Archive for Astros

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.

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 »

Sometimes you have to go with a bullpen game. It isn’t exciting, but it’s just the reality of modern baseball. With the White Sox and Astros each battling right to the end of the season for their respective division titles, it set up a Game 1 matchup of poorly-rested pitching staffs without full, conventional rotations. Both managers looked at the starters they had available on full rest (nobody), looked at the starters they’d already used on short rest in the last week (plenty), and each settled on a bullpen game. And that’s how we ended up with a lengthy, disjointed contest where the outcome felt decided in the first hour.

Will Venable and the White Sox pitching staff put their best foot forward to open Game 1. Hagen Smith might get a playoffs-opening start as a full-time starter before his career is over; the fifth overall pick in the 2024 draft, he ripped through the minors and looked amazing in a multi-inning relief role down the stretch. When people talk about playoff pitching as nine innings of closer-level stuff, they’re imagining guys like Smith handling short stints. He came out fully gassed up, throwing a tick and a half faster than he had all season and ripping off electric sliders at the drop of a hat. He max-efforted his way through three innings of work. Perhaps most impressive, he went after Yordan Alvarez both times he faced him, including with a runner in scoring position, and won both confrontations. Read the rest of this entry »

Credit the Phillies for trying. When I highlighted the worst defenses among contending teams in early July, they were the poster boys, scoring worse than any team besides the decidedly non-contending Rockies in the multi-metric methodology I’ve used for the past four seasons. But when the August 3 trade deadline arrived, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski took a step to improve that shoddy defense, acquiring second baseman Luis Arraez from the Giants and setting off a game of musical chairs that sent incumbent second baseman Bryson Stott to third base, third baseman Alec Bohm to first, and first baseman Bryce Harper to right field. The defense at those spots mostly improved, but last Thursday, with the Phillies in the midst of what would become a 2-6 skid that nearly cost them a Wild Card berth, Arraez sprained his left ankle while trying to avoid a tag at first base. On Monday, interim manager Don Mattingly announced that the 29-year-old infielder will be left off the roster for the team’s Wild Card Series against the Braves.

How Mattingly will proceed with his lineup is unclear. In the three games Arraez missed — including Sunday’s playoff berth-clinching win over the Rays — Edmundo Sosa started at third base twice while Stott returned to second, while in the other game, Bohm and Harper moved back to their original positions as well; they lost that one 12-1.

Below I’ll take a closer look at the metrics underlying the Phillies’ defensive configurations, but long story short, they rate as the playoff team with the worst defense, as they did last year and in 2023. Read the rest of this entry »

No one will be happier than the Houston Astros when the second game of their Wild Card Series starts. See, during the first game, they won’t have a playoff win-loss record, so the fact that they went 81-81 this year, the worst record ever to win a division title, will come up early and often. That’s such a striking fact that we’ll no doubt continue to hear about it throughout the playoffs, but in their first game, it’s going to be one of the main topics of conversation. Houston would love nothing more than to leave behind that pedestrian regular season and get back to what the team normally does in October: maraud through the American League towards the World Series.

The Chicago White Sox, on the other hand, would probably be happy to live in the 2026 regular season forever. Written off before the year even began, they started hot and kept winning. While pundits expected them to continue their slow rebuild, their youth movement bubbled over into major league success far faster than expected. They led the AL Central longer than any other team this season. They won 24 more games than they did last year, which was itself a 19-game improvement on the year before. Unless they win the World Series, the 2026 White Sox will be remembered for their miraculous regular season, not whatever goes on in the few games they play afterwards. But being remembered is for the future; right now, all that matters is avoiding going home for one more series. So while Chicago has blown away expectations and Houston has fallen short of meeting their own, none of that matters for the next two or three games.

The divergent regular season experiences of these two clubs make for an interesting setup for this clash. But that’s just the big picture storyline. The series has several points of interest on both sides that I’m excited to talk about. Read the rest of this entry »

Chase DeLauter is having a strong rookie season. The top hitter on a Cleveland Guardians team that ranks in the bottom half of the junior circuit in runs scored, he has 16 home runs to go with a .287/.363/.457 slash line and a 131 wRC+ over 559 plate appearances. His production — thanks in part to good health — doesn’t come as a surprise. As Eric Longenhagen and Brendan Gawlowski wrote when ranking him atop our 2026 Guardians Top Prospect list, “The oft-injured DeLauter has only played 140 professional games… [but] projects as a middle-of-the-order hitter.”

Approach-wise, he is a hitter who doesn’t get too deep into the weeds when it comes to his craft (my recent conversation with him brought to mind this summer’s Talks Hitting interview with Mike Trout). I had gotten that impression speaking to DeLauter three years ago when he was playing for the High-A Lake County Captains, and not much has changed.

“I try not to think too much about my swing,” the 24-year-old outfielder told me last week. “Of course, there are small adjustments here and there, but I’ve swung the same way my whole life. It’s what got me here, and it is what’s going to carry me through. I’m the same dude, the same guy.”

What works works, but at the same time, the 2022 first-rounder out of James Madison University now has access to more data than ever before. He must tap into it. Right?

“I don’t like looking at that stuff,” DeLauter stated. “I’m more old-school. It’s about what feels good [and] what looks good. That’s what I care about. There are guys who play that kind of game, but they’re better thinkers. I’m not that good of a thinker for things like that. For me, it’s about trusting my roots.”

Fair enough, but even so, he’d been in the lineup against hard-throwing left-hander Payton Tolle the night before, and now he was about to go up against right-handed spin monster Sonny Gray. The approach against such disparate hurlers can’t be exactly the same?

“I mean, it is though,” DeLauter replied to my supposition. “Sit on a fastball and [bleeping] hit it. Whatever they throw me in the strike zone, whether it’s the fastball or something else, if it looks good, I’m going. My goal is to hit the ball as hard as I can and pray to the baseball gods that they take care of it.

“I mean, I’m not going up there blindly,” he went on to clarify. “I am looking at the report in the dugout before I go up to the plate. I have their fastball velocity in the back of my mind, but outside of that, I basically just go up there and hit.”

And again, DeLauter has been hitting very well. With October baseball on the doorstep, how would he assess his season to date?

“My only goal for the year was to stay as healthy as possible and contribute any way that I can,” DeLauter said. “I wanted to play as many games as I could. I’ve had some nicks and bruises here and there, but overall I have done a good job of managing myself, obviously with the help of our staff. I grade my season as a success in that way. The numbers are going to fluctuate from year to year. For me, availability is the best ability. That’s what I’m chasing.”

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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Chase Utley went 1 for 19 against Jake Arrieta.

Justin Turner went 1 for 23 against Jon Lester.

Fernando Tatis Jr. went 1 for 15 against Kyle Hendricks.

Cody Ross went 1 for 15 against Jason Hammel.

Jim Thome went 0 for 18 against John Lackey.

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Pete Crow-Armstrong has batted out of the leadoff position for much of the season, and it’s hard to argue with the results. The Chicago Cubs have scored the most runs in the senior circuit, and the presumptive NL MVP has dominated opposing pitchers to the tune of a 156 wRC+. Moreover, PCA has launched 45 home runs and swiped 41 bags.

I was on hand when Craig Counsell addressed the 24-year-old superstar’s spot in the batting order in late August. One of the things he touched on was the value of having an especially dangerous hitter at the plate to begin the game.

“I think that’s real,” the Cubs manager said in reply to Jeff Agrest of the Chicago Sun-Times (apologies if I’m misremembering who broached the subject). “Jim Leyland used to talk about that a little bit. He led off Cliff Floyd in 1998, I believe. There was just a presence there for the opposing pitcher immediately, from the get-go, that I thought he was right about. Pete is absolutely providing that.”

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The Cubs won a Wild Card series against the San Diego Padres last year, only to then lose to the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLDS. How are they set up to perform in the about-to-begin postseason? Jed Hoyer, the team’s president of baseball operations, was pragmatic when I asked him that question on Friday.

“I’ve been doing this too long to try to predict that,” Hoyer stated. “There are years you go in feeling fantastic — everyone is healthy, everything is lined up — and you play poorly. There are also years where things are in question and you go in and play great. In the playoffs you’re playing against a really good opponent. We’re a really good team, but trying to predict how we are going to perform based on how we’re performing now… I don’t think that really ever bears fruit. Like I said, we have a good team and we’re going to play a good team. Hopefully we’ll show our our best selves when we get there.”

The Cubs came into today’s regular season finale having lost 11 of their last 18 games.

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A quiz:

Every active franchise has thrown at least one no-hitter in the modern era (since 1901). Which franchise has produced the most no-hitters?

Bonus question: Which pitcher threw the most no-hitters for that franchise?

The answer can be found below.

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NEWS NOTES

SABR announced the finalists for its Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award. More information on the finalists — Sarah Langs, Jeneane “Lefty” Lesko, Maud Nelson, Janet Marie Smith, and Lisa Turbitt — can be found here.

Denny Matthews called his 8,000th game for the Kansas City Royals on Friday. The 83-year-old broadcaster was behind the mic when the franchise played its first game in 1969, and he plans to return for his 59th season in 2027.

The Detroit Tigers announced multi-year contract extensions with television play-by-play voice Jason Benetti and radio play-by-play voice Dan Dickerson. As Tigers fans can attest, both are among the best in the business.

Jim Rittwage, a right-hander who logged a 4.15 ERA over 26 innings while appearing in eight games for the Cleveland Indians in 1970, died on August 28 at age 81 (per Baseball Player Passings). On September 25 of that year he moved from the mound to third base for three batters, then returned to the hill. Six days earlier he’d gone the distance in his only career start, earning his lone win.

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The answer to the quiz is the Dodgers, with 22. The answer to the bonus question is Sandy Koufax, with four.

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Anthony Seigler was solid with the stick this season. Serving in a part-time role with the Boston Red Sox, the 27-year-old infielder not only logged a 102 wRC+ over 173 plate appearances, he contributed multiple clutch hits along the way.

Who most stood out among the pitchers he faced?

“I would say Dylan Cease and Yoshinobu Yamamoto,” Seigler told me recently. “One of those two. Pick your poison. Both know how to command the zone and keep you off balance. It’s fun to compete against them, but yeah, those are two pitchers where I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a pretty good arm.’”

Seigler went 0-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts versus Yamamoto, and 0-for-3 with a strikeout and a walk versus Cease. Outside the similarities noted above, how do the right-handers compare?

“As far as movement type and how they’re going to attack you, they’re different,” said Seigler. “Yamamoto has great stuff and can overpower you, but he’s really more moving the ball around, moving your eyes. He does that really well. Cease is more like a power pitcher. He has a great mix. But they both know how to locate and keep you off balance. That’s what makes them difficult, and why they’re two of the best pitchers in [MLB].”

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Some have speculated that the Arizona Diamondbacks will part ways with Torey Lovullo if the team fails to reach the postseason. Were that to happen — the Snakes’ fate will be determined this afternoon — assigning blame to the franchise’s all-time-winningest manager seems a stretch at best. Despite multiple issues beyond his control — Ketel Marte’s AWOL episode is especially notable — Lovullo’s club comes into the final day of the campaign with 86 wins, a total exceeding that of three AL playoff-qualifiers. Dismissing him on an October-or-bust premise would be unwarranted.

Those things said, I recently talked to Lovullo about the collaborative relationship he has with his bench coach, Jeff Banister. In-game decisions are a big part of it.

“They’re fast-moving conversations,” explained Lovullo, who is in his 10th season at the helm in Arizona. “Banny gives me simple reminders. He gives me suggestions. He gives me his gut feel. Then we chop it up as fast as we possibly can to make the decision within the game.

“We trust our instincts and we trust the matchups,” the veteran manager went on to say. “We’re drawing from the same resources throughout the course of the game. Projections for certain matchups are provided to us. We’re looking at the same data points, and we’re watching the game with the same type of eyes, so we come to some really fast conclusions. Putting the guys in the best position isn’t easy, but we draw from a lot of resources and are looking through the same scope every single inning.”

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Ja-wook Koo is slashing .369/.456/.576 with 15 home runs and a 174 wRC+ for the KBO’s Samsung Lions. The 33-year-old outfielder played for Team Korea in this year’s WBC.

Yeong Hyun Park is 6-0 with 27 saves and a 2.54 ERA over 56-and-two-thirds innings for the KBO’s KT Wiz. The 22-year-old right-hander, who also represented Korea in the WBC, has 87 saves across the past three seasons.

Andrés Machado is 3-1 with 35 saves and a 1.20 ERA over 52-and-a-third innings for NPB’s Orix Buffaloes. A member of Team Venezuela in this year’s WBC, the 33-year-old right-hander pitched for the Kansas City Royals in 2017, and for the Washington Nationals from 2021-2023.

Darwinzon Hernández has a 1.51 ERA, a 2.70 FIP, and a 29.9% strikeout rate over 44 appearances comprising 41-and-third innings for NPB’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. The 29-year-old Venezuelan southpaw pitched for the Boston Red Sox from 2019-2022.

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A few accomplishments, milestones, and leaders:

Matt Olson is poised to play in his 944th consecutive game today. In doing so, he will have appeared in all 162 in each of the past five seasons.

Kenley Jansen goes into the final game of the season with 498 career saves, Manny Machado with 399 career home runs.

Pete Alonso leads the junior circuit in home runs (43) and RBIs (113). Along with Yordan Alvarez Junior Caminero, and Pete Crow-Armstrong, Alonso is the only player in MLB to both drive in and score at least 100 runs.

Gabriel Moreno leads the senior circuit with a .311 batting average, while Luis Arraez — the three-time batting champion is unlikely to play today due to an ankle injury — is at .310. If Moreno finishes on top he will be the first catcher to lead the league since Buster Posey in 2012.

Eduardo Valencia’s .344 batting average and 180 wRC+ are tops in the junior circuit among batters who have come to the plate at least 100 times. The Detroit Tigers rookie has 134 PAs.

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Left on the cutting-room floor from Tuesday’s Challenging Career Quiz installment with Ron Coomer were his memories of a southpaw who amassed 219 wins and 42.5 WAR while pitching for six teams over 20 big-league seasons.

“I remember some good matchups against guys who played the cat-and-mouse game with you,” the infielder-turned-Chicago-Cubs-broadcast-analyst told me. “Kenny Rogers was one guy like that. He was great at pitching to a side of the plate. The ball would get there in three different ways. It would get there this way, that way, the other way, cutting it, sinking it — and they would all be on the inside corner or just off the inside corner. He would knock you down, too. There was that intimidation factor he wanted to play with you. And he was good. He ended up being my teammate and I got to watch it from third base. There would be someone at the plate and I’d be thinking, ‘This guy doesn’t have a chance.’”

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A random obscure former player snapshot:

Scott Loucks recorded the first of his 21 career hits for a team that reached the postseason for the first time in franchise history. Pinch-hitting for Joaquin Andujar on September 3, 1980, the Anchorage, Alaska-born outfielder stroked a single off of John Candelaria in a 10-4 Houston Astros loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium. The knock came in his initial time at the dish. Two days earlier, he had made his MLB debut as a late-inning defensive replacement for longtime Astros stalwart Terry Puhl.

Five years later, he notched the last of his hits in flip-flopped fashion. Wrapping up his 73-game major-league tenure in a Pirates uniform, Loucks lashed a double off of Houston southpaw Bob Knepper in a late-May affair at the Astrodome. His geographical background also bears noting. One of 13 Alaska natives in MLB history, Loucks attended high school in Hawaii, a state that has produced 50 big-leaguers.

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans and Ken Rosenthal teamed up to explain why the Cincinnati Reds remain in limbo while other small-market clubs succeed.

Jarren Duran has 20 home runs, 21 stolen bases, and a 70 wRC+. Talk Sox’s Maddie Landis explained how the outfielder’s 20/20 season is the worst in MLB’s live-ball era.

Lookout Landing’s Kate Preusser checked in with Mississauga, Ontario native Josh Naylor, who is wrapping up his first full season as a Seattle Mariner.

Former Chicago White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper passed away earlier this week at age 70. Scott Merkin has the story at MLB.com.

MLB.com’s Thomas Harding wrote about how the Rockies’ rotation shortcomings have the club searching for answers going into 2027.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Eight pitchers have been credited with 15 or more wins this season, with none of them reaching the 20 mark. In 1976, a total of 34 pitchers were credited with 15 or more wins, with eight of them reaching the 20 mark.

Justin Verlander has fanned 3,560 batters and allowed 374 home runs. Max Scherzer (who is scheduled to pitch today) has fanned 3,550 batters and allowed 369 home runs.

The five teams in the AL West have combined for a minus-469 run differential.

Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Chandler Simpson has stolen 46 bases in 60 attempts.. The Houston Astros have stolen 50 bases in 72 attempts as a team.

The Cleveland Guardians are the only team that hasn’t had a batter hit at least 20 home runs this season. Angel Martinez leads the club with 18.

Chicago White Sox pitchers have plunked 90 batters, the most in the majors. White Sox batters have reached base via a HPB a total of 100 times, tying them with the Los Angeles Angels for the most in the majors.

Colson Montgomery’s 225 strikeouts are the most in a single season in MLB history. Moreover, since July 28 the 24-year-old shortstop is batting .150 and has fanned 94 times in 218 trips to the plate. Over that same span, Munetaka Murakami is batting .167 and has fanned 97 times in 245 trips to the plate.

On today’s date in 1935, the Chicago Cubs won their 21st consecutive game — and their 100th on the season — to clinch the National League pennant. Stan Hack tripled home the deciding run in the ninth inning of the 5-3 conquest of the St. Louis Cardinals.

On today’s date in 1964, Johnny Callison launched three home runs, only to have his effort go for naught as the Philadelphia Phillies fell to the Milwaukee Braves by a score of 12-8. The defeat, their seventh in a row, knocked the Phillies out of first place. They went on to lose the next three, completing a collapse from what had been a six-and-half-game lead with just 14 games remaining on the schedule.

On tomorrow’s date in 1911, the New York Highlanders (they became known as the Yankees two years later) stole 15 bases and were caught stealing five times in a 19-12 win over the St. Louis Browns.

Players born on today’s date include Bo Hart, a second baseman whose MLB career comprised 88 games for the St. Louis Cardinals across the 2003-2004 seasons. The Creswell, Oregon native began with a bang… only to fizzle and fade away. Hart went 28-for-68 (.412) over his first 15 contests, then just 56-for-241 (.232) thereafter. His given first name was Bodhi.

Also born on today’s date was Doug Konieczny, who along with Steve Gromek, Ted Kazanski, John Paciorek, and Tom Paciorek, is one of five players in MLB history to have attended Hamtramck, Michigan’s St. Ladislaus High School. A right-hander, Konieczny went 7-18 with a 4.93 ERA over 221 innings with the Houston Astros from 1973-1977.

We’ve made it to the final weekend of the regular season, and while all but two of the 12 playoff teams have been determined, two divisions titles and one Wild Card berth are still up for grabs. Both the Guardians and White Sox have already clinched a spot in the American League bracket, but only one game separates them in the standings. Cleveland, the first-place team, needs to win the division outright because Chicago owns the tiebreaker. The stakes are high; the victor earns the second seed in the league, a first-round bye, and home-field advantage in the Division Series, while the loser has to play the entire best-of-three Wild Card Series on the road.

The club that finishes second will face either the Astros or the Rangers, who both lost Friday night and fell to 79-81. There’s a very real chance that AL West winner will become the first playoff team ever to finish a full-length season with a losing record. Houston holds the tiebreaker. This race is emblematic of two things wrong with the current rules: 1) We should not allow losing teams to make the postseason, and 2) ties should be settled by one-game playoffs, not math. As if to provide further support for my second point, over in the National League, the surging Diamondbacks are making a last-gasp bid to overcome the reeling Phillies for the final Wild Card spot. Riding a six-game winning streak into Saturday, Arizona is just one game behind the Phillies, but crucially, the Snakes would get in if they finish with the same record. The two teams split their six regular-season matchups — head-to-head record is the first tiebreaker — but the Diamondbacks have the better intra-divisional record, which is the second tiebreaker. Goofy! It’s still going to be a fun baseball weekend, and the playoffs are sure to be a thrill, but think of how much more excitement there would be if we had not one, not two, but three Game 163s on Monday. What could have been.

Before we get to this week’s mailbag, I have one quick programming note. We’ll still be doing our weekly mailbag during the postseason, but we might move around the specific day it runs depending on the playoff schedule. As we did last year, our plan is to do a mailbag before every postseason round, beginning with the Division Series. Also, in case you missed David Appelman’s announcement from Thursday, this year you will need a FanGraphs Membership to read our postseason coverage. You can find all the details in David’s post, but considering our mailbags are also exclusive to FanGraphs Members, most of you reading this probably won’t notice the change. However, what you will notice and appreciate is the other major part of David’s announcement: This October, we’re committed to having staff at every World Series game, allowing for additional reported work and greater access to players and team personnel, with more in-person coverage throughout the earlier rounds as well. In recent years, we’ve had in-person World Series coverage only when the games were played in a city where one of our writers lived. Now, we’ll be there no matter what. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to both keep reading this mailbag and get access to our postseason coverage, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the last 2026 edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. The regular season is headed to a conclusion, with two division titles and four playoff spots still up for grabs. For me, late September is a great time to catch my breath and watch a little meaningless baseball as a palette cleanser before flipping the switch to the maximum-intensity world of October. So while there are some consequential games this week, this column isn’t about those. It’s about some goofy things I saw in low-stakes matchups, a player I enjoyed watching all season, and some voices that have enriched my baseball-viewing experience over the years. With my customary acknowledgment of Zach Lowe of The Ringer, who popularized the format this column shamelessly copies, let’s get started.

1. Professional Courtesy
Baseball players on opposite teams are competitors, but they’re also workers in the same field. Yes, you’d like to beat the other team, but your counterpart on their squad is one of the people who can most relate to your daily struggles. You might compete against them 10 times a year; the other 355 days, your lives are far more alike than different. Catchers have a particular bond; let people throw projectiles right at you all day, and you’ll naturally gain a lot of respect for other people willing to do the same thing.

When the Brewers and Phillies squared off this week, the stakes were moderate. The Brewers hadn’t clinched the top overall seed yet, though they were headed there. (They did last night, when the Dodgers lost to the Padres.) The Phillies haven’t yet clinched a playoff spot, though again, the writing is on the wall. For the most part, it was a playoff tuneup for both sides. In the top of the ninth on Tuesday, with the Phillies up three and cruising home, William Contreras decided that he might as well burn a challenge:

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The Yankees had to make do without Aaron Judge for all of June, July and August due to a stress fracture in his right first rib. With the days on the calendar dwindling and the AL East title still in play — which is no longer the case after the Rays clinched on Tuesday night — Judge bypassed a rehab assignment, but once he returned, he played in just seven games before landing back on the injured list due to a right calf strain. Both the slugger and the team took great pains to avoid discussing the injury’s specificity and timeline for recovery until Tuesday, when manager Aaron Boone revealed that Judge has a “moderate grade” strain, received a platelet-poor plasma injection, and isn’t expected to be available for the team’s Wild Card Series rematch against the Red Sox.

While deadline acquisition Heliot Ramos has heated up after a very slow start to his pinstriped career, the Yankees’ right field situation is one of the more glaring potential trouble spots among American League contenders. As the playoffs approach, teams no longer have a chance to upgrade from outside their organizations and instead must make do with the talent on hand. What follows here is a look at the most vulnerable teams at each position — something of a companion to my annual pre-deadline Replacement Level Killers series, with a focus on the teams that still have a chance to make the playoffs. For the AL, that means the Rays, Yankees, and Red Sox — all of whom have clinched spots — plus the Guardians, White Sox, Rangers, and Astros, who are battling for the other two division titles and the third Wild Card spot. I’ve taken the Blue Jays out of consideration, as their Playoff Odds now start with a zero in front of the decimal. While full-season performances play a significant part here, I’m more concerned with who’s worst now, with injuries and adjustments in mind. Each position has a headliner (or two, if it’s a job share), but at several positions, I’ve noted other teams with concerns. A companion National League piece will follow. Read the rest of this entry »

With one week to go in the regular season, the playoff field is nearly set in the National League, though it’s anything but settled in the American League, with two of the three division leaders — two different ones since I last checked in — ahead by just one game and those races spilling over into the battle for the third and final Wild Card spot. We’re not going to get any tiebreaker games due to the fun police and the playoff format change put into effect by the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, but it’s entirely possible a playoff spot — and perhaps even a division title — will be decided on the basis of MLB’s tiebreaker procedures.

Since the situation is simpler in the NL, I’ll start there. The Brewers (98-58) lead the Dodgers (96-60) in the race for the top seed, and own the tiebreaker there on the basis of a 4-3 season series advantage. According to our Playoff Odds, as of Monday at 9 AM, the Braves (92-64) have just a 0.9% chance of bypassing either Milwaukee or Los Angeles. The Brewers — who have a magic number of one to clinch a first-round bye — finish out with a visit to the Phillies (86-70) before coming home to face the Cardinals (76-80), while the Dodgers host the Padres (87-69) for three and then travel to the Giants (62-90), with the Braves hosting the Reds (72-84) and then visiting the Marlins (76-80).

The Padres have taken advantage of a soft spot in their schedule — series against the sub-.500 Nationals, Giants, Rockies, and Marlins, after taking two out of three from the Yankees — to win 13 out of their last 14 games. Not only did that push them past the Diamondbacks (now 82-74), whom they trailed by half a game before the start of the surge, but they’ve tied the Cubs (87-69) for the top NL Wild Card spot, with the Phillies a game behind them. The Phils have been phlailing lately, going 8-10 in September and failing to win a series since beating the Diamondbacks at the start of the month. Their slide gave the Braves enough room to clinch the NL East title on Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »