Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, September 5

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.

Nolan McLean is on one of those runs right now. In his four starts with the Mets, he’s been near-unhittable. He throws a six-pitch mix, and they’re all gorgeous offerings. Stuff+ and PitchingBot do the algorithmic equivalent of a bemused giggle when they measure his arsenal. Twenty-eight strikeouts in 26 innings is impressive enough, as is a 1.37 ERA and secondary statistics to match, but it’s even better than that: He’s done it against three playoff teams and the rival Braves.

If you had to staff the Mets’ postseason rotation, would you put anyone ahead of McLean? Watching a rookie who has basically never failed in his life try to keep that going against long-time professionals is thrilling, and it adds a little bit to the equation, at least for me, when the richest team in baseball is the one relying on that rookie.

McLean might be the leading contender for the the crown at the moment, but don’t sleep on Cade Horton over in Chicago either. His trajectory isn’t quite as steep as McLean’s – he’s been up since May and had an uneventful first few months – but he’s been similarly dominant in the month of August. I think he’ll probably end up as no better than the Cubs’ third starter in October, but I think he’s the pitcher I’d least like to face.

If it weren’t for various issues of injury or team ineffectiveness, we’d have some other options for playoff pitching phenoms. Hurston Waldrep has been a rare bright spot in Atlanta. Chase Burns was looking good until he got hurt. Jacob Misiorowski doesn’t go deep enough into games to give off the same inevitable vibe. Will Warren is more effective than overwhelming. Payton Tolle and Jonah Tong might end up on this list, but they’ve each only made one start in the big leagues so far. I’m excited for some spectacular playoff rookies – and right now, McLean is our best bet for a little October magic.

2. The NeverEnding Story
Trevor Story’s Boston tenure got off to the rockiest start imaginable. In his first three years out east, he managed only 670 plate appearances due to a litany of injuries. He played his customary great defense, but his bat was headed south and he wasn’t getting any younger. Between Boston’s spectacular farm system and free agent activity, Story’s role on the team looked tenuous at best. When he started the season in an extended slump, you could almost see the writing on the wall: As soon as the Sox got healthy, Story’s time would surely be up.

That’s not what happened, though. Story improved as the season got going, and he remained remarkably healthy while the rest of the team dealt with injury after injury. Story is second on the Red Sox in plate appearances, in fact, a key source of stability while all of their other stars hit the shelf.

There’s never been much question about Story’s defense. Even in the back half of his career, he’s going to make plenty of plays like this one:

And this one:

I don’t think he’s a plus defender at shortstop anymore, but he’s sneaky fast and still has excellent instincts in the field. He’s in the middle of his best baserunning season, 25 steals and not a single time caught. Indeed, he has a 25/25 season squarely in his sights thanks to a new offensive approach that I can best describe as “See that Green Monster? I’m gonna hit it there.” (I suppose he says the same about Pesky’s Pole, too.)

Seriously, I can’t emphasize enough how weird it is for Story to be leading the Red Sox through their injury woes. We’re talking about a team so crammed with great hitters that they traded away Rafael Devers at least in part to free up at-bats; now their poor injury luck has them starting Nick Sogard and Masataka Yoshida (and Nats castoff Nathaniel Lowe, but he’s been certifiably awesome). In August, Roman Anthony and Story were comfortably the team’s best hitters. Now Anthony is hurt (jeez, c’mon), and Story is batting cleanup for one of the better teams in the majors. It’s the kind of story you couldn’t make up – pun intended.

3. A Nice Little Setup
Speaking of the Devers trade, the Giants have gone on a run of their own in the last few weeks, surpassing the Reds as the presumptive beneficiaries of any late-season Mets swoon. Devers has been a big part of that surge, shaking off his post-trade slump with a huge August. That’s not really the kind of observation that makes this column, though. Good player plays well? Yes, obviously. No, the thing that’s caught my eye recently is the nice little platoon situation the Giants have worked out with Devers and the rest of the team’s first basemen.

Against right-handed pitchers, the Giants have been DH’ing Devers and playing Dominic Smith at first base. That’s an excellent setup; regardless of what a year of defensive metrics say, I’m comfortable saying that Smith is an elite defender who still hits righties well enough to platoon. His offense is nothing to write home about, but the smooth double plays are an absolute delight:

But one thing you should never do? Play Smith against a lefty. That’s fine for the Giants, though, because they’re looking to give Devers playing time at first base anyway. When a lefty is on the mound, Devers plays first base and Wilmer Flores DHs in his place. Devers might not be a great defender yet, but he looks better than Flores to my eyes already, and he’s trending the right way there, far better in September than he was in July.

Flores, for his part, is well-suited to being a short-side platoon bat. Even when he briefly led the majors in RBI this year, he seemed miscast, more of a role player than an everyday starter. He’s below replacement level this year, for example, and was even worse in 2024. He’s a fan favorite and everyone in the dugout loves him, but quite frankly, competitive major league teams probably shouldn’t be giving someone like Flores a full complement of at-bats.

This clever little semi-platoon – three players for two positions, with one of them playing everyday and the other two rotating – has been in short supply by the Bay of late. The 2021 season wasn’t that long ago, but the platoon-heavy 107 win squad from that year hardly resembled today’s team. This year’s lineup has been disappointingly stagnant, without enough depth to rotate guys and put role players in the best position to succeed. It’s amusing to me that the Giants have gotten back to their platooning ways by trading for a superstar who plays every day. That kind of delicious irony is what Five Things is all about.

4. Pinball
The Giants have the best shot at disrupting the NL playoff picture. Their AL counterparts, the Texas Rangers, are doing their best to make things more complicated on their side. If you want drama in September, you should be rooting for the Rangers to make a little noise – and to keep making plays like this:

Man, talk about bad luck. Two outs in the top of the 10th, a defender perfectly shaded up the middle, and the dang line drive hits your pitcher? Even worse, it caroms to where no one is? There were Diamondbacks pretty much everywhere except down the first base line:

The good news for Arizona? At least it was in extra innings. One run isn’t such a big deal when you get to start the bottom of the inning with a man on second. Bad bounces and unlucky hops are part of the game. Just one tiny problem – the play wasn’t over:

Sure, the umpire signaled out, but look how certain Ezequiel Duran was. He was so sure he was safe that he did some combination of a yell, a safe sign, and a call for replay all at once. The umpires didn’t need much time to deliberate. Duran’s slide was just in time:

That second run is a heartbreaker, completely changing the tenor of the game. The Diamondbacks went down in order in the bottom of the 10th without ever threatening. But should it have counted? I contend that it should not have. The only reason it was a bang-bang play at home was that first base coach Corey Ragsdale set an effective pick on first baseman Tyler Locklear. Keep your eye on the top righthand corner:

The rule is pretty clear on this one: “If any member of the batting team (including the coaches) interferes with a fielder’s right of way to field a batted ball, the batter shall be declared out.” There’s little doubt in my mind that Ragsdale interfered with Locklear’s right of way. Neither broadcast had a close-up view of it, but the overhead view makes it clear that Locklear had to take a less direct route to the ball to avoid a collision.

It seems like an easy thing to miss in the moment, and it felt like the play was going to be over with only one run scoring, but that slight hesitation made all the difference. It’s hard to blame the umpires for not seeing this given how much was going on. It’s harder to understand why the Diamondbacks weren’t complaining. But either way, the Rangers are hoping to inject some chaos into the playoff race, and they got a head start on it to kick off the month.

5. Un-Victory Formations
The ultimate sign of a blowout is when the team that’s leading is so comfortable in their advantage that they put a position player on the mound. Inserting a position player when you’re behind? No big deal. Teams do that because allowing more runs doesn’t really matter; there’s no effective difference between a 10-run deficit and a 15-run deficit. The inverse isn’t as true – a five-run deficit is decidedly less hopeless than a 10-spot – which is why few teams go to position players when they’re ahead.

Honestly, though, it’s probably fine. Position players aren’t good, or even decent, pitchers, but it’s not like the other team is likely to put up huge crooked numbers even if they get to hit batting practice fastballs. I was at Citi Field for Jonah Tong’s debut last Friday night and got to see this firsthand. With the Mets leading 13-5 heading into the bottom of the eighth, Miami threw up the white flag and let Javier Sanoja “pitch.” He got shelled to the tune of six runs, giving New York a massive 19-5 advantage heading into the ninth. Enter Luis Torrens, who clobbered a three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth before taking the mound to save some bullpen innings.

As far as I can tell, Torrens had one goal on the mound: strike someone out. I think this because the first time he got to two strikes, he did this:

That’s an 81 mph “fastball,” easily his fastest offering of the night. Another 73 mph try missed wildly, putting Jakob Marsee on first base, and then Torrens went back to normal position player pitching rules, lobbing in mid-50s rainbows and letting the Marlins get their cuts in.

Otto Lopez did what hitters often do against mid-50s rainbows:

Hey, no biggie, it was still 19-7. Then Liam Hicks ripped a solo shot to make it 19-8. Then Connor Norby singled, and Troy Johnston smoked one off the wall:

Carlos Mendoza had seen enough. He went to the bullpen. Fourteen runs was enough for a position player to wear the last inning, but 10 runs and a raft of loud contact wasn’t. All of the sudden, the Mets declared the game to be competitive again. Ryne Stanek entered in what is surely the lowest-leverage spot of his career to mop up.

The Marlins were vanishingly unlikely to come back and win even against Torrens. Against a real pitcher, they had no shot. Stanek actually struck out the two batters he faced, but that’s beside the point. The point was that everyone had already decided the game was over, and then another real pitcher had to warm up and throw real fastballs and sliders.

My favorite part of this wasn’t any of the hits, or even Torrens reaching back for 80 and missing by two feet in a vain attempt at a strikeout. It was watching Stanek after the game ended. Baseball players love celebrating wins. The pitcher who closes the game occupies a place of pride in the post-game high-five/handshake/coordinated celebration line. He gets a handshake and pat on the bat from the catcher, whether it was a tight one-run win or a laugher. Stanek blew a raspberry. What else are you supposed to do when you have to go “protect” a 10-run lead by relieving the catcher you normally throw to?

Unfortunately, you’ll have to take my word for it. The broadcast very reasonably cut to Tong celebrating his first big league win and the team doing their normal post-game huddle. By the time the cameras found Stanek again, he had recovered and looked like just another Met celebrating an easy victory. Poor Torrens, denied his coveted strikeout. Poor Stanek, having to pitch in this farce. Poor Marlins, for obvious reasons. But lucky me! My first time at Citi Field in eight years, and I got a 28-run game with a position player getting pulled off the mound for ineffectiveness – on the team that scored 19 runs.

6(?!). Bonus Athleticism
I know, it’s five things, but I have to get a tiny plug in for the US Open. If you’re a sports fan who reads FanGraphs, you’d probably love tennis. The rules are so simple – everyone’s played a game like this. The athleticism is spectacular. The tiny little moves players make to succeed are just as fun as the feats that populate this column every week. Watch Jannik Sinner creep wider and closer to cut down on big lefty serves. Watch Aryna Sabalenka step back to find more room to unleash her hellacious forehand. Watch Novak Djokovic think five steps ahead of his opponent now that he can no longer just out-physical them. Today alone you could see three of the 10 best male tennis players of all time on the court, plus a former top prospect, still only 25, looking for his first major tournament win. The next three days will feature some of the best tennis of the year. I definitely recommend watching it if you enjoy great athletes in their element.