Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, September 26

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.

In April, Tarik Skubal allowing three runs in six innings is a hiccup, a still-solid start that no one will remember in a week. In September, a freak accident and a few infield singles can drive Detroit to despair. Hunter Greene against Paul Skenes? I’d watch that any day of the year, but when the Reds absolutely need a win to catch the Mets, it’s appointment viewing. I wanted to see Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s last pre-playoff start anyway, but I liked it more because the Diamondbacks came into the game with playoff aspirations.

It might actually be better, from a fandom perspective, not to have a horse in the race during a week like this. It’s so stressful to watch your team struggle for survival that you might not appreciate the drama playing out elsewhere. But for a neutral observer like me, this week has been delightful. Every single day, I turn on the TV and some team is fighting for their playoff lives, in full desperation mode. Playoff baseball is awesome. Getting a taste of it in September, when half the games are meaningless and the others might be remembered for years? What a great bonus.

2. One Last Battle
On September 3, Andrew McCutchen launched what might be the last home run of his illustrious Pirates tenure:

Then he rounded third base and entered the rock-paper-scissors arena, as he does after every home run:

McCutchen is one of my favorite players in all of baseball. He’s universally admired and clearly loves the game. I think he’s also been generally underrated, which only makes me like him more. He’s declined from being a perennial MVP contender in his 20s to being a role player in his late 30s, but that hasn’t dissuaded him from coming back every year, even without a clear path to the playoffs. He also seems like he’s having fun out there, which is tremendously important to me as someone who writes a weekly column on the joy I get from watching baseball.

As best as I can tell, McCutchen started his post-homer rock-paper-scissors battles in 2019, his first year in Philadelphia. At the time, it was just one of many choreographed celebrations on a meme-heavy team. But while almost everything else on that list faded away, McCutchen kept his tradition going. As he moved from the Phillies to the Brewers and then back to the Pirates, he and his third base coaches dutifully went one-two-three-shoot at regular intervals.

Sadly, I don’t have McCutchen’s career post-homer rock-paper-scissors winning percentage for you. It’s not that I didn’t try, to be clear – I must have watched 50 videos slowed down and close up trying to figure out whether he’d thrown paper or scissors, and looking for alternate angles because the standard post-homer view generally obscures third base coaches’ hands. But I didn’t watch a single video where he clearly didn’t play, and he’s hit 109 homers in that time. If someone happens to have his overall record, or can ask him about it, the Five Things Committee (that’s just me, but with a fancier title) would love to know the results.

I’m not sure if McCutchen is going to play next year. It seems like it’s pretty much up to him; he’s playing on one-year deals at this point and grinding out replacement-level value for love of the game. I couldn’t take the chance of letting him play his last game without nodding to this delightful little sidegame, though. I’m a big fan of great players doing silly things, and I get an extra thrill every time I watch a Pirates game because I’m rooting for a McCutchen bomb. I hope this isn’t farewell to one of the great players of our generation, but if it is, I’m going to remember him both for his dominance and for how much fun he always seemed to be having.

3. Baserunning Blunders
I’ve made no secret of my love for good-bat/bad-glove-and-run outfielders. I’ve even written about Jordan Walker, one of today’s entrants, and his contributions to the field in this column already. I was despairing – players are so good these days, just so un-bumbling. But Monday night’s Cardinals-Giants game, the last I’m planning on attending this year, featured so many great achievements in bad baserunning that I’m getting optimistic all over again.

It started with Walker, of course. In the top of the second inning, he hit into one of those hard-luck fielder’s choices that just happen sometimes. Thomas Saggese, on third, had no hope of making it home:

Why didn’t Saggese take off? He saw the ball hit Walker’s foot, as it turns out:

That’s not reviewable, though, and the ball was live. As Saggese saw when he recovered from his initial instinctual relaxation, he had no chance of making it home safely. Instead, he started retreating slowly. That gave him a better chance of escaping or at least delaying the inevitable, but it probably wasn’t going to work against Patrick Bailey and Matt Chapman, two of the best defenders in the world. Indeed, Chapman put a stop to Saggese’s rundown quickly by charging Bailey’s throw and giving Saggese no time to spin back home.

Bummer. That’s probably an infield single for Walker with no one on base, but a tough luck out with a runner on third. Or, well, it’s supposed to be a foul ball, but even if that didn’t pan out, he should have gotten out of it with something to show for his effort; the only reason Willy Adames could even make a play is that the infield was in to contest the run at home. But the play wasn’t over:

Oof. Walker paid the price for not realizing how quickly the Giants were going to close out the rundown. When he got to first, Saggese was already in full retreat. Setting aside why Walker ran after the ball clearly hit his foot – maybe he has a really good protective plate in his shoe, or maybe he figured the call was already missed so he should hustle to be safe – this would be a good time to throttle down and stay at first. Instead, he put his legs on autopilot and started advancing to second. The result was an embarrassing double play.

Don’t worry, though. Bad baserunning loves company. Over in the home dugout, Heliot Ramos made his own claim on the title of most bat-only hitter. He’s one of the worst outfielders in the majors, and a ghastly three runs below average on the basepaths this year, but he’s a regular anyway because the bat plays. Like Walker, he’s probably got hustle on the mind after a bummer season. Like Walker, he should probably just have stopped at first:

Yeah, that one’s pretty bad. The cutoff man was right in front of him. Was he really going to make it to second base there? It almost makes me think he just saw Walker make an out on the bases and thought “Oh, right, that’s a thing I do too.”

The fun wasn’t over. Bailey is dying to end his season on a high note, and one way to do that is turning singles into doubles. On a clean single in the fourth inning, he rounded first base so hard that he nearly got hung up halfway to second. In the sixth inning, he hit another clean single and decided that it was a double:

That’s just what happens when you, a catcher, try to get fancy on the basepaths. Bailey looked appropriately chagrined on his walk back to the dugout, at least:

I love bad baserunning. All of this, in one game, from four players I like rooting for anyway? At the last game I got to attend all year? And all of it coming in a delightful 6-5 contest where I also got to see Justin Verlander? The baseball gods are truly great.

4. It Was Written
It’s always tempting to take a defensive wizard in the Rule 5 draft. There are some minor leaguers who can really pick it. Why aren’t they in the majors already? Well, they can’t hit just yet, or maybe ever. The Nationals picked Nasim Nuñez in the Rule 5 draft in 2023 after he’d just spent his age-22 season hitting .224/.341/.286 in Double-A, the platonic ideal of a light-hitting utility infielder. He stayed on the major league roster for the entirety of the 2024 season, but he racked up just 78 plate appearances. With the terms of the Rule 5 pick completed, Nuñez spent much of 2025 in Triple-A, where he again posted a below-average batting line with no power to speak of.

That glove, though? It’s downright electric. For as much as he looks like a fish out of water at the plate, he’s phenomenal in the field. Most second basemen don’t get anywhere near this ball:

But of course, most second basemen aren’t track stars with incredible defensive instincts. And look at this gem from a few innings later:

This is basically what you can expect from Nuñez. Whether he’s playing second base or shortstop, he’s a superlative defender. The Mets are surely tired of seeing him flash into frame from outrageous starting points to make a catch or snare a seemingly surefire hit.

He even has a strong throwing arm, which he frequently breaks out to turn two against speedy runners. Just watch him playing short:

Is Nuñez ever going to be an All-Star? Probably not. He can’t hit! But who cares? He clearly belongs in the major leagues. I perk up when the Nats are on defense because he might do something phenomenal. How many utility infielders can you say that about? I wish Nuñez a long and successful major league career – and I hope he spends that time hitting indifferently and making wizardly plays on defense. It’s the kind of skill set that I’d love to see more of in the game, even as I understand that offense is king. A team of nine Nasim Nuñezes probably wouldn’t be a powerhouse, but it would still be appointment viewing every night.

5. Wild Swings
I cut off that first Nuñez defensive play against the Mets because I needed an entire item to deal with the fallout. How do I know that Nuñez’s sprawling play in short right field robbed a surefire hit? Because the Mets baserunners took off like they were late for dinner:

I can’t really blame them. Francisco Lindor thought he was going to score there. It’s a great hustle play. He just didn’t count on Nuñez turning into Spiderman. So when the catch was made, both Lindor and Juan Soto were hung out to dry. Nuñez made what felt like the natural play, throwing to first, where he had at least gotten a peek at Soto running. Just one problem: It’s hard to throw from your back. The only reason that didn’t cost Nuñez an error is that Lindor was so far off of second that he was still retreating when the Nats corralled Nuñez’s errant throw.

A single turning into an out turning into a double play turning into a wild throw? That’s a lot of drama packed into one play. And this entire game was full of turns of fortune, with the Mets clinging to a slim Wild Card lead and the Nats playing spoiler.

The Mets came into the ninth inning down 2-3 and struggling for offense. Naturally, they parlayed a single, a sac bunt, a hit by pitch, and a bloop into the game-tying run. They pulled off a double steal to put the winning run on third with just one out. But fate wasn’t done, and strikeouts abounded:

It still should have been easy from there. Nuñez led off the 10th, and fun as he is, he isn’t necessarily a great bunter:

That gave the Mets a chance to drive the zombie runner home in the bottom of the inning and call it a day. But this fluke play somehow didn’t end things:

Starling Marte stayed at second instead of charging for third because he couldn’t be sure the ball would land; it bounced off of Riley Adams‘ glove, in fact. The next batter hit into a double play, which didn’t score Marte because he hadn’t reached third. The Mets couldn’t score. This game would just not end.

The Nats, given new life, still couldn’t figure out how to get a runner to third. What in the world was CJ Abrams doing here?

But that was okay, because new hotness Daylen Lile brought the house down with an inside-the-park homer:

By the time the Mets went quietly in the home half, I was relieved for the break. This game was non-stop wildness, bad bunts and crazy defense and electric hits one after another. So to bring things full circle, thank goodness for the playoff race; it turned what would otherwise have been an easily forgettable game into some of the best theater I’ve seen all month.