BALTIMORE — You don’t achieve superstar status in baseball on speed alone. Evidence of Bobby Witt Jr.’s speed is all over his 10.4-WAR season — 31 stolen bases, 45 doubles, 11 triples — but that’s not why he’s a 10-win player. He’s a 10-win player because he posted a 168 wRC+ while playing elite defense at a premium position.
“That’s what makes him so unique is because he’s got the power,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said after the game. “He’s got the bat to ball skills, but he’s also got the speed that he gets infield hits, he can do a lot of different things. He is literally the total package when it comes to physical ability on the field.”
It was that speed that made the difference in Kansas City’s 2-1 win over the Orioles on Wednesday night. The second tense, low-scoring game in as many days extended Baltimore’s postseason losing streak to 10 games over 11 years. The Royals, now bound for the Division Series, have won nine of their past 10 postseason series, dating back 40 seasons. Read the rest of this entry »
The Detroit Tigers continue to ride their wave of jubilation into October.
The most surprising playoff team beat the Houston Astros 5–2 in Game 2 of the best-of-three Wild Card round on Wednesday to advance to the American League Division Series. Manager A.J. Hinch successfully navigated a bullpen game that included only two turbulent innings. Tyler Holton, who threw just two pitches in Detroit’s Game 1 victory, acted as a left-handed opener to ensure the hard-hitting heart of Houston’s order (Kyle Tucker and Yordan Alvarez) would be forced to take an at-bat against a lefty.
After a clean first from Holton, sinkerballer Brenan Hanifee entered the game and narrowly escaped a scoreless second inning that featured two heart-stopping foul balls off the bat of Jason Heyward, either of which would’ve been a one- or two-run double with two outs. Hanifee gave the Tigers five outs, wrapping up his day against Jose Altuve before another lefty, this time Brant Hurter, entered to face Tucker and Alvarez. Hinch’s shrewd matchups and the Tigers’ pitching staff held Tucker hitless in the series.
Every bullpen game comes with a sort of Russian Roulette-ish risk that any one of the pitchers might have a bad day and cough up the game on their own. Hurter, who had a microscopic 3% walk rate in his 45 big league innings this year, looked for a minute like he might be that guy. He surrendered four baserunners and four hard-hit balls across 1 2/3 innings, exiting when Houston’s lineup turned over to Altuve with one out and two runners on in the bottom of the fifth.
At that moment, Hinch called on high-leverage reliever Beau Brieske, who closed Tuesday’s Game 1, to face Altuve and the heavy-hitting part of the Astros order. After getting both Altuve and Tucker out to escape extreme danger in the fifth, Brieske became the pitcher of record in the next half inning when Parker Meadows broke the scoreless tie with a solo home run off of Hunter Brown, who had been dealing to that point. Brown’s pitch to Meadows wasn’t bad; it was so far inside that most hitters would’ve at best been jammed by it, but somehow Meadows tucked his hands in, steered it fair, and doinked it off the right field foul pole.
This was the lone blemish in an otherwise stellar day for Brown, who allowed just four baserunners and struck out nine across 5 2/3 innings. Brieske, who as a former soft-tossing starter turned fire-breathing reliever looks like he might be a Liam Hendriks sequel of sorts, navigated the rest of the top half of Houston’s order in the bottom of the sixth.
Then for a couple innings all hell broke loose. Hinch called upon 22-year-old Jackson Jobe, one of baseball’s best pitching prospects, to work the bottom of the seventh. Jobe, who entered the game with four innings of Major League experience, nearly had a nuclear meltdown as he plunked Victor Caratini, narrowly avoided a pitch clock violation, couldn’t hear the PitchCom through the Houstonian crowd noise, and allowed consecutive singles to Jeremy Peña and Mauricio Dubón to load the bases. Astros manager Joe Espada then pulled his bench’s power-hitting lever by pinch hitting Jon Singleton for Chas McCormick with the bags full and nobody out. After Singleton took a very healthy rip at an early-count pitch, which he fouled back, he hit a well-struck grounder to a diving Spencer Torkelson whose on-target, one-hop throw to the plate was bobbled by the usually sure-handed catcher Jake Rogers.
SINGLETON TIES IT UP WITH A RBI SINGLE! 0 OUTS, BASES LOADED FOR THE ASTROS IN THE BOTTOM OF THE 7TH!
Not only had the Astros scored, but the Tigers had failed to notch an out, and suddenly the top of Houston’s order was due to hit with the bases still juiced. Altuve hit a fairly shallow fly ball into foul territory along the right field line, where Matt Vierling caught it. The right fielder seemed surprised that Peña made an aggressive attempt to score, and his rather lackadaisical throw home was barely too late to snare Peña. Houston took a 2–1 lead.
With the Tigers seemingly flailing and Tucker and Alvarez due up, Hinch removed Jobe (who seemed miffed at Vierling’s effort on the prior play as he left the field) in favor of sinker/slider lefty Sean Guenther, who got Tucker to ground into an inning-ending double play to keep the Tigers within single-swing striking distance.
To say the Tigers responded to the lead change in the eighth would be an understatement. Houston bullpen fixture Ryan Pressly came in to relieve Bryan Abreu, who bussed Brown’s table in the sixth and worked an easy seventh. Pressly quickly surrendered two singles, threw a wild pitch that allowed the tying run to score, and then walked Colt Keith. Espada then pulled the ripcord on Pressly and inserted closer Josh Hader. Hader walked Torkelson to load the bases and then Andy Ibáñez — pinch-hitting for Zach McKinstry — cleared them with a three-run double hooked into the left field corner.
The Tigers were back on top, 5–2, and they didn’t look back. Guenther worked the eighth and Will Vest, who ripped the sleeves off the bottom of Houston’s lineup across 1 2/3 dominant innings in Game 1, shut the door in the ninth to send the Tigers to the ALDS.
This postseason series win is the Tigers’ first since 2013, when the team was managed by Hall of Famer Jim Leyland and a carton of cigarettes. They have two off days before Saturday’s Game 1 tilt with the division rival Guardians in Cleveland. Right-hander Tanner Bibee, who has a 4.50 ERA and a 1.04 WHIP across 22 innings in his four starts against the Tigers this year, will start for the Guardians. Reese Olson, who was rostered for the Wild Card series but did not pitch, is the presumptive Game 1 starter for Detroit.
Houston’s season ends earlier than it has in any year since 2016, the last time the team failed to make the playoffs. The Astros had advanced to the ALCS in each of the past seven seasons, a borderline dynastic stretch for the franchise. Through that perspective, getting knocked out by the Tigers in the Wild Card Series is a major disappointment. However, at a certain point earlier this year, it would have been considered a miracle for this team to make the postseason at all. The Astros got here despite a glacial start to their season and several key injuries to their pitching staff. Those injuries may impact next year, too, as the timing of Cristian Javier’s and Luis Garcia’s Tommy John surgeries have them on pace for a mid- to late-season return rather than in early 2025.
Additionally, third baseman Alex Bregman, who was Houston’s best player in these two playoff games, hits free agency this offseason. With several highly paid Astros coming off the books (most notably Justin Verlander who didn’t pitch enough for his $40 million option to vest), the team has room to sign Bregman. That said, Tucker and Framber Valdez are both entering their third year of arbitration, and their futures with the club might be impacted by what happens with Bregman. Whatever happens, the Astros may not look the same for too much longer.
In your most prim and proper ballet teacher voice, repeat after me, “Demi-plié and stretch. Demi-plié and stretch.” The demi-plié is the first foundational move taught to new ballerinas. Its name translates from French to “small bend.” When pitching from the windup, Michael King comes set, gently bends at the knees, then stands tall for a moment before delivering the pitch. Setting aside his lack of turnout and hinge at the hip, King went about his business on Tuesday with the precision and artistry of a dancer.
Ballerinas value efficiency of movement above all else, and King needed just 89 pitches to complete seven shutout innings, while allowing just five hits, walking absolutely no one, and striking out 12. His performance earned a standing ovation from the Petco Park crowd, which went home happy after the Padres orchestrated a 4-0 win over the Braves in Game 1 of the best-of-three NL Wild Card series.
King stole the show with a well-choreographed approach that has served him well all year, and he executed every step at a high level. And lest we forget, this is King’s first season in a full-time starting role, his first year strategically piecing together his complement of pitches into the rhythm and flow of a start. Knowing that his goals now include facing batters of both handedness multiple times and throwing six or more innings each time out, King has evolved the three-pitch arsenal he debuted with to a five-pitch ensemble that he deploys with specific intent. Read the rest of this entry »
Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/USA TODAY NETWORK
I’ve heard the phrase “track meet” more this year than at any point since I ran track in high school. Some of that is Olympics-related – great track meet! – but most of it is because analysts like me can’t resist referencing track and field when we bring up the Milwaukee Brewers. “They turn games into track meets.” “They have gamebreaking speed.” You’ve no doubt read those two sentences (and many variations on them) as people explain the team’s success this year.
Those comparisons aren’t wrong. The Brewers can flat out fly. Brice Turang, the first batter of today’s Wild Card game against the New York Mets, slapped a grounder past Mark Vientos and turned on the afterburners en route to a double. He did it again in the third. Garrett Mitchell went first to third beautifully. Sal Frelick had a hustle double of his own. Turang and Jackson Chourio advanced adroitly in a two-run fourth. If there are 90 feet lying around for the taking, the Brewers will grab them. You have to be alert whenever there’s an open bag and a Milwaukee player on base, and they’ll take away hits with their defense to boot.
The Mets, in comparison, are station-to-station mashers. They hit 30 more homers than the Brewers this year and stole 111 fewer bases. The average Mets hitter is 30 years old; the average Brewers hitter is 26.4. If this were a track meet, the Mets would not be favored. They wouldn’t have a prayer of winning, if I’m being honest; the Brewers outfield is three-quarters of a 4×100 relay team, and fourth outfielder Blake Perkins completes the squad. If you could actually turn a game into a race, the Brewers would be 100% likely to win this series (I’m not sure how good anyone on these teams is at high jump or hammer throw, so we’ll leave the “field” part aside). Read the rest of this entry »
BALTIMORE — It’s been a long road back to the postseason for the Kansas City Royals, but they’ve picked up right where they left off in 2015. Technically speaking, the Royals haven’t lost a postseason game in nine years.
But as much as that championship team was an egalitarian enterprise, a team effort by a group of good players, it didn’t really have star power. Not so the next generation. The heroes of the Royals’ 1-0 win over the Orioles in Baltimore were exactly who you’d expect: The best pitcher and position player, respectively, in a series that has plenty of both.
Cole Ragans threw six dominant scoreless innings before being lifted with cramping in his left calf. Because of his efforts, an RBI single by Bobby Witt Jr. was all the run support he needed. Read the rest of this entry »
A day after Jared Goff was perfect on Monday Night Football — the Detroit Lions quarterback went 18-for-18 with a pair of touchdown passes — Tarik Skubal was simply very good, though that was enough for the Tigers to win the opener of their best-of-three Wild Card series against the Houston Astros. In a game the team probably needed to win — losing with their ace on the mound would have put the Cinderella club squarely behind the eight ball — Skubal threw six scoreless innings to help lead Detroit to a 3-1 win.
He obviously didn’t do it alone. A.J. Hinch’s mix-and-match bullpen threw the most innings in the majors this season, and they sealed the deal against a normally potent Houston lineup. The unheralded yet talented quartet of Will Vest, Tyler Holton, Jason Foley, and Beau Brieske combined to hold the lead — albeit not without a white-knuckle scare in the ninth. As for Detroit’s hitters, they didn’t exactly knock down the fences, but they scored enough to support the hurlers. Read the rest of this entry »
It would be unfair to the New York Mets to reduce their regular season to its triumphant climax, an epic, whiplash-inducing, decisive two-run homer by a hobbled Francisco Lindor during a de-facto postseason game necessitated by a hurricane. The Mets clinched a postseason berth and a trip back to Milwaukee for a Wild Card date with the NL Central champion Brewers.
These organizations share some history and DNA that makes for heightened intrigue, and in one case quite literally. Recall that these teams played each other a couple of days ago as the Mets fought for their playoff lives. They also squared off on Opening Day and nearly came to blows as (currently injured) Mets second baseman Jeff McNeiltook exception to a Rhys Hoskins slide. Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns was once a young upstart Brewers GM and (later) POBO who was hired away in a very telegraphed, long-rumored move at the end of last season. Each team has a Megill brother (Tylor or Trevor) on its pitching staff.
Aside from these features, the teams are quite different. Monday was not the first time the Mets had stared down the potential death of their season. They were comfortably under .500 for most of the first half of the year and hit their nadir in early-June when they were 11 games under and sporting playoff odds below 10%. From the start of the season through the end of August, New York’s playoff odds were above 50% for only six days in total. A September surge coupled with the Diamondbacks’ collapse allowed the Mets to eek into the tournament, and now a team that began the 2023 season with the biggest payroll in baseball by a sizeable margin enters the 2024 playoffs as a plucky underdog that has developed a battle-tested edge during the last two months of play.
The Brewers, on the other hand, have been coasting since June. They were the first team in the league to clinch a playoff spot, and they tout the third-best run differential (+136) in all of baseball, behind only the Dodgers and Yankees. Almost exactly a year ago, it was announced that front-end starter Brandon Woodruff would require shoulder surgery. His loss and the pre-season trade of Corbin Burnes made the NL Central feel like it was up for grabs. Instead, Milwaukee’s young core of hitters carried it to a cozy division title despite a season-ending injury to All-Star outfielder Christian Yelich.
At an average age of 26.4 years old, the Brewers position player group was the second youngest in the National League, behind only the rebuilding Washington Nationals. The Brewers ranked fourth in the league in position player WAR this year despite comfortably having the lowest slugging percentage among the other clubs in the top 10. While Milwaukee has a few dangerous power hitters (most notably catcher William Contreras, shortstop Willy Adames, and tooled-up prodigy Jackson Chourio), the group has largely succeeded via secondary skills like speed, defense, and plate discipline. The Brewers were second in baseball in team walk rate, second in team stolen bases (second baseman Brice Turang led Milwaukee with 50 bags), first in Base Runs (by a lot), and third in defensive Outs Above Average. The Brewers have three shortstop-quality defenders manning their non-first base infield positions and arguably boast the best all-around defense of any playoff team.
The Mets, on the other hand, succeed with power. Though not exceptional or dominant (they did barely sneak into the playoffs, after all) they ranked in the league-wide top 10 of most measures of power talent and production (SLG, ISO, HardHit%, and Barrel%). Lindor had an MVP-caliber season, young corner infielder Mark Vientos hit 27 home runs in just 110 games, Pete Alonso notched yet another 30-homer season, Brandon Nimmo smacked 22 dingers, and despite middling homer totals on the season, both Francisco Alvarez and J.D. Martinez are powerful, dangerous hitters.
And then there’s 34-year-old second baseman (and pop star) Jose Iglesias, who is entering the postseason on an epic heater. He had a hit in each of Monday’s games against Atlanta and is riding a 22-game hitting streak. He slashed .341/.387/.456 this season, having played pretty regularly since June. McNeil’s broken wrist put more pressure on Iglesias to perform down the stretch, and he has delivered well above what anyone could’ve expected.
Game 1’s pitching matchup features Brewers “ace” Freddy Peralta against Mets righty Luis Severino, who was a shrewd and effective reclamation pickup by the Mets during the offseason after their high-profile Scherzer/Verlander staff flopped the year before. The 2024 season was Severino’s first fully healthy one since 2018. Peralta just completed his second straight 30-plus start campaign, and he set a career-high for innings pitched (173 2/3). All four of Peralta’s pitches garnered above-average whiff rates.
Neither team has a particularly strong rotation, and both will likely rely heavily upon their respective bullpen if they’re going to make a deep run into October. The Mets begin the Wild Card round on their back foot in this regard, having just taxed their bullpen across 18 innings in Monday’s doubleheader. Huascar Brazobán and Adam Ottavino pitched in both of Monday’s games. Mets closer Edwin Díaz threw 40 pitches Monday and 26 pitches the day before. All three of them may be unavailable — or at least fatigued — in the first two games of this series.
Contrast that with the Brewers bullpen. Only DL Hall and Hoby Milner pitched on Sunday, giving the rest of Milwaukee’s bullpen at least two days to rest. That includes closer Devin Williams, who has been utterly dominant since his return from multiple stress fractures in his back. Since he was activated just before the trade deadline, Williams has the second-highest K/9 rate (15.78) among relievers, behind only Edwin Díaz, and has posted a 1.25 ERA. He has not allowed a run since August 21. The Mets may be able to counter some of the funky-looking deliveries that the Brewers run out of their bullpen with Jesse Winker, Harrison Bader, or Tyrone Taylor coming off the bench, depending on who starts. But, if only due to the circumstances caused by Hurricane Helene that forced the Mets to cover two games the day before the start of this series, Milwaukee’s bullpen would seem to have a big advantage.
In this series, we have a narrative reversal of the two franchises and markets involved. The Mets — a financial juggernaut that snuck into the playoffs in a year that was supposed to be a “step back” — now feel like they’re playing with house money, while the Brewers, who performed during the regular season like one of the sport’s best teams, check many of the boxes of a typical postseason contender, especially the defense and bullpen ones. The winner will earn the right to tango with the Phillies.
CHICAGO — I just couldn’t help myself. The heat index was 105 degrees when I hopped on the train in Downtown Chicago to head to Guaranteed Rate Field on Monday, August 26 — the day after the White Sox had lost for the 100th time of the 2024 season — and I had the sudden urge to send a snarky Slack message to Meg Rowley. “What are the odds that I’m one of 20 people in the stands today?” I also included a screenshot of the AccuWeather Minutecast.
After her response, two words that appropriately acknowledged the sweltering conditions, the exchange continued:
Matt Martell: Only the true sickos watch a team in August with more losses than the temperature.
Matt Martell: Is that my lede???
Meg Rowley: i think it is
I received my Certified Baseball Sicko diagnosis at an early age, but even I wouldn’t have endured that heat to watch the worst team in modern baseball history if I didn’t have to be there for work.
Chicago was the second stop on a cross-country roadtrip that had begun the previous Wednesday morning in Poughkeepsie, New York — about 20 minutes from Hopewell Junction, where I grew up and where my parents still live — and would end in Seattle 17 days later. My first destination was Pittsburgh, where on Thursday I saw Paul Skenes start, and wrote about his impact on the organization and its fans. The next day, I drove to Chicago to spend the weekend at Saberseminar with eight other FanGraphs staffers, including Michael Rosen, who detailed “the preeminent conference at the intersection of dingers and calculators” for Defector. I stuck around one more day to watch the White Sox play at home before driving to Minnesota on Tuesday to catch Wednesday’s Twins-Braves game.
Initially, I planned to ask a few dozen White Sox fans the same question: Why are you here? Of course, that is a question for the ages, one that could prompt a meditation on the meaning of life, but I was interested in a more specific context. Really, the connotation of my question was this: Why are you spending money to witness the team that you love degrade itself with such historical ineptitude? If that sounds needlessly harsh, well, that’s why I would’ve gone with the more philosophical and broadly worded version, but the purpose of my asking such a question wouldn’t have been cynical. Quite the opposite, in fact. There’s something romantic about cheering for a terrible team with the unconditional love that Roger Angell captured in his writings about the early-60s Mets. It’s the beautiful, irrational core of fandom that we sportswriters often overlook. That’s what I intended to do at the ballpark that night, anyway. Instead, the fans I encountered were there for a different kind of unconditional love.
After spending an uneventful top of the first inning talking with White Sox farm director Paul Janish, I left the press box for the stands. I never learned the journalist’s trick to estimate crowd size, so I can’t give you a number for how many people were in the ballpark for Davis Martin’s first pitch. What I can tell you is that the number was below the official 10,975 paid-attendance figure, and that I had no trouble finding good seats in the section behind home plate. I looked around and saw there weren’t many White Sox fans in the area: A middle-aged man and his not-quite-large adult son sat in the back and to the left of me — back and to the left — and one preschool boy who ran down the aisle before his dad caught up with him. That was pretty much it.
After another look, I realized that I was sitting among a sea of Tigers fans who all seemed to know each other. They cheered with every strike, but they also had a nervous energy that they were trying not to show; some were more successful than others. A few were clasping their hands together as if they were praying, while others were choking their beer cups instead of drinking from them. They grew more anxious as Andrew Vaughn stepped in with runners on the corners and one out; they offered reassurances after Vaughn’s sacrifice fly gave the White Sox an early lead. Finally, they erupted when Gavin Sheets grounded out to end the inning. The reaction seemed a bit excessive for a first-inning groundout against an opponent who at the time had a 31-100 record, but then I noticed something. Most of them were wearing a Tigers cap with the same lettering stitched into its side above the right ear: Ty Madden 8-26-24.
Ah, yes. That makes sense, I thought.
I pulled the Tigers’ game notes out of my pocket just to be sure. Yup, Detroit’s starter that night was Madden, a 24-year-old righty who had just been promoted from Triple-A Toledo. Unknowingly, I was sitting with his family and friends — about 50 of them, as one of his mom’s friends later told me — watching him complete the first inning of his major league career.
Admittedly, I didn’t know much about Madden other than his name, so I pulled out my phone and checked his FanGraphs player page and prospect report. Entering this season, Eric Longenhagen evaluated Madden as a “high-probability no. 4/5 starter,” assigned him a 45 FV, and ranked him the fifth-best prospect in the Tigers organization. Madden was bumped down to sixth when Eric updated the list midseason, after Detroit had drafted one prospect who ranked ahead of Madden and traded for another. (Colt Keith, who ranked third in the Tigers system before the season, exceed rookie limits during the year and wasn’t included on the latest list.)
While writing this story, I asked Eric for an updated evaluation of Madden based on his 2024 performance, and here’s what he said:
He’s had a pretty surprising uptick in walks this year, and when you put on the tape, he is indeed struggling with release consistency. But he’s sustained above-average stuff and has been durable amid multiple delivery tweaks since turning pro, and I think it’s fair to expect that he’ll eventually either refine his feel for his current delivery or keep making changes until things click. He’ll operate in a starter’s capacity for the foreseeable future during the regular season, but his current strike-throwing issues make him more of a multi-inning relief fit on Detroit’s playoff roster.
Madden had a much easier time in the second inning. He allowed a one-out single to Dominic Fletcher, who was erased two pitches later on Lenyn Sosa’s inning-ending double play. A woman a few rows in front of me shouted, “Yeah, Ty!” as he walked back to the dugout.
It was around this time that I decided I would stick with the Maddens for the rest of the game and skip the White Sox fans story. So many great pieces have been written about fans watching the team’s futility — Ben Strauss of The Washington Post has been sharing his favorites on Twitter all week, and I’d encourage you to check them out — and I’ve enjoyed reading them, but I figured I’d probably never again get the chance to see a major league debut through the eyes of his family and friends.
I knew I would write about watching the Madden Family Cheering Section watch Ty, but I didn’t want to intrude on their special moment, so I set a few rules:
1) I wouldn’t talk to them until Madden finished pitching, unless they said something to me first.
2) I would tell them exactly what I was doing as soon as I introduced myself, and if they weren’t okay with it, I would figure out another way to do this piece or come up with something else to write.
3) I wouldn’t interview them; they’d have enough going on without some stranger sticking a recorder in their faces. Instead, I would talk to them and take notes about what I experienced sitting there with them, but I wouldn’t quote any of them by name.
I think the beer started kicking in for the two White Sox fans sitting behind me in the third inning, because they suddenly became much more animated. Every time Martin threw a strike to the Tigers batters, the dad and his adult son would shout, “Yeah!” After the first few times it seemed to me that they were directing their voices at the Madden Family Cheering Section. The father and son weren’t mocking the Maddens, and their shouts weren’t aggressive, but they were crisp and targeted, as if to signal that they were going to support their starter more than the Maddens would support Ty. It was kinda sad, then, when it became clear that the Maddens weren’t paying them any attention. It was a fitting depiction of these two organizations in microcosm: The Tigers were beginning to mount their stunning surge to a Wild Card berth, and they couldn’t be bothered by the lowly Pale Hose.
The two Sox fans were interrupted by a beer vendor who was using the heat index as his sales pitch. “Miller Lite! Modelo! Water!” he hawked, sounding remarkably similar to the actor John C. Reilly. “Hey, let’s stay hydrated here!” One Madden family friend flagged him down for a Modelo as Martin struck out Matt Vierling to retire the Tigers in order in the third.
Madden worked into trouble again in the third, allowing a leadoff single to Chicago nine-hitter Brooks Baldwin, who swiped second, before walking Nicky Lopez. First and second, nobody out, Luis Robert Jr. at the plate. Welcome to the big leagues, kid.
Madden’s family and friends got louder. He said after the game that he’d blocked them out so he could stay focused, but that didn’t make any difference to them. They were behind him, no matter what. He buckled down; Robert grounded into a 6-5 fielder’s choice and Andrew Benintendi popped out. He wasn’t out of the inning yet, though. The next batter, Vaughn, blooped a four-seamer off the plate inside to right field. Vierling came up firing to home, but catcher Dillon Dingler — elite name — whiffed at the one-hopper as he tried to sweep-tag Lopez and the ball got past him. Madden was backing up, but he couldn’t field the errant throw either. Robert advanced to third and Vaughn moved up to second on the error.
The inning could’ve spiraled from there, but Madden refused to unravel. He missed low with a first-pitch changeup to Sheets, evened the count with a four-seamer that Sheets took for a called strike, and then got Sheets to swing over a tight slider dotted on the low-outside corner. His 1-2 offering was another slider that looked just like the previous one out of his hand and for most of its trajectory to the plate. Sheets took a healthy hack but came up empty as the bottom completely dropped out of the pitch. It was Madden’s first major league strikeout. His friends and family exploded, their cheers so propulsive it was as if they were daring him to look up at them, but he never did. He was locked in.
“Yeah, well, he still gave up a run,” the adult son behind me said loudly. He got no response and didn’t heckle the Maddens again, but that wasn’t the last we heard from him. In the bottom of the fourth, when once again Sosa was batting with Fletcher on first and one out, a foul ball went over my head and bounced off a stadium usher’s butt. “He got hit in the ass! He got hit in the ass!” jeered the son. The usher was fine. As was Madden, who got Sosa to pop out and then struck out Baldwin to end the inning.
Things got interesting with two outs in the top of the fifth, when Kerry Carpenter and Vierling singled to put runners on the corners and bring Keith to the plate. A three-run homer would give the Tigers the lead, and if Madden made it cleanly through the fifth and the bullpen closed things out, he would earn the win. Sitting there with his family and friends, I realized I was hoping for this exact scenario to happen. How weird it was for me, the associate editor of FanGraphs, to be rooting for a pitcher win. But I knew it would matter to everyone in the Madden Family Cheering Section. Beyond the fact that it would make this a better story to write if he were to win his big league debut, I felt a strange sense of loyalty toward these people, even though I had not yet introduced myself to them.
Alas, it was not meant to be. Keith didn’t blast a go-ahead dinger, but he did line a single into shallow left to drive in Detroit’s first run. Vierling went first to third on the knock, and Keith advanced to second on Benintendi’s late throw to third. Jace Jung came up with the chance to give the Tigers the lead with a base hit, but he struck out swinging. The inning was over, the White Sox were leading 2-1, and Madden was still in line for the loss.
The tension ratcheted up in the home half of the frame when Madden issued a two-out walk to Benintendi. He’d just thrown his 86th pitch, and I feared manager A.J. Hinch would go to the bullpen instead of letting Madden face Vaughn, who’d driven in both White Sox runs, for a third time. But Hinch stuck with his young righty, who rewarded his manager’s faith by getting Vaughn to pop out on a first-pitch cutter. The Madden Family Cheering Section, correctly assuming that was Madden’s last pitch, gave him a standing ovation. Once again, he didn’t hear them and kept his eyes straight ahead. He was in his element, and they wouldn’t have had it any other way.
The Maddens couldn’t exhale yet. Because the Tigers didn’t go to their bullpen in the fifth, Madden technically was still in the game, and if they took the lead here, he would be the pitcher of record. Spencer Torkelson doubled to lead off the sixth, but the next three batters went down in order. Madden’s night was over. His final line: 5 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 2 K.
Around this time, I introduced myself to the women sitting in front of me, who were friends of Madden’s mom. One of them told me they learned that Madden was getting promoted two days earlier, shortly after Madden got the news and phoned his parents — Brian and Misty — back home in Houston. His parents quickly assembled the members of the Madden Family Cheering Section, which they estimated to include 50 people, though none of them knew the exact number without taking a headcount. Many of them flew up from Houston for an eventful week that would only begin with Madden’s debut. The same woman said her daughter was getting married back home on Sunday, so the Madden Family Cheering Section would trade in their Tigers caps for their best suits or dresses and all be together again that coming weekend.
The Bally Sports Detroit crew came over to interview Brian, Misty, and Ty’s wife Breton, who was holding their sleeping three-month-old daughter Miller, live on the broadcast during the bottom of the sixth. While that was happening, Misty’s friend told me that the next day Brian and Misty would go to Toledo to help Breton with the move to Detroit. Madden told me after the game that the next day was also Breton’s birthday, so his parents would be with her for it while he was with the team for a home game against the Angels.
When Parker Meadows led off the seventh with a game-tying home run, a man in the Madden Family Cheering Section proclaimed, “No decision! That’s a no decision baby!” I never expected a no decision to stir such passion from a person; after all, the only thing more inherently neutral than a no decision is Switzerland. But I, too, was thrilled to see Meadows even the score and get Madden off the hook. The happiest man in Chicago then turned and gave me a thumbs up. I smiled and responded in kind.
The Tigers scored four more runs that inning and held on for a 6-3 win to sweep the White Sox, bringing their record to 66-66. The series feels like a turning point for their season; Madden is the last Detroit pitcher to start a game while his team had a losing record. Sure, that’s a specific bit of trivia that doesn’t really matter much, and yes, he has played a minor role for these Tigers, but he has played that role well. He has pitched four times since making his debut, all as a multi-inning reliever in games that Detroit used an opener. Across 23 innings, he has a 4.30 ERA and a 3.99 FIP, good for 0.2 WAR. He is a solid depth bullpen arm and swingman, and pitching-first teams like the Tigers need guys like that.
Now, five weeks after his debut, Madden has earned a spot on the Tigers’ roster for the AL Wild Card Series against the Astros in Houston, Madden’s hometown. His career, like his team’s competitive window, is just beginning, and we don’t know how long either will last. No matter what happens, whenever I see or hear his name, I’ll remember that gross, barely bearable August night in Chicago, when I sat in the Madden Family Cheering Section and watched him fulfill his dream of becoming a major league pitcher. That was as good a reason as any to be there.
With the 2022 change to a 12-team playoff format, the addition of the Wild Card Series, and the decision to do away with winner-take-all tiebreaker games, Major League Baseball thought it had stuck a fork in Team Entropy and done away with end-of-season scheduling chaos. But with the league’s failure to approach last week’s scheduled Braves-Mets series in Atlanta with the necessary level of proactivity in the face of Hurricane Helene, the two teams were forced to play a doubleheader on Monday to determine the final two NL Wild Card berths. While the Braves squandered leads of 3-0 and 7-6 in the late innings of the opener, the teams ultimately split the doubleheader; both finished 89-73 and made the cut, while the Diamondbacks, who played their final game as scheduled on Sunday, missed it because they lost their season series against the pair. The Braves had to fly cross-country on Monday night in order to make their date with Padres (93-69) in San Diego.
It’s a banged-up Braves team at that. Not only are they missing Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley, and Spencer Strider due to season-ending injuries, but they’re now without Chris Sale. The 35-year-old lefty may well collect the Cy Young award that has long eluded him, but he hasn’t pitched since September 19. Much was made of the Braves’ plan to start him just once in the final week instead of twice, and just when the baseball world expected him to start the must-win second game of Monday’s doubleheader, he was ruled out due to back spasms. Manager Brian Snitker said after the win that he doesn’t expect Sale to pitch in the Wild Card Series, and added that this is something the pitcher has dealt with on and off this season. President of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos told reporters prior to Sale’s scratched start that he would not be going on the injured list. [Update:Sale was left off the roster submitted to the league on Tuesday morning.]
As for the Padres, after a disappointing 2023 season in which they won just 82 games and squandered a franchise-record $255 million payroll and a full season of Juan Soto, they’re back in the postseason for the third time in five seasons. It took awhile for the Padres to hit their stride; they were just 50-49 at the All-Star break but went a major league-best 43-20 (.683) thereafter. Not only did they secure the top NL Wild Card spot (and thus home field advantage here) but they even put a scare into the Dodgers before the latter won the NL West. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to a bonus edition of Five Things I Liked (And Just Liked, This Doubleheader Was Glorious So Let’s Not Be Negative). This column usually runs on Fridays, and it’s supposed to be about a week’s worth of games played by every team in the majors. But uh, did you all see yesterday’s spectacle? The Mets and Braves played two to determine the NL playoff field, and all hell broke loose. We had wild bounces and hitters learning new skills in real time. We had lead changes and two-out rallies. We had Cy Young winners getting late scratches and relievers putting their team on their backs to protect the rest of the staff. The most dramatic day of baseball this year just happened, so let’s dive right into a rapid-fire edition of Five Things.
1. Tyrone Taylor’s Cueball
They say that you can throw the rules out the window when it gets down to sudden death. I’m not sure they meant the laws of physics, though. Two hundred years ago, this ball would have been accused of witchcraft:
Give Tyrone Taylor a lot of credit for sprinting out of the box on a baseball he hit pretty far foul. Give Spencer Schwellenbach credit for making this close at all. Most pitchers would have given up on that ball right away. Schwellenbach hustled over to it, grabbed it an instant after it rolled fair, and then made a nice scoop throw to Matt Olson at first, where Taylor ended up beating the throw by a slender margin:
