Welcome to the final Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week of the year. As we prepare to leave the normal cadence of regular season baseball behind, we’re all already mentally preparing for the madcap pace of the playoffs, when the games are fewer but more momentous. This last week is more of a transitional phase; some of the series are monumentally important, while others feature the Royals and Angels (just to pick a random set) playing out the string. Maybe this is the best time for baseball, actually. If you’re looking for it, there’s more drama in the back half of September than in any other regular season month. But if you just want silly baserunning in inconsequential games, or role players making the most of big opportunities, there’s plenty of that too. I love October baseball, but I’ll be sad when September ends.

Of course, no Five Things intro would be complete without me thanking Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the format I’ve shamelessly copied. So Zach, I hope your Mets fandom isn’t too painful this week. To the things!

1. Playoff Races
Obviously. If this isn’t the thing you like most in baseball this week, you’re probably a Mets or Tigers fan, and even then, you’re probably lying to yourself a little. The thrill of a pennant race coming down to the wire is one of the great joys of this sport. Most of the time, I like baseball because no single outcome matters all that much. Lose a game? Play the next day. Strike out in a big spot? Everyone does that sometimes. Give up a walk-off hit? I mean, there are 162 games, you’re going to give up some walk-offs. But every so often, as a treat, it’s fun when the games suddenly transmute from seemingly endless to “must have this next one.”

Has the new playoff format played a role here? It’s hard to argue it hasn’t. This is the fourth year of the 12-team field, and it’s the fourth straight year with an unsettled playoff race in the last week of the season. It’s the third straight year with multiple good races, in fact. That’s not exactly unimpeachable evidence – the final year of the old format saw its own thrilling conclusion to the regular season – but the point is that when the last week of the regular season is filled with drama, it makes for a great playoff appetizer. I’m still unsure what the new format does to the competitive structure of the game, and I haven’t liked the way trade deadlines work when the line between contender and pretender is so hazy. But in late September, it sure seems to be giving me more of what I want. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t tell you why the structure of the big leagues seems to bend towards close races. On August 31, the teams on the right side of the playoff cut line were all at least 2 1/2 games ahead of their nearest competitors. All baseball has done since then is collapse into chaos. The Mets have gone 8-13 to fall into peril, though that’s nothing compared to the Tigers, who have gone 5-15 over the same stretch. The Guardians are an absurd 18-5. Playoff fortunes have ebbed and flowed mightily.

Which players have featured most prominently in those games? There are any number of ways of answering that question. You could look for the highest WAR among contenders, the worst ERA or the most blown saves. You could use fancier statistics like Championship Win Probability Added, which accounts for how much each game mattered to each team. You could use the eye test, honestly – I can tell you from how frustrated Framber Valdez has looked this month that he’s not helping the Astros.

But the closest thing to matching the way I experience baseball, as a fan, is regular ol’ win probability added. My brain doesn’t distinguish between the importance of games when a team is in the pennant race. They’re all important. You can’t lose a random game on September 7 when you’re three back in the standings; you never know when the team you’re chasing will lose five in a row. Championship Win Probability Added distinguishes between whether your team is a long shot or playing from ahead, but when I’m rooting for one of the teams jockeying for a playoff spot, I don’t do that. I don’t think I’m alone in this, either. If every game in the race is equally important to you, Win Probability Added will measure the players who have mattered most in that framework. So I’ve compiled a list of notable players from the past month in each playoff race – and as a little bonus, I threw in a few players who have either stymied contenders or gotten trounced by them. Read the rest of this entry »

With just 12 days left to go in the regular season, two teams — the Brewers and Phillies — have clinched playoff berths, and on Monday the latter became the first to win its division. From among the four other division races, only in the AL West and NL West are the second-place teams closer than five games out, putting the chances of a lead change in the range of low-fat milk. With the exception of those two races, the lion’s share of the remaining drama centers around the Wild Card races.

Once upon a time, this space would be filled with my reintroduction of the concept of Team Entropy, but through the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, Major League Baseball and the players’ union traded the potential excitement and scheduling mayhem created by on-field tiebreakers and sudden-death Wild Card games in exchange for a larger inventory of playoff games. The 12-team, two-bye format was designed to reward the top two teams in each league by allowing them to bypass the possibility of being eliminated in best-of-three series. Often, however, things haven’t worked out that way, because outcomes in a best-of-five series are only slightly more predictable than those of a best-of-three.

Aside from the Dodgers beating the Padres in last year’s Division Series, every National League team that has earned a first-round bye under the newish system had been bounced at the first opportunity, with the Dodgers themselves falling in rather shocking fashion in both 2022 and ’23. The AL has had only one such upset in that span: the 2023 Rangers, who beat the Orioles and went on to win the World Series. Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time — as of June 12, to be exact — the Mets had the best record in the majors (45-24) and a 5 1/2-game lead over the Phillies in the NL East. That afternoon, however, their rotation took a major hit when Kodai Senga strained his right hamstring. He hasn’t fully recovered his form, and it’s been mostly downhill for the Mets since then, even with their attempts to fortify their bullpen at the trade deadline, the arrival of some impressive rookie starters, and an MVP-caliber stretch by Juan Soto. The team entered Sunday on an eight-game losing streak that pushed them to the brink of elimination from the NL East race, and in danger of falling out of the third NL Wild Card spot.

The combination of Pete Alonso’s walk-off three-run homer off the Rangers’ Luis Curvelo, and losses by both the division-leading Phillies and the Giants (who now trail the Mets by 1 1/2 games in the Wild Card race) helped the Mets stave off those ignominious scenarios for the moment. Even so, the Phillies’ magic number to clinch is one, as they lead the NL East by 12 games with 12 to play. Not only are the Giants (75-74) on the Mets’ tail, but the Diamondbacks (75-75) are just two games behind, with the Reds (74-75) 2 1/2 behind. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA — Nostalgia for the 1990s is so back! The Mets are running back Generation K, and at an interesting time. As it stands, their playoff rotation could include three pitchers who were in the minors in mid-August: Nolan McLean, Brandon Sproat, and Jonah Tong. At least, all three should figure somewhere on the postseason roster, should the Mets stop playing with their food and sew up the playoff berth they’ve had a hand on all season.

I’m old enough to remember the 90s the first time around — an era of flared jeans and futurism, much of which was rebadged 1960s nostalgia. Not least in Mets pitching prospects, when Bill Pulsipher, Paul Wilson, and Jason Isringhausen were viewed as the second coming of Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and Gary Gentry and/or Nolan Ryan.

There is nothing new under the sun. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Mets signed Juan Soto to a 15-year deal last December, they expected him to be the heaviest hitter on a contending team, a player who would factor into the Most Valuable Player voting. Odds are that they didn’t price his base-stealing ability into his record-setting, $765-million contract, yet with just under three weeks remaining in the regular season, the 26-year-old slugger has not only set a career high in steals, but he might very well become the first player this season to join the 30-homer, 30-steal club.

Despite a slow start that included just three home runs and two stolen bases through the end of April, Soto has clubbed 38 homers and is just three away from his career high, set last year with the Yankees. He’s already had additional seasons with 34 and 35 homers (2019 and ’23, respectively), so any total in that range is hardly out of the norm. What’s remarkable is that he now has 29 steals, a country mile beyond his previous career high (he stole 12 in both 2019 and ’23), and more than he swiped from 2022–24 combined (25 steals). At this writing, he’s third in the NL in homers but 11 behind leader Kyle Schwarber. By comparison, he’s fifth in the league in steals but just eight off the lead, held by Oneil Cruz.

Soto stole seven bases (in 11 attempts) last year, and averaged about nine steals for the 2021–24 span. He added five steals in May to those two in April, but he stole just two more in June. Once July hit, though, and especially after the All-Star break, he started running more frequently, with four of his six steals for the month coming in a nine-game span from July 19–28. He’s maintained a similar clip since then, with 11 steals in August — tied with Jazz Chisholm Jr. for the major league lead in that month — and three more in September. That’s a major league-leading 18 steals in 20 attempts over his past 45 games, a 65-steal pace! Chisholm is second over that same span with 17. Read the rest of this entry »

As both a player and a manager, Davey Johnson was a standout and a man ahead of the curve. In a 13-season playing career that spanned from 1965 to ’78, primarily as a second baseman with the Orioles and Braves, he made four All-Star teams, won three Gold Gloves, played in three World Series, and set a home run record. In a 17-season managerial career that stretched from 1984 to 2013, covered five different teams, and included a decade-long hiatus, Johnson won six division titles, one Wild Card berth, a championship, and two Manager of the Year awards. He’s indelibly linked to the Mets, first for making the final out in their 1969 upset of the Orioles and then for piloting their ’86 juggernaut to a World Series win at the peak of a six-season run.

Johnson had a knack for turning around losing teams, and for connecting with his players. Decades before the analytical revolution took hold in baseball, he was a pioneer in the use of personal computers by managers, at a time when the machines were still a novelty. Drawing upon his offseason studies at Trinity University — from which he earned a B.S. in mathematics — and Johns Hopkins, as well as his experience playing for Earl Weaver with the Orioles, he was renowned for using statistical databases to figure out probabilities and optimize his lineup and bullpen matchups.

Johnson, who last worked in baseball as a consultant for the Nationals in 2014, died on Friday in Sarasota, Florida following a long illness. He was 82 years old. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you a fan of a team in playoff position? Are you tearing your hair out because their bullpen has been completely unable to get anybody out over the past couple weeks? Is this starting to get creepy? Does it feel as if I’m staring straight into your very soul? Worry not. I’m just playing the odds. Below is a table that shows bullpen performance over the last 14 days, but only for the 13 teams with at least a 12% chance of making the playoffs. I’ve highlighted the teams whose ERA ranks in the bottom half of the league over that stretch:

There are the Red Sox in fifth place, looking solid with a 3.40 ERA. But, uh, this not exactly an encouraging sign for all these playoff teams. That’s a lot of yellow. Boston is the only team in the top 10; no one else has a bullpen ERA below 4.00. Only five of these teams are even in the top half of the league. The Mets, Yankees, Cubs, and Blue Jays all have ERAs over 5.00.

The Brewers are tied with the Twins for the league lead with five blown saves in the past two weeks. The Blue Jays and Phillies each have four. Just a reminder: The Brewers have the best record in baseball, and the Blue Jays and Phillies are tied for the second best. All of sudden, none of them can close out a game to save their lives.

Once again, I need to disavow any supernatural influence here. I don’t think there’s a paranormal reason that seemingly every good baseball team’s bullpen is in a rut. It’s mostly a coincidence. If we look at FIP, things are much more reasonable. Six of our 13 teams are in the top 10, and only four are in the bottom half of the league. That’s pretty much what you’d expect. Most of the good teams have strong bullpens. This is a short stretch, a small sample of innings, and a volatile cohort to start with. The Brewers’ bullpen has an excellent 3.29 FIP over the past two weeks, but it’s blown five saves anyway. Stuff happens.

I’ll break down the four teams at the bottom of the table along with a couple others I found noteworthy due to injury reasons, or because I’m worried about them heading into the playoffs, but that’s mostly what I wanted to tell you. All the bullpens seem to be blowing up right now. It’s weird. If you’re tearing your hair out because we’re in September and your bullpen can’t hold on to a lead, relax. First, there may be enough time to right the ship. Second, whoever you’re facing in the playoffs can’t hold a lead right now either, unless it’s the Red Sox (who gave up eight runs in a bullpen game last night, presumably because that’s what all the cool kids are doing).

Mets
The Mets lead the league with a whopping six relievers on the IL right now: Reed Garrett, Drew Smith, Danny Young, A.J. Minter, Max Kranick, and Dedniel Núñez. Smith, Minter, Kranick, and Garrett had all been pitching well before their injuries. That’s four good relievers lost, and only Garrett has a chance to return this season. That’s how the Mets ended up claiming Wander Suero, who has thrown just 6 1/3 major league innings in the last two seasons combined, from the Braves off waivers yesterday. Suero has a 1.35 ERA and 2.63 FIP over 46 2/3 innings in Triple-A Gwinnett, and he will get the chance to prove that’s not a fluke. The Mets called him up less than half an hour ago to take the spot of the struggling Kodai Senga, who has been optioned to Syracuse.

More than that, Ryan Helsley has been completely ineffective since the deadline trade that brought him to New York from St. Louis. He had a 3.00 ERA and 3.56 FIP as a Cardinal, and he has a 11.45 ERA and 6.50 FIP as a Met. Helsley said last week that he thinks he’s been tipping pitches. With any luck, he’ll get that sorted out. If he does that and Garrett comes back pitching well, they’ll join Tyler Rogers, lefties Brooks Raley and Gregory Soto, and closer Edwin Díaz, all of whom are putting up good numbers this season. Somehow the Mets could still put together a solid bullpen going into the playoffs.

Dodgers
The Dodgers’ relievers rank third in the majors with 5.2 WAR this season, but that’s mostly because they’ve been asked to throw 570 1/3 innings, the most in baseball. At the moment, RosterResource says they’re tied with the Brewers at five injured relievers, one behind the Mets. They lost Evan Phillips to Tommy John surgery in May, deadline acquisition Brock Stewart went on the IL with shoulder inflammation almost immediately after the trade, and Alex Vesia strained an oblique on August 21. Jack Dreyer, Justin Wrobleski, and Ben Casparius are the only relievers on the team with FIPs below 3.50. Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates are load-bearing pieces who have taken major steps back and lost time to injury besides, and yet the Dodgers are still one of the higher teams on the list. After missing time with forearm tightness earlier in the season, Blake Treinen has allowed just two runs in his last 12 appearances, and his ERA is down to 3.00.

Yankees
The headliner here is the 5.60 ERA that Devin Williams has put up this season, but as Michael Baumann wrote earlier today, the underlying numbers aren’t that bad. They’re maybe even good. The Yankees lost Jake Cousins to Tommy John surgery in June and Jonathan Loáisiga to a flexor strain in August. Brent Headrick is also on the IL after taking a line drive off his pitching arm. The Yankees have also suffered blowups from Paul Blackburn and Yerry De los Santos. They pulled the plug on deadline acquisition Jake Bird almost immediately. He had a 4.73 ERA and and 3.50 FIP in Colorado before the deadline, but he got into just three games for the Yankees, allowing six runs over two innings before being optioned to Triple-A, where he has continued to struggle. Luke Weaver has been bitten by the home run bug lately, allowing four in his last seven appearances for an ERA of 5.14. However, his average exit velocity over that stretch is lower than it’s been the rest of the season, and he’s run a 2.53 xFIP. It seems more like bad luck than anything.

Fernando Cruz and David Bednar have been lights-out, Tim Hill is still a groundball machine, and Camilo Doval hasn’t allowed a run in his last five appearances. Over the entire season, the Yankees bullpen has a 3.93 xFIP, tied for second-best in baseball. Over the past two weeks, they’ve got the second-best FIP despite the hideous ERA. It’s hard to imagine them making a run without Williams and Weaver (The Deadly W’s) turning things around, but this isn’t necessarily a disastrous ‘pen either.

Cubs
By most metrics, the Cubs bullpen has been right in the middle of the pack this year. In the past two weeks, its 3.05 xFIP is the third best in baseball. So why are the ERA and FIP so ugly? That’s the danger of playing in homer-friendly Wrigley Field in August. Over that stretch, 21.1% of their fly balls have gone for home runs, second only to the Rockies (and not coincidentally, they recently spent a three-game series in Colorado). Drew Pomeranz and Taylor Rogers have put up good seasons, but have each given up a couple of homers in recent weeks, and because the Cubs have relied on their bullpen less than just about any other team over that stretch, those mistakes have been magnified. Nothing that’s happened in the past two weeks has made me change my opinion of this relief corps.

Phillies
Philadelphia’s bullpen has been an issue all year long. Free agent signings Joe Ross and Jordan Romano have not worked out at all, putting up a combined -0.5 WAR over 86 appearances and 93 2/3 innings. The good news is that the bullpen looks very different now. The Phillies released Ross, and Romano hit the IL with middle finger inflammation. They signed David Robertson in free agency in July, traded for Jhoan Duran at the deadline, and got star lefty José Alvarado back from an 80-game PED suspension on August 20. Alvardo has looked very rusty since his return and won’t be available for the playoffs, but Robertson and Duran have been excellent. Together with Matt Strahm, Orion Kerkering, and Tanner Banks, the Phillies should have a serviceable, if shallow, bullpen going into October. With Zack Wheeler out and Aaron Nola struggling, the rotation may be the bigger concern.

Blue Jays
How much time do you have? The Blue Jays had the worst bullpen in baseball in 2024, and if nothing else, they looked primed to bounce back. They non-tendered Jordan Romano. They signed the excellent Jeff Hoffman, traded for Nick Sandlin, brought back Yimi García and Ryan Yarbrough, and took flyers on arms like Amir Garrett, Jacob Barnes, and Richard Lovelady. And they have bounced back. They rank in the middle of the pack in both ERA and FIP, and seventh in xFIP. Lately, though, they just can’t seem to get outs.

They released Yarbrough before the season. The fliers they took haven’t worked out, nor have in-house guys like Chad Green, Zach Pop, and Erik Swanson. They’ve lost major pieces, with both Sandlin and García out for the season. Other injuries forced Easton Lucas and Eric Lauer into starting roles, where they’ve performed significantly worse. Hoffman put up three ugly performances in the last week of August, though he’s looked much better in the past week. Although the underlying numbers aren’t bad, deadline acquisition Louis Varland has a 6.91 ERA in 15 appearances as a Blue Jay.

If Hoffman can keep things straightened out, if Varland’s luck can turn around, if Lucas and Lauer can get back in the bullpen, if the arms that got them here – Yariel Rodríguez, Brendon Little, Braydon Fisher – can keep doing what they’re doing, the Blue Jays could have a decent bullpen going into the playoffs. But that’s a lot of ifs.

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. You might think that this September is a poor one for baseball drama. The playoff spots in both leagues are fairly decided, give or take a bit of wobbliness from the perpetually star-crossed Mariners and Mets. Few division titles are in play – maybe the NL West or AL East, but neither feels all that likely to flip. But that’s okay, because even the teams that are probably out of it can be fun to watch, and even the teams that are already in it still have seeding to vie for. This week, I’ve turned my eye to a few teams with intriguing storylines in the month to come. I’m focusing my baseball viewing on playoff hopefuls, and there’s plenty to like. So with our customary nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer, let’s talk baseball.

1. McLean (and Horton and Waldrep and…) Fever
One of my favorite baseball archetypes is the shooting star rookie ace. You know what I’m talking about if it’s happened to your team. Some rookie, often a heralded prospect, makes a mid-season debut and just has it. Their fastball? Unbeatable. Their breaking stuff? It just disappears! And that poise – it’s like they’ve been pitching in the majors for years, not weeks.

Whether you want to harken back to Fernando Valenzuela or rely on a more personally resonant example – 2013 Michael Wacha is my touchstone here – there’s just something special about these meteoric talents. At some point, they’re due for a downturn. How could they not be? It happens to everyone eventually. But until then, we might as well enjoy the ride. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets swept the Phillies this week, which made headlines for two reasons: First, the Mets have now won 10 straight against the Phillies at Citi Field, dating back to last September, and including Games 3 and 4 of last year’s NLDS. If the Phillies don’t win a game there in the playoffs, they don’t face the Mets in New York again until the last weekend of June 2026. A potential 21-month losing streak at a divisional rival is tough to swallow, though it’s good to see that everyone’s being super normal about it.

Second, it kept the NL East race alive. The Phillies entered this division matchup seven games up with 32 to play; had they won the series, they would’ve basically had the division title in the bag. As it stands now, they’re up five, with the Mets coming to Philadelphia for a four-game set in mid-September. The Phillies are still 3-to-1 favorites, according to our playoff odds, but it’s a real pennant race now.

But this sweep is most important for a reason that went a little under the radar. While the Mets were beating seven shades of you-know-what out of the Phillies, the Dodgers were doing the same to the Reds in Los Angeles. Read the rest of this entry »