing just two hits. Rice, the 27-year-old slugger from Cohasset, picked up the slack for the injured Aaron Judge by going 4-for-5 with two homers and six runs batted in as the Yankees waited out Red Sox ace Payton Tolle, then broke the game open against the bullpen en route to a 9-0 romp.
This was the sixth time in 363 days that Schlittler faced the Red Sox, dating back to the aforementioned Game 3 of the 2025 Wild Card Series. At that point, the baby-faced rookie — a seventh-round pick in 2022 out of Northeastern University with just 14 major league starts under his belt — turned in eight brilliant shutout innings, striking out 12 without a walk and allowing just five hits, all singles. In his first full season, while leading the league in ERA (1.95) and WAR (6.2) and making an overwhelming case for the AL Cy Young Award, Schlittler started four times against the Red Sox, putting up a 0.74 ERA in 24 1/3 innings while striking out 27. Those numbers conceal a few minor blemishes; he did allow four unearned runs in five innings in a loss on June 25, the only time in those six starts that the Yankees were defeated, and he walked five in 5 2/3 shutout innings on August 28. But so far, the Sox have yet to solve him.
They certainly didn’t on Tuesday night, though they did make Schlittler work hard enough to run up his pitch count early and to throw a career-high 117 pitches. Though Schlittler struck out three in the first inning, he needed 22 pitches to complete the frame thanks to a 10-pitch at-bat by Adley Rutschman that culminated in a soft single to left-center. His next three innings were spotless and included five more stirkeouts, but he needed 44 pitches for those, then another 23 for a fifth inning in which he yielded a two-out, seven-pitch walk to Jarren Duran, and 18 for a 1-2-3 sixth that included two more strikeouts. The pesky Red Sox fouled off 24 of his pitches in all, including 14 with two strikes. Read the rest of this entry »
