Members-Only Game Thread: ALCS – Oct 13, 2026
Welcome to our Open Game Thread for the ALCS games today. Chat with fellow readers as we watch the Guardians play the Rays! Only Members can participate, and unlike our usual staff Q&A chats, your messages will be posted immediately.
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The response (as of this writing) to the 2nd poll is peak Cleveland.
6/6 respondents want Cleveland to win but only 1/6 believe it will happen.
Hello everyone! We got a few polls for you. The likability ranking from last night, we'll let that ride for at least another day. Then we have the standard who ya got for the game and the SP poll.
I've been thinking about possible ranked polls. If there's an all-midwest WS you'll definitely need some food polls and they will have to feature cheese curds (does Tampa have a cuisine?). I'm also mulling over one on the poignancy of loser heroics–Randy Arozarena, Rajai Davis, Carlton Fisk. I know there are other good ones I'm forgetting.
Bob Gibson in the 1968 World Series is the all-timer
Yes, absolutely.
Also Chase Utley in 2009
Any word on if Caminero and DeLuca are banged up at all after the collision yesterday? Looks like both are good to play at least which is a good sign
Caminero just got the wind knocked out of him, DeLuca was fine
Hi everyone!
Who else is doing Star Wars Legos during the game?!? I assume the answer is just me.
What are you making?
My son kind of wrecked the AT-AT Walker so I'm rebuilding it. I just got the Tantive IV in the mail yesterday
Every time I see the Billy Bob Thornton commercial I think the cops are coming for the crazy guy who keeps bothering people trying to relax in the massage chairs by presuming they want to hear about T-Mobile
Jon, what do you think about this camera angle? For the pitcher-batter matchup?
Didn't Tropicana have an almost perfect straight on angle before the hurricane? I could be wrong. Maybe I need to replay MLB the Show for the answer.
Pretty good but it's perfect in the regular season, yeah
I have a strange question for the group after watching Diaz lope down the line. Should a player go hard on such an easy play and risk a hammy or give himself up?
Depends on the state of his hammies going in. I was OK with Willson Contreras taking it easy when it came up with him–he was clearly hurt, and he's not in the lineup to get infield hits.
I remember Tony La Russa taking a lot of heat in Chicago when he told his players not to hustle on routine plays. Then they fired him and the next season the 3 best White Sox players all got hurt running the bases in April. Sometimes you just can't win
I lean to the don't risk injury side.
What was that commercial!
i feel like dodgers sorta have to play shohei at this point, whats there to lose
Well this is a bad challenge.
Good thing they get two
The replay coach needs a pair of glasses.
G'evening
Messick only retired one batter that inning but still faced the minimum
Dan, obviously there's a long way to go in the NLCS. But from what we've seen so far, do you think projection systems need better ways of accounting for players not on the IL but playing hurt? I feel like all of them, not ZiPS particularly, have been projecting LA at their best and not as they are.
A rare Walls hit!
Phil, it would definitely hurt, but the problem is the actual data itself.
I've always wondered if there's something that can be done here, such as sudden change in playing time over a seven-day-period, but I haven't really dug into it
errr, it woudl definitely HELP
how would you even predict injury?
Yeah, I recognize that reliable data is a huge problem. You don't want ZiPS scouring the papers.
Maybe some day AI can figure that out, but that day is not now!
The problem is that both players and teams lie. I don't know that AI will ever get to the point where it can see through an obvious lie. Our greatest advantage over the machines!
I just checked Eric's 2023 Guardians prospect list and a remarkable 14 players on that list are on the roster today. The Rays have only 4 from that year.
RosterResource has CLE second to STIL in number of homegrown players.
Rays dead last.
Oooh, I should check my 2023 Guardians prospects
From ZiPS Top 200
Bo Naylor
Brayan Rocchio
Logan Allen
Tanner Bibee
Gavin Williams
Daniel Espino
Angel Martinez
George Valera
Juan Brito
Gabriel Arias
Tyler Freeman
That’s an impressive list.
Lotta double plays already
This won’t be one though
Messick doesn't look as sharp as he usually does. The double plays are bailing him out.
First to third on an infield hit!
That seemed fast even for Simpson
Yeah as soon as that bounce went way up he hit another gear
It looked like he ran through first by liek 50 feet too
Ramirez not having a good inning
Bucknered
Bucknered
Oh my – rough two plays for J-Ram
It's the green glove
Buckner's wasn't hit as hard!
I'm seeing double, 4 Seans!
4? Did the message send 4 times?
Simpsons reference.
lol, scared me that something was more wrong than just client sending twice.
Yikes
I wonder if Tyler Wells ever takes an at bat for Taylor Walls just to see if anyone is paying attention
The ball Ramirez failed to come up with hit the edge of the infield grass and stayed down. It is impossible to foresee that and it is more like bad luck, but still an error, than anything else.
The Megan Fox commercial leaves it kind of ambiguous if she's trying to sell us the drug or she's actually the drug
J-Ram kinda has to wonder how come that's an error and the other 750 bloopers not by the Yankees are hits
Oh hell yeah Junior
☝️😏☝️
I liked the competent inelegance of the Caminero catch as he kinda just threw his body in the general direction as a reaction and then caught it
"That first pitch to Jo Adell was the fastest pitch of Freddy Peralta's career, including playoffs, at 99.4 mph" via the great Sarah Langs
I don't know how Sarah does it, she's way faster and more productive than 99% of us that don't need health aids.
Fastball Freddy's heater is the definition of carry.
Hot take: HBPs shouldn't count if it hits your armor.
I had the same thought, but I don’t think we want to incentivize “Wear it!” culture more.
Don Baylor used to make no effort to avoid being hit by the pitch. Of course he was made of concrete.
It’s at the point now where Little League kids are being pressured not to get out of the way.
That's fair.
Jeez. Yet another inane challenge.
I was always told to not get out of the way in Little League tand that was 35-40 years ago
Your coach was a sociopath ahead of his time!
I looked away for a second and not sure why you'd waste a challenge on that. At least it's not the first 3 innings.
And I didn't. I was an overcompetitive kid. I would lose my s%#@ about the mercy rule even if we were on the bad side of it
Fastball Freddie really needed to get away from the Mets. Put a bow on that performance.
Where on earth did Petey Halpin come from? I've now watched a game and a half with him in the starting lineup, and I still have no idea who he is.
San Mateo, CA, sez here.
Man, they’ve really doubled down on that Sydney Sweeney ad.
I almost feel bad for her. It's like she blew her Euphoria money on ice sculpting lessons or something.
That sounds like investing in herself.
Oof that's the shortstop's ball
We had Messick and Peralta going 5 IP for the median, and almost 5 IP for the mean. We were spot on for Messick. And short for Peralta.
Wow, a pinch hitter without a mound visit? How often does that happen? It’s almost like they knew Palacios was on the roster before the game!
Guardians bats gotta do better than pop on toast
This is a good series for undersized sluggers. Palacios , Mesa Jr., Hicks, and of course the great J-Ram
not so great for J-Ram's D!
Arby's commercials always make me a little sad because I'm reminded of my cat Galileo
I saw your story about Galileo and Arby’s in a chat recently. It made me smile, surprised to know that Arby’s has done some small bit of good in this world. I’m glad you have those memories.
I was saying how there’s no way Hicks should be starting against a lefty, but SSS >>> my brain.
The Guardians started Hedges at catcher so they could use Bailey as a PH. I hope that sounds as ridiculous to others as it does to me as I write it.
Gotta keep the other team thinking. Zag when they expect you to zig, etc.
It's amazing how often in recent postseasons Vogt has had Hedges at bat in extremely high leverage situations. Now he has competition for that spot!
"I put my hand on the stove because it feels so amazing when I take it off!"
Was that punitive for heading to first early?
He LOOOOVED Arby's. I couldn't eat Arby's for a year after he died. I mean, he was 20, so he was a really old cat, but still miss the guy because he was the cat who was invariably around me when I was working, including all ZiPS work from origin to 2019.
Vogt has been having Hedges and Bailey pinch hit for each other all year. Drives me up a wall
Gotta think of it as more of a catcher funging than pinch hitting, I guess.
Yeah, that's how he uses it. I just wish he'd pinch hit someone else then make a defensive sub. Although it's not like there's a slugger on the bench.
I was gonna dispute the factoid, but I didn't realize that Kwan was THAT good total in the second half. 155 wRC+
You are allowed to pinch hit with a non catcher though
I mean, he turned it on, but I didn't see the number
I like when they mention Booser, because it's always in a situation where saying boozer sounds funny
THERE'S A BOOSER GETTING WARMED UP
He’s actually a recovering alcoholic.
OH geez, I didn't know that
True story.
Not a convenient name to have
I know, right?
My dad drank himself to death, but he didn't have an ironic name.
How would you explain changing it, though?
"Call a lawyer?"
I just read an article about him the other day. He was out of baseball when he was 27 due to injuries, which led to depression and addiction. But he made it back. So, major hat tip.
Seems like it's a story i should have remembered. Good story
I mean, these days there’s always a chance that the article was a total AI fake, but it seems unlikely that a fake article about a Rays reliever would be real high on anyone’s AI priority list.
Not the matchup Cash would want here.
Man, Adell looked horrible on that changeup
I want to see another Jo Adell triple
That was not a good at bat for Adell
Yes, I'm still here – just went down a deep rabbit hole looking for the best World Series performances from players on losing teams
Lenny Dykstra was tearing it up in 1993
Yes, Dykstra is on the list
A 6-inning rabbit hole
Sorry if I sent you down it! But I'd be curious to see the answer. Wondering about CWPA, too.
Send it as a mailbag question!
Yikes! Terrible bunt.
I mentioned that I watched him several times in Worcester and thought nothing of it. He was just an old never-will-be. Perusing his history shows he did not appear in organized ball between his 26-28 year old years.
Armstrong is a good name for a pitcher
Certainly better than Flimsyelbow
The Twins used to have a starter named Kevin Slowey
And the guy actually named Tommy John ended up having to have Tommy John surgery. How ironic is that?
Don't get me started on Lou Gehrig!
Cy Young never won a Cy Young award
I hate to break it to you about Bill Goodenough.
In retrospect, it seems inevitable.
Why wasn’t Kwan sent home on the double? I thought he was fast.
I couldn't believe he wasn't sent. I guess the 3rd base coach was afraid of him being thrown out in the 1 in 10 chance that might have happened. I hate 3rd base scared 3rd base coaches as you might have ascertained.
Will there ever come a point at which people decide they’ve had their fill of Day-O, “boom boom boom and let me hear you say hey-o” and “Everybody clap your hands!”? Can we poll that?
I much prefer "everybody clap your hands" to the relatively recent alternative "I can make your hands clap"
Yeah I don't love a disembodied voice bragging about how he has control over my body
Rotten potato, rotten potahto.
Jeff Sullivan once live-blogged a Mariners game which included a post "everybody clap your hands clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap" and I will never not laugh about that now
We’ll do a stadium chant poll tomor
The “free mound visit for a pinch hitter” rule is such a farce.
“Gotta give the pitcher the scouting report,” my ass.
I'm grumpy and never ever participate in fan things, even as a kid
One of my earliest memoried is my older brothrr explaining why the wave is stupid.
I just genuinely don’t get why people apparently like the same five sound bites over and over and over and over again for years on end.
Another of life's imponderables. How did Bryan Baker morph into Mariano Rivera?
That's just Ray Magic.
You should see what they did with the Butcher and the candlestick maker
Patrick Bailey, pinch hitter, folks.
Mesa is entertaining even on the routine plays
Ballgame
See ya' all tomorrow.
Excited to suffer through a Snell start?
Good night, all.
I would go see a band called Bryan Baker's Primal Scream, though the actual band might be unhappy
NIght!
I build things here.