Archive for Cubs

Ben Clemens’ managerial report cards have become a postseason staple here at FanGraphs. We’re continuing the tradition this year, while expanding the pool of writers who’ll contribute, and I’ll be stepping in with grades for the abbreviated Wild Card Series. Since I’m only going over two or three games per manager, these will be briefer than the report cards for the managers who are eliminated from the playoffs in later rounds. We’ll start with the two eliminated National League managers today, and then get into Joe Espada’s and Chad Tracy’s decisions in a couple of days.

Like Ben, 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 get into it, I’ll caution 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.

And now, away we go.

Craig Counsell

Batting: Incomplete

I was going to give Craig Counsell an A here because the moves he did make were perfectly fine, but that’s giving him far too much credit for three pinch-hitting decisions. The Cubs didn’t hit well this series, through no fault of Counsell’s own, and they have a pretty plug-and-play lineup that became even more rigid after Alex Bregman’s facial fractures limited him to DHing during the team’s anemic offensive showing.

The lineup mirrored the one that had made the Cubs successful basically all season, and the three pinch-hit opportunities Counsell did pull the trigger on were obvious platoon-advantage layups. In Game 1, he hit Michael Conforto (113 wRC+ against righties this season) for catcher Carson Kelly (84) down by eight runs; at that point, leaving Kelly in wouldn’t really have mattered anyway. In Game 2, Tyrone Taylor and his 153 wRC+ against southpaws hit for Michael Busch (who had a still-solid 117 wRC+ against lefties this year) against extremely tough lefty Adrian Morejon; Conforto was used again to hit for Matt Shaw against ninth-inning demigod Mason Miller. Shaw had just 90 plate appearances against righties this year and was 21% below league average by wRC+.

Pitching: C

Normally, I really enjoy watching Counsell manage a pitching staff in the postseason. He’s aggressive. Roles and innings go out the window, and the idea that a starter has to go at least a time or two through the order is nowhere to be found. But I really didn’t see that level of urgency in this series. In Game 1, Matthew Boyd was shaky from literally the first pitch, a changeup that Fernando Tatis Jr. deposited over the center field wall. It didn’t get any better after that; he gave up another homer on another changeup to Manny Machado two batters later. I wouldn’t have necessarily gotten the bullpen up at that point, but I certainly would not have given Boyd the rope to go through the order almost a full second time before pulling him after 17 batters.

Game 2 was a similar story, with Kevin Gausman laboring through the second inning after a strong first. He clearly lacked the higher-end velocity that I thought might show up with the adrenaline of the playoffs but (unfortunately for the Cubs) never did. That created a tighter velocity band between his fastball and splitter, and his whiff rate was a rather mediocre 23%. And yet, he too was permitted to face the top of the order for a second time.

Perhaps Counsell’s reticence to call for a reliever was due to the bullpen’s personnel. The Cubs pitching staff was injury-ravaged the entire season and came into the playoffs without a closer; trade deadline acquisition Ryan Zeferjahn didn’t stabilize the bullpen as hoped, taking a step back after his acquisition from the Angels. But the Cubs had length options in spades, namely David Peterson, Aaron Civale, Shota Imanaga, and Clay Holmes. Imanaga or Holmes may well have been earmarked to start a potential Game 3, but the other options were underutilized. Pairing the righty Civale with the lefty Boyd, or the lefty Peterson with the righty Gausman, and more aggressively managing the starters would have created more inflection points for opposing manager Craig Stammen to have to sort through as he thought about deploying his bench.

Instead, the shaky starters were pushed too far, leading to Game 1 being all but decided by the time Javier Assad was first out of the bullpen, while Daniel Palencia was forced into a dirty inning in Game 2.

Don Mattingly

Batting: B+

The Phillies lineup limped down the stretch, almost blowing the team’s playoff spot in the process. To add injury to insult, Luis Arraez’s badly sprained ankle kept him off the Wild Card roster entirely. That left Don Mattingly with a restricted bench and a handcuffed set of in-game options, not to mention a somewhat makeshift starting lineup. Shielding Brandon Marsh and Justin Crawford from lefties almost entirely in favor of Derek Hill and Bryan De La Cruz made sense, and considering the tools he had at his disposal, I have no qualms with how Mattingly handled his in-game platooning.

Ultimately, I bumped Mattingly down just a hair here for sticking with Trea Turner in the leadoff spot, as he did for the last few games of the regular season while the Phillies were spiraling. I know that a single lineup spot in a handful of games doesn’t actually matter that much, but having a struggling batter guaranteed to get as many or more plate appearances as anyone else on the team still doesn’t sit quite right with me. Additionally, having Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper hit back-to-back (with Bryson Stott just two spots later) created an obvious pocket for Walt Weiss to deploy southpaw Dylan Lee, and even Chris Sale, out of the bullpen. For as bad as Turner’s struggles had been, having a righty amidst the two big lefties may have given Weiss just a little bit more pause when making pitching changes.

Pitching: D+

Like Counsell, Mattingly didn’t have a whole lot to work with here. Jesús Luzardo, Cristopher Sánchez, and Zack Wheeler are awesome. Beyond that, well… it seemed like Jhoan Duran was the only reliever Mattingly thought he could truly trust, and he used him like it in Game 1.

Duran came in to start the seventh inning with the Phillies ahead by a run and Atlanta’s 9-1-2 hitters due up. If things went perfectly, Drake Baldwin and Ronald Acuña Jr.’s last plate appearances — in a Phillies win — would come against Duran in that inning, with Matt Olson looming. With that in mind, I fully endorse using Duran in that spot — and sending him back out for the eighth — with the information Mattingly had at the time. Your best reliever has to face the meat of the lineup and not whoever is due to hit with three outs left in the game. Starting Duran with the nine spot and a clean inning rather than going batter-to-batter with Alex McFarlane or another reliever was perfectly sensical considering Duran’s regular season usage, which almost invariably started with nobody on base.

We have no way of knowing if Duran would have gone three innings and taken it to the house had Austin Riley not taken him deep in the eighth, but there weren’t obvious warning signs showing that he shouldn’t have been allowed to face Riley. Riley was coming off a horrible regular season, and his three-run homer was set up by a well-placed but poorly-hit groundball by Michael Harris II and a yanked knuckle-curve Ozzie Albies hit-by-pitch, this after having secured two outs on three pitches. One poorly-placed fastball doesn’t make leaving Duran in a bad decision; it’s not as if he had thrown 40 pitches and was clearly tiring.

The crushing Game 1 loss left the Phillies with their backs against the wall and Duran unavailable after 27 pitches and nine batters, and considering Donnie Baseball’s hands were tied even more, I thought he mostly did a passable job with his choices in Game 2. If I had been in Mattingly’s shoes, I would have pulled Sánchez immediately after a Baldwin RBI double gave the Braves the lead in the seventh rather than intentionally walking Albies to set up a platoon-advantaged matchup of a gassed Sánchez facing Matt Olson. As the manager there, I’d much prefer a fresher McFarlane against the worse bat of Albies than Sánchez against Olson for a fourth time; that non-move was overly deferential to left-on-left and living and dying with your ace rather than recognizing how little Sánchez had left.

Mattingly and pitching coach Caleb Cotham redeemed themselves to some extent by recognizing that with Duran unavailable, Andrew Painter was the best option out of the bullpen for the eighth and beyond. Sending Painter back out there for the 10th and ultimately letting him face Riley and Harris a second time later in the inning was not without risk, but Painter’s velocity and stuff held, and again, who else did the Phillies really have at that point?

If the series had ended after two games, I’d give Mattingly a solid B or B+ for his moves. But Game 3 was so baffling in its entirety that I tanked his grade a full two letters. The decision to start Aaron Nola over Wheeler frankly defied logic in its reasoning. Nola purportedly got the nod because he was the more rested of the two, with the NBC broadcast also noting that the Phillies thought Wheeler profiled better in relief. But the sequencing of pitcher usage should prioritize the best pitcher, not the guy who’s the most-rested or has the best relief profile. Plus, Wheeler ultimately proved he could be stretched to four innings and 68 pitches — he didn’t exactly turn in a traditional relief outing. (I know, I said I would operate based on the information known to the managers at the time and not what ended up happening, but Wheeler’s eventual workload shows that he had a good amount in the tank, which the Phillies would have been aware of before the game.)

Regardless of how much he had to give, Wheeler having anything at all meant he should have started the game; it guaranteed that his outing would start with the Phillies tied or ahead, not when the club was already playing catch-up. To be clear, Nola was almost surely going to have to pitch at some point in the game — the Phillies put themselves in this mess by taking so long to clinch that Wheeler had to pitch the last game of the season, and he was on short rest in Game 3 — but using him as the opening salvo was the wrong move.

Mattingly was sufficiently aggressive in pulling Nola for Tim Mayza after nine batters faced, though while I’m picking nits, I’ll say I would have brought Mayza (or José Alvarado) in for Dominic Smith in the nine spot rather than have Nola face him. Weiss had been aggressive with pinch-hitting with his down-lineup hitters to that point in the series, and it would’ve been worth finding out if he’d go to his bench early and take one of his weapons for later in the game off the board. Even if Weiss had countered, I’d rather have had a lefty reliever against a righty than Nola against a lefty, as shaky as he had looked to that point.

From there, I can’t quibble with much. Wheeler gave what he could and Duran’s availability was evidently limited to a single inning, with Jonathan Bowlan filling the space between the two arms. Bowlan was a fine choice down by three runs, with McFarlane having pitched the prior two games and presumably available but potentially considerably less sharp. Luzardo was reportedly available for an inning or two despite starting Game 1 and throwing 77 pitches coming back from shoulder inflammation, but I’m okay with not using him as a Hail Mary at that point in the game. Perhaps Wheeler or Duran could’ve instead been stretched to cover the gap that Bowlan filled, but at that point the Phillies were chasing runs, and I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to Mattingly and Cotham for knowing their pitchers’ limits better than I do. The decision to start Nola ultimately had the team playing from behind and using its best arms while trailing, not exactly an unforeseeable outcome.

On Wednesday night, the San Diego Padres eliminated the Chicago Cubs from the playoffs with a 4-1 win. A sold-out, frenzied crowd watched the Friars get to Kevin Gausman early, scoring two runs in the second after a double from Ty France, singles from Jackson Merrill and Xander Bogaerts, and a sacrifice fly from Ethan Salas. A two-run homer from pinch-hitter Gavin Sheets in the fourth put San Diego up by three, and from there, the Cubs barely threatened. It was just the latest big moment in a summer full of them for the Padres: A team that saw its playoff odds drop to 7% in late July will now head to Milwaukee for the NLDS.

When you think about this generation of the San Diego Padres, a number of descriptors may spring to mind. “Exciting” works, for all the stars they’ve rostered and playoff runs they’ve made. “Unpredictable” captures the spirit of a front office bold enough to empty the farm year after year, postseason probability be damned. “Competitive” — you heard all those F-bombs during the game last night, yes? — applies, as might “brash,” particularly if you’re from Los Angeles or Phoenix.

But watching this game, I kept thinking about how poised they looked. It’s an unfamiliar feeling watching this group: Fernando Tatis Jr. is many wonderful things, but there’s very little mellow to him or the team he headlines. In an emotional game, though, which is exactly how they looked, and nobody epitomized that more than San Diego’s young catcher. Read the rest of this entry »

Major league baseball’s postseason derives its spine-tingling intrigue from many sources. There’s the tension — and inherent cruelty — of a months-long season coming down to a handful of games. Perhaps nothing in sports is better than a tightly-contested postseason game entering its final innings, the score so close and the stakes so high that it’s impossible to look away, while also leaving even the most devoted fans wondering if they can bear to watch. From these theatrics we often get epic performances and precise execution. Cam Schlittler dismantling the Red Sox with coiling curveballs and unfair fastballs in front of a bloodthirsty Yankee Stadium crowd, for instance. Grant Taylor’s dastardly 3-2 slider to strike out the potential tying run and end the eighth inning in Tuesday’s Game 1 against the Astros also comes to mind, as does the Braves’ note-perfect double play to squash the Phillies’ ninth-inning rally in their opening round first game.

But sometimes, well, sometimes a similar type of joy comes from the baseball equivalent of a windmill dunk.

The scene? Petco Park, Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres. The Padres hold a comfortable 7-0 lead in the bottom of the seventh inning. The actor? Fernando Tatis Jr., arguably the most exhilarating player in the game when he’s hitting all his marks. Looking to extend the lead — or maybe just have a little fun — Tatis takes off from first base on a 2-1 pitch and is rewarded with a curveball in the dirt, a basestealer’s delight. Tatis not only beats the throw to second, it pings off his sliding leg and into no man’s land, dribbling slowly into shallow left field as the Friar Faithful slowly ascertain what’s about to happen. Tatis is going turbo mode.

Moments like this bring fans to their feet and opponents to their knees. Tatis — who reached first on an infield single, and saw the opportunity to turn that hit’s 49.7 mph exit velocity into a run — seemed hellbent on scoring as soon as the ball caromed away from the Cubs’ infield. Is stealing a base with a touchdown-sized lead sort of reckless and unnecessary? Sure. But these are the playoffs, where it’s never a bad idea to add on, especially when presented with the opportunity to exploit a catcher like Carson Kelly, who struggled with the running game all year. We can assume Tatis merely read the scouting report and was putting that knowledge to good use. But once he took second, surely he’d chill there (with no outs!) and give the heart of the Padres’ order a chance to drive him in. Right? Wrong:

Tatis did not stop at third, and probably didn’t even consider doing so. Why would he? Because his third base coach explicitly told him to, long before Tatis even reached third base? That’s super boring. And Tatis, ever the entertainer, sensed that this blowout needed a little extra oomph before people started leaving to beat the traffic. Flying into third base, completely ignoring Bob Henley’s stop sign, and rounding for home are the sorts of moves that only the game’s great showmen have the ability to recognize, and even fewer have the aplomb to pull off. Lurking backlash for running up the score be damned (thankfully, the internet seemed to agree that this play was so awesome that he was spared any criticism), Tatis wants to remind everyone that he’s capable of things other ballplayers are not.

The Padres’ rambunctious right fielder, who has an 89th-percentile sprint speed, correctly identified that his speed would provide much more exhilaration in this situation than scoring from second on a Dustin Harris single would. Again, pretty unnecessary given the circumstance, but people don’t pay postseason ticket prices to see the mundane. They want to see superstars do superstar things, punctuated with the type of emotional outburst that makes postseason baseball so special. Does one man’s primal scream after diving across home plate register as much of a sound when 47,000 San Diegans are also screaming? Probably not, but it makes for one hell of a highlight:

FERNANDO TATIS JR. ARE YOU SERIOUS?! pic.twitter.com/hsHlrxILZk

— MLB (@MLB) September 30, 2026

None of this even accounts for the fact that Tatis started this baseball bash with a leadoff home run, giving him seven in 17 playoff games and boosting his lifetime postseason OPS to a nirvanic 1.178. All this from a man who finished April with a 75 wRC+ but who put up a 143 the rest of the way, giving him a strong chance to finish in the top five of MVP voting. His 2026 statistics will show yet another season with at least 25 homers and 25 steals — the fourth time he’s done that — with the lowest strikeout rate of his still-ascendant career to boot. But the numbers won’t tell the full narrative arc. His first home run of the regular season famously did not come until late May, and his team’s playoff odds sagged to a season-low 7.4% in July. The Padres were under .500 as late as July 25, and their deadline acquisitions of Casey Mize and Robbie Ray didn’t do much to help. But thanks to a bullpen unit that tied for second all-time in collective WAR, Jackson Merrill’s second-half revitalization, the surprise production of Harris, Ty France, and Samad Taylor, plus Tatis finding some sort of flow state (which may or may not have something to do with planetary alignment), the Padres are poised to advance into October.

The lesson here? Chase wild, thrill-seeking endeavors over playing it safe. This style of play might just be what San Diego needs in a hypothetical Division Series against the Milwaukee Brewers and their tight, fundamentally sound, 103-win operation. Run free, Fernando Tatis Jr., and deal with the consequences later. At the very least, you gave everyone something to marvel at and helped your team to a convincing win. Which is kind of the whole point of playing postseason baseball.

Defensive metrics take a long time to stabilize. As such, I’ve been waiting for a few months to write this article. But the season is over. We’ve gotten as much information as we’re going to get, and Seiya Suzuki is still grading out as one of the best fielders in baseball. His 8 FRV is tied for 12th among outfielders, his 14 DRS is tied for seventh, and his 1.4 DRP ranks 33rd. To illustrate how surprising that is, let me show you what those numbers have looked like over the course of his MLB career:

Wait, sorry, that graph didn’t include the numbers for the 2026 season. That’s my bad. Let me just add them back in real quick:

Yeah, that’s much better. Suzuki certainly looks like a whole new defender out there. As is the case for many players, the three advanced defensive metrics have rarely agreed about Suzuki’s performance. DRP, by far the most conservative, has generally graded him as slightly above average, while Statcast has almost always been the low man. However, there are some general points of consensus here, the biggest being that Suzuki graded out very badly according to all three metrics last year, and then, in his age-31 season, experienced a miraculous reinvention. He’s been consistent, too. Statcast credits him with at least one fielding run in each month of the season. What is going on in right field at Wrigley? Read the rest of this entry »

“He’s not coming out of this game” was the comment from NBC play-by-play announcer Dave Flemming while the broadcast lingered on a shot of Padres Game 1 starter Michael King as he sat in the dugout looking through a notebook during the bottom of the sixth inning. “He’s not reading War and Peace either,” added color commentator Mark Grant. “He’s studying hitters.”

But that’s not to say King and the Padres wouldn’t find certain aspects of War and Peace relatable. Speaking in reference to his own work, Leo Tolstoy acknowledged that War and Peace defies conventional attempts at classification, saying it is “not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle.” Comparatively, analysts have struggled all season to properly define the 2026 Padres. If Tolstoy had scripted the Friars, he might have said they are “not a playoff team, much less a contender, and still less a club in the midst of a rebuild.”

Instead, the Padres were a team that went 30-20 in its first 50 games, 19-31 over the next 50 games, and then finished out the season by going 42-20. On July 22, their odds of making the playoffs bottomed out at 7.4%. Then they went on a run, and just one month later, their odds had surged to 68.9%. But rather than continue that upward trajectory en route to clinching a playoff spot, they first endured a backslide that shrank their odds to 39.2% as recently as September 2. It would have been logical for San Diego to sell at the trade deadline, but Padres POBO A.J. Preller was born without the specific bit of genetic code that allows humans to understand selling as a strategic concept. Instead, they added starting pitchers Robbie Ray and Casey Mize and finished the year as the top-seeded Wild Card team in the National League. 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 »

Thanks to the nor’easter dumping rain up and down the Eastern Seaboard, the Cubs have traveled from Chicago to Boston to St. Petersburg and finally all the way across the country to San Diego in the past five days, but they don’t sound daunted by the challenge. “Just tell us where to play,” manager Craig Counsell told reporters on Friday. “We’ll show up and play.” Well, on Tuesday, the Padres and Cubs face off in the Wild Card Series between the National League’s top two non-division winners. Both teams have plenty of offense, a great defense, and some question marks on the mound. You’re playing in San Diego, Craig. Get yourself one of those burritos with French fries in it and get to the ballpark.

The other Craig – that would be Padres manager Craig Stammen – is in his first season skippering a major league club. Or any club, for that matter. You could view his inexperience as a liability, or you could view his long, recent playing career as a reliever as a tactical advantage for pulling the right bullpen strings in a short series. Either way, you should also probably get yourself a California-style burrito before the game, Other Craig. They’re so good.

The Padres look to be peaking at the right time. They went out and grabbed the first Wild Card spot, ending the season on a 17-3 run, with just enough of a cushion to line up their three best starters for the Wild Card series. But they’re a lot more than a team on a hot streak. At 41-18, they’ve had the best record in baseball since July 24. How long do you need to be playing like the best team in baseball before you simply are the best team in baseball? The Padres have some major concerns when it comes to pitching, but they’ve also got a couple of the little things that can make an outsized difference in a short series. Their rotation is front-loaded. They’ve got an all-world closer. They’re one of the better baserunning and base stealing teams in the game. 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.”

———

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.

———

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.”

———

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.

———

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.

———

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.

———

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

———

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].”

———

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.”

———

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.

———

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.

———

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.’”

———

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.

———

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.

———

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.

Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, and Freddie Freeman were vital contributors to the Braves when they won the 2021 World Series after getting as far as Game 7 of the National League Championship Series against the Dodgers the year before. Half a decade later, all three remain lineup staples — the first two in Atlanta, the third in Los Angeles — but as the postseason approaches, they rate as significant concerns for their respective teams. Though neither Albies nor Riley has turned 30 yet, both have not only had disappointing seasons, they appear to be multiple years into their decline phases, held in place by a combination of loyalty, track record, and long-term extensions. Freeman is 36 years old and a future Hall of Famer nearing the end of his 10th All-Star season, but while he would seem to be on firmer footing, he’s been dealing with a power outage that has coincided with a bout of patellar tendinitis in his right knee. He’s played through it at a time when the Dodgers have dealt with bigger injury concerns, though at least he’s got a first-round bye to help him recover for a few days.

Earlier this week, I went around the diamond to identify the most notable vulnerabilities in the lineups of teams still contending for playoff spots in the American League — a companion of sorts to my annual pre-deadline Replacement Level Killers series, albeit among a more limited field. For the National League, that means the Brewers, Dodgers, Braves, Cubs, and Padres, all of whom have clinched spots (the last two of those on Thursday), plus the Phillies and Diamondbacks. Arizona trails Philadelphia by two games with three to play and has Playoff Odds of just 11.1% before accounting for the complicated and unresolved tiebreaker scenario involving those two teams.

While full-season performances play a significant part in these selections, 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, particularly injury-related ones. Read the rest of this entry »

Ron Coomer was a solid hitter while playing for four teams, mostly the Minnesota Twins, across the 1995-2003 seasons. A corner infielder who took his hacks from the right side, the Chicago-area native counted 92 round-trippers among his 827 base knocks. An All-Star with the Twins in 1999, he later suited up for the Cubs, Yankees, and Dodgers.

He is currently in his 13th season as a color analyst in the Chicago Cubs radio booth. Working along the legendary Pat Hughes, Coomer not only provides insight gleaned from his playing days, he consistently contributes entertaining anecdotes. Given those attributes, he was an ideal candidate for an installment of our Challenging Career Quiz series.

As with most of the dozen players-turned-broadcasters who preceded him, I began by asking who he faced the most times.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Would it be Scott Karl?”

Coomer wasn’t particularly close with his guess. He matched up against the erstwhile Milwaukee Brewer a total of 25 times, whereas he faced Chuck Finley 45 times.

“Really?” Coomer said upon learning it was the longtime California/Anaheim Angels southpaw, against whom he went 11-for-42 with a pair of home runs. “I remember Chuck very well. I remember getting some hits off him, and I really remember that I got a lesson taught to me when I was a young big league player. He threw me a pitch inside and I blasted it, but hit it way foul at the Metrodome. I thought, ‘Well, he’s not throwing that again.’ I was wrong. He doubled up and struck me out on the same fastball inside. I went, ‘Hmmm, OK. Don’t forget that.’ I think this was my first year in the big leagues.” Read the rest of this entry »