Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 10/12/26
by Ben Clemens
October 12, 2026
FanGraphs Baseball
Arizona Fall League Pitcher Scouting Notebook
I’m rolling out a bunch of notes from my recent trip to Arizona. Last week, I wrote about some of the top hitters in the Arizona Fall League, as well as a few backfields standouts for the Royals, Giants, and Padres. Today, we’ll dive into some of the pitchers from the AFL.
Jarlin Susana, RHP, Nationals
Susana has one of the strongest arms in professional baseball. The big righty sits 101-103, and generates it with a low-to-moderate effort delivery. For all its velo, Susana’s fastball doesn’t have bat-missing shape, and even the Fall Leaguers he faced were generally able to get the bat on the ball. His feel for release was off to start the game, and he frequently missed up early in the outing. Hitters couldn’t barrel it in the zone, though, and that will likely continue to be the case for Susana as long as he’s able to live anywhere near that velocity band.
Susana worked with two breaking balls. He used an occasional upper-80s slider, usually just as a way to get hitters off his primary secondary, a mid-80s sweeper. There aren’t a lot of guys who can get 15 inches of break on an 85-mph sweeper, but few pitchers have Susana’s arm talent. Read the rest of this entry »
Postseason Manager Report Card: Craig Stammen
While his season ended with a sour taste, having been bounced from the playoffs by the Brewers in the NLDS, it’d be hard to argue that Craig Stammen’s first season as Padres skipper was anything but a success, with 91 wins plus a Wild Card series victory over the Cubs. Now that his season is over, I’m back to the grade book to give Stammen a report card for his postseason performance in the six games he managed.
I’ll once again remind you, as Ben Clemens also will for his report cards for the AL managers, that I care about process and not results here. It’s easy to say, “That was a great move because it worked,” or “That was a bad move because it failed,” but managers obviously can’t know the results of their decisions as they’re making them. I’ve tried my best to transport myself back to the moment of each decision — taking into account the pitches, innings, and plate appearances that led up to it — while ignoring its outcome.
Before we get into the grades, I’ll also re-reiterate that while these are ostensibly manager report cards, there’s a much larger group of people behind the manager that helps to inform his decisions. Before the game, that includes discussions with the front office, which provides the reams of data that every manager has at his disposal during play. During the game, he’s getting feedback from his coaching staff and players on their levels of health and readiness. It really does take a village to get through a baseball game, and realistically, the praise and scorn doesn’t belong to the manager alone. Read the rest of this entry »
Postseason Managerial Report Card: Aaron Boone
by Ben Clemens
October 12, 2026
Every October, FanGraphs grades each playoff manager. We focus on their in-game decisions, because a lot of the most important parts of the job – things like keeping players ready to go and making sure relievers understand their roles so they know when they might be deployed – aren’t always visible to us from the outside looking in. A lot of what managers do never reaches the public eye. These report cards focus on the remainder of their decisions, the ones that come when the lights are bright and the game is on the line.
We attempt to evaluate those decisions based on process, not results. A pitching change isn’t necessarily bad because the reliever who comes in gets shelled, or good because he gets out of a jam. That’s not to say it can’t be a bad decision – if you bring in a mop-up man in a high-leverage spot, or let your righty specialist face Ben Rice, you made the wrong call. But we’re interested in the before, in what we could expect to happen when a manager makes a pitching change or calls on a pinch-hitter. It isn’t good to completely ignore results, but it’s also bad to fixate on them, and it’s my hope that our report cards strike the right balance.
Earlier this month, Jon Becker wrote up the four managers who lost in the Wild Card round. This week, we’re adding the Division Series losers to the mix. First up: Aaron Boone and the Yankees. Read the rest of this entry »
2026 ALCS Preview: Rays Face Guardians in Battle of the Tight Budgets
Rebounding from two sub-.500 seasons, the Rays won an American League-high 98 games, and took home their first AL East title since 2021. They followed that with an impressive three-game Division Series sweep of the Yankees, highlighted by Drew Rasmussen’s 7 2/3 no-hit innings in Game 1, a contact frenzy that exposed the Yankees’ shoddy infield defense and hastened ace Cam Schlittler’s exit in Game 2, and a timely two-run homer by rookie Victor Mesa Jr. in Game 3. That sweep marked the Rays’ first postseason series victory since 2020, when they outlasted the Astros in a seven-game ALCS to claim their second pennant in franchise history. After bowing to the Dodgers in that World Series, they made the playoffs in each of the next three seasons but went just 1-7 in those games, including a 2022 Wild Card Series sweep by the Terry Francona-managed Guardians. Rays manager Kevin Cash and designated hitter Yandy Díaz are the only principals left from the 2020 pennant-winners. This really is a new era in Tampa Bay baseball.
For their part, the Guardians spent a good chunk of the summer drafting behind the upstart White Sox in the AL Central race before sneaking into first place in mid-September and finishing one game ahead of their rivals at 85-77. They came from behind again versus Chicago during the ALDS, becoming the fourth team to lose the first two games of a five-game series at home but win three straight elimination games to capture the series. After being called upon to close out Game 4 with a four-run lead (a bit of overkill), Gavin Williams threw 5 2/3 innings of one-hit ball and struck out 12 on just one day of rest, while José Ramírez shook off an injury-related slump to homer in Games 4 and 5; his two-run shot off an ankle-high pitch in the finale was all the scoring Cleveland needed. Against the whiff-prone White Sox, Guardians pitchers set and then broke the postseason strikeout record for a nine-inning game, with 19 strikeouts in Game 3 and then 21 in Game 5. This is Cleveland’s third straight trip to the postseason under manager Stephen Vogt, and its second time to the ALCS in that span; the Guards lost to the Yankees in 2024.
Particularly given the contrast between the big-spending Dodgers and the more frugal Brewers in the NLCS, expect much to be made of an ALCS matchup featuring the teams ranked 29th and 28th in payroll, with Cleveland ($87 million) slightly outspent by Tampa Bay ($90 million). Both are ultra resourceful teams whose front offices are among the game’s most analytically inclined, though they’re built differently, with the Guardians heavily reliant on homegrown talent, while the Rays have largely leaned on smart trades to fill out their roster. In fact, deals with the Guardians brought the Rays Díaz in 2018 and third baseman Junior Caminero in ’21, the latter when he was an 18-year-old coming off his professional debut in the Dominican Summer League. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s Brewtal Out There: Milwaukee Takes Game 1
MILWAUKEE — A year ago, the Dodgers came to Milwaukee as the lower seed in the NLCS and blew the doors off the Brewers. Milwaukee scored four runs, total, in a four-game sweep. Both teams’ rosters have evolved, and individual players have changed for better (Jacob Misiorowski) or worse (Shohei Ohtani), but what could possibly be so different this time around? As Dan Szymborski wrote in his series preview, teams that get beat in a playoff series are 17-28 all-time when afforded a rematch the following year. Teams that get swept are 0-5.
Well, at least one thing’s different: The Brewers aren’t going to get swept this time. They checked off the hardest item on their to-do list — beat Tarik Skubal — right away, with a 2-1 win at a sold-out American Family Field. Misiorowski made hard work of his 4 1/3-inning stint, but some terrific infield defense allowed him to escape with a single run on the board, and a solo homer by Brice Turang preceded an RBI single by Luis Lara an inning later. After another four innings, the Brewers had taken Round 1. Read the rest of this entry »
Members-Only Game Thread: NLCS – Dodgers vs Brewers – Oct 11, 2026
Welcome to our Open Game Thread for the NLCS game today. Chat with fellow readers as we watch the Dodgers play the Brewers! Only Members can participate, and unlike our usual game chats, your messages will be posted immediately.
Our Member community is made up of thousands of incredibly knowledgable baseball fans, and we think this is a great way to follow a game with like-minded baseball enthusiasts. We might even have some FanGraphs Staff drop in and join the fun. Please be courteous to your fellow Members, or you may find your chat privileges revoked.
Hi everyone!
Hey Jon!
Hello from the press box at AmFam
I just wanted to wish you both good luck, we're all counting on you
How's the press box food up there, Baumann?
It's the voucher-and-fend-for-yourself system, unfortch
at the workout day yesterday they did have pizza in the media dining room, which saved me from a hypoglycemic emergency, as I hadn't eaten anything since I left for the airport at 7 a.m.
They had a real bald eagle flapping by the Dodgers dugout. It's funny to think about how we imbue this animal with such weighty symbolic meaning and you look at one and it's clearly just thinking "Fish?"
How is Milwaukee? It’s one of the few cities I haven’t been to.
I love Milwaukee. I love just about every medium-sized Midwestern city and even within that context Milwaukee is one of my favorites
Is Pittsburgh on that list
I like Pittsburgh, the thing is if you stay there for more than a day you start running into Steelers fans and it ruins the vibe for me
What in the world is this camera angle, respectfully
Is this angle a Fox thing, not a a MIL park thing?
I think just a FOX thing
Usually a good angle there
Is this angle a Fox thing, not a a MIL park thing?
Not a fan of this new score bug either
I feel like the networks still think this is better for the average viewer.
Just for you, I'm going to call that a "bespoke" double play in my gamer tonight
Jon has used bespoke non-stop in our dev meetings.
The Polymarket commercial clearly used The Wolf of Wall Street in-office party scenes, with the marching band and all, as inspiration, and I think that's more on the zone that they think it is
this guy said "on the zone"
I did, and I'm leaving it as is
Also, hi
Hi Matt 🙂
Matt saw Digger today, everyone
Guys, go see Digger. It's very good. Don't let the haters prevent you from having a great time
I am also iffy on Iñárrritu, but this is different. If I came in blind, without knowing who made it, my best guess would've been Wes Anderson.
It's also a baseball movie
You will not see two plays that look the same on the scoresheet yet look so different in real life as the 4-3 groundouts in the top and bottom of the first inning
I can't see the umps changing anything, with all the scrutiny in the ABS era. Which, it is still remarkable how good most of those umps are.
They are sorta getting there by talking about all the foul balls but the broadcast hasn't really said anything about Miz being down a lot of fastball carry today (not that I really expect them to)
Spin axis, which I believe is largely about hand position
Hello, baseball friends. My daughter is asleep, so I am watching the game and making mini waffles for dinner.
Leggo my Eggo!
Broadcast hasn't said a single thing about that either
brb going to the store to get mini waffles now
That was a disjointed as hell double play
edited
Could've gone wrong three different times
I mean, I have more than enough batter over here.
— Dave Roberts making a lineup
I forgot about that! How can he not win MoY?
and by get mini waffles i mean edit Jay's ALCS preview for tomorrow
I'm trying not to get hyperbolic, but that janky-ass double play could end up being the turning point in the series
You have it in writing. You can reference this in Game 5/6.
Acuña Kalshi commercial oh BROTHER
Enrique has lost several steps since his youth, but did he swing by CVS on his way to first?
He had to get mini waffles
Update: Mini waffles are so good. I'm so happy I did this.
Wait do you have a mini waffle maker?
Or were these frozen
I'm really asking, I'm sitting directly behind the storage point for the folded-up press box window so anything that happens to the right of second base I'm hearing about secondhand
We all need to acknowledge that @brewersbibliophile is at the game and participating in this chat. Our Members are the best
Legend.
We'll tell you what commercials you're missing so you get the full experience.
I need to ship a mobile apupdate. Need to finish it first. But it makes this easier.
These are from scratch. I would love it if they were regular waffles, but we don't have a regular waffle maker. We have this tiny one that makes heart-shaped mini waffles that my wife got for her friend's bachelorette party a few years ago. So I get one tiny waffle every 90 seconds or so, and I am constitutionally incapable of waiting and eating a bunch of waffles at once. I just eat them as soon as they come out.
Making tiny heart-shaped mini waffles with batter made from scratch is the most Davy Andrews activity I've ever heard of
I…cannot argue with that.
I don't know about that, but the number PECOTA spit out for this series is one I did not think it was possible for a projection system to produce in any series, let alone in favor of the road team in a series against a 103-win team
That's definitely something we could compile. Might have to join a few things to get the dates rights for series start dates.
I will be happy to answer it if somebody else is doing all the work.
Fox LOVES to talk about pitcher extension and stride length. I wonder why that's the one metric they care so much about.
No doubt, but I think you could make cool graphics for a bunch of Statcast measurements.
See, Matt? This is the good stuff
This is very good
I think it would be nearly impossible because the AL and NL Cy Youngs are voted upon separately, and while he was excellent, he wasn't overwhelming in his stint in either league.
Sutcliffe's numbers did have a pretty massive contrast between AL and NL, which helped his cause.
And Dwight Gooden got screwed because Sutcliffe went 16-1 with about 2/3 the innings of Gooden
Hey folks, just popping in here for a bit
You're a pop-in guy?
There's a slight flinch of Miz's front leg before he steps off
That's a great call
Yes, called a balk
Send it to the Mailbag!
wow, that's a break for the Dodgers, Teoscar is not the guy I want stealing a base
Miz's front leg moved first. He began to lift his front leg slightly, the equivalent of a false start in football.
I guess I'd have been surprised if you told me the Dodgers would get the first hit with runners in scoring position in this series while the Brewers chalked up the first homer
Re: favored lower seed. This isn't exhaustive, but THIS isn't the most lopped sided. Because the Dodgers happen to face the Brewers in the NLCS quite often as the lower seed.
Now, these are saved from the previous night and we could have updated depth charts the day of.
But these three match ups are by far the most extreme from my quick search.
Also think it's amazing that the Brewers have played the Dodgers three times in the NLCS as the higher seed.
@brewersbibliophile: past performance is not indicative of future results
Has anybody watched that show Doc? The one where the doctor has amnesia but is somehow allowed to keep practicing medicine? Seems like a flawed conceit, right?
DL Hall sounds like someone who writes obnoxious Slate articles
edited
Did you read the one where the guy reached out to all the commenters who were mean to him and asked why?
I keep thinking DL Hall is the famous poet who wrote the book Dock Ellis In the Country of Baseball, but that was Donald Hall. I think it's because my favorite high school teacher was DL and his real name was Donald.
Wait, they fell in love through hating on that one writer?
Let me just say this right now: If anybody falls in love during this chat and ends up getting married, I will bake your wedding cake.
Full-sized cake, decorated on the outside with mini-heart waffles.
I'm against shows that just say what they are. Doc. FBI.
The Office?
Bailin' out the Miz
Like I've never watched the show, but Harlan Coben's Final Twist is a good name for a tv show
I also don't like the name Sheriff Country because fire country is a thing, but like everywhere has sheriffs. It makes as much sense as Police Country or Government Country
The show's fine but I want better names!
I don't want a burger from Burger. I don't want a car called The Vehicle.
I need to check the archives, but is Skubal's butt getting a little bigger every year while the rest of him stays the same size?
Do we archive butt size now?
LARACIOUS
SpectacuLARA.
I mean like videos
Though I bet statcast has ass size somewhere
dang that's way better
I'm sure Baumann will top us both.
They key question for a bunt is already what is the probability that the hitter gets a bunt hit. The calculus for a bunt changes wildly in that case
something like a 10% beating out rate on a sac bunt makes it pretty plausible in most base/out situations
Ron Johnson ran the numbers way back, but I dont' have them at the moment
Nor do I want to do that when there's a game on!
Muncy had murder in his eyes after that
Smoltz said that has to be a hit… That does NOT have to be an hit. Should've been an error
Things that are not errors in 2026: errors
As long as you make incompetence look like it was a hard play, you'll get the hit
Ooh, Contreras wanted to challenge there.
I love a good challenge-that-turns-into-a-helmet-adjustment.
My conspiracy theory is that MLB has instructed official scorers to give out hits more liberally to exaggerate the effect of the shift on BABIP
It's not like Muncy made some spectacular dive and it caromed off his glove, he was there, ran past it, and shoudl have had it
I don't believe MLB is competent enough to successful execute a conspiracy successfully
Huh, weird, there's a guy in a dark suit and sunglasses with an MLB league credential coming up behind me, let's see what he wants
Don't look at the flashy thing!
I mean, the actually did collusion by having Peter Ueberroth gather them in a room and yell at them. And then GMs would actually tell agents "those deals you got last time are not available anymore"
..and that was the last time anyone heard from or saw Michael Baumann.
I mean, pitcher butts are the center of the screen
Putting Cal Raleigh in an ad about screening for colon cancer is very smart
I did my Cologuard recently!
It was harder than I thought because I kept thinking about that Cologuard Saturday Night Live commercial.
The whole box was in the bathroom and I just kept imagining it telling me to "Unleash"
Did he say free-peat?
Related to both that commercial and DIGGER — John Goodman says "a** cancer" multiple times
Capsule review of Digger, please.
I used asterisks so Sean wouldn't have to approve a comment with a** cancer in it
Oh dang, since we're just regular chatterers, we can't self-ignore censorship things
I sometimes drop an F bomb in my chats
Andy Pages needs to thicken his mustache, the mustache beard thickness ratio is too low
Truck commercials are real turnoffs to me. They're all like TRUCKS ARE FOR SERIOUS ADULT WORK THINGS, and I don't want to do any of that
So…uh…is Mike dead?
See, Vesia has a proper ratio. A mustache should be thick enough that it looks like it could hold up the beard if it had to be used as a handle
If a food place wants to sponsor a thing in a broadcast, it should also have the possibility of earning free food from viewers
If someone held me a gunpoint and demanded I explain a balk, they'd find my corpse
Every time you think you know all the balk reasons there's some other thing
OH THE PITCHER RUBBED HIS BELLY WITHOUT ITCHING HIS ASS THATS ACTUALLY A BALK
Hey, we can say ass
HAS the world embraced Bills mafia?
They didn't ask Christopher Walken insane, they just filmed him normally
I was really upset back in the day when I found that Andy Ashby and Alan Ashby weren't related after thinking they were for like 15 years
They need a brain chip that checks intention and then they can time it against where the pitch was
Yes, it's best to hit it over the wall NO MATTER WHO the centerfielder is
I miss the zoom-zoom commercials. I don't have a Mazda just for not dying, which is kinda boring
I just have trouble caring either way
One of nice things about getting older is you can care about a lot fewer things
I can't wait until I'm the age when I can not care that someone tweeted something stupid at me and not feel required to get into a stupid fight
Hey Doug, the Grokipedia biography of me is peak.
"Daniel John Szymborski (born June 19, 1978) is an American baseball analyst and sabermetrician renowned for developing the ZiPS (Zebulon Igor Projection System) projection system, "
"Szymborski graduated from high school in 1996 and demonstrated early independence by self-financing much of his college education through physically demanding construction work, including digging ditches"
Digger Dan Szymborski????
Also did not do that, I don't even like the outside if there's no beer or baseball
now, it would be awesome if my name was Zebulon Igor
I'm still disappointed my dad didn't want my name to be Alexander because i could have been Zander Zymborski
It took me 30 years to get people to mostly spell my name right, I'm not starting from square one
I think Dodgers pitchers generally have bigger butts than Brewers pitchers. Given the cities, shoudln't it be the opposite?
I wonder if ChatGPT is going to make up the answer to "Give me a chart of ass size by city"
Are there enough kardashians by now to skew it?
I don't endorse AEDs
People with big butts shoudl have to be tested to make sure they have high cholesterol
My brain was destroyed decades ago
Andy and Alan! Aaron is Andy's nephew but not Alan relaetd
Now the other Andy/Alan pair, the Beneses, are releated
Any relation to Hal?
sorry endaround, I can't approve your link!
I didn't set up the chat
when he makes it an error it's a Cooper Pratfall
how did that lady in teh state farm commercial only have the hail damage on ONE wall?
the other wall facing the same direction had no hail damage
I never want to see that Trolli commercial again
Are we all getting the same commercials?
I always like when food companies have commercials saying "you know that thing you've been eating for years? Well, we know it was %#@#, so we made it better now."
yeah, I stream it from foxone too
This is a bonkers decision
Even if it works out, it's still wild
"Hi, I'm Corey Seager. I'm a MLB SS, the better Seager, and the second-earliest balding man behind Michael Chilkis, and I'm here to talk about Nutrafol."
Asses are one of the things that are universal to the human experiences
I wonder if being Joe's brother causes Dom DiMaggio to be really underrated in history
edited
You mean The Long Goodbye?
Megill was pop on toast but made it
Baumann has the gamer tonight, so hopefully the MLB official didn't kidnap him
Ah, yeah he skeeted 14 minutes ago
Do we get a Whopper or something now?
OK, game over so I'm gonna go play Trails of Cold Steel II
Sunday Notes: D-backs Prospect Demetrio Crisantes Is Crushing It in the Desert
Demetrio Crisantes is off to a hot start in the Arizona Fall League. The 22-year-old second baseman has gone 8-for-20 with a triple and a pair of doubles for the Salt River Rafters. That hardly comes as a surprise. As our own Brendan Gawlowski wrote prior to the regular season, “Crisantes has a case as the best pure hitter in the D-backs system.”
The Tucson native’s track record largely backs up that opinion. Since being drafted in the seventh round by his home-state team in 2023 out of Nogales High School, Crisantes has slashed .312/.399/.473 with a 125 wRC+. Moreover, this past season he batted .296 with 10 home runs over 335 plate appearances between three levels, topping out at Triple-A. Notably, Arizona’s No. 3 prospect played all but the final two weeks as a 21-year-old.
Staying on the field has been an issue. Crisantes has undergone a pair of Tommy John surgeries — the first at age 15, the second two years later — and he has subsequently dealt with hamstring and shoulder injuries. That makes his stint in the desert especially meaningful. Eric Longenhagen put it this way in his Fall League preview:
“He has really hit when he’s been healthy, and how he looks in the AFL might help inform whether the D-backs feel comfortable trading Ketel Marte this offseason. He’s arguably the most important eval in the entire league.”
Asked for a self-assessment of his strengths as a hitter, Crisantes cited the plus contact skills described in Gawlowski’s scouting report. Read the rest of this entry »
2026 NLCS Preview: The Brewers Get Their Rematch
October 11, 2026
When the Los Angeles Dodgers finished off the Atlanta Braves in Game 4 of the NLDS, they set up a rematch of last year’s NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers. Last time around, the Brewers, coming off an extremely successful 97-65 season, ran into the Dodger buzzsaw and were swept out of the postseason. While Milwaukee mostly kept Los Angeles’ offense in check, the Brew Crew could only muster one run in each of their four games, and when that’s all you manage to score, you have to pitch shutouts to prevail. As noted in many a book and movie, revenge frequently comes with a good deal of satisfaction, whatever Herman Melville may have thought. And the Brewers now have the chance to turn the tables on the Dodgers and stymie their quest for baseball’s first three-peat (please don’t sue me, Pat Riley) of the 21st century.
Going back to the start of the modern World Series in 1903, there have been 45 consecutive-year postseason rematches in major league history (here we’re including a rematch in any playoff series the following year). In 17 of those 45 rematches, the previous year’s loser got their revenge, but no team has immediately avenged a playoff sweep. Granted, before now, there have only been five chances for a team to get vengeance the year after being swept in the playoffs — Orioles-Twins in 1970, Yankees-Rangers in 1999, Cardinals-Padres in 2006, Red Sox-Angels in 2008, and Yankees-Twins in 2010 — but it still gives the Brewers the opportunity to do something that’s never been done before.
ZiPS favors the Dodgers by a significant, but not overwhelming, margin in the NLCS. But with the fourth-most wins in the majors over the last decade, including the most wins in each of the last two seasons, the Brewers aren’t your typical scrappy underdog fighting for table scraps. Yet, in another sense, they are: Every year, they crush the expectations of fans, the Vegas oddsmakers, and projection systems. As the developer of one of those projection systems, I’ve spent a lot of time scratching my head over how the Brewers so routinely defy the expectations of my model in a way no other team has, and while I think I’ve identified the mechanism of my humiliation, I’m still trying to figure out how to model it. Read the rest of this entry »
Gavin Williams, José Ramírez Power Guardians to ALCS
Pope Leo XIV may not have quite as much pull with The Man Upstairs as Chicago fans had hoped. After obliterating the Astros in the Wild Card Series and jumping out to a 2-0 lead in the ALDS, the White Sox dropped three in a row to end their miracle 2026 season. On the back of a brilliant performance from starter Gavin Williams, the Guardians defeated the White Sox, 2-0, in Game 5. They’ll now head to St. Petersburg to face the Rays on Monday night, making their second ALCS appearance in three years.
So many things about this series were odd. Both managers pulled every lever they could get their hands on. The first four games featured 49 pitchers and just 54 hits. Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt continued the trend in Game 5. He shook up his lineup, sitting catcher Austin Hedges in favor of Patrick Bailey, who homered in Game 4. Angel Martínez, who went 0-for-15 in the first four games of the series, got benched in favor of Petey Halpin, who ran a 66 wRC+ in the regular season. But after all the mixing and matching and overthinking, the rubber match was a genuine, old-fashioned pitcher’s duel. If you’re a fan of gaudy strikeout totals and teardrop curveballs pouring into the strike zone, this was the game for you.
The game also looked like it might be impacted by weather. Rain started falling before first pitch, with the intensity picking up in the bottom of the second. By the third, the television broadcast was cutting to Guardians fans wearing ponchos and the cleat cleaner was getting significant air time. The grounds crew replaced the cleat cleaner after the third, and just like that, the rain calmed down. By the fifth, it had all but stopped. Read the rest of this entry »
