Category: Baseball

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A Dodger left-hander, who put video game-like numbers in the regular season, had a colossal dud in arguably the most important game of the year, in no small part by being left to hang out to dry in the seventh inning, before a back-breaking, likely season-breaking, home run. And then, the bullpen let whatever hope still in the building out with great alacrity.

The fact that this paragraph could apply to either Clayton Kershaw or Blake Snell is one of life’s little ironies. Snell became the second pitcher in history to start a playoff game by giving up a home run and have his last pitch in that same game go for a home run. The other pitcher was John Smoltz in Game 3 of the 1991 NLCS.

Considering Snell hadn’t previously allowed a home run all year, the timing is terrible.

If this current era of Dodger baseball started because Rays’ manager pulled Snell too early in 2020, the bookend image of Dave Roberts leaving Snell in too long in 2026 is striking.

Unless you have been mercifully under a rock, the Dodgers have failed, so far, with aplomb in this NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers. Not to take any flowers away from the Brewers: they have played hungrier, angrier, and more effectively than the Dodgers. And now Tyler Glasnow and an offense that has mostly been absent stand between the Dodgers and Cancun.

If you told me that the poor play in this series was from this past July, I wouldn’t disagree. The Dodgers look like they would probably drop a series to the Colorado Rockies right now if given the opportunity. Again, it’s not an unknown problem. Over the past two seasons, you’ve seen this movie; you’ve heard this song.

It’s just unusual to see it in the most important games of the year, this year.

Time is a flat circle

Like the bad, old days, the Dodgers have reacted to adversity in this round by being “confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head.” President Lincoln used that turn of phrase to describe one of his generals after the Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the situation is likely going to resolve itself, one way or another, in less than eight hours after you read this essay.

Five of the last six times there has been a rematch in the LCS in consecutive years, the loser in the first year wins the rematch. The Brewers are one win away from making that bit of recent history, six out of seven times. Moreover, with a win today, the Brewers would be the first team ever to repay a sweep one year by sweeping in the rematch the following year.

The last time the Dodgers were down 0-3 in the playoffs was the 1966 World Series: Koufax’s last ride. The Dodgers ended up being swept and shut out over Games 2 through 4. In a bit of historic irony, last year’s championship team had the lowest batting average for a winning team since the 1966 Orioles.

Sarah Langs reported via EliasSports that there have now been six times when a team has gotten a 3-0 advantage on the reigning champion. Four of these instances have involved the Dodgers: 1963, 1966, 2017, and now. Four of the last five times, the series ended in a sweep. Only the 2017 Dodgers allowed a game five.

Getting ready to look for loose change

The Dodgers have been bad in this LCS; you don’t have to take my word for it. Once again, Max Muncy is singing a slightly more urgent tune than he did after the dud to end Game 2.

I applaud Muncy’s candor, but I must politely disagree on one point: excrement, in a pinch, can be useful.

Based on what we knew then, you can even use it to grow a potato. There’s nothing useful here from the Dodgers over these past three games, no silver lining, no green shoots to build upon, no fun moment with young phenom Josue De Paula to obsess over or expand upon for the pending long winter. Sure, let’s use the most exciting prospect since Cody Bellinger as a decoy.

The figurative harvest has come back with blight, and everything looks dead. But technically, it’s not dead; it’s only mostly dead, and unless you’ve forgotten — shame on you — there’s a big difference between “mostly dead” and “all dead.”

Only one single solitary team has ever climbed the Everest that is a 0-3 best-of-seven hole in baseball: the 2004 Boston Red Sox.

Yes, Dave Roberts sparked the comeback; that’s not the point here. He’s not running. He’s not playing. Heck, last year in Toronto, he badly lost a footrace to Hyeseong Kim, which kept the team loose.

The fact to remember from that ALCS is that Boston took the figurative belt to its bottom in Game 3, losing 19-8 in Boston. The Red Sox looked beyond dead, and it took two extra-inning games to force Game 6 back in the Bronx and returned the belt with aplomb in Game 7.

Yes, the 2004 Red Sox turned it around. There is nothing in the past three games of play to indicate the 2026 Dodgers are about to go on a similar run. But again, the Red Sox looked mostly dead until they weren’t.

The only thing left to lose is pride

In all likelihood, the series and the season are hours away from being over. The Dodgers can either roll over or get mad and finally start punching back. The Brewers have played well, but they haven’t played perfect baseball. There have been opportunities.

A good team finds a way to win. A bad team finds a way to lose. A mediocre team attempts to convince itself and you that they are a good team, only to underachieve until their season ends.

Yes, the 2026 Dodgers won 100 regular season games. That fact and a cookie leaves you with a cookie and a likely forgotten notation in Baseball Reference, unless things drastically turn around.

Talk of a threepeat and talk of history have become a yoke around this team’s neck. So throw it out. It’s like eating a whale: you do it one bite at a time. If the series extends past today, the teams will be playing for free. Why not give everyone something to talk about?

If I had to work for free, I would make a spectacle of it.

Truthfully, I’ve been on house money mode since I was fortunate enough to be at last year’s Game 7. My only fear that game wasn’t a defeat; it was that the team laid an egg and made me feel dumb for making the effort to get to Toronto and back in 48 hours.

Losing is one thing; getting embarrassed is another. The play and the results over the last three games have been the latter. The moments where I haven’t thought that this team was underachieving or skimming by on pedigree and reputation have been far fewer than I would have preferred.

I harbor no illusion that this essay will change anything. Nor am I trying to annoy or aggravate or any other cardinal sin of this profession. I operate under the delusion that the right words can move mountains, or at the very least, make one smile when everyone is frowning.

The 2026 Dodgers could do better and should do better. They have at least one last chance to do so. Again, the Brewers have been better on the field simply by being watchable. If there was a time for this team, our team, to live up to its pedigree, its design, it would be to acknowledge the cold, hard truth that there is no tomorrow unless they outright take it.

Keep clawing and fighting until they tell you to stop. Maybe you become a legend. Maybe you get one last road trip to Milwaukee? Maybe you get to see Tarik Skubal one last guaranteed time in a Dodger uniform? Maybe you get to prevent the indignity of seeing your home fans, some of whom paid $75 for parking, watch another team celebrate at Dodger Stadium?

And if not? Well, then it doesn’t matter what this team did. It simply underachieved when it mattered most, and the rest from them would be silence.

Contracts will expire. Players will move on. Time will move on, and ripping the bandage off with critical analysis can start. Calling out an offense built like a supercar and performing like a busted Honda Civic, calling out a rotation that has underperformed when it has mattered most, and calling out a manager who literally panicked and resuscitated jokes and memes from 2018, 2019, and 2021 that he successfully put to bed over the past two seasons?

Now is not the time for postmortems and requiems. We likely have a lengthy, miserable lockout-aided offseason for those essays. But first, I am a slave to the bit, and we are going to press on, much like I hope that the Dodgers do today.

Because if not now, when?

The Los Angeles Dodgers have dug themselves into quite a deep hole.

The Dodgers are now down 3-0 in their NLCS series against the Milwaukee Brewers after Wednesday night’s 6-2 loss.

The last time the Dodgers were down 3-0 in a postseason series was 60 years ago, when they lost the first three games of the 1966 World Series against the Baltimore Orioles.

The Orioles won Game 4 of that World Series by a score of 1-0, cementing the sweep against Los Angeles. The legendary Don Drysdale was the losing pitcher for the Dodgers in that fateful Game 4.

In fact, history has been historically bad for MLB teams who were down three games in a best-of-seven series. Only one team has ever crawled out of that deficit to win a series: the Boston Red Sox, who famously did so against the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS.

Aside from that, 41 of the other 42 MLB postseason series where a team went up 3-0 has ended with that team advancing. 32 of those have ended in a sweep.

At least Dodgers fans won’t have to wait long to see whether this NLCS series becomes No. 33 that ended with a sweep, as Game 4 is arriving on Thursday night.

Three days after the Orioles agreed to a five-year deal with Pete Alonso last December, the Mets signed Jorge Polanco to a two-year, $40 million contract. At the time, the Mets’ front office clearly thought that the switch-hitting veteran would give them good production at the plate, and in the team’s press release about the signing included a comment from David Stearns that the expectation was that he’d spend time at first base and designated hitter while “bouncing around to other positions as needed.”

None of that happened. After a slow ramp-up in spring training that was designed to ease him into the long season because of past injury issues with his legs, Polanco played first base just two times: in the first and second games of the Mets’ season. He started having issues with his lower legs, as his Achilles tendon and heel were mentioned in injury reports in early April, and he spent the rest of the season as a DH.

A variety of injuries kept Polanco sidelined for several long stretches of the season, too, and when he did play, he was historically bad. In just 145 plate appearances over the course of 37 games, Polanco hit .148/.201/.230 with a 20 wRC+. He was worth -1.4 fWAR, which was tied with Noelvi Marte of the Reds for the worst mark in all of baseball. And while that wasn’t the worst single season in Mets history, it’s the only one of the ten worst seasons by fWAR to have happened this century. The last time a Met was that far below replacement level was in fifteen years ago, back when Ronny Paulino put up a -1.2 fWAR season for a very bad Mets team, thought it’s worth noting that Mark Vientos nearly tied Paulino with a -1.1 fWAR of his own this year.

So what went wrong? Having struggled in his first season with the Mariners in 2024, Polanco thrived at the plate as he got the team shifted the vast majority of his playing time to the DH role in 2025. Yes, he had played shortstop, second base, and third base in the past, but the Twins began moving him off short in 2021 and had fully moved him off the position in 2022 with the exception of 30.0 innings that he played there that season. Primarily a second baseman from that season through 2024, he occasionally played third base, too.

That track record, combined with what the Mariners got out of Polanco when they reduced his playing time in the field even further, seemed to suggest that Polanco was moving toward a full-time DH role sooner rather than later. Sure, the Mets might’ve been able to have him cover other infield positions in a pinch, but it would’ve been surprising to see him get significant playing time around the infield. If his legs hadn’t been such a mess on the injury front, maybe he’d have been able to play about as often at first base this year as he played second base for the Mariners last year, but even that would’ve given the Mets a whole lot of innings and games to cover at first.

Even for those of us who were concerned about the Mets’ apparent plan to play Polanco in the field regularly, though, what wound up happening was far worse than what had seemed like the worst-case scenario back on Opening Day. Leg injuries forcing him to move to DH even more than he had last year in Seattle, well, that seemed fairly predictable. You wouldn’t have expected him to fall off a cliff at the plate, though, and you wouldn’t have expected him to last just two games in the infield before he was too hurt to play defense again.

Entering his age-33 season, Polanco presents a massive question mark for the Mets, assuming the team doesn’t decide to part ways with him as it manages its 40-man roster this winter. If he sticks around, a best case scenario would be an injury-free spring training spent exclusively as a DH and something resembling a return to form in that role once the regular season gets underway. The underlying metrics as measured by Statcast don’t paint any more of an optimistic picture than his 2026 stats do, though, and it would a major shock if he were to rebound significantly enough to avoid joining Jed Lowrie and Frankie Montas as one of the Mets’ most infamous signings of all time.

Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor’s wife, Katia, gave him a hilarious basket of treats for undergoing a vasectomy, she revealed in an Instagram post Wednesday.

“Three beautiful children later, we decided our family is complete. ” Katia wrote, including a behind the scenes video of her assembling a snack basket with jokes referencing the procedure. “I’ve carried the babies, now it was his turn to take one for the team. Love you, babe! ”

The couple are parents to daughters Kalina Zoé, 5, and Amapola Chloé, 3, and 18-month-old son Koa Amani.

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This surgery comes after Lindor and the Mets finished last place in the National League East with a 74-88 record and missed the postseason for the second consecutive year.

Katia showed a handmade card that said, “Snip snip hooray it’s vasectomy day!” with the date of Oct. 14, 2026.

Another card said, “It’s a whole new ballgame Happy Vasectomy Day!”

Inside, it read, “Paquito, Thank you for taking one for the team! Blessed with the best teammate,” including the message, “No more babies.”

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Katia’s post was set to the song, “Bye Bye Bye” by NSYNC.

Katia included some snacks with a few jokes such as, Chips Ahoy, which she switched to “Snips Ahoy” — and a box of Sour Patch Kids that had a “No more” sign on it.

She also packed cooling boxer briefs for the five-time MLB All-Star.

Lindor flashed a big smile as he read the cards.

“Yeah, done,” he said.

“He’s home and we’re giggling together,” Katia wrote.

Before he had a chance to grow up and become affectionately known as “Babe Ruth’s Legs,” Samuel Byrd was known to his family as Dewey. While growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, Byrd excelled at basketball and baseball for Simpson High School. During his high school days, Byrd also found another sport to love, as he grew up close enough to the golf course to work as a caddie. Remarkably, both played a role in his long-term future.

Samuel Dewey Byrd
Born: October 15, 1907 (Bremen, GA)
Died: May 11, 1981 (Mesa, AZ)
Yankees Tenure: 1929-1934

Following his graduating from Simpson High, Byrd worked as a bricklayer like his father while playing sandlot baseball. That changed in 1926 when the Southern Association’s Birmingham Barons signed Byrd to a contract and promptly sent him to the Jonesboro Buffaloes in Arkansas. In 59 games, Byrd posted a .348 average and led the league in hits.

Following that successful debut, the Barons tried Byrd out with the Knoxville Smokies for the 1927 season. Byrd caught fire again in the hills of Tennessee, batting .331 with 15 home runs. This performance landed him his big break. The New York Yankees purchased Byrd’s contract and assigned the right-handed outfielder to the Albany Senators for the 1928 season.

In Albany, Byrd kept rolling. His batting average jumped to .371, and he hit 18 home runs in 130 games. After that season, it was clear Byrd had a future in the big leagues. The Yankees invited him to spring training, and he made the club to start the 1929 season. The rookie had trouble finding playing time, as the Yankees’ outfield included Ruth, Earle Combs, and Bob Meusel. Wearing number 27 on his jersey, Byrd finished his rookie season with 202 plate appearances and slashed .312/.409/.471.

Meusel vacated left field prior to the 1930 season, but the Yankees used a rotation of players alongside Ruth and Combs. In his second big league season, Byrd appeared in 30 more games than he had as a rookie but only netted 52 more trips to the plate. Of the 92 games he appeared in, Byrd started only 54. This was when the nickname and honorific of being “Babe Ruth’s Legs” took hold, as Byrd was often used to pinch-run or serve as a defensive replacement for Ruth late in games.

The Yankees experienced some change prior to the 1931 season, as Joe McCarthy was brought in to lead the club and Ben Chapman was moved out of the infield to cover the spacious “Death Valley” in left. Byrd was locked in as the team’s fourth outfielder and continued to serve as Ruth’s late-game replacement. Byrd appeared in 115 games that year while starting only 45. In that role, he produced a .270/.349/.395 slash line.

The 1932 season was a magical one for the Yankees. The team won 107 games and went on to sweep the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. For Byrd, the season was much of the same: another solid year serving as the team’s fourth outfielder, batting .297 with a career-high eight home runs in pinstripes. Byrd appeared in one inning of the World Series, as you guessed it, a defensive replacement for Ruth in the final inning of the final game.

Byrd spent two more seasons in the Bronx, continuing to serve as the team’s fourth outfielder and primarily taking over for Ruth at some point during games. In 1933, he appeared in 85 games with 18 starts; in 1934, the numbers were 106 games and 42 starts. Perhaps not coincidentally, once Ruth’s time in pinstripes ended, so did Byrd’s, as the Cincinnati Reds purchased his contract ahead of the 1935 season.

The Reds let the 27-year-old Byrd start 111 games in 1935. In the full-time role, he slashed .262/.322/.406 with a career-high nine home runs. The 1936 season was not as kind to Byrd, as he returned to a reserve role, but he did achieve the rare feat of hitting a Jason Giambi-esque “ultimate grand slam,” a walk-off slam that turned a three-run deficit into a one-run victory against the Pirates. The Reds traded Byrd to the St. Louis Cardinals after the season, but he opted to retire rather than return to the minor leagues and started to pursue golf full-time.

Byrd’s passion and talent for golf were known throughout the majors. Byrd, along with Ruth and other teammates, played as much as they could, and many players at the time agreed that the Yankees’ odd man out in the outfield was actually the leader on the links. After just a few years, Byrd found himself competing at golf’s highest level. He finished third in the Masters in 1941 and fourth in 1942.

When he retired from professional golf in 1949 (incidentally, one year after Ruth’s passing), he had won six times on the PGA Tour while playing in 20 majors with four top 10 finishes. Today he still holds claim as the only person to ever play in both a World Series and the Masters Tournament.

After all his playing days were over, Byrd became a golf instructor. He taught people how to swing a club using a drill he picked up from the Babe himself, keeping a cloth pinned between his arm and body. In 1974, Byrd was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and got to enjoy those honors for seven years before passing away in 1981.

Whether you call him Dewey or Sammy, we wish him a happy birthday!

See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.

David Peterson came over from the Mets in a trade made well before the deadline, in late June. The Cubs gave up 23-year-old infielder Cole Mathis, who was the team’s second-round pick in 2024 and who has yet to play above A ball.

Peterson made 16 appearances (15 starts) for the Cubs and overall his numbers were good, not great: 3.70 ERA, 1.369 WHIP, 0.9 bWAR.

That ERA is decent, but even that was skewed by a horrific start against the Cardinals July 3, when Peterson was tagged for 10 runs in 3.2 innings. In 14 games (13 starts) after that his ERA was 2.66 and he allowed only seven home runs in 71 innings, with a 3.83 FIP.

Those numbers would play, I think, in the Cubs rotation going forward. It’s still a bit of a mystery why the Cubs didn’t start Peterson in one of the Wild Card Series games. He wound up throwing 1.2 scoreless innings in Game 2 once the Cubs were already behind 4-1.

In some ways Peterson became the forgotten man of the Cubs rotation. He was even shuffled into a relief role when Edward Cabrera made his first disastrous return to the rotation in mid-August. Even then he was productive, getting this important out in the eighth inning Aug. 17 against the White Sox [VIDEO].

Peterson turned 31 in September. He’s another ground-ball type like Clay Holmes and generally keeps the ball in the ballpark (2.3 percent career HR rate). He made $8.1 million in 2026.

I would not be opposed to offering him, say, a three-year, $35 million deal. I think Peterson is much more worth keeping around than, say, Matthew Boyd, who will be 36 in February.

Who says no to that?

The Phillies made a trade with the San Francisco Giants this trade deadline in which the headliner was Luis Arraez. With an offense that would be considered “moribund” at the time of the deal, getting Arraez was supposed to help revive them (narrator: it did not help revive them). To make the deal happen, the Phillies had to part with a solid prospect in Ramon Marquez, an overpay when considering just those two names. Yet there was a third name there in the deal, one Caleb Kilian.

Did you remember him?

What went right

Well, he helped them get Arraez. That’s something, right?

Oh yeah, he has team control. That’s basically why they traded for him.

What went wrong

He got hurt.

That’s basically it. There was something the team saw in him that made them want to make sure Kilian’s name was included in the deal for Marquez, something they saw and liked. However, an oblique strain basically ended Kilian’s season as he was unable to recover in time to help the team down the stretch and into Atlanta.

Final grade: Incomplete

You can’t really grade anything Kilian did as he threw 48 pitches wearing Phillies red. He was abjectly terrible in one of his appearances with the team, so saying that there is something to build on for future seasons might be a bit of wishcasting. It could end up being in the same vein of the Jonathan Bowlan trade where the team saw the unmolded clay of a relief pitcher that they feel they can turn into a piece of art worthy of a major league bullpen, but we’ll just have to put a pin in it for now.

Former Mets manager Carlos Mendoza is back in the NL East, joining the Phillies as their third base and infield coach.

Mendoza was fired by the Mets this past June and replaced by Andy Green, whose interim tag was removed near the end of the season.

In three seasons with New York, Mendoza had a 206-199 record. The Mets reached the NLCS in his first year at the helm and had a slow collapse in 2025 that resulted in them being eliminated from postseason contention. In 2026, a 12-game losing streak in April knocked the Mets out of contention early.

Before joining the Mets, Mendoza was a coach for the Yankees from 2018 to 2023.

In Philadelphia, Mendoza will work under manager Don Mattingly, who was given a two-year deal earlier this week after finishing the season with the interim tag. 

Before hiring Mattingly, Philadelphia reportedly reached out to Alex Cora, Raul Ibañez, and Chase Utley to gauge their interest in the position.  

The Dodgers were in a prime position to sucre a win at home in Game 3 of the NLCS, but Blake Snell couldn’t endure the wrath of Milwaukee’s lineup in a 6-2 loss on Wednesday.

Snell faced a similar fate as he did in Game 5 of the 2025 World Series, as he allowed a first-pitch home run to Jackson Chourio to start the scoring. From there until the seventh inning, Snell was exactly what the Dodgers had ordered, tossing six innings of scoreless ball while striking out nine hitters.

The Dodgers were able to give Snell some semblance of run support, as a two-run double from Will Smith helped put them up a run against Milwaukee. It looked like the Dodgers had enough momentum to come back in the seres, until the top of the seventh inning occurred.

Snell allowed a leadoff walk to Andrew Vaughn to put the tying run on base, and it seemed as if Snell was able to work around the situation. Instead, Snell got into a deep at-bat against Jake Bauers. and the Brewers first baseman was able to catapult Milwaukee to a 3-2 lead. Two pitchers later, center fielder Garrett Mitchell blasted his first postseason home run to put the lead evidently out of reach.

Snell spoke with Kirsten Watson of SportsNet LA, where he mentioned how he was able to bounce back after the leadoff home run to Chourio.

“It was just wild, the fact that t happened in back-to-back postseasons, It’s part of the game. It’s not gonna define me, but it’s frustrating. I was really locked in because I was focused. I knew what I needed to do, and that’s part of the game. To give up a home run to start the game was just frustrating, and I’ll learn from that.”

In a start where the Dodgers needed all the run production they could get behind Snell, the two-run double from Smith was the only help that the southpaw was able to get. Snell looked to be on the upswing before Bauers and Mitchell both got to him in the seventh inning.

When speaking with Watson, Snell spoke about his dominant performance over his first six innings on the mound, until the two Brewers lefty bats lit him up in the seventh. It was a moment that Snell reflected particularly on Bauers, whom Snell shared parts of his career with in Tampa.

“I got a strike pitch one, and then I left a fastball over the middle to Bauers. I’ve known him since he got drafted with San Diego and then was with the Rays. I’ve seen all the ups and downs he’s been through. For him to go through this, he’s earned it.”

The Dodgers starting pitching so far has failed to live up to expectations, as they’ve been responsible for allowing nine earned runs allowed over 14 2/3 innings. The Dodgers will send Tyler Glasnow on the hill for Game 4 on Thursday, looking to avoid being swept by Milwaukee. This is the firs time the Dodgers have been down 3-0 in a playoff series since the 1966 World Series against the Baltimore Orioles.

We’re going to try something a little bit different today. With Boston out of the playoffs and anniversaries of awesome Red Sox postseason moments popping up on a daily basis during this stretch of the calendar, it got me thinking about some of the greatest games in franchise history.

Specifically, I started a little exercise in my head highlighting these magical moments, and by the end of it, I wanted to play the game with other Red Sox fans and the OTM community. The task is simple: Create the best Red Sox 7-Game series using the franchise’s rich catalog of postseason roller coaster rides. In doing so, you have just two limitations:

1. Each selection within your best 7-Game series must correspond to the actual game it was during the series played. (So you can’t use a Game 5 and place it at Game 1 or Game 7 or whatever.)
2. You can only use one game per series, meaning you have to dip into seven different series to create the full list. (This means you’re going to have to make some hard decisions when it comes to the 2004 ALCS.)

So with that, I’ll get everybody started with my list.

Game 1:2004 World Series

You can actually go a few different ways here. For a while I thought the one-game Wild Card win over the Yankees in 2021 was the answer since that’s the only Game 1 that’s winner-take-all and it came against the detestable Yankees. But it was also so early in the postseason, was a good — not great — game, and it has some surprisingly stiff competition.

I also almost went with Game 1 of the 2018 World Series (great game and an easy way to lead off with the most dominant Red Sox team of all time). But I landed on Game 1 of the 2004 World Series because even 22 years later, I can still remember exactly how I felt watching every inning of that surreal experience. The euphoria at the start of the game coming off the ALCS comeback, the wild twists and turns, the errors, and of course the sound of the Mark Bellhorn home run hitting Pesky’s Pole.

There’s also been some extra legend added to this game and moment in recent years now that we know the ESPN crew accidentally pulled down the pole and moved it just hours before the World Series got underway. What are the odds the decisive home not only ends up near, but off Pesky’s Pole in the aftermath? Just another incredible tidbit from a time in Red Sox history full of them.

Game 2: 2013 ALCS

For me, the 2013 ALCS was the easiest selection on the whole list. I don’t think there’s any other Game 2 in MLB history that so completely and decisively swung a best-of-7 series. That series felt like it was headed down a one way street before the Ortiz grand slam, and then it morphed it into a different universe. Add on the indelible image of Tori Hunter flipping over the bullpen wall in front of the cop celebrating, and you have a photo that will grace the walls of Boston bars forever. Special game, special player, special moment, special series, special season!

Game 3: 2003 ALDS

Here’s where it gets tricky, but I went with Game 3 of the 2003 ALDS for multiple reasons. First off, it was just peak bizarre baseball, which I love! But also, I’d argue this game was the catalyst of the entire epic saga that was the 2003-2004 postseason. If the Red Sox lose, they get swept by the A’s, the Red Sox vs. Yankees ALCS never happens, the Pedro/Grady Little controversy in Game 7 never happens, and that entire core is less battle tested and probably constructed a little bit different when the face the Yankees the following year.

It also had some of my favorite dumb baseball moments of all time with Eric Burns shoving Jason Varitek and Miguel Tejada stopping on the basepaths when Oakland had the Red Sox on the ropes.

Oh, and then it went 11 innings and featured a Trot Nixon walk-0ff. Man, the entire 2003 postseason was just nuts!

Game 4: 2004 ALCS

The 2004 ALCS. This one doesn’t need an introduction or video (we’ve all seen the highlights a million times). It’s the ultimate dividing line between the past and the present. I almost went off sequence here and wanted to save my 2004 ALCS bullet for the next game, but I couldn’t because …

Game 5: 2008 ALCS

This is by far the toughest pick! Despite my last answer, I’d actually argue that Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS is the better game from that series (and I’ve done so here at Over The Monster before). But here’s the thing: There is no team in baseball — and for that matter all of sports — that has a more impressive catalog of stunning Game 5s than the Boston Red Sox. It’s not even close!

There’s the Dave Henderson home run in 1986. There’s Pedro coming out of the bullpen against Cleveland in 1999. There’s the Andrew Benintendi catch to close out the 2018 ALCS. There’s the nail biting ninth inning of Game 5 of the 1967 World Series that nearly sparked a 3-1 comeback. There’s Derek Lowe stranding the bases loaded to end the 2003 ALDS. There’s even this beauty to close out the 1915 World Series in which the Sox rallied down 4-2 in the eighth.

But for this exercise, I’m going with the seven run comeback in Game 5 of the 2008 ALCS.

The Sox failing to close out this series in Game 7 is one of the biggest missed opportunities in franchise history! Game 5 very nearly set off a dynasty with what could have been the franchise’s ultimate comeback game, and it was the eighth straight Red Sox win in the LCS when facing elimination (appropriately dating by Game 4 of the 2004 series against the Yankees). Mathematically, Boston’s odds to win the 2008 ALCS were lower in the seventh inning of Game 5 of this series than they were in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, and they took that all the way to an early lead in Game 7.

It probably won’t be the most popular answer among the masses because of how the series turned out, but I’m obsessed with what this game could have set off if Game 7 went differently.

Game 6: 1975 World Series

Even after all these years and four championships, it’s still Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. It’s a damn near perfect baseball game!

The Bernie Carbo home run fueled the dramatic eighth inning comeback, the Red Sox blew a golden bases loaded, nobody out opportunity to win it in the ninth, the Dwight Evans catch in right field in the 11th, Hall of Famers all over the place, and of course the iconic Carton Fisk home run where he waves it fair off the pole.

For decades, this was the best thing Red Sox fans had. It’s the closest many people ever came to tasting a championship, and it was savored so much by the region it was frequently mentioned in movies, books, and other literature for years.

Game 7: ???

And here’s where we get to the title of the article. For a franchise blessed with so much rich postseason history, the Red Sox don’t have a signature Game 7 win. Take your time. Dig. It’s not out there.

They have plenty of signature Game 7 losses, but all of their modern Game 7 wins tend to be exclamation points on other more iconic games from earlier in the series. (The 2004 ALCS is a perfect example of this.)

Oddly, they do have an easy pick for a Game 8. Back in the 1912 World Series, Game 2 ended in a tie, so Game 8 became the decisive, winner-take-all contest, and it ended up going to extra innings. The Sox fell behind 2-1 in the top of the tenth, only to score two in the bottom of the inning following an extremely costly error by Giants’ centerfielder Fred Snodgrass. What a way to close out Fenway Park’s inaugural season!

But anyway, back to the matter at hand. I’m going Game 7 of the 2007 ALCS to complete the comeback vs. Cleveland. It was more of a party than a great baseball game, but again, where else do you go with this exercise? (It also holds a special place in my heart personally.)

Here’s the most fun takeaway of this exercise for me: We have yet to see the best Game 7 in Red Sox franchise history. For all the records, all the heroics, and all the rhetoric about how we’ll never experience the same highs as 2004 again, any modern Red Sox team has a chance to go one last place no other Red Sox team has gone before. Make a deep postseason run and end it with an unforgettable exclamation point of a Game 7.

When it happens, that group will go right up there with all the other magical seasons we touched on throughout this list. In other words, there’s still new places to explore out there, and maybe — just maybe — our young stars will light the way.

So with that, I turn it over to you. What’s your best 7-Game Red Sox series?

The finish was frustrating. The power was undeniable. And the players who shared the field with Munetaka Murakami apparently saw plenty worth recognizing.

The White Sox first baseman was named one of three finalists for the American League Outstanding Rookie Award in the MLBPA’s Players Choice Awards on Wednesday, joining Detroit’s Kevin McGonigle and Cleveland’s Parker Messick. It’s an all-AL Central field. Apparently, the division had a few things going for it this year.

The winners will be announced the week of Oct. 26. Established in 1992, the Players Choice Awards recognize excellence on and off the field, with the voting handled by the players themselves. There’s something meaningful about getting the nod from the same guys trying to get you out. And for stretches of his first big-league season, getting Mune out was quite the assignment.

Murakami finished the regular season with a .207/.347/.478 slash line, an .825 OPS, 35 home runs, 77 RBIs and 92 walks in 127 games. Even with a right hamstring strain costing him roughly six weeks from late May into July, the slugger supplied the kind of power the South Side has spent far too long trying to find.

The batting average? Nobody is framing that one, but 35 homers and 92 walks will play, especially when they come with a 130 OPS+ and 2.3 WAR. There was real production underneath the strikeouts and the frustrating stretches.

His Baseball Savant profile tells that story in rather dramatic shades of red and blue. Murakami finished in the 100th percentile in barrel rate, the 99th percentile in hard-hit and walk rates, and the 98th percentile in average exit velocity. When he connected, pitchers generally had reason to turn around. Making that connection consistently was the problem.

His whiff and strikeout rates both landed in the first percentile, while his expected batting average sat in the second. Yet his chase rate ranked in the 91st percentile, a useful distinction: Murakami could lay off pitches outside the zone and still struggle mightily to put bat to ball. The power was elite. The patience was there. The contact remains a work in progress.

That combination made for a rookie season with some awfully high highs and a difficult landing. Through his first 74 games, Murakami had already launched 24 of his eventual 35 home runs and looked like someone the White Sox should be discussing a future with immediately. August and September were considerably less fun.

Those struggles followed him into Soxtober, when he hit .185/.258/.296 with a .554 OPS, one homer, five RBIs, three walks and 15 strikeouts in 27 at-bats. It was a rough ending for a hitter who had given the offense so much early electricity. Still, the entire season counts, and it gave Chicago plenty to build on.

When the Sox signed Murakami to a two-year, $34 million contract on Dec. 21, 2025, the surprise extended well beyond the South Side. This franchise isn’t usually the one landing an accomplished international slugger while the rest of baseball watches.

Mune arrived with quite the résumé: consecutive Central League MVP awards in 2021 and 2022, four NPB All-Star selections, the 2019 Central League Rookie of the Year award and a 2021 Japan Series championship with the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. In 2022, he captured the Triple Crown by hitting .318 with 56 home runs and 134 RBIs. Those 56 homers established the single-season record for a Japanese-born player.

Questions about how his swing would handle major-league velocity and breaking stuff accompanied him to Chicago. His first season offered evidence of both the enormous upside and the adjustments still ahead.

There was a defensive transition, too. Primarily a third baseman in Japan, Murakami moved to first for the Sox and finished with -2 Fielding Run Value. The bat was always going to carry this particular investment.

Now, the question is how long Chicago can keep it around. According to Bruce Levine, general manager Chris Getz said Tuesday that extension discussions with Murakami’s representatives began in late summer and remain ongoing. A longer stay would give Mune time to make those adjustments — and Sox fans more opportunities to watch baseballs disappear.

The broader awards slate also includes several familiar names: Dylan Cease and Chris Sale are finalists for their respective leagues’ Outstanding Pitcher awards, Chris Bassitt is up for Marvin Miller Man of the Year and Jake Burger is a Philanthropist of the Year finalist. Plenty of former South Siders will be represented when the winners are revealed later this month.

This time, there’s a current one worth celebrating, too.

LOS ANGELES — Amid Dodgers despair, Shohei Ohtani provided a sliver of hope.

Maybe more.

It was the bottom of the eighth inning on Wednesday, Oct. 14, with the Dodgers on their way to a 6-2 loss against the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 3 of the National League championship series, when Ohtani stepped to the plate.

Two out. No one on.

Ohtani, stuck in a horrendous hitting slump, jumped on the first pitch, a 96-mph sinker from Brewers reliever DL Hall. The Dodgers superstar laced it right back up the middle for a single to center.

Hall nearly got hit as the ball rocketed off Ohtani’s bat with a reported exit velocity of 113.5 mph. It was the top exit velocity of the game, according to Baseball Savant, and considered elite-level velocity.

Of course it did nothing to slow the Brewers, who took a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven NLCS. But it looked like signature Shohei, unfurling a quick, powerful swing.

For the past few months, over most of the baseball season, MLB has aired commercials educating the public on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiations. The message has repeatedly outlined that fans are losing out due to the lack of parity among the teams while touting a salary cap and floor as the solution.

If the fans are outraged by the players’ refusal to consider a salary cap/floor, MLB believes it will hold a negotiating advantage.

For its part, the MLBPA contends that a cap and floor are not needed and that it is a ploy by the owners to limit player salaries and benefits. All of the proposals made by MLB up to this point in the negotiating process are contingent on the players accepting the cap and floor as the baseline.

Baseball is broken

There is no doubt the economics of baseball are broken. The playing field is far from level when a few teams can spend up to five times as much on payroll as the teams at the bottom.

It is not acceptable for some owners to use their teams as a cash cow to line their own pockets while never believably attempting to win.

Obviously, this system needs to be fixed. But is a cap and floor going to fix it?

Is there a parity problem in baseball, or is it just the excesses of out-of-control billionaire ownership groups that try to buy championships instead of competing more traditionally?

What is parity in this market?

The last small-market team to win the World Series was the Kansas City Royals in 2015. Over the past 10 years, top-10-payroll-ranked teams have taken the prize. Lower-market teams have competed but not gone all the way.

In 2026, three of the four teams remaining in the playoffs are in the bottom 11 in payroll, with the lowest payroll in baseball belonging to the Cleveland Guardians. 

The Los Angeles Dodgers are ranked second, a few million behind the New York Mets for the top spot.

The Dodgers’ payroll is $340.6 million, with another $180.8 million in luxury tax (payroll tracker). Their luxury tax penalty is more than the payrolls of the other three playoff teams. Combined, the Milwaukee Brewers ($143.7 million), Tampa Bay Rays ($98.5 million), and Cleveland Guardians ($74.4 million) total $316.6 million, less than the Dodgers ‘ regular-season payroll.

We don’t know how this season’s playoffs will turn out. At this point, it looks unlikely that the Dodgers will achieve their coveted three-peat for the World Series.

Whoever wins, the point is that MLB doesn’t have a parity problem in the realm of team success. The Guardians and Brewers have been winning for a while now, despite not getting the top prize… yet.

MLB has a Dodgers problem

Smaller market teams can compete. They just have to work harder to achieve success. They have to maximize financial deals, have a smart administrative team making decisions, and their baseball operations have to draft and develop well.

The Dodgers don’t have to do any of those things. With their huge TV deal, merchandising income from their popularity and their superstar players, as well as the huge market they play in, the money is pouring in. They are the poster child for lack of parity.

The Dodgers can make mistakes, have endless injuries, overpay for underperforming players, and still win the NL West every season. No other team in baseball can do what they do. The Mets spend more money and are still a bad team. The organization is a mess and is wasting its advantage.

The real problem is that the Dodgers start every season with an advantage no other team can come close to achieving. They can outspend and outbid most every team in MLB for any player they want. Everyone else can only get a player if the Dodgers don’t want them.

MLB supports the chosen few

Major League Baseball supports the Dodgers in their process. The league makes a lot of money with what the Dodgers are doing. Their justification is that everyone benefits financially because of the luxury tax. The league’s contention is that the real problem is the underspending teams that refuse to try. Those are the teams ruining baseball.

Many of us remember when the Padres were pursuing Yankees free agent Aaron Judge. Offering him a huge contract, the Padres lost out to the Yankees, and Judge returned to the fold. MLB made it clear that they would not have approved that deal anyway. It wasn’t sustainable for a small-market team already committed to multiple big contracts. Peter Seidler got his hand slapped.

Where the Padres stand in this situation

Former owner Peter Seidler spent money when he didn’t really have it to spend. He was determined to turn the Padres into a winning organization and believed that the financials would work out when the success began. 

Signing long and lucrative contracts with players who couldn’t possibly fulfill those contracts will hamstring this team for years to come. Aging players drag a team down; especially a team like the Padres, who now have to fill out their roster with a fixed payroll that begins at over $100 million with those guaranteed contracts.

New controlling owners José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones have taken over at a tenuous time in baseball. They are saying all the right things about being motivated to fulfill Peter Seidler’s legacy. What happens this offseason may not indicate their intentions.

This offseason could be hampered by the CBA negotiations, a lockout, and a delay to Spring Training and the season. Depending on how all that plays out, the ownership group might or might not get an opportunity to show what they want to accomplish.

The Padres have figured out a way to maximize profits in their limited media market. Fan attendance and enthusiasm help, and so does maximizing the use of Petco Park for non-baseball events. Merchandising is also a help, as two Padres players rank in the top 20 (Fernando Tatis Jr. No. 5, Jackson Merrill No. 18) for jersey sales in MLB.

The Friars finished 2026 with a payroll of $224,019,413 and will pay $8,280,316 in luxury taxes. 

They ended up with the fifth-highest payroll in baseball. MLB points to the Padres as the poster child for what can happen when an organization makes a real effort to win in a limited market. But all of the Friar Faithful know that we can never hope to compete with the Dodgers for a division title the way things stand. Not when they have their resources and ability to overcome any and all hurdles.

That means a Wild Card berth is the likely route to the playoffs. A much longer and more difficult road to travel.

The owners need to work for real parity 

The goal of the CBA negotiations should be to level the playing field by limiting organizations that can overspend above what any other team can. A cap and floor might do that, but current teams would have to be grandfathered into whatever is agreed to, as there are contracts that can’t be changed. It would only prevent future abuses of the system.

The road ahead for baseball is fraught with financial uncertainty. The unprecedented popularity of the Friars in San Diego is based on their success. Any agreement reached has to support teams in smaller markets so that they can compete with the big market behemoths. Not enough is being done currently to guarantee that outcome.

Hello everyone and happy Thursday!

Here’s everything you may have missed from the baseball world yesterday.

MLB Postseason scores…

• The Dodgers are just one game away from being swept in the NLCS following a 6-2 Brewers victory powered by a trio of homers.

In Mariners news…

• David Laurila at Fangraphs spoke to Mariners prospect Boston Smith, who was acquired by the team in the Luis Castillo trade and is now playing in the Arizona Fall League.
• Kate Preusser caught up with up-and-coming Mariners prospect Jarvis Gomez following his breakout performance in the Dominican Summer League.
• Over on The Feed, Tommy Stokke started a conversation on the biggest Mariners prospect disappointments.

Around the league…

• Major League Baseball unveiled its list of finalists for the 2026 Gold Glove awards. Cole Young is the lone Mariners representative.
• It’s official: Joe Espada will not be returning as Astros manager in 2027, leaving the door wide open for him to take the role with the Mariners should they choose him.
• Despite their massive success this season, the Rays are having trouble filling seats at the Trop. Sam Blum at The Athletic has the story.
• While many teams are slashing their scouting departments, the Mets are expanding theirs, reports Will Sammon at The Athletic.
• The White Sox are locked in on improving their starting rotation this offseason.
• Michael Baumann at Fangraphs explained why the Dodgers pulled Blake Snell in the middle of a great outing against the Brewers.
• Danny Funt spoke to former ESPN producer Nicole Noren, who is speaking out about the sports gambling problem that prompted her exit.

The playoffs are already more than half over, which means the Royals need to be preparing working on their roster for the offseason ahead of the anticipated December 1 lockout that will preclude all roster transactions. The SB Nation offseason simulations may not take place anymore, but I’m not going to let that stop me from attempting to build the 2027 Royals in my own image.

This article is going to focus on preparing the 40-man roster for the offseason. Under the current rules, everyone on the 60-day IL has to be returned to the 40-man roster following the conclusion of the season. Some players will leave as free agents, but the Royals also need to be prepared for a Rule 5 Draft even though one might not happen. You don’t want to be the one team that assumed you didn’t need to worry about it only for it to happen anyway.

The Royals currently have 39 players on the 40-man roster. They also have eight players on the 60-day IL who ostensibly need to be activated and added to the roster. The good news is that Jonathan India is a free agent, so that’s one we don’t have to worry about. Additionally, Carlos Estévez has a club option I’m going to decline. Similarly, I will non-tender Connor Seabold. That leaves us with 44 guys for the 40-man roster, still. However, Craig Kimbrel, Luke Maile, and Josh Rojas are all free agents, too. That gets us to 41. I’ll go ahead and non-tender Easton McGee, and that will get me down to 40.

But that’s not where we stop. Because, as noted above, the Royals need to protect some of their prospects from the Rule 5 draft, just in case it happens. For what it’s worth, it did not happen after the 2021-2022 lockout, but that doesn’t mean things won’t be done differently this time. You can read a breakdown of who is eligible.

Lucas Braun and Carson Roccaforte are no-doubt guys to be added. Both figure to play some kind of role on next year’s big league team, regardless. Unfortunately, no one else seems worth protecting. Most of those guys are too far away to be seriously considered for selections under the current system, which requires players to be offered back to their old teams rather than be demoted. There has been some negotiation around potentially allowing drafted teams to keep those players even when they want to send them to the minors, but I have to imagine that if they made that change and then did hold the Rule 5 draft, teams would get a chance to adjust again beforehand.

To clear those two spots, I will designate Mitch Spence and Matthew Lugo for assignment.

Now let’s address the remainder of our arbitration-eligible players.

• Kyle Isbel (Arb3)
• Nick Mears (Arb3)
• Nate Pearson (Arb3)
• Michael Massey (Arb2)
• Daniel Lynch IV (Arb2)
• Alex Lange (Arb2)
• Anthony Gose (Arb2)
• James McArthur (Arb2)
• Randy Dobnak (Arb2)
• Lucas Erceg (Arb1)
• Alec Marsh (Arb1)

You can read MLB Trade Rumors estimates for arbitration salaries for those players. Out of that list, the easy keeps are Lynch, Massey, and Dobnak. For the salaries they’re likely to get, I think it makes sense to keep Erceg, Gose, and Pearson. I don’t want to pay Kyle Isbel that much to be a fourth outfielder on this team when I have so many cheaper options, but I’m going to try to trade him for a reliever before I have to tender.

That leaves us with Mears, Lange, McArthur, and Marsh. Lange and Mears don’t have options and they were both bad and hurt, so they’re gone. McArthur and Marsh are more difficult. I really like both players – they each had long-ish stretches of being quite good before being hurt – so I think we can tender them for now and not much money is lost if we end up not being able to keep them. Plus, the longer we have them, hopefully the easier it would be to get them to come back on a minor league deal if we end up needing the 40-man room.

The Yankees need some center field defense help; let’s deal Kyle Isbel to them for Bradley Hanner. Hanner strikes guys out, but he doesn’t have elite stuff, and he’s struggled with walks and home runs at times. Plus, he’s already 27. He’s not a flamethrower, but if Sweeney and company can turn him into a useful middle relief piece for Kyle Isbel, I think I’d be pretty happy with that.

So that leaves us with 38 men on the roster and plenty of holes to still fill. Just to reiterate, the Royals need a lot of relief help, some starting pitching, and a bat or two for the outfield. We haven’t added anything yet, minus that one reliever. That’s for next time, though. What do you think so far?