Category: Baseball

The San Diego Padres are back in the postseason! They’ll likely go back and forth as the season continues before they face off against the Arizona Diamondbacks for the final Wild Card spot. The Friars swept the Washington Nationals after Jackson Merrill’s two homer day. He finished a double shy of the cycle, with a single, a triple and two home runs. That production led the Padres to a 9-2 win in the series finale.

San Diego will now embark on a crucial road trip, facing the San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies. Both are divisional opponents who are very beatable for the Friars. Not only that, but both teams have been eliminated from the playoffs so they aren’t playing for as much. The Padres should be able to clean up against the two clubs, with the Friars beating San Francisco, 6-4, in the season series.

Taking the mound

Anthony Molina (SF) v. Robbie Ray (SD)

In a short stint with the Giants, Molina has managed to immensely impress. In three appearances (two starts), Molina owns a 1.88 ERA through 14 1/3 innings pitched. Prior to that, Molina had been on the Atlanta Braves, where he pitched just five innings in relief before he was traded for starting pitcher Tyler Mahle.

Molina doesn’t have an abundance of experience at the big-league level. He’s spent two seasons with the Rockies, posting an ERA over 6.00 in both years. Molina worked primarily out of the bullpen but has worked as a starter for San Francisco. It’s worked to mostly solid results, with Molina surrendering three runs in his last three starts.

This will be Ray’s homecoming since being traded by the Giants at the Trade Deadline. The veteran lefty has pitched incredibly well this season but has struggled with the Friars. He’s coming off of a miserable start in which Ray gave up five runs in just 2 1/3 innings versus the New York Yankees.

This is the perfect team for Ray to face in order to turn his Padres tenure around. Not only does Ray know these hitters well, having shared a clubhouse with them, but they have struggled immensely to produce runs this season. That said, San Francisco is on a three-game win streak after sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals.

Batter up!

Apart from Merrill’s hot day at the plate, the San Diego lineup still looked fantastic on Wednesday afternoon. The offense (without Merrill) went a combined 12-for-33. Three of the Padres had three-hit games (Ty France, Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr.) while five had multi-hit games.

1. Fernando Tatis Jr., RF
2. Jake Cronenworth, 2B
3. Manny Machado, 3B
4. Ty France, 1B
5. Jackson Merrill, CF
6. Luis Campusano, DH
7. Dustin Harris, LF
8. Xander Bogaerts, SS
9. Freddy Fermin, C

After Cronenworth’s day off on Wednesday, he’ll likely be back in the lineup for the series opener versus San Francisco. He’s spent most of the second half batting behind Tatis. That has worked pretty well for the Padres, but Craig Stammen could tinker a little bit after Merrill’s recent hot streak.

Relief corps

After Walker Buehler was pulled from the game early (perhaps accidentally), the Padres’ bullpen locked it down. With the bases loaded in the third inning, Kyle Hart stymied the Nats. Hart then pitched 1 2/3 more innings before David Morgan, Yuki Matsui, Wandy Peralta and Griffin Canning covered the final 4 1/3 innings.

With the off day on Thursday, San Diego will have all of its relievers available for the series opener. However, those who didn’t pitch in the series finale on Wednesday will be preferred over the rest. Mason Miller, Adrian Morejon, Bradgley Rodriguez and Randy Vásquez will be available out of the ‘pen for San Diego. Vásquez seems likely to pitch only if Ray struggles to work deep into the game.

The lineups are out for tonight’s series-opening showdown between the Atlanta Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies. There’s no major shakeup but there is a return to the lineup for one familiar face after he started Thursday’s contest on the bench.

Ozzie Albies is back in the starting lineup for the Braves. Here’s how the rest of Atlanta’s lineup is looking:

Sale takes the mound tonight at @TruistPark 💪 pic.twitter.com/sZRngGjbvQ

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) September 11, 2026

Ozzie has hit .249/.304/.411 so far this season with a wOBA of .311 and a wRC+ of 95. His big triple against the Rays on Thursday helped push Atlanta past Tampa Bay and gave them what could amount to being a very crucial win if all continues to go well for the Braves as far as this particular series is concerned.

Outside of that, there are no major changes from yesterday and in fact, this is the same group of nine batters that squared off against Aaron Nola last week. The bottom of the order is slightly different but the players remain the same. For what it’s worth, Ronald Acuña Jr. has an OPS of 1.076 against Nola in 56 pat-bats. Austin Riley has done a similar level of damage as well with an OPS of 1.111 over 62 ABs. Mike Yastrzemski and Drake Baldwin have both been successful as well (1.046 and 1.056 OPS, respectively) against Nola but they both have much smaller sample sizes (16 and 8 ABs, respectively) to go with. Let’s see if that turns into a factor during tonight’s contest.

Meanwhile, here’s how the Phillies are shaping up:

Today’s Phillies lineup in Atlanta:

Schwarber DH
Turner 6
Harper 9
Arraez 4
Bohm 3
Sosa 5
De La Cruz 7
Realmuto 2
Hill 8

Nola RHP

— Lochlahn March (@lochlahn) September 11, 2026

Alec Bohm is the main one to watch out for tonight, since he was the only Phillies hitter who had any real consistent success against Sale when these two teams squared off last week. Bohm had an RBI double and a solo homer as both of the runs that Philadelphia scored on the night came of of his bat. Of course, it’s hard to overlook the rest of the lineup but hopefully Sale will be able to get the better of Bohm this time around.

So, what do y’all think? Tonight’s game is scheduled to start at 7:15 p.m. ET. There’s some inclement weather in the area so there is a chance that this one could get delayed, so that’s why I’m mentioning the scheduled start time. Either way are y’all ready?

The success of the Yankee pitching staff has been the team’s guiding beacon this season, but to say they’ve had their depth tested would be an understatement. The rotation has seen at least one expected starter sitting on the IL the entire season, whether it be Gerrit Cole, Max Fried, Carlos Rodón, or Ryan Weathers, oftentimes with two of them simultaneously getting shelved. The bullpen has had to do a lot of heavy lifting to support the starters working themselves back into shape lately, and though the team has seen the trio of David Bednar, Paul Blackburn, and Brent Headrick take over the late innings, there’s still more than enough mileage that Aaron Boone has to get out of the rest of the staff.

The team opted against paying a premium for any relievers at the Trade Deadline, instead opting to rely on the arms who they knew were set to start rehab assignments soon to fill in the gaps as they fought through the dog days of summer. One of those arms being eyed for a bullpen spot was Luis Gil, the former Rookie of the Year back in 2024 who had missed most of the last two seasons with a series of injuries. Gil worked himself back into the fold at the start of the season following one tune-up start in Triple-A and made four starts in the majors back in April before hitting the shelf again with shoulder inflammation. It took a while for Gil to get back on a mound, but he began to ramp up in August and after a couple of appearances with the High-A Hudson Valley Renegades, the organization made the decision to use him in some relief appearances while rehabbing to transition him into that role since the big-league team needed bodies.

However, since getting back to the majors Gil has appeared just twice for the Yankees, and both times in blowouts. He made his return on August 31st against the Angels and soaked up the sixth and seventh innings in a game they were losing 6-1 when he entered, before getting an opportunity last night to pitch the final two frames against Colorado with a 10-2 lead. Neither outing was clean for Gil, as he allowed a run against the Angels (though he did strike out three batters) and allowed an unearned run against the Rockies with the potential for more as he loaded the bases in the ninth inning with no one out before getting some shallow fly balls to prevent any more from scoring. It’s clear from how little he’s seen the mound that Boone doesn’t exactly have much trust in Gil at the moment, and with the Yankees in the middle of a playoff push chasing the Rays for first place in the division he’s going to opt for his better relievers in close contests, but has Gil truly fallen this far down in the eyes of the organization at this point?

Looking under the hood, the clear discrepancy in Gil’s arsenal from 2024 to now has been his fastball velocity, the right-hander dropping from a 96.6-mph four-seamer in his Rookie of the Year campaign to a 95.2-mph offering this year. Hitters have predicably been able to catch up to it with ease, slugging to a .512 mark against the heater compared to .395 a few years ago. Even more concerning has been his inability to end at-bats with the pitch, dropping from a 23.3-percent PutAway% to a 9.6-percent rate this year. Gil’s slider and changeup, while still seeing a slight uptick in the damage done against them, are nowhere near as out of whack as the four-seam has been, and Gil offers the heater 49.2 percent of the time to batters giving them plenty of opportunities to punish the pitch.

Now, Gil’s latest appearance didn’t do a lot for him in the box score to stand out, but there were some signs of improvement in this category. Gil noticeably dialed up the speed in his second inning of work, topping out at 97.9 mph in a three-pitch strikeout against Zac Veen to end the game. Gil threw just one fastball below 96 mph in that frame after largely staying in that range in the eighth inning, though two of the three singles he allowed were against that four-seamer and were smashed pretty hard coming back.

That finishing pitch against Veen is more of what Gil wants to accomplish with his heater, blowing it by hitters up in the zone. However, even though Gil was able to kick the speed up a notch on his heater to accomplish this, it did come with a considerable lack of command that went unpunished by a lowly Rockies team all but going through the motions the end of a blowout.

Consider this fastball Gil threw to TJ Rumfield to conclude the penultimate at-bat of the game:

Ali Sánchez is setting up for the pitch to come on the outer third of the plate, but Gil misses and offers Rumfield a cookie down the middle of the plate. Fortunately for Gil, the former Baby Bomber swung under this pitch and popped it up for a harmless out, but that was a mistake pitch that could’ve gotten tattooed had Rumfield timed his swing a little better. Now let’s look at the fly ball that Gil induced from Hunter Goodman for the first out of the ninth:

Another miss from Gil, Sánchez setting up up and away with Gil crossing the plate to find the inside corner of the plate instead. Goodman didn’t manage to get this ball deep enough to threaten a sacrifice fly, but that’s not good execution in a situation where the Rockies were a productive out or a base knock away from forcing Boone to use his closer in a game that Bednar never should’ve needed to warm up for.

So in total, Gil gave up two hard hits against the fastball in the ninth, collected two weak outs on pitches that he largely got away with making mistakes, and then locked in to deliver a good finishing touch in his final at-bat. It’s promising that the velocity was there to bail him out because it simply hasn’t been there previously, but if either command or velocity is going to be a question mark every time Gil steps on the mound it’s no surprise that Boone has only deployed him in mop up duty thus far.

On top of Gil’s struggles, the Yankees have collected several options who have gotten priority over Gil down the stretch. The team signed Michael Fulmer and John Schreiber at the end of last month to help eat up some innings and both have seen their fair share of work already, appearing in seven and five games respectively. Schreiber in particular looks to me like an arm that Boone and company could utilize in a postseason roster, as he has been elite in shutting down right-handers this season with a .401 OPS allowed in 113 plate appearances. On the near horizon, the team also has Clarke Schmidt putting together the finishing touches on his rehab assignment before he’ll return to the majors looking to add to the bullpen’s choice of weapons. Schmidt’s had a similarly difficult time staying healthy but has looked far more effective when on the mound than Gil has in recent memory, and then there’s the possibility of Ryan Weathers returning in time from the forearm strain he suffered to add himself into the mix as well.

If all goes according to plan, there just isn’t an avenue for Gil to get himself any further chances if the Yankees want to prioritize chasing the Rays down. They could risk working Gil into some low-to-moderate leverage situations as opposed to letting him be the guy that soaks up a couple innings every week or so, but what would they stand to gain? Gil still has a lot to work on, and it looks to be a situation where he needs time more than anything else — and there isn’t any of that left to give. Having backup options still matters at this stage and there’s always the possibility of another arm hitting the shelf, but the team also has Will Warren beginning to transition into a relief role as he looks to be the likely odd man out of the playoff rotation through no fault of his own. Looking at this roster as it stands*, Gil is in even more jeopardy than Ryan Yarbrough among pitchers on the chopping block who could be squeezed back in should a situation arise. Yarbrough has been in the ‘pen throughout the year, and while he has been mostly deployed in a low leverage long-relief role that wouldn’t see much use in October, he’s been consistent enough to be trusted over Gil.

*With Jasson Domínguez getting demoted last night, another bubble reliever is joining the active roster in Bradley Hanner.

Luis Gil’s future with the Yankees is overall extremely murky — the team passed on trading him in previous offseasons, but he’ll be arbitration-eligible for the first time after this season and he hasn’t had much to show for his last two years. This relief role was his best shot at recouping some stability with the team, but he’s been supplanted in that and the rotation seems fully out of reach for him in 2027. This could potentially be the last we see of Gil in pinstripes, but it would also be selling at rock bottom to pass on Gil right now and that’s not something Brian Cashman is fond of doing. Perhaps the likeliest outcome is Gil gets relegated to the minors to start next season and either serves as depth at Triple-A with a full offseason of rest behind him or continues to work on his evolution into a reliever with Scranton, but either way it’ll be a tough climb for Gil to make his way back into the team’s plans.

It is obligatory to include a reference to the 2023 World Series in every preview between these two teams, so let’s get that out of the way first. As we remember well, Texas prevailed in five games. But since then? Neither team has returned to the playoffs. It was the first World Series since 2006 where neither side reached the playoffs the following year – and, of course, it was considerably harder to make the post-season in 2007. Arizona narrowly missed out on tiebreakers, but Texas finished with a losing record in 2024, slumping to a 78-84 mark. The following year saw the Rangers with the better record, ending exactly even at 81-81.

This year, they’re there or thereabout again. Texas are currently 72-75. Normally, such a mediocre record would be well out of the post-season picture, but this is the American League in 2026. So the Rangers are still in the hunt for a spot, despite being below .500: they are two back of the Guardians for the last AL spot. Even winning the AL West is not out of the question. Texas are currently three games behind Houston there, and all told have a playoff percentage of 20.3%, per Fangraphs. While not as good as the Diamondbacks, I’ve no doubt the Rangers will still feel there’s a chance, and I’d expect them to play like it this weekend.

The season so far

No doubt about the star for Texas (hohoho) so far on the position player side. Ezequiel Durán’s remarkable flexibility – he has started at every position bar pitcher and catcher – combined with a 124 OPS+ has powered him to 4.6 bWAR. It’s kinda out of nowhere, considering his total over the previous four seasons and 362 games was only 1.7 bWAR. Interestingly, former Diamondback Alex Cintron, now a hitting coach for Texas, may have helped sustain Durán’s breakout campaign, with an adjustment in the player’s stance. Wyatt Langford and Corey Seager have also been having solid seasons, while Jake Burger easily leads the team in HR, RBI and strikeouts.

The Rangers lead the American League in OPS+ at 108, but that has largely been undone by the pitching side. They rank 13th among the 15 clubs there, with an ERA+ of 91. Weirdly though, only the Tigers and the Red Sox have more shutouts than the Rangers, who have blanked the opposition 13 times. One starter we won’t see is Jacob DeGrom, but nice to see him stay mostly healthy. He could post consecutive 30-start seasons for the first time since 2019, though had to leave his last start with groin tightness. We probably don’t want to be trailing going into the ninth, because Texas closer Jacob Latz has been their best pitcher by bWAR. He has a 1.85 ERA to go with 28 saves, and a FIP of 2.65 suggests he has been deservedly good.

Pitching match-ups

At time of writing, early Friday morning. MLB.com lists all six probable pitchers for this series as a thoroughly unhelpful, “TBA”. So what follows is a best guess, going off previous pitchers in each team’s rotation plus other sources online, and is subject to change. So don’t come whining to me…

Friday 11th: LHP MacKenzie Gore (8-10, 4.51) vs. RHP Merrill Kelly (9-13, 5.06)

We’ll be hoping for better this time, against the man whose name sounds like the villain in an eighties slasher film. For Arizona faced Gore on the road in May, and he tossed eight innings of one-run ball, allowing only three hits. It was his best start of the year by Game Score. But his ERA is more than two runs higher on the road: 5.63 vs. 3.36. Kelly has been showing some improvement; last outing was a quality start, and his first appearance without a walk since May 20. He’d walked 3+ each of his previous six. Merrill is 4-9 when issuing more than two BBs in a start, compared to a 5-4 record when he walks zero or one batters.

Saturday 12th: RHP Kumar Rocker (5-11, 4.61) vs. RHP Brandon Pfaadt (7-2, 3.53)

The #3 pick in the 2022 draft hasn’t lived up to expectations yet. Over his first 41 starts, he has an ERA+ of just 79. His last appearance came following an opener on September 4, and it did not go well, allowing nine hits over five innings. Though his first such “bullpen” outing, earlier this season, led to 7.2 shutout innings at Coors Field. Looks like a regular start here though. After a stellar month and a half, Pfaadt has come back to earth. He’s not missing as many bats, with only eight strikeouts over his last three starts, covering 19 innings. But he has thrown at least six innings each time, keeping Arizona in the games: all three ended up being decided by one run.

Sunday 13th: RHP Cal Quantrill (8-5, 2.89) vs. LHP Eduardo Rodriguez (15-5, 2.55)

If this does turn out to be the match-up, it’s likely the best of the series. With three – possibly four – starts remaining, ERod has 5.3 bWAR, and could end up surpassing his career high of 5.5 bWAR, back in 2019. Indeed, his total bWAR over five years and 114 starts from 2021-25 was only 5.6 bWAR. It has been a spectacular resurrection. Meanwhile, Quantrill started the year in the bullpen, but has been a revelation since returning to the Texas rotation in late June. He has a 1.70 ERA over his last six outings, with a K:BB ratio of 34:6 across 37 innings. While his FIP is somewhat higher, at 2.80, it’s hardly extravagant. This promises to be a tough one.

Prediction

When we faced the Rangers at Arlington in mid-May, we squeaked out the opener 1-0, but then lost the next two by margins of 4-7 and 5-6. With the D-backs now in a tough fight for a wild-card spot, they’ll certainly be looking to do better. Given the lack of certainty about the pitching match-ups, it’s hard to say how things might break. Saturday’s game is the only one where I feel there’s a definite edge, favoring Arizona. The others could go either way – and I’d not be surprised if that’s exactly what they do, the D-backs taking one and dropping the other. Just don’t ask me which! So, all told: the Diamondbacks win two out of three. Enough? We’ll have to ask the Giants about that…

The 2026 MLB trade deadline was almost six weeks ago, and as you may recall, the situation for the Texas Rangers was very fluid at the time. There were reports that the Rangers were saying that no one was off-limits and that they were listening on everybody after getting swept in Houston the weekend before the deadline. A complete seemed, if not likely, at least possible.

After a morning filled with angst, anxiety and uncertainty, news broke around 2 p.m. that Monday afternoon that Jacob deGrom would not be waiving his no-trade clause. A couple of days later, I did a lengthy post-mortem on the trade deadline that talked about deGrom’s decision, among other things. Everyone pretty much moved on.

The Jacob deGrom non-trade is a topic of conversation again, however, thanks to a column by Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. Feinsand, in a piece that went up yesterday entitled “An early look at 11 intriguing offseason trade candidates,” detailed, well, 11 intriguing offseason trade candidates, one of whom was Braves’ starter Spencer Strider.

This is the Spencer Strider section, in toto:

Spencer Strider, RHP, Braves

The Braves discussed sending Strider to Texas in a contract swap trade for Jacob deGrom before the Trade Deadline, and although deGrom blocked the deal with his no-trade clause, it’s clear that Atlanta is open to moving its former ace. Strider has been out since mid-June with right elbow inflammation, and while it’s unlikely that he will return this season, there is an outside chance he could be available out of the bullpen during the postseason. Strider is owed $22 million in each of the next two seasons with a $22 million club option ($5 million buyout) for 2029, so if the Braves can find a team willing to bet he can return to his previous form, they could look to move him.

127 words. A heading and three sentences about Spencer Strider, one of 11 individuals who was the subject of the story. Only one portion of one of those sentences had to do with deGrom, who was mentioned more or less in passing.

That particularly snippet on deGrom is noteworthy, and does provide for an interesting footnote on the whole Jacob deGrom trade deadline drama. But because this is used to provide background for the inclusion of Strider on Feinsand’s list, and is not a story on, you know, the Jacob deGrom and his potentially being dealt at the deadline, it is lacking in the sort of information that would provide clarity in regards to the details of the discussions between the Rangers and the Braves.

Years ago, on Twitter, I broke down what I called the “Hierarchy of rumor stage descriptions”:

Hierarchy of rumor stage descriptions, from least meaningful to most:

Have discussed internally
Have considered
Have interest in
Have contacted about
Have engaged with
Have had ongoing discussions with
Have had substantive discussions with
Have had advanced discussions with

— Adam J. Morris (@lonestarball) June 21, 2018

This is something I put together based on, at the time, a couple of decades of obsessing over online reports of rumors in the Big Four sports, dating all the way back to the turn of the century when MLB Trade Rumors would take ButtPirate69’s post on the ESPN Yankees message board* saying that the Yankees should trade Ricky Ledee to the Expos for Vlad Guerrero and turn it into a story with a headline like “Yankees, Expos rumored to be talking Guerrero trade!” There’s an element of tea leaf reading when digesting rumors being reported, something that became even more necessary when Twitter became the preferred medium for reporters to send little tidbits out in bite-sized form, leaving room for interpretation, or, at a minimum, requiring the reader to use context clues.

* 25 years ago today, I learned that what we now colloquially refer to as “9/11” happened by logging onto my laptop and going to the ESPN Rangers board right after waking up (I was in law school and had no morning classes) and seeing the board filled with replies on posts with subjects like “Second Tower Just Fell.”

Feinsand’s “discussed sending” would seem slot in around “engaged with” in the hierarchy above, though it could also be equivalent to as high as “advanced discussions with” at the top of the hierarchy pyramid (or at the bottom of the inverted ziggurat, as I structured the tweet). Again, because this is an aside in a piece that is only 9.09% about Spencer Strider, its hard to tell exactly where this fits in.

We do know, per reporting, that the Rangers apparently told deGrom that if he wanted to be traded to the Braves, the Rangers would make that happen. We don’t know whether there was a specific trade agreed to or in place between the Rangers and the Braves, or if the Rangers were simply at a point in the discussions where they felt that a deal was doable and they were letting their future Hall of Fame pitcher who is in the twilight years of his career know that they would facilitate such a move if that’s what he wanted.

“Discussed” has a wide range of possible implications, which gets us back to the lack of clarity surrounding reporting of rumors in general. One would think that if the Braves and Rangers had a deal worked out to swap deGrom for Spencer, Feinsand would have said “agreed to” such a swap. Of course, its possible there was such an agreement, and Feinsand couldn’t get it confirmed, or his source didn’t want him to acknowledge something that definitive (which, given the fact that Strider is still a member of the Braves, and the Braves presumably don’t want Strider thinking they had agreed to get rid of him, would be understandable). It could be that there were various permutations of a deal being discussed, with Strider going to the Rangers in some scenarios but not others. There is a lot of inherent uncertainty, given we are working off of less than a sentence in Feinsand’s report.

That hasn’t, however, kept folks from re-packing Feinsand’s story in more definitive and clickbaity ways.

Go do an internet search for Jacob deGrom and Spencer Strider and one of the first things you’ll see is a New York Post article with the headline “Jacob deGrom nearly traded for Spencer Strider in failed deadline blockbuster.” The article starts off thusly:

Add this one to the long list of blockbuster baseball trades that nearly happened.

Before this year’s trade deadline, Jacob deGrom nearly became a Brave.

Instead, the ex-Met declined to waive his no-trade clause, citing his desire to remain in Texas.

The Post’s Jon Heyman reported the potential deal at the time, but the return Atlanta discussed is only now coming to light.

The headline and opening paragraphs lead one to suppose that the New York Post is breaking some news here and not just aggregating the aside in the Feinsand story, right?

Wrong:

MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand revealed Thursday that Spencer Strider was discussed as part of a possible “contract swap” for deGrom.

The article then just goes on to talk about deGrom and Strider, and what the ramifications would have been had such a deal gone down.

I probably could have figured out that there’s no new independent scoop here from the outset if I’d looked a little more closely. The byline indicates the author of the piece is Dylan Svoboda, whose New York Post page describes him as “a sports gambling editor and producer for the New York Post,” rather than someone like Jon Heyman or Joel Sherman.

You’ll also see a headline from “theScore.com” stating: “Report: Braves tried to trade Strider to Rangers for deGrom.” Here’s the lede:

The Atlanta Braves attempted to deal right-hander Spencer Strider to the Texas Rangers for two-time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom before the trade deadline, according to Mark Feinsand of MLB.com.

Credit to the score for putting “Report” in their headline, indicating that they were simply relaying another journalist’s reporting, unlike the Post’s framing. Negative one million, though, for saying that “according to Mark Feinsand” “[t]he Atlanta Braves attempted to deal” Strider for deGrom.

Feinsand didn’t say that! That’s not true!

We get a similar treatment from Barstool Sports, with contributor “Big Tennessee” running a story with the headline “The Braves Were Reportedly Going To Include Spencer Strider in a Trade for Jacob deGrom.” Not that anyone expects original reporting from Barstool anyway, but if you were under the impression they were breaking a scoop, your misconceptions are put to rest immediately, since the very beginning of the story itself is an embed of a tweet from something called “SleeperBraves” with a 25 words or less summary that ends with “Per @Feinsand.”

And that’s before we get the myriad of social media aggregators that don’t even blog or do a story, but just choose to repackage whatever someone else reported in a Facebook or Twitter post with an exaggerated, misleading summary.

To be clear, there are plenty of folks who reported on this the right way. The SBN Braves blog Battery Power had a headline with “discussed” in quotes. MLB Trade Rumors used “discussed” in the headline of their story discussing the Strider, and even links to a Mark Bowman MLB.com piece from early August that said the Rangers “didn’t show initial interest in Strider,” further undermining the overly-excited “we almost had a deGrom/Strider swap” framing we see elsewhere.

But those more nuanced, and more accurate, headlines and pieces don’t catch the eyeballs that the clickbait does.

Don’t look now, but the Pirates are getting hot at the right time.

It’s been an uphill battle for the Bucs to erase a sizable deficit in the National League Wild Card race, but the team is looking to make this a September to remember. 

The Pirates have won four games in a row and their last five series after sweeping the White Sox on the south side. They are over .500 for the first time since July 29.

Pittsburgh has won eight of its last 10 games, and only the Dodgers (seven in a row) are hotter than the Bucs.

So what’s standing in their way? Shota Imanaga, who pitches like 2025 second-half Jake Arrieta against the Pirates… but better.  

In 38 career innings facing Pittsburgh, Imanaga has allowed only one run for a staggering 0.24 ERA. He is the Pirates’ version of kryptonite despite having a season ERA of 3.92.

The Pirates placed All-Star Braxton Ashcraft on the 15-day injured list on Thursday with right arm discomfort, and he won’t start against the Cubs on Friday.

Wilber Dotel will begin the game, but it will likely become a bullpen day. Khristian Curtis and recently recalled Antwone Kelly are also available to pitch in bulk roles. 

Refining Cy Young honoree Paul Skenes starts on Saturday against former Pirate Holmes, who was acquired from the Mets at the trade deadline. Holmes owns a 3.51 ERA through his first six starts with Chicago.

Bubba Chandler gets the ball, opposite Matthew Boyd, on Sunday in the series finale. All three games at Wrigley Field are at 2:20 p.m. Eastern.

The Pirates are 4.5 games back of the San Diego Padres for the final wild card with only 15 games left. It still feels like a nearly impossible feat for the Pirates to accomplish, and they dug themselves too deep a hole after being six games under .500 on both August 13th and 23rd.

Oneil Cruz drove in both runs on Thursday, including a solo home run hit 117.4 MPH as the hardest-hit home run of the season.

Oneil Cruz! 117.4 mph

That’s the hardest-hit home run in MLB this season https://t.co/iR4E50V3Pu

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) September 11, 2026

Since returning to the team on August 18 after missing two months with a hand injury, Cruz is batting .315 with a .404 slugging percentage, four homers, and 18 runs batted in. 

Konnor Griffin returned last weekend, and first baseman/right fielder Ryan O’Hearn may be back this weekend.

The arrow is pointing up for the Pirates, but the rival Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers are waiting for them. It may be too little, too late for the Pirates as their race to the postseason continues to take full shape.

The Pirates do have a chance.

You knew that the only season series the San Francisco Giants have won against the San Diego Padres this decade was in 2021 and you figure that the Giants are unlikely to sweep the Padres this weekend in San Francisco to make it season series win #2, but maybe you didn’t realize just how much of the Padres’ fate the Giants hold in their hands?

The split with the Diamondbacks a week and a half ago didn’t obliterate Arizona’s Wild Card aspirations, but it was just enough losing to keep them a half game behind San Diego with — for them — just 15 games remaining. The Giants were supposed to be an easy way for them to enter this brutal — for them — September (Philadelphia, Houston, Kansas City (43-45 since June 1st), Texas, Miami, the Yankees, then three in Coors Field before the final three games of the season versus the Padres. Why mention the Diamondbacks at all?

Well, look, the Giants are actually playing spoilers right now. This isn’t the wishcasting of the past decade (save 2021) when these losers rolled into the final weeks staggering disappointments to a fan base that thought they were getting a perennial contender after the championships in the early 2010s, this is some actual spoiler behavior. San Diego’s next 7 games are against our Giants (3) and then 4 in Colorado before hosting the Marlins and then playing the Dodgers in LA, and hosting the Diamondbacks to end the season. They just went 5-1 on a homestand where they took 2 out of 3 from the Yankees and swept the Nationals. They are 22-14 since August 1st. So, they are riding high.

But, the Giants have won 10 of their last 17 and have done damage to multiple playoff hopefuls: they’ve taken out the Reds, brushed back the Diamondbacks, confused Atlanta, humbled Pittsburgh, and nuked the St. Louis Cardinals from orbit. The San Diego Padres are just half a game ahead of the Diamondbacks for the final Wild Card spot and 4.5 games ahead of the Pittsburgh Pirates (who play the Cubs, Brewers, Royals, Cardinals, and Tigers). The Giants could be a doormat (the Padres have lost just 3 series at Oracle Park since the start of 2022, the last time being early 2024) helping San Diego improve its Wild Card standing, but there’s just enough excitement around these Giants to think that the spoiler energy might carry over to the weekend — despite two nationally televised games.

The first matchup in the series is pretty great. The Giants traded Robbie Ray to the Padres at the deadline and seem to have won that deal immediately. Ray was always going to be an improvement over the flotsam and jetsam that made up the Padres’ rotation before the deadline, but he has been remarkably worse for them than he was with the Giants. A 4.71 ERA & 6.06 FIP in 6 starts (28.2 IP) compared to 3.08 and 4.36 with the Giants. He’s struck out 20 and walked 20 in this span while allowed 5 HR and 15 ER. The sole win the Yankees had against San Diego last weekend was the Ray start where he allowed 5 ER in 2.1 IP.

Meanwhile, Anthony Molina has pitched quite a bit better than the “40-man roster castoff turned innings eater who will be DFA’d in the offseason” guy many people projected him to be when the Giants acquired him from Atlanta. He’s appeared in 3 games, the Giants have won all 3 games, and he has a 1.88 ERA (3.52 FIP) in 14.1 IP. Just 2 walks against 13 strikeouts. Very impressive and a really nice development down the stretch. You’d like to think a 24-year old with a 96 mph fastball and a curveball-slider combo with high whiff rates will be able to stick to the roster of a 90+-loss team that will need pitching heading into next season.

Then there are the performances from the dudes who will definitely be sticking around: Rafael Devers has a 272 wRC+ over these last 17 games, and he hasn’t even played in them all! His 9 home runs lead the team, of course, but also the entire sport — same with that wRC+. Bryce Eldridge has hit .365/.453/.596 over his last 64 PA (187 wRC+), Christian Koss .278/.328/.500 over his last 62 PA (130 wRC_), and Jonah Cox has been right there with both (.298/.365/.447 — 129 wRC+ and with 5 stolen bases).

Ahem. The Giants’ team walk rate has been 9.5% over this same span (21.6%).

So, between the hitting standouts and the pitching standouts — excited to see if Cesar Perdomo can continue to get outs against a tough lineup that has nonetheless struggled versus LHP this season (.691 OPS) — the Giants are setup to rain on the Padres’ parade a little bit. Their new owners, Kwanza Jones and Jose E. Feliciano, introduced themselves with a song made just for the occasion…

This is the exact sort of excitement and energy a cranky, losing team like the Giants ought to be able to frustrate at this time of the year if they’re to really create hope for a fanbase that isn’t sure when the team will be good again.

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Series Overview

Who: San Francisco Giants (62-85) vs. San Diego Padres (78-68)
Where: Oracle Park | San Francisco, California
When: Friday at 7:15pm PT, Saturday at 1:05pm PT, Sunday at 4:20pm PT
National broadcasts: Friday (Apple TV), Sunday (NBC/Peacock)

Projected starters
Friday: Anthony Molina (RHP 3-0, 2.79 ERA) vs. Robbie Ray (LHP 11-8, 3.39 ERA)
Saturday: Cesar Perdomo (LHP 0-0, 0.90 ERA) vs. Michael King (RHP 10-9, 3.00 ERA)
Sunday: Logan Webb (RHP 8-8, 4.10 ERA) vs. Nick Pivetta (RHP 2-2, 3.43 ERA)

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Players to watch

Padres

Nick Pivetta: He was the 14th-most valuable pitcher in MLB last season (3.7 fWAR) and the Padres got him on a song (3 years, $41 million), but he missed a massive chunk of this season with right elbow inflammation. He made just his 5th start of 2026 on Monday night, getting the win via 5 shutout innings, 2 hits, 0 walks, and just 2 strikeouts against the Nationals. His second start since returning from the IL will be at Oracle Park where he’s struggled. He has a career 5.40 ERA in 20 IP (admittedly, 7.1 of those came before 2020). He’s the Padres’ #2 starter, essentially, but with a wobbly Ray and a Pivetta still coming back from injury, you can see a fuzzy outline for how the Giants might take this series.

Jackson Merrill: This guy loves Oracle Park. In 16 games (68 PA), he’s slashing .379/.397/.606. That 1.003 OPS is his best result in any of the NL West Parks, and it’s really his best result in an opposing stadium if you set the threshold at 50 PA. He has higher OPSes in some other stadiums, but with fewer PA: Yankee Stadium — 1.556 OPS (9 PA), Fenway Park — 1.348 (23), loanDepot Park — 1.172 (37), Guaranteed Rate Field — 1.135 (13).

Fernando Tatis Jr. & Manny Machado: Tatis was bad the first two months of the season (.658 OPS through May), but since June 1st has slashed .295/.357/.528 (.886) with 19 homers and 18 stolen bases. If you move that “since” date to something more recent (August 1st), he remains the team’s best hitter. He (151 wRC+), Ty France (144 wRC+), Merrill (141), and catcher Luis Campusano (120) have led the charge. For his career (44 G 191 PA) he’s done quite well at Oracle Park (.860 OPS), better than his overall mark against the Giants (.839 OPS), but in the previous Oracle Park series this season, he was just 1-for-13 with 5 strikeouts. Will the bounce back go all the way with him to the Bay?

Meanwhile, the 33-year old Machado is having the worst season of his career (.224/.314/.414), but like Tatis Jr. he has managed to turn it around — to an extent. Since the All-Star break he’s slashing .263/.355/.409 with 7 homers and 6 doubles. Not a lot of power but he’s getting on base. He has a career .830 OPS against the Giants and an .806 OPS at Oracle Park; but, this season, it’s .274 vs. the Giants overall and and 1-for-12 at Oracle Park. Will he, like Tatis, bring his turnaround with him?

Giants

Logan Webb: It was a nice bounceback start for Webb against the Cardinals following the worst start of his career; but, the Padres have his number. He’s already had a 4-inning, 6-earned run disaster in San Francisco against them back in May after they’d tagged him for 3 runs in 6 innings in San Diego (though, that game wound up being the Giants’ first win of the season). He’s 5-6 with a 3.60 ERA for his career against the Padres (110 IP). He has still been quite a bit better at home (3.26 ERA) than the road (5.29 ERA), of course, but this looks (on paper, anyway), to be a tough matchup.

Drew Cavanaugh: Look, he’s not a starter, but a left-handed hitting catcher with a 10.5% walk rate (though, yes, a 28% strikeout rate) with average-y defense is a player who has likely played his way onto a major league roster. The Susac-Cavanaugh combo might be cemented by the rest of this month. The Padres’ pitching has been worse against left-handed pitching than right-handed, too (.710 OPS vs. .697), so this might be a good weekend for him.

The lefty relievers: Because the Padres have struggled more against left-handed pitching (94 wRC+ — 18th in MLB), I wonder if we’ll see Tugboat, Reiver Sanmartin, and Phil Abner early and often, at least in games 1 & 2 of the series.

Prediction time

The Giants will not sweep the Padres.

The 2025 season was a disaster on many levels for the Washington Nationals. However, one of the biggest long term blows came in the farm system. Jarlin Susana and Travis Sykora, the Nats top two pitching prospects both went down with major injuries. Sykora will not pitch this year due to Tommy John, but Jarlin Susana has returned from his Lat surgery.

Susana did not return to action until August and the Nats have been taking things very slowly. He has made six starts so far, but has only thrown 14 innings in total. So far we have seen the whole Jarlin Susana package, for better and worse. 

In his first outing back, he made a real statement with how loud his stuff was. His fastball was sitting 101-103 and he was uncorking nasty sliders as well. He showed how unique his right arm truly is. Even in this age of velocity, this kind of fire power is special.

Jarlin Susana struck out two batters in the first inning here in Hudson Valley.

He sat 101-103 mph, had one two-seamer at 103 mph w/ 20 inches of run.

Threw one sweeper at 89 mph w/ 15 inches of horizontal.

P.S. This gun is 8 years old and I’ve never gotten 103 mph before. pic.twitter.com/pTneH6Fp2w

— Geoff Pontes (@GeoffPontesBA) August 11, 2026

It is tough to read too much into stats after only 14 innings. However, Susana has an especially wacky statline. His ERA is unimpressive at 5.14, but the underlying numbers are tremendous. Susana has 28 strikeouts in those 14 frames, showing how overpowering he is. A 45.2 K% is video game type stuff.

His underlying numbers are also stellar. Susana’s FIP is 2.68 and his xFIP is 2.43. Those data points suggest the elevated ERA is misleading. A .391 BABIP also suggests some bad luck is at play here. Susana has been dominating even if the run prevention has not necessarily shown that.

The book on Susana is that he can be wild. That has been true for the most part. He has 7 walks in those 14 innings and has also hit 3 batters. However, his 11.3% walk rate is actually a step in the right direction. In 2025, that walk rate was up at 13.9%. If Susana can keep his walk rate around 10%, his chances of starting will increase.

At this point, that is the biggest question with the right hander, along with health. With stuff this good, he should have big league success. As we have seen with Yovanny Cruz and Luis Perales, huge velocity is not everything. However, Susana is even bigger and badder than both those guys. His fastball is harder, his slider is nastier and he is tougher to square up.

With the quality of his stuff, there are folks wondering if Susana should get a cup of coffee in the bullpen down the stretch. He will have to be added to the 40-man roster after this season anyways, so it could be worth giving him a look. A few extra appearances would help him build up as well.

The Nats are going to add Jarlin Susana to the 40-man roster this offseason, so why not promote him now? He throws 103, his slider has a 68% whiff rate, and he is the last piece of the Soto trade still waiting to debut. I make the case in the piece below.

Link below! pic.twitter.com/VWI0uqLrVa

— Wally (@WallyHuron) September 10, 2026

Susana has not pitched above AA, but the quality of his stuff is beyond questioning. He will get whiffs at the big league level. Skipping players over AAA is not unprecedented either. In fact, we have seen a couple recent examples of this with Kade Anderson and Josue De Paula.

With the season lost and Susana needing to join the 40-man roster anyways, there is not much to lose here. The bullpen can also use all the help it can get. Susana’s elite stuff would also generate plenty of buzz.

When Susana is on his game, he is jaw dropping to watch. For one, he is an absolutely massive human. Susana is officially listed at 6’6 235 pounds on the MILB website. However, in the Nationals media guide, he was listed at 6’7 283 pounds. If Susana were born in America, he would probably be a left tackle in the NFL. Seeing that sort of body dominating on the mound is mesmerizing. 

Jarlin Susana returns to the Double-A @HbgSenators pumping 100+ mph ⛽️

2.2 IP
1 H
0 R
1 BB
4 K

The @Nationals' No. 3 prospect has struck out 17 of the 35 batters he's faced this season. pic.twitter.com/nDyGY2inIB

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) August 27, 2026

Getting in as many innings as possible before next season should also be a goal for Susana. A few outings in the big leagues down the stretch could be part of that. The AA season ends this week, so maybe he could get called up after that.

I would also like to see Susana in the Arizona Fall League. That would give him more opportunities for innings. A selfish reason I want to see both of these is so I can actually see the metrics on his pitches. Those stuff grades must be totally out of control.

In his 14 innings this season, Jarlin Susana has looked like Jarlin Susana. If he can stay healthy and moderately improve his command, he can be a top of the rotation arm. Even if those strides do not happen, he has a long future in the bullpen. It is great to see him back on the mound. He is a true unicorn of a pitcher.

So this surprised me. The Jays DFAed Jesús Sánchez as the counter move to bringing up Rudy Martin.

Sánchez just didn’t work out. He was supposed to be the power bat we needed and then he hit 8 home runs in 99 games for us. And there was the defense, or lack there of. 3 official errors (leading the league) and a .975 fielding average (why does baseball insist on three significant digits?) in the outfield. League average is .987. All three of his errors were in left field, in right he hadn’t made an error, and we were told that he was more used to right field which had be wondering why not play him in right?

But the errors were just part of the story. Cause baseball has this silly idea that if a player makes too big of a mistake, we can’t call that an error. Ball goes off the glove, error. Player doesn’t get within 30 feet of a catchable ball, not an error.

Anyway, the last couple of weeks of the season will be Sánchezless. I don’t suppose he’ll be greatly missed.

The Mets are making a change in their bullpen ahead of their series in the Bronx, recalling Jack Weisenburger and sending Chris Devenski back to Triple-A Syracuse.

Weisenburger appeared in three games for the Mets in August, tossing four and a third innings, allowing one run on three hits, walking two and striking out four. In 18 games for Syracuse (13 starts), Weisenburger has a 6.68 ERA over 62 innings pitched, with 53 strikeouts to 34 walks and eight home runs allowed.

Devenski split time between the Mets and Pirates organizations this season, and in six appearances for the Mets was more or less fine until his last appearance against the Marlins, where he was responsible for five of the runs in the Mets’ wild 15-14 dub on Wednesday. The 35 year old veteran has a 13.50 ERA for the Mets this season, and an 11.74 ERA across both clubs in the majors.

With a little more than a week left in the Triple-A season and Syracuse two and a half games out of a playoff spot, Devenski will have plenty of opportunity for some innings before, potentially, rejoining the Mets if the need arises.

The second half of the Subway Series with the Yankees starts tonight at 7:05pm on PIX11 with Nolan McLean facing off against Carlos Rodón.

When our Social Media Manager, Lindsay Adams, asked after the Trade Deadline how we thought the team did, I could only say the following:

The team didn’t do enough. Hold onto your butts!

Granted, the team traded for Tarik Skubal, which would not have been my choice, even though he’s been fine since arriving in Los Angeles. I would have gone after Cincinnati Reds’ hurler Hunter Greene and maybe checked in with the New York Mets on someone like Sean Maenea as a low-risk, innings-eater acquisition from an organization going nowhere fast.

Greene is already hurt and likely down for next year, and Maenea hasn’t produced anything that Charlie Barnes or Landon Knack couldn’t already do, which goes to show that sometimes even the best of us get it hilariously wrong.

The Dodgers have had some of the worst outfield play in the majors this year.

They have a glut of quality outfield prospects. At the trade deadline, one would have expected the Dodgers to offload someone like Ryan Ward or Alex Call for a lottery prospect to free up room for someone like James Tibbs III, Josue De Paula, or Zach Erhard to get an extended look to see if they could either contribute and/or shake up what was a moribund offense.

Nothing happened. Life moved on. The corner outfield play remained bad.

When the rosters expanded on September 1, considering the status quo, it would not be out of the question to think that maybe an outfielder was being called up to essentially audition for a postseason role.

The Dodgers instead recalled Dalton Rushing from the injured list, a catcher who physically and literally could not play the position due to an arm injury, and infielder Alex Freeland, the first half of the ultimately demoted Freeland/Kim platoon. This platoon was both offensively disappointing and ultimately demoted once Tommy Edman came back from injury.

Rushing has since returned to the injured list as he can neither hit nor catch, and he has been replaced by Eliézer Alfonzo.

The Dodgers even optioned Alek Thomas, which meant no outfield platoons for anybody. It feels like the Dodgers got too cute for their own good, mostly as to their handling of Shohei Ohtani (which has been roundly criticized in an essay that looks prophetic at this point) but also as to their outfield core as a whole.

On that front alone, the team has since been bailed out (or vindicated, based on perspective) by the resurgence of Teoscar Hernández.

Turning back the clock to 2024

It’s a weird feeling to have part of the season turn on a single play. With reporting indicating that the Dodgers were going to call up Tibbs when the rosters expanded, I initially did not pay attention to this home run that Hernández hit in Detroit.

As Eric Stephen reported, Dave Roberts explained the move thusly:

“We didn’t bring up an outfielder. That’s part of the bet on Teo, that he can right the ship,” manager Dave Roberts said on Tuesday. “That’s kind of where we’re at.”

To his credit, Hernández delivered and credited his success to a return to his old mechanics that his health prevented with Bill Plunkett of The Orange County Register:

“Last year, I used it before I had the injury. That’s the way I was hitting,” said Hernandez, who got off to an excellent start in 2025. “Then when I came back, I was doing the same thing but I was feeling it (in his injured leg) so that’s why I stopped. This year when I got my hamstring issue, I had to get rid of it because it was putting so much pressure on the hamstring.

In nine games since the end of the Detroit series, as of the start of play on September 11, Hernández has an otherworldly slash line of .500/.579/.750, going 16 for 32 with 3 2B, 3B, and an HR. He also has 12 RBI, 2 SB, and equal walks and strikeouts (6).

Against anyone other than the Reds, that triple would be a second home run.

Things have gone so well that Hernández credibly had an inside-the-park home run chance. With apologies to the Reds’ broadcast crew, it was not disbelief from Dodgers fans that Teoscar was gunned down at home; it was general annoyance about the send in the first place.

His hamstring has only finally healed, people; let’s not break the man before October even starts!

While there is a credible argument that the Dodgers could use help in the outfield, if not from Ehrhard or Tibbs III, then maybe Josue De Paula, who will be eligible for the Rule 5 Draft. Per Owen Riley and Maxfield Lane of Down on the Farm:

De Paula is too good for Double-A; he’s doing everything right with no red flags and very impressive contact metrics for a guy who is also blasting home runs at a 30+ per season pace. You won’t convince me that the Dodgers lineup looks better with Enrique Hernandez in it against LHP than it would with De Paula. This potential addition grades out top half, but not right at the top, for me, since it is only really relevant in the playoffs. Isolate to just October, though, and I do think De Paula has the potential to be a difference maker—a high-risk, high-reward play.

And then, as if the universe heard me asking this question, the Dodgers finally pulled the trigger on De Paula in the wee hours of September 10, although it is expected that De Paula will fill in for Ohtani as the designated hitter.

While De Paula gets settled in as the most anticipated prospect since Cody Bellinger in 2017, one might wonder, while Hernández is having a resurgence, how about the other part of the outfield tandem that has been struggling?

Checking in on the Tinkerbell Gambit

Let’s check in on how Kyle Tucker has fared since our last article. It’s been about three weeks since the Dodgers faithful channeled their inner Tinkerbell (à la the Phillies and Kyle Tucker in 2023) to will the struggling slugger out of his offensive tailspin in 2026.

As of the start of play on September 11:

• 18 games, 10 for 58, 2B, 2 HR, 5 RBI, 3 SB, 11 BB, 7 K, .172/.300/.310, 70 OPS+ for this stretch, 90 OPS+ on the year

How did it get worse?!? He was fine on the road and awful at home; the gambit seems to have backfired. It’s like ruining two perfectly good jackets.

Tucker’s bWAR had dipped into the negative for the year before having a multi-hit game and hitting a home run off a position player in the Wednesday finale. The slash before the finale was .132/.277/.208, with an 38 OPS+ for this period.

This season, Tucker has looked bad at the plate, to those who follow baseball and those who do not.

Anecdotally, when my non-sports watching sister and my causal fan mother both indepedently comment on separate occasions some version of “why is that man flailing like that?” when watching Tucker, something has gone awry.

There’s a deeper conversation that needs to be had here if there is no improvement before the regular season ends. I think this situation has gotten to the point where it’s not a question about playing time or being on the playoff roster. This situation is only exacerbated by Ohtani’s stint on the injured list, which shall not end until the last week of the regular season.

You may see one of the biggest single-season free-agent flops in baseball history, by definition.

I see a career inflection point that feels vaguely reminiscent of another now-former Dodger who was a nice story until he wasn’t: Joey Gallo. Gallo arrived after the inflection point, and the damage was done in the Bronx, but this comparison and analysis is one for another day.

Just over a week after starting off a four-game square-off in Philadelphia, the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies are going to do it again — this time in Cobb County, as Friday’s matchup will serve as the series opener for this weekend’s three-game divisional showdown.

Chris Sale will be returning to the mound to get this thin going and this’ll be his sixth-consecutive start against a team in Postseason position. Over the five starts and across the 33 innings that Sale has pitched during this span, he’s put up an ERA of 2.18 and a FIP of 1.55 against some stiff competition. He’s certainly been coming up huge for the Braves here in the home stretch and Atlanta’s going to need him to really come up big once more if they’re going to get this series off to the best possible start.

What’s interesting about this go-around is that this’ll be the fourth time that the Braves have sent Sale out there to face the Phillies. So far, the results have been pretty good for Sale — the Phillies were only able to get one run off of him across the 13 innings he tossed against them in two starts in April and then Sale left last Thursday’s game with the lead after he only gave up two runs in six innings against Philadelphia. The Phillies will surely be hoping that the fourth time is the charm but with the way that Sale has been locked in lately, it would still be a bit of a shock if this was the moment where the wheels came off.

As far as individual matchups go, the ones to keep an eye on would probably be Sale vs. Alec Bohm (.333 average and .821 OPS with one homer in 21 at-bats), Trea Turner (.318 average, .830 OPS in 22 at-bats) and of course, Kyle Schwarber. Schwarber has only hit .227 against Sale but he’s sporting an .883 OPS and that’s because Schwarber has homered twice off of Sale so far. In fact, Schwarber has been on a bit of a binge lately as he’s homered in four of his past six games — three of those came against the Braves, mind you. It’s no secret that he’ll be swinging for the fences each time he’s up so hopefully Sale will figure out a way to keep him in the park on this particular night.

Meanwhile, the Phillies will be countering with Aaron Nola and let me tell you, it has brought me no pleasure to see the renaissance run that this guy has been on recently. Starting with his outing on July 28, Nola has made eight starts, thrown 46.2 innings and produced an ERA of 2.31 with a FIP of 3.93. The last time he gave up more than two runs in an outing was August 3 against the Nationals and they could only muster up three runs in six innings against the guy.

He certainly made life hard for the Braves last week, as he tossed seven innings and only gave up one run in a game that the Braves had to rally late (after he had exited the game) in order to win. Hopefully they’ll be able to do some real damage against Nola before he leaves this game. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see something similar to what happened when Nola last pitched at Truist Park, which is when Atlanta tagged him for six runs across 4.2 innings back on April 26 (which, coincidentally, was the last time Sale saw the Phillies here in Cobb County). The adjustments that Nola has made since August could make that scenario unlikely but it’s baseball and the Braves have been known to do some cool stuff in Truist Park so who knows what’s going to happen?

Either way, it’s abundantly clear that the Braves have an opportunity to start lunging for the finish line as far as the NL East race is concerned. Both teams lost their midweek series to American League divisional leaders so the four-game lead that the Braves left Philadelphia with has remained the same. The pressure is on the Phillies to start getting results, since the Braves simply have to maintain their pace in order to throw another blue flag up there on the light tower outside of right-center field. With that being said, there’s no need for the Braves to “simply maintain” when they can just go out there and grab it for themselves, which a win tonight (and a series win in general) would go a long way for Atlanta when it comes to accomplishing that goal.

Whatever challenges Atlanta may face from Aaron Nola, they’ll have Chris Sale going and hopefully he’ll be able to do the trick once again against the Phillies. A low-scoring, nervy affair is definitely possible but hopefully the home advantage will be enough to carry the Braves to victory on this particular night. We’ll see what happens, folks!

Game Info

Game Time: Friday, September 11, 7:15 p.m. ET

Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA

Watch: BravesVision

Radio/Audio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan

On April 25, the Red Sox were 10-17, tied with the Royals for the second-worst record in the American League. Boston management shocked the baseball world by firing popular championship-winning manager Alex Cora and replacing him with minor league manager Chad Tracy.

Since then, the Red Sox have gone 70-50, the second-best team in the AL over that time. They have climbed back into the pennant race, sitting comfortably in the #2 Wild Card spot. It has been one of the best turnaround in recent history, and Tracy will likely get support for Manager of the Year.

Kansas City Royals (65-82) vs. Boston Red Sox (80-67) at Fenway Park, Boston, MA

Royals: 4.28 runs scored/game (22nd in MLB), 4.88 runs allowed/game (25th)

Red Sox: 4.44 runs scored/game (17th), 3.88 runs allowed/game (5th)

The Red Sox have been hit by injuries to Triston Casas, Willson Contreras, Curtis Mead, and Masataka Yoshida, and Roman Anthony and Trevor Story only recently returned to action. Jarred Duran has had a rough season – he has the third-worst wRC+ of qualified hitters, and Adley Rustchman has hit just .188 since being acquired from the Orioles. But the Red Sox have gotten offense from some surprising places like utility players Mickey Gasper, Nick Sogard, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, and Andruw Monasterio.

Who’s hot:

• Trevor Story is hitting .341 (14-for-41) with five doubles in ten games since coming off the Injured List.
• Carter Jensen won American League Player of the Week and is batting .292/.434/.708 with seven home runs and 16 walks in his last 19 games.

Who’s not:

• Caleb Durbin has just one extra base hit in his last 20 games and is hitting .188/.325/.203 over that time.
• Kyle Isbel is hitting .156/.208/.178 in his last 14 games.

Interesting matchups

• Wilyer Abreu is a career .300 hitter (3-for-10) with a home run and two walks against Seth Lugo
• Salvador Perez struggles against Sonny Gray, hitting .167/.189/.222 in 37 career plate appearances with just two extra base hits and no walks.

• Seth Lugo has a 6.19 ERA in 14 road starts this year.
• Sonny Gray is 10-2 with a 1.74 ERA in 14 career starts against the Royals.
• Randy Dobnak has a 2.54 ERA since joining the Royals, the 7th-lowest ERA in the American League since the start of July.
• Lefties have a wOBA of .334 against Ranger Suarez, the fifth-highest against any left-handed starting pitcher.
• Noah Cameron has 1.7 rWAR since July 24, the fifth-most among any starting pitcher.
• Payton Tolle is second among all rookie pitchers with 3.7 rWAR

The Red Sox have the second-fewest blown saves in baseball and their 3.14 bullpen ERA is second-best. Former Royals closer Aroldis Chapman has a 32.3 percent strikeout rate, ninth-highest among relievers. Erik Miller, acquired mid-season from the Giants, is fifth at 35.1 percent, but his 14 percent walk rate is fifth-highest. Brayan Bello has a 2.03 ERA in 14 games since moving to the bullpen.

The Dodgers are on the cusp of qualifying for the postseason tournament, where they will attempt to successfully defend their championship for the second year in a row. Shocking, I know.

It would have been a far more unexpected story had the Dodgers somehow bungled their way to an early trip to Cancun. But imagine spending that much money just to be terrible?

Picking a preferred opponent is some bad baseball juju. The Dodgers will ultimately need to best all comers if they wish to pull off the first threepeat in National League history. The Dodgers likely have the mindset of bring it on, without caring who they play.

The drama in the National League is largely limited to what seed the Dodgers will end up with and who ends up with the sixth seed in the National League between the perpetually disappointing San Diego Padres and the scrappy, underfunded Arizona Diamondbacks.

If pressed, I would predict that the Diamondbacks prevail with the sixth seed, in defiance of what ESPN predicts, because the Diamondbacks lack a history of being perpetually disappointing when yoked with the burden of expectations.

While the Miami Marlins are technically alive in this chase, in the same way that someone is only mostly dead after an unfortunate encounter with “The Machine” in The Princess Bride, the Dodgers can effectively end the Fishes’ season in Miami.

The Dodgers in Miami in September; nothing interesting has ever happened with that quirk of the schedule.

SB Nation asked its readership who the Dodgers would prefer to face to start the tournament, as the team largely controls its own destiny through its creampuff finale of a schedule. We asked whether you preferred the Dodgers as the top seed or the second seed.

The readership overwhelmingly agreed with this essay: ride the second seed to glory.

If the Dodgers end up with the NL’s top seed, they would face the winner of the current projected matchup between the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies.

Considering how the Cubs play in 2026, with likely Most Valuable Player Pete Crow-Armstrong, as either world beaters or clowns who have somehow never touched a baseball before, and the city of Philadelphia salivating over avenging Kerkering’s Blunder from last year, which requires another look, I have just one thing to say:

Have fun dealing with that portion of the bracket, Milwaukee!

Personally, Brewers/Cubs 2: Electric Boogaloo would pop like the sequel everyone in Cream City needed and likely have the same result, which I am absolutely fine with. However, based on the events of the past week, an interesting wrinkle has become possible, but for right now, we will operate under the current projection.

Analyzing chaos is for another day.

I have predicted all year that the Dodgers will end up with the NL’s second seed, and I see no reason to change this view now. In this scenario, the Dodgers would face the winner of the Atlanta Braves/Arizona Diamondbacks/San Diego Padres portion of the bracket.

The drama just writes itself. Can the Dodgers avenge 2021? Can the Diamondbacks shock the world again as they did in 2023? Does the baseball world really need Dodgers/Padres 4: The Revenge?!?

In order, hopefully: Yes; I hope not; And, heavens no!

Let the Dodgers rest up and deal with a likely exhausted portion of the bracket before a return trip to the NLCS, as that path seems like the best route for success.

The worst-case scenario is if the Dodgers have to deal with either the Diamondbacks/Padres for a three-game series in Los Angeles, only to turn around and have to fly to Atlanta, assuming the Diamondbacks/Padres are vanquished, which is no guarantee.

I knew the 2025 Cincinnati Reds, and neither of these squads will lay down like last year’s Reds.

Unless they do, because baseball. Time will tell either way.

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