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 »
Heading into Game 2 of the NLDS, much of the talk was of the mismatch in pitching rotations between the Dodgers and the Braves, and whether Atlanta’s bullpen could continue to cover up for a rotation held together with rubber bands and duct tape. Yet, in the end, it was the Dodgers who ended up burning the most relievers, and the denouement was only in doubt because the Braves missed a few opportunities to blow the game, a 3-2 win, wide open.
The most-talked-about pitching decision was probably the one made before the game started: Going with a third consecutive bullpen game rather than starting ace Chris Sale in Game 2. It’s a decision that Walt Weiss clearly doesn’t regret, at least not when speaking in public. He told reporters:
“We had a conversation this morning. Look, at the end of the day, we want full-strength Chris Sale. I know him at 80 percent is really good, but that’s what it came down to. We’ve given him extra rest all year, and it’s served him very well. It allowed him to do what he did the other night, I think all the extra rest he’d gotten. He’d be on normal rest from his last start, but he had the outing in between. Not sure you’re getting the best version of him pitching today. We’re certain he will pitch in Game 3.
They opened the roof. That’s the first thing you need to know about Game 2 of the NLDS between the Milwaukee Brewers and the San Diego Padres. Nobody had to worry about knocking the ball off a girder or a wire or a catwalk or a dangling chain of sausage links hanging from the ceiling. More importantly, nobody had to worry about the damn thing blowing off in the bottom of the ninth, when Jackson Chourio, one strike away from defeat, turned around a 101-mph Mason Miller fastball for a game-winning, two-RBI single. Against the most formidable reliever in baseball, after trailing since the fourth batter of the game, the Brewers turned water into, well, beer, beating the Padres 4-3 to take a 2-0 lead in the series. It marked the first time in more than a month that the Padres have lost two games in a row.
American Family Field presents quite a beautiful backdrop when it’s open to the sky and full of natural light. It feels vibrant and alive. It’s also not the friendliest place for hitters, who get to shift their worries from the roof to the shadows. The 3:09 PM local start time meant that when Logan Henderson threw the first pitch of the game, his shadow, already much longer than his six-foot-tall frame, stretched all the way across the mound and onto the infield grass toward third base. It twitched and wriggled as he went into his delivery, as if it believed this might be its chance to escape once and for all.
No player was more grateful for the open sky than Ty France, who on Saturday night experienced an even more unfriendly side of American Family Field. As you surely know by now, France flew out to deep left field by way of a ricochet off something or other up there by the roof. There’s somedebate as to whether that ball would have both cleared the fence and stayed fair, but regardless, France certainly played like a man with a score to settle. He went 2-for-3 with two RBI singles and a hit-by-pitch, pushing his batting average this postseason to a respectable .487. Read the rest of this entry »
The Brewers earned a 3-2 victory over the Padres in Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday. With this year’s presumptive Cy Young winner starting for the Brewers and a former Cy Young winner (and still an above-average starter) going for the Padres, a low-scoring affair was not a surprising outcome. Still, the game script didn’t exactly play out as anticipated. Instead, the contest took on a late-inning feel almost from the beginning, and with both emotions and the leverage index consistently running high, perhaps the best way to tell the story of Game 1 is via reactions sourced from one of the most emotive players in either dugout — Milwaukee outfielder Sal Frelick.
The Frelick shown above was struggling to process an unusual double play that he initiated during last year’s NLCS, but that confused sentiment also applies to the experience of watching Brewers starter Jacob Misiorowski allow three consecutive singles during the second inning on Saturday. In over half of Misiorowski’s 30 starts this season, he allowed three or fewer hits across the entire outing, making three hits over three plate appearances feel fairly baffling. The trouble began with a one-out, infield single off the bat of shortstop Xander Bogaerts. The hit was the culmination of a six-pitch skirmish. Bogaerts took the first four pitches he saw (two four-seamers were called balls, while another four-seamer and a cutter were called strikes). He fouled off a 2-2 fastball, then rolled over a slider for a groundball that forced shortstop Cooper Pratt to range far enough to his right that by the time he made the diving stop, he couldn’t get the throw to first in time to beat Bogaerts to the bag.
Though Misiorowski got the type of batted ball that pitchers are usually pleased with, the whole interaction with Bogaerts highlighted a burgeoning problem for the Milwaukee righty. For the flamethrower’s fastball to function, he needs hitters to swing through it, and relatedly, he needs hitters to be willing to offer at it, even when it’s a touch out of the zone. On the season, his four-seamer averaged a 40.2% whiff rate and a 34.3% chase rate. But on Saturday night, it was generating whiffs only 14.3% of the time and getting hitters to chase just 24.1% of the time. Bogaerts was content to watch three heaters from The Miz and then fouled off the fourth. Since the San Diego batters were often fouling off fastballs in the zone and laying off the pitch when it missed the zone, Misiorowski pivoted to his 96-mph cutter as a pitch he could more reliably throw in the zone for called strikes in order to counter the obnoxiously patient Padres. Read the rest of this entry »
Generally picked to win the AL East before the 2026 season, the New York Yankees spent the final four months of the season looking up at the Tampa Bay Rays in the standings. If the Bombers were hoping to avenge their second-place finish in their Division Series matchup with their AL East foe, they got off to a poor start on Saturday evening, losing 1-0 in a game that felt more lopsided than the one-run margin would suggest. Taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning, Drew Rasmussen dominated the Yankees, with his bid for history only spoiled by an Austin Wells two-out double that the New York catcher unsuccessfully tried to stretch into a triple. Bryan Baker quickly dispatched the Yankees in the ninth to give the Rays a 1-0 series lead to match the final score.
In a game without much in the way of offense, Rasmussen was the biggest story. Unfazed by a New York lineup that consisted almost entirely of lefties — not entirely surprising as Rasmussen has shown no platoon differential over his major league career — he freely mixed his four pitches, with the Yankees not having an answer for any of them. Rasmussen struck out 10 batters over eight innings and still cruised enough that, if the Rays’ cushion had been larger, he may very well have been sent out for the complete game in the ninth.
As playoff starts go, Rasmussen’s stands out not just as a pretty darn good start, but one that was good enough to rank with the best in recent history. Bill James’ Game Score is useful for this kind of thing, and Rasmussen’s Game Score of 88 is tied for the 15th-best playoff start of the Wild Card era (1995-present). Among games of the last decade, only Blake Snell’s 2025 NLCS Game 1 start ranks higher. Snell’s performance featured a final line that was nearly identical to Rasmussen’s (8 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 10 K, but no walks).
It certainly wasn’t passivity that caused the Yankees to fail against Rasmussen. It’s well known that the Yankees are a low-contact team, with the fourth-lowest contact rate in baseball in 2026, and ahead of only the White Sox among playoff clubs. But they also weren’t as selective as usual with their swings against Rasmussen, chasing 37% of his out-of-zone pitches, including 69% of the changeups. For the game, the Yankees had a 43.1% whiff rate, their second-worst number in 2026, and the 24th worst out of the 3,082 games they’ve played since the start of the 2008 season.
There were, of course, a few productive moments in a night of offensive woes. George Lombard Jr. hit a couple of scorchers where they could be easily caught by outfielders, and I’d argue that both could very well have been home runs if his swing had connected with the ball a whisper of an instant earlier. Jazz Chisholm Jr. worked a nine-pitch walk, though it turned out to be moot; the Yankees left him at first and the additional pitches had no noticeable impact on Rasmussen, who never seemed to tire. He was throwing as hard in the eighth as he was in the first. Behind the plate, Wells nailed two ABS challenges in the first inning, including a strike three on the teensiest edge of the strike zone to Chandler Simpson that ended the first with the Rays stranding two runners.
Meanwhile, the Yankees’ excellent pitching staff was about as good as advertised. Gerrit Cole pitched well in his first postseason start since 2024; he just didn’t quite match Rasmussen’s dominance. His game plan was a heavy dose of fastballs and knuckle-curves, and after the first inning, the Rays weren’t particularly successful at stringing hits together. Cole’s lone blemish came with one out in the third inning, when Jonathan Aranda barreled up a thigh-high changeup on the outside edge of the plate for a home run.
As the night went, it was almost fitting that New York’s sole bit of offense, a Wells double, was also arguably the team’s worst moment. In the eighth, with two out, Wells rocketed a Rasmussen sinker down and in and right in his wheelhouse into the right field corner, the hardest hit of the night at 107.8 mph. The hit not only broke Rasmussen’s no-hitter; it also broke the hearts of Yankee fans, as Wells decided that with two outs, he was going to try and leg out the triple. Suffice it to say, the guy who looks like a no-nonsense police captain on a 1970s TV show did not successfully channel Rickey Henderson. Any reasonable relay would’ve nailed Wells at third, and the one from right fielder Victor Mesa Jr. to shortstop Taylor Walls to third baseman Junior Caminero proved to be more than reasonable.
Baker came out in the ninth, whiffed pinch-hitter Giancarlo Stanton in his first plate appearance since April, froze Ben Rice on a changeup, and got Cody Bellinger to ground out to end the game. Part of me wonders whether Rays manager Kevin Cash was secretly relieved that Rasmussen’s no-hitter was broken up, as letting a pitcher try to finish a no-hitter in a 1-0 game is a whole lot scarier than in an 8-0 laugher.
It may not be remembered in light of Rasmussen’s performance, but after Mesa’s single in the fourth inning, Cole and three relievers (Ryan Weathers, Paul Blackburn, Brent Headrick) held the Rays hitless for the rest of the game, preventing any inconvenient insurance runs from scoring. Those insurance runs were not needed.
If there’s any silver lining, it’s that this was the game in the best-of-five series that ZiPS projected the Yankees to have the lowest probability of winning. I believe Cole is a future Hall of Famer, but at this point of his career, I think he’s no better than the fourth-best starting pitcher in the New York rotation. Losing any game in a short series is bad, of course, but it’s less impactful on the Yankees’ chances of advancing than if the Rays had spoiled a Cam Schlittler start. It would be dangerous to count the Yankees out, but the Rays simply looked like the better team in the opening battle.
Remember that brief period of time when Tarik Skubal didn’t look like Tarik Skubal? In June, in his first three starts after returning from tiny-needle surgery, Skubal went 0-2 with a 4.96 ERA and a 5.86 FIP. He struck out as many batters as ever, but he just kept giving up home runs, and everyone whispered to their neighbors with alarm, “Maybe the needle wasn’t as tiny as we thought it was. Is it possible that it was just a regular needle with a good publicist?” Well, that period of time was shorter than you might remember. It was, in fact, just 12 days long. Over his final 16 starts, Skubal regained his form. He went 9-3 with a 2.36 ERA and a 2.14 FIP. Only once over that period did he allow even four runs in a start.
With Game 1 of the NLDS in the books, Skubal has extended that unhittable stretch to 17 starts. Under an oppressively hot midday sun in Los Angeles, the Dodgers quashed the Braves by a score of 5-3. The game started out looking like a pitcher’s duel, spent a few innings looking like it might be a rout, and ended up surprisingly close. All eight runs scored by way of the home run. Skubal was brilliant, striking out seven, walking two, and allowing two hits across six innings. At one point he retired 15 Braves in a row. The effort allowed him to lower his career postseason ERA of 2.04 even further. With a 1-0 series lead, the Dodgers have rounded into form, and the two-time defending champs look every bit the juggernaut we expected back in the spring. Read the rest of this entry »
When the Chicago White Sox pushed aside the Houston Astros in a Wild Card sweep, they set up a tilt against a familiar opponent. The Cleveland Guardians are the hereditary rulers of the AL Central, and they nipped the Sox by a single game this year. But other than playing in the same division and having nearly the same record, the two teams present quite the clash in styles. The White Sox are a group of young guys who hit home runs. The Guardians are a group of veterans who play small ball. It’s so compelling that it’s hard to find any other way to look at the series.
The difference between the two teams was on display immediately in Game 1. The Guardians sent Parker Messick to the mound for his first playoff start. He’s one of the best starters in baseball, and he’d be the Rookie of the Year favorite if Kevin McGonigle weren’t from another planet. The White Sox countered with opener Hagen Smith, coming off of an electric three innings against Houston. The White Sox aren’t deploying a “rotation” in the way you’d normally think of one; they’re heavy on multi-inning relievers and light on true starters, so their games are mix-and-match, while the Guardians hope to run their starter out for a decent stretch, then turn the game over to a series of one-inning relievers.
That’s the kind of game plan you can execute against the White Sox if you’re sharp enough. Messick came out a bit scattershot, walking Miguel Vargas and surrendering a hard-hit single to Munetaka Murakami in the first. But he also posted six strikeouts through the first three scoreless innings, the exact kind of numbers you’d expect against the aggressive White Sox lineup. Messick leans on his fastball, and he works the edges. That mattered more today, because to put it charitably, home plate umpire Cory Blaser’s strike zone was uneven. Five of those six strikeouts came on called strike threes, though White Sox hitters were clearly under dugout orders not to challenge early. A particularly egregious pitch to Randal Grichuk – 3-2 count, two inches off the plate outside – got Messick out of the third, and quite frankly, the combination of stuff and zone looked incredibly inhospitable to the White Sox. Read the rest of this entry »
