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This is the Carlos Rodón the Yankees thought they were getting. When Brian Cashman inked the lefty to a six-year, $162-million contract in December 2022, Rodón was coming off a two-season stretch in which he’d gone 27-13 with a 2.67 ERA, 2.42 FIP, and 12.23 strikeouts per nine innings. From 2021 to 2022, his 11.2 WAR ranked the third among all pitchers. But, like Samson of old, Rodón’s strength deserted him when his beard fell victim to the Yankees’ facial-hair policy. A forearm strain and a hamstring issue limited him to 14 starts in 2023, and when he did take the hill, he ran an unsightly 6.85 ERA. He was better this season, but he was by no means the ace the Bronx faithful were expecting.

That guy finally showed up on Monday night. Rodón powered the Yankees to a 5-2 victory over the Guardians in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, going six dominant innings and allowing one earned run on a solo homer. He blew his fastball by the Guardians and tempted them over and over again into chasing his slider as it burrowed into the dirt. Read the rest of this entry »

The magic of baseball is that every pitch counts and no game is ever truly over. There’s no victory formation, no garbage time with two minutes left in a 30-point blowout. If you have outs left, you can string together hits ad nauseam and win the game. But while that’s technically true, the game doesn’t really work that way in practice. Most games boil down to a few key moments, where the stakes are heightened and the outcome is truly uncertain. Win those moments, and you generally win the game.

In Game 2 of the NLCS on Monday, there were three such moments. You could use leverage index to tell you that. You could also just watch the game and count when there were a lot of runners on. The Mets won 7-3 to even the series at one game each, but if those three moments had broken differently, the game could have too.

The first inflection point in the game came early. The Dodgers went with a modified version of their plan from last Wednesday: a Ryan Brasier-fronted bullpen game. Landon Knack came in for the second inning this time, which makes sense to me as an armchair manager. The Dodgers were going to need at least one less-trusted reliever to throw, because Alex Vesia got hurt in Game 5 of the NLDS and was left off the roster for this series, and Daniel Hudson apparently wasn’t even available on Monday. Why not get Knack in early, against the bottom half of the Mets lineup, and see whether he had it or not? A scoreless outing would set the Dodgers up to aim high-leverage options at the top of the New York order the rest of the day. A bad outing? They could pull the ripcord and keep everyone fresh. Better to find that out in the second inning than the seventh.
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Even in an era brimming with colorful characters and exceptional hurlers, Luis Tiant stood out. The barrel-chested, mustachioed Cuban righty combined an assortment of exaggerated deliveries with a variety of arm angles and speeds that baffled hitters — and tantalized writers — over the course of a 19-year major league career (1964–82) and an affiliation with the game in one capacity or another that extended through the remainder of his life. “The Cuban Dervish,” as Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite christened him in 1975, died last Tuesday at the age of 83. No cause of death was announced.

The son of a legendary left-hander colloquially known as Luis Tiant Sr., the younger Tiant was exiled from his home country in the wake of Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro’s travel restrictions, and separated from his family for 14 years. Against that backdrop of isolation, “El Tiante” went on to become the winningest Cuban-born pitcher in major league history, and to emerge as a larger-than-life character, so inseparable from his trademark cigars that he chomped them even in postgame showers. He spoke softly in a thick accent, but that didn’t prevent his wit and wisdom from getting across, particularly during the latter half of his career, after he emerged from a serious arm injury to become a top big-game pitcher. “In boots, black cap, foot-long cigar and nothing else, he’d hold court with half-hour monologues Richard Pryor would envy,” wrote Thomas Boswell in 1988.

Tiant’s ascendence to iconic status centered around his 1971–78 run with the Red Sox, reaching its pinnacle in their seven-game 1975 World Series defeat, during which he made three starts: a brilliant Game 1 shutout; a gritty Game 4 complete game during which he delivered “163 pitches in 100 ways,” to use the description of Sports Illustrated‘s Roy Blount Jr.; and a valiant, draining Game 6 effort where he faltered late but was saved by Carlton Fisk’s famous body-English home run around Fenway Park’s left field foul pole in the 12th inning. Read the rest of this entry »

LOS ANGELES — There was a glint in the eye of Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. Asked in the pregame press conference if his Game 1 starter, Jack Flaherty, would be making any adjustments after an unsteady start against the Padres in the NLDS, Roberts vamped for a bit before a grin broke across his face.

“I just feel he’s built for moments like this,” Roberts said. “I think the pulse, the stuff. I really feel a good one out of Jack tonight.”

Whether it was a premonition, insider knowledge, or — in the style of his fellow Angelenos — belief in his power to manifest reality, Roberts got exactly what he expected. Flaherty carried the Dodgers in Game 1 of the NLCS on Sunday night, shutting out the Mets for seven innings en route to a casual 9-0 victory and an early series lead.

The right-hander, acquired from Detroit in a trade deadline deal, was in control all night. He allowed two walks and two singles but otherwise held the Mets at bay, striking out six and holding New York to an .233 expected batting average. It felt like the Mets couldn’t figure out whether to sit on Flaherty’s loopy knuckle curve or his firmer gyro slider. Stuck between these two distinct breaking balls, the Mets flailed around, swinging through his breakers, lifting them for harmless fly balls, or — on the rare occasions when they squared him up — sending them straight into the gloves of the Dodgers defense. To right-handed hitters, Flaherty threw a near-identical number of curves and sliders, making it difficult to key in on a specific pitch type. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: Jose Iglesias has issued an appeal to the gods. Iglesias, a pop singer who performs as Candelita and sometime infielder for the New York Mets, has seen his song, “OMG,” become something of a victory anthem. It’s been on signs and shirts and — above all — on repeat, as Iglesias’ club charged from fourth place in June all the way to the NLCS in October.

Now, “OMG” has been given the remix treatment by the Florida-based musician Armando Christian Pérez, aka Mr. 305, aka Mr. Worldwide, aka Pitbull. In his pre-NLCS media availability on Saturday morning, Iglesias said he put Pitbull in contact with the Mets, with an eye toward a potential ceremonial first pitch. For one day only, Mr. 305 would become Mr. 718.

Pitbull is a karmic force of unfathomable strength, and his intercession in this series would be decisive. It should be treated like the Greek and Trojan heroes’ prayers to Zeus or Apollo in The Iliad. So in the interest of filing a series preview of more than 200 words, let’s operate under the assumption that Pitbull will not place his finger on the scale here. (He might have more important things to do, or other places to be. He is, after all, Mr. Worldwide.) What if this contest is decided by mortals? Read the rest of this entry »

Zyhir Hope is one of the youngest and least experienced players participating in the Arizona Fall League. Acquired by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the January deal that sent Michael Busch to the Chicago Cubs, the 19-year-old outfielder has just 315 professional plate appearances, in part because he missed three months this season with a shoulder injury. The raw tools are impressive. Since being selected in the 11th round of last year’s draft out of Stafford, Virginia’s Colonial Forge High School, Hope has slashed .289/.419/.492 with a dozen home runs and a 143 wRC+.

How he would define himself as a hitter is a question he wasn’t quite sure how to answer when I posed it to him on Wednesday.

“I try my best,” responded Hope, who is suiting up for the Glendale Desert Dogs. “I have amazing coaches and a lot of resources to kind of help me find myself, find my swing. I’m working every day, trying to stay consistent, trusting the process.”

Asked if his setup and swing are essentially the same as when he signed, he said that they are. As for how much he studies the intricacies of his craft, let’s just say that Hope is a believer — at least to this point of his young career — in keeping things as simple as possible.

“I don’t really think about that stuff, about mechanics,” explained Hope, who takes his cuts from the left side. “I just go out there and swing, to be honest. I love to just go out there and swing. It’s just feels, man. Just feels. I’ve been that way my whole life. See ball, hit ball.” Read the rest of this entry »

It’s likely not too many people have heard of or seen the movie Wolfs, even though it features Brad Pitt and George Clooney in a crowd-pleaser action movie, throwing witty banter at each other for two hours. However, the film dropped three weeks ago on Apple TV+. No wide release, little marketing power behind it, and available only on a streaming service that lags behind Netflix, Hulu, and other platforms. Likewise, the MLB playoff picture began to take shape around the same time, and casual fans of the sport probably hadn’t heard or seen much of the Detroit Tigers or the Cleveland Guardians, who play in the AL Central and don’t receive much national media attention.

Nevertheless, the two teams met in an ALDS that spanned the full five games. The Guardians outlasted the Tigers 7-3 in Game 5 on Saturday to earn a trip to the ALCS, where they’ll meet the New York Yankees in a best-of-seven series with a World Series berth on the line.

In Wolfs, Pitt and Clooney play fixers who are sent in to clean up messy situations created by people with enough money and power to avoid facing consequences for their actions. The two are assigned to the same job despite this being the type of work better suited to a lone wolf. The dual fixer scenario highlights how the two men who have never worked together still generally follow the same playbook. They ask the same questions, follow the same procedures, and tap into the same network of resources. Both fancy themselves not only the best at what they do, but Clooney declares, “No one can do what I do,” mere moments before another character proclaims, “No one can do what he does,” in reference to Pitt. Read the rest of this entry »

Forget second-guessing — I first-guessed Dave Roberts as the fifth inning of Game 5 ended. It was partially his hugging form – a little too hands-off-y for my tastes – but mostly, it was who he gave the hug to. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history. Eleven months ago, he pitched the game of his life in the biggest spot of his career. His complete game, 14-strikeout masterpiece in Game 6 of the Japan Series was one of the great playoff performances of the 21st century. Against the Padres, he looked nearly untouchable. He rolled through five innings on just 63 pitches, and he seemed to be picking up steam as the game wore on.

Roberts didn’t agree. The top of San Diego’s order was due up for a third time the following inning, and Yamamoto has exclusively turned in short outings since returning from injury in September. He simply hasn’t had a ton in the tank, and the Padres had roughed him up in Game 1 of the series. The Dodgers bullpen has been dominant, and had just turned in nine shutout innings to force this deciding game.

Maybe Roberts felt like he had no choice. Yamamoto’s counterpart, Yu Darvish, was no slouch himself. He’d allowed a second-inning home run to Enrique Hernández, but other than that, he’d given up pretty much nothing. He did it with smoke and mirrors – or, to be more specific, a curveball that vanished like smoke into the night every time the Dodgers took a swing. He threw that hook a whopping 19 times, more than any other pitch, and the Dodgers managed to put exactly one into play, a harmless groundout off the bat of Mookie Betts. Read the rest of this entry »

Well that’s not how it was supposed to go. The Phillies came into this season as one of the World Series favorites, having won the pennant in 2022, then reached the NLCS in 2023. They were the best team in the National League for most of the year, and — having won the club’s first NL East title since 2011 — were expected to at least repeat the deep playoff runs of the past two seasons. Ideally, they’d improve on it and go all the way.

Instead, they’re out on the first hurdle, having lost 3-1 in the NLDS to — and this might be the most galling part — a hated division rival who sneaked into the playoffs on the final day, then needed a lightning strike of a rally off Devin Williams to eke out a three-game win in the Wild Card series. But over four games, the Mets were comprehensively the better team. If Nick Castellanos hadn’t had his eyes glaze over white and milky as he accessed a higher plane of consciousness in the last four innings of Game 2, this could well have been a sweep.

A team this talented and well-resourced would be within its rights to shrug and run it back in 2025. Indeed, that’s what the Phillies did a year ago, when they were nine outs from going up 3-0 in the NLCS, then lost consecutive would-be clinchers at home. Now, having spit the bit twice in as many playoff series, the Phillies are going to have to at least consider changing more than their postgame playlist. Read the rest of this entry »

The postseason is at its most fun when both teams have something to prove. The ZiPS projections may have been bullish on the Cleveland Guardians coming into the season, but the computer was in the minority, with most observers thinking the Minnesota Twins were the clear favorites in the division. The Guardians are no longer the habitual losers they were from the 1960s-80s, but their last World Series championship was still in 1948. For their part, the Detroit Tigers dominated the AL Central 15 years ago, but lost both of their World Series, dropping eight of nine games. And Detroit wasn’t even supposed to be here; the team traded Jack Flaherty at the deadline and if someone had bowled them over with an offer, Tarik Skubal might be wearing a different uniform this month.

Game 4 was do or die for Cleveland, with the Tigers’ plan of “Tarik Skubal and then pitching chaos” winning two of the first three games. With a bullpen whose second-half performance led the American League with a 2.50 ERA and 3.0 WAR (the Tigers weren’t far behind with a 3.00 ERA and 2.8 WAR), the Guardians had high hopes that they’d be able to send the ALDS back to Cleveland for one winner-take-all showdown. And that’s precisely what they did, winning a closely fought game that was one of the most entertaining we’ve seen so far this October.

Cleveland struck first and in old-school fashion, with a single and a stolen base from Steven Kwan, and singles by Kyle Manzardo and Lane Thomas, the latter of which scored Kwan. But Will Brennan’s groundout on a low changeup allowed Detroit starter Reese Olson to escape the first having only surrendered one run. Read the rest of this entry »