Archive for 2026 Postseason

It’s been a rough season for José Ramírez. After a sluggish start, the 34-year-old third baseman suffered a fractured left hamate that required surgery and knocked him out of action for nearly six weeks, then struggled so mightily upon returning that it took him nearly two months to barrel a ball. His bat showed some life in the second half of September as he helped the Guardians overtake the White Sox in the AL Central race, and with his team pushed to the brink of elimination in the Division Series against those same White Sox, he collected four extra-base hits and drove in eight runs over the final three games, most notably golfing a two-run homer off Sean Burke to provide all the scoring Cleveland would need in Game 5. After more heroics in the ALCS opener against the Rays, however, his costly error on Tuesday night helped Tampa Bay even the series.

Ramírez made his error during the fourth inning of a scoreless game, and while it was the only play scored an error, it was hardly the Guardians’ only miscue in that frame. After Parker Messick issued a leadoff walk to Junior Caminero, Victor Mesa Jr. hit a potential double-play grounder to second baseman Travis Bazzana, who tossed to shortstop Brayan Rocchio for the force out. Rocchio’s throw at first base was high enough to pull Nathaniel Lowe off the bag, and while Mesa was initially called out, the call was overturned when the Rays challenged it (the Rays also challenged the out at second, but that was upheld).

After Messick struck out Jonny DeLuca, Chandler Simpson hit a high chopper to Rocchio, who unhesitatingly fired to first base. Simpson beat the throw, while Mesa motored around second base and alertly took third because Ramírez had ranged so far to his left. Ben Williamson then hit a grounder whose second hop took an odd bounce off the edge of the turf in front of Ramírez; instead of winding up in his glove, it squirted through his legs and into left field as Mesa scored the game’s first run, with Simpson taking third and Williamson second. Liam Hicks plated them both on a single into right-center, giving the Rays a 3-0 lead. The three unearned runs were all the scoring the Rays would need in a 3-1 victory. Read the rest of this entry »

LOS ANGELES — On Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, Blake Snell took the mound with his team down 2-0 in the NLCS and made one of the best postseason starts I’ve ever seen. For six scoreless innings, he was nearly unhittable. At one point, he set down 14 Brewers in a row, striking out nine of them. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re searching for a metaphor for how differently the 2026 NLCS has gone than last year’s version, look no further than Blake Snell. In 2025, the two-time Cy Young winner humbled Milwaukee in the series opener, allowing one hit over eight strong innings, a prelude to the drubbing the Dodgers put on the Brewers in a sweep. This year, Snell got the start in Game 3, attempting to keep his team in the series after two Milwaukee victories, but the Brewers proved far more formidable this time around. Last year’s series was all about dominant Los Angeles pitching. The current edition has been about back-and-forth games and a resilient Milwaukee offense, and Wednesday’s contest — which the Brewers ultimately won 6-2 to pull within one win of their first World Series appearance since 1982 — delivered on both counts.

In last year’s NLCS start, Snell faced the minimum, erasing the only Brewers baserunner with a double play. This time, his brush with perfection lasted all of one pitch. Snell eased a fastball down the middle to Jackson Chourio to start things off, and Chourio tattooed it, a line drive missile that screamed out to right field, landing in the Dodger Stadium seats before many of the fans did. (This being Los Angeles just after 5 PM local time, only about a quarter of the spectators had arrived.) Snell recovered to retire the next three batters in order, but the tone was set: This iteration of the Brewers wasn’t going to go meekly into the L.A. night.

Snell has been spectacular when available since joining the Dodgers, and he had it all working in the early innings of Game 3. His curveball fizzed with menace, he located his changeup near perfectly, and playoff adrenaline had him up a few ticks on his fastball, which turned an already-good pitch into a monster. He used the curveball to clip the bottom of the zone and the fastball to bully the top of it, a combination that Milwaukee hitters had few answers for over his first six innings of work.

Snell’s counterpart, Robert Gasser, didn’t have the same dominant stuff, but he too gave the opposing lineup fits. He managed as many strikeouts in his five innings of work as Snell recorded in the first inning. He let the leadoff runner reach in three of those five innings. The Dodgers racked up a pile of loud contact; when Gasser departed, seven of the eight hardest-hit balls of the game had come against him. Read the rest of this entry »

When you manage a big league ballclub, life is unfair. You’re always one bad season, maybe just one really bad month, from getting fired. Even when you’re doing a good job, a vocal contingent of your fellow citizens is likely still agitating for your ouster, mostly because they just kind of like the way they sound when they’re agitating for someone to lose their livelihood. Writers you’ve known for years will one day fire up their laptops and pen a thousand words about why you no longer have what it takes. And on top of all that unrelenting judgment, whenever you’re out there doing your job during the game, a camera is trained directly on your face. Any time you react to what you see, you’re likely to wind up on television, often in slow motion, slamming your hand in frustration or launching an F-bomb.

For that reason, managers tend to at least try to maintain a stoic front. Some are better than others, but I’ve always enjoyed watching Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy in particular. He seems to feel the game more than most managers. He’s constantly checking his notes, or scribbling more notes, or retreating a few steps into the tunnel that feeds into the dugout to think things through. Also, he tends to snack a lot. But on Monday night, as the Brewers took care of business against the Dodgers in Game 2 of the NLCS, I noticed that one emotion seemed to show as clear as day on Murphy’s face every time the camera found him. All night, it seemed to me, no matter how well things were going on the field, Murphy looked pissed off. Read the rest of this entry »

During the regular season, Tampa Bay’s defense ranked fifth in runs scored, while Cleveland’s offense ranked 24th in runs allowed. After giving up seven runs to the Guardians in Game 1, the Rays entered Game 2 at risk of dropping both games at their home ballpark in Florida.

So I did my best to lay to rest
All of the bodies that have ever been on my body
And in my mind, they sink into the swamp

Techniques for moving on from a humbling loss vary from person to person, but whether the Rays took their nightmarish Game 1 and visualized it as gator food or chose to hit the reset button in some other way, they bounced back with a 3-1 win in Game 2.

Rookie Parker Messick got the start for the Guardians on Tuesday. After posting a 67 ERA- over 186 1/3 innings during the regular season, Messick made two starts during the divisional round. The lefty allowed two earned runs in both outings, but his command was shakier his second time out and he was pulled after 2 1/3 innings in which he walked four batters and threw 65 pitches. In his first ALCS appearance, though, Messick bested both of his prior postseason starts by pitching five innings and striking out three while allowing zero runs. Well, zero earned runs. Read the rest of this entry »

Every October, FanGraphs grades each playoff manager. We focus on their in-game decisions, because a lot of the most important parts of the job – things like keeping players ready to go and making sure relievers understand their role so they know when they might be deployed – aren’t always visible to us from the outside looking in. A lot of what managers do never reaches the public eye, so these report cards instead key in on the remainder of their decisions, the ones that come when the lights are bright and the game is on the line.

We attempt to evaluate those decisions based on process, not results. A pitching change isn’t necessarily bad because the reliever who comes in gets shelled, or good because he gets out of a jam. That’s not to say it can’t be a bad decision – if you bring in your closer up eight, or let your worst reliever face Yordan Alvarez with the game on the line, you made the wrong call. But we’re interested in the before, in what we could expect to happen when a manager makes a pitching change or calls on a pinch-hitter. It isn’t good to completely ignore results, but it’s also bad to fixate on them, and it’s my hope that our report cards strike the right balance.

Earlier this month, Jon Becker wrote up the four managers who lost in the Wild Card round. This week, we’re adding the Division Series losers to the mix. Jon and I have already covered Craig Stammen and Aaron Boone. Next up: Will Venable and the White Sox. Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago, even eight months ago, it would have been difficult to envision Victor Mesa Jr. emerging as a postseason hero for the Rays.

The son of a legendary Cuban outfielder and manager, he made his major league debut with the Marlins in 2025, but even by then, his standing as a prospect had faded due to his long swing and his aggressive approach. Designated for assignment by Miami before camps opened in February to make room for a waiver-wire reliever, Mesa was traded to the Rays and began the 2026 season in Triple-A.

Yet by June, the lefty-swinging 24-year-old (now 25) had carved out a platoon role with the big club thanks to his speed and defense. His role expanded as he far outdid his power projections, demonstrated an ability to hit same-side pitching, and played outstanding defense. In Game 3 of the Division Series, he administered the decisive blow against the Yankees, a towering two-run homer on lefty Max Fried’s final pitch to give the Rays a 4-2 lead. His adventurous night didn’t end there — in left field, he attempted to catch Anthony Volpe’s sixth-inning homer-that-wasn’t, which was ultimately ruled a run-scoring double because of fan interference — but the Rays held on to complete the sweep and advance to the ALCS against the Guardians.

“At the beginning of the year, I started being designated for assignment and look at me now,” a beaming, champagne-soaked Mesa said in the aftermath of the Wild Card Series victory.

“Victor Mesa Jr. is a very talented player both sides of the ball,” manager Kevin Cash said that night. “And when we got him up here and he found comfort in playing in that role that he was in basically every day, he really lengthened out our lineup.” Read the rest of this entry »

After a nine-year hiatus from managing, which he mostly spent with the Braves as Brian Snitker’s bench coach, Walt Weiss made a triumphant return to the top step of the dugout this year. Promoted to replace the retiring Snitker, Weiss made the playoffs for the first time as a big league skipper, winning 94 games, the NL East crown, and the Wild Card Series against the Phillies. With his season completed, following a 3-1 NLDS loss to the Dodgers, I’m making a trip to the grade book for the last time this year to evaluate his performance at the helm.

I’ll remind for you, as Ben Clemens also has for his AL manager report cards, that 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 results of their decisions as they’re making them. 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 its outcome.

Before we get into the grades, I’ll also reiterate that while these are ostensibly manager report cards, there’s a much larger group of people behind the skipper 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. During the 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. —>

It wasn’t how manager Stephen Vogt drew it up, but after stealing Game 1 in St. Petersburg, the Guardians have won four in row and they now find themselves in the driver’s seat of the ALCS. On paper — on pretty much any surface you can think of — the Rays held the advantage coming into the series. They were the better team all season long. They dominated the Yankees in the ALDS, while the Guardians nearly fell to the White Sox. They were rested, while the Guardians had completely worn down their pitching. They had fearsome bats, and they had their rotation lined up the way they liked it.

Drew Rasmussen was coming off one of the most dominant playoff starts we’ve ever seen, throwing eight scoreless innings against the Yankees in Game 1 of the ALDS while allowing just one hit and striking out 10. What’s more, the Rays staked him to an early lead against Cleveland. But these Guardians just don’t seem to quit. After coming back from two games down in the ALDS, the Guardians came back from two runs down to beat the Rays on Monday. Then they poured it on, scoring in each of the last four innings to earn a 7-3 victory.

From the first pitch of the game, Rasmussen looked much less sharp than he had against the Yankees. His velocity was down compared to his regular season average. In each of the first two innings, he allowed two singles and notched just one whiff. Thanks to some help from his defense – catcher Nick Fortes threw out a stealing José Ramírez in the first and Victor Mesa Jr.’s rocket arm held Nathaniel Lowe to a single on a tailor-made double in the second – he escaped those two frames without surrendering a run. He allowed another single apiece in the third and fourth, but kept the Guardians off the board. His velocity ticked back up, but he didn’t throw a clean inning until the fifth. It would be his only one. Read the rest of this entry »

MILWAUKEE — Game 1 of the NLCS was an exemplary display of mid-2020s playoff baseball, a dramatic and finely poised showcase of high-powered pitching and expansive defense. Game 2 was a hot dog, loaded with chili and onions, and dropped clumsily down the diner’s shirt.

And yet, the result was the same: The Brewers got the odd solo homer to center to erase an early Dodger lead, and a small-ball run put Milwaukee up for good. This one had a little more action — the 7-4 final marks the highest-scoring NL playoff game this year, as well as the Brewers’ highest offensive output in their past 13 postseason games. They are now halfway toward answering a humiliating sweep in last year’s NLCS with a sweep of their own.

Heroes outnumbered passengers for Milwaukee in Game 2. William Contreras went 3-for-4 with a walk and a monster home run, but four of his teammates also had multi-hit games. Every Brewers position player except Jackson Chourio reached base. As they piled on the insurance runs, four of their pitchers contributed perfect relief stints. When Game 2 started, only two Brewers in history had scored three runs in a playoff game; David Hamilton and Brice Turang both tied that record in the span of three plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »