NEW YORK — As Francisco Lindor stepped in against Phillies reliever Carlos Estévez with the bases loaded, one out, and the Mets down a run in the sixth inning, the Citi Field fans were still singing his walk-up song:
When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May.
The Mets shortstop called time, retreated, and regrouped. The singing continued.
I guess you’d say,
What can make me feel this way?
My girl, my girl, my girl
Talkin’ ‘bout my girl, my girl
They punctuated their sweet serenade with three letters, shouted repeatedly in succession. “M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!”
Lindor returned to the batter’s box, tapped the outside edge of the plate, then the inside one. Now, he was ready to break the game open. Read the rest of this entry »
Who would you pitch in a pivotal Game 4? Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that your best starter is available on three days’ rest, and he didn’t throw a full complement of pitches in his last start. He could pitch tonight’s game – or he could pitch a potential fifth and deciding game on full rest. But if resting him and letting him go in the next one seems like the obvious answer, let’s add another wrinkle: There’s no one else available to start. If your ace doesn’t go, it’s all bullpen, all the way.
The Padres and Dodgers both faced that decision Wednesday. They chose differently – the Padres sent Dylan Cease to the mound, while the Dodgers countered with reliever Ryan Brasier. The decision wasn’t exactly identical, but it was nearly so. The Dodgers used three relievers in Game 3, while the Padres used four. The relievers San Diego used were better – but then, their bullpen is better overall. Both teams had good full-rest options for Game 5 even if they opted to use their aces on Wednesday, with Yu Darvish set to take the ball for the Padres and Jack Flaherty available to do so for the Dodgers if Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched Game 4 on short rest. (Dave Robertssaid after the game that he has not yet settled on a Game 5 starter, with everything from Yamamoto, Flaherty and another bullpen game on the table depending on how everyone is feeling after Thursday’s workout.)
Cease came out with what seemed like the kind of adrenaline you’d expect from a guy trying to knock the Dodgers out of the playoffs. His first fastball to Shohei Ohtani was 99.6 mph. The slowest fastball he threw in the first inning was 97.5 mph, half a tick faster than his average fastball this year. His slider had more hop. His sweeper had more sweep. Oh yeah – he also hung a fastball middle-middle that Mookie Betts launched for a solo home run. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you have a favorite flavor of baseball? Maybe you enjoy a crisp, clean pitching duel, or maybe you prefer the luxurious mouthfeel of a decadent slugfest. But if what your tastebuds really crave is yelling – the sharp, mouth-puckering tartness of unbridled emotion and constant, heartfelt screaming audible through the on-field microphones – then Game 3 of the National League Divisional Series between the Dodgers and Padres was the contest for you. The San Diego fans screamed pretty much all game long and the players screamed whenever anything big happened, which is to say often.
With the series tied at one coming into the game, drama was the watchword of the day. The Padres had roasted the Dodgers, 10-2, in Game 2 on Sunday. The fans threw things at the San Diego players. Manny Machado threw a ball into the Los Angeles dugout. Dave Roberts asked the league office to investigate the throw, which, he said, was directed at him with “something behind it.” When Zapruder-esque video of the toss surfaced online, that something was revealed to be petulant but ultimately harmless. Tensions were high enough that before the game, the Padres released a statement reminding their fans that throwing things at the Dodgers is frowned upon. So rather than throw, the fans just screamed. For hours.
The game featured plenty of action, all of it stuffed into the span of one inning. The teams combined for 10 runs in the bottom of the second and the top of the third, and then, when it looked like the onslaught might never stop, the bats went cold and the game turned into a one-run nailbiter headlined by unhittable bullpens. If you had Walker Buehler surrendering six runs on your bingo card, congratulations on having a bingo card full of extremely probable outcomes. If you had him getting through five innings, then you lucked out. But if you somehow had both of those outcomes, you should probably upgrade from bingo to the Mega Millions, because fortune is smiling upon you. Meanwhile, the Padres started Michael King, who ran a 2.95 ERA this season and threw seven scoreless innings in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series. What looked for all the world like the world’s most lopsided pitching matchup ended up as very nearly a draw.
In the end, the Padres pulled out a 6-5 victory, and they now have a chance to end the Dodgers’ season on Wednesday night. If they do, it will mark the third straight time that the Dodgers have won the division but failed to make it to the League Championship Series. Read the rest of this entry »
The Kansas City Royals have a great starting rotation, a bullpen that’s come together nicely over the past few weeks, and a lot of team speed. The offense? Eh, it’s not great. Let’s not underestimate the impact of Bobby Witt Jr., who was the best normal-sized player in the American League this year, and should count as two All-Stars. They’ve got a couple big dudes to drive in Witt, but Salvador Perez is 34 going on 50, and Vinnie Pasquantino is working with a barely healed right thumb. That’s no small issue — the thumb is what separates us from the apes.
I was going to break out the old cliché about bringing a knife to a gunfight, but there have been times when manager Matt Quatraro was probably looking around and thinking, “You know what, I would settle for some cutlery right about now.”
Every pitcher starts an at-bat with a plan of some sort. Usually, they execute the plan. But sometimes the plan goes awry. And the plan definitely went awry when Emmanuel Clase faced Kerry Carpenter in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the Tigers-Guardians ALDS.
On the sixth pitch of the plate appearance, Carpenter uncorked a massive blast off Clase to give the Tigers a late 3-0 lead. A half-inning later, and Detroit had the series tied up at one game apiece. It was the hardest hit ball that Clase had ever given up. It was the first home run this season he’d allowed to a lefty. He allowed five earned runs the entire regular season; on that chuck alone, he gave up three. Read the rest of this entry »
After the Detroit Tigers beat the Houston Astros in the opener of their Wild Card series, I wrote that while Tarik Skubal wasn’t perfect, he was very good, and that was enough to lead his team to a 3-1 win. The same was true in Game 2 of the ALDS, although this time he wasn’t the biggest story. On an afternoon where the ace left-hander hurled seven scoreless innings, Kerry Carpenter came off the bench and hit the biggest home run of his life against a lights-out closer. When the dust had settled, the Tigers had evened their series against the Cleveland Guardians at one game apiece with a 3-0 win.
The matchup between Skubal and Matthew Boyd offered both a contrast in styles and, at least on paper, a mismatch. After undergoing Tommy John surgery last year, the 33-year-old Boyd wasn’t offered a major league contract during the offseason, and he remained unsigned until June, when he signed a one-year deal with Cleveland for an undisclosed salary. He appeared in only eight big league games during the regular season. As it turned out, Boyd ended up matching this season’s likely American League Cy Young winner pitch-for-pitch for four-plus innings before the Guardians turned to what has been baseball’s best bullpen this season.
The early frames accentuated the contrast in styles. Through three innings, Boyd relied heavily on soft stuff, throwing more changeups than fastballs, while Skubal relied primarily on high-90s heaters, mostly leaving his own plus changeup in his back pocket. Hitters on both sides were left floundering. By the time the Guardians batted in the bottom of the fifth, the Tigers had the game’s only four hits, and one of them was of the infield-dribbler variety. Read the rest of this entry »
I started writing this article just before the playoffs began, and I framed it to myself as a trailer for an early-2000s romantic comedy. I thought Matthew Boyd and the Cleveland Guardians fit the rom-com formula surprisingly well. After his second breakup with his ex (the Tigers), Boyd was hurt (recovering from Tommy John surgery), unemployed (a free agent), and short on suitors (unsigned well into the season). When he had his meet cute (signed a contract) with the Guardians, they were successful (best record in the AL) but something was missing (starting pitching). Sparks flew instantly. Boyd pitched to a 2.72 ERA in eight starts. Cleveland won six of those eight games.
Now, the Guardians are just a baseball team, standing in front of a Boyd, asking him to start in the ALDS. Replace Boyd with Kate Hudson and make him a journalist instead of a baseball player, and you’ve got your movie. About a Boyd. To All the Boyds I’ve Loved Before. You get it.
Unfortunately for me (and fortunately for the rest of you), my colleague Kiri Oler came out with an excellent piece not so long ago that just so happened to use a Kate Hudson rom-com as a framing device. I was delighted that two different writers thought to write about Kate Hudson on a website that usually couldn’t have any less to do with Kate Hudson, let alone the fact that we both thought to do it in the same week. At the same time, I was disappointed I’d spent so much time coming up with “Boyd” puns for nothing. Read the rest of this entry »
“They just said there was nothing clear and convincing to overturn it,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said Sunday morning, after he asked MLB why the call on the field was not reversed. “If he had been called out, that call would have stood too.” Read the rest of this entry »
Everyone thought it was gone. Jurickson Profar hopped around, ostensibly upset that Mookie Betts’ fly ball had dropped into the left field seats. The camera panned to Betts triumphantly rounding the bases. The scorebug flipped from zero to one under the Dodgers logo. And then, a few seconds later, all was clear: Profar had pulled a Julio Rodríguez, fooling everyone into thinking it was a homer before whipping the ball back into the infield. He wasn’t hopping out of frustration, it turned out; on second look, he was engaging in some well-earned taunting, goading the assembled Dodgers fans after his excellent defensive play.
Profar’s first-inning home run robbery and subsequent gloating was a sign of things to come. In a tense clash between these two Southern California rivals, the Padres came out on top, 10-2, to level the NLDS at a game apiece, battling their opponents both on and off the field throughout the course of this bizarre evening.
The weirdness peaked in the seventh inning, when the game was delayed for over 10 minutes while fans threw things — including baseballs and beer cans — onto the field, pausing the action. While security guards attempted to get the crowd under control, Padres manager Mike Shildt gathered his fielders, issuing a fiery impromptu pep talk as the team huddled around their appointed leader. After the inning, an even larger group meeting was held in the Padres dugout, this time led by the on-the-field leader, Manny Machado, who issued marching orders to the rest of the San Diego roster. Read the rest of this entry »
Justyn-Henry Malloy was in the Atlanta Braves organization when he appeared as a guest on FanGraphs Audio in October 2022, this while finishing up his first full professional season in the Arizona Fall League. He became a Tiger soon thereafter. In early December of that year, Detroit acquired the now-24-year-old outfielder, along with Jake Higginbotham, in exchange for Joe Jiménez.
Then a promising-yet-unpolished 2021 sixth-round pick out of Georgia Tech, Malloy was described in our trade recap as possessing “a combination of power and patience.” It was the latter that stood out most. Plate discipline was the youngster’s carrying tool, as evidenced by a .438 OBP as a collegian and a .408 OBP across three levels in the minors. Despite a higher-than-ideal strikeout rate and questions about his defensive future — he’d recently transitioned to left field from the hot corner — Malloy seemed well positioned to join a young Tigers lineup in the coming seasons.
He arrived, at least in part, this summer. After doing his thing in Toledo — his stat line with the Triple-A Mud Hens this season included a .403 OBP and a 129 wRC+ — Malloy made his MLB debut in early June, and with the exception of brief demotion in late August remained on the roster throughout. His numbers were admittedly not great. In 230 plate appearances against big-league pitching he slashed just .203/.291/.366 with eight home runs. Moreover, a pedestrian 10% walk rate belied the discerning-eye approach that helped him get there.
How different is the present day Justin-Henry Malloy from the up-and-coming prospect I’d talked to two years ago? I asked him that question when the Tigers played in Chicago on the final weekend of the regular season. Read the rest of this entry »
