Category: Sports News

It was only fitting that Christian Yelich hit a ground ball to shortstop where Xander Bogaerts fielded the ball and completed an unassisted double play to help the San Diego Padres secure a 4-3 win over the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 3 of the National League Division Series at Petco Park on Tuesday night.

Bogaerts was instrumental at multiple points throughout the game. His diving stop deep in the hole at shortstop in the top of the fifth inning did not take away a hit, but it did keep the Brewers from scoring a run. In the bottom of the seventh inning, Bogaerts hopped over a ground ball off the bat of Miguel Andujar. Bogaerts also avoided the broken bat of Andujar which was right behind the ball. The play by Bogaerts combined with the distracting broken bat caused Milwaukee shortstop Cooper Pratt to throw short to first base. The ball skipped past Jake Bauers and went into foul territory. Andujar reached safely and Bogaerts slid into home to give San Diego a one-run lead on what proved to be the winning run.

Michael King took the mound in relief in the top of the eighth inning and got through the top half of the frame without much trouble. The Padres were unable to add to their lead in the bottom of the eighth inning. On a night when San Diego did not have Mason Miller who was placed on paternity leave prior to the start of the game, and Adrian Morejon who seemed to be unavailable, King returned to the mound in the ninth and got the first two outs. He then allowed a walk to William Contreras and a walk to Bryce Tourang. Yelich came to the plate and on the first pitch after a mound visit from Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla, King got the Brewers captain to ground into a game-ending double play to help San Diego stave off elimination.

Nick Pivetta started on the mound for the Padres and left the game after 4 1/3 innings with a 2-1 lead. There were runners at second and third base and Jason Adam was called on to try to strand them there. Adam induced a shallow fly ball to left field that was caught by Dustin Harris for the second out, but Pratt tested Harris and raced home and slid in safely well ahead of the throw to make the score 2-2. Jake Cronenworth changed that with a solo home run to lead off the bottom of the fifth inning which put the Padres back in front, 3-2.

Bogaerts was not the only San Diego player to make game saving plays on defense. Jackson Merrill took away extra bases when he ran deep into the left-center gap and made a sliding backhanded catch to take away extra bases from Jackson Chourio. Merrill followed that up with a play in the top of the third inning with a play in the right-center gap to take away an extra-base hit from Sal Frelick, prompting a response from Brewers manager Pat Murphy.

San Diego will face its second elimination game in as many days when the Padres and Brewers meet tonight at 7 p.m. for Game 4.

Padres News:

• The Padres had a disappointing weekend in Milwaukee and came back to Petco looking to avoid elimination.

• Tom Krasovic of the San Diego Union-Tribunebelieves this series deserves at least a Game 4, if not more.

Baseball News:

• Yoshinobu Yamamoto recorded 10 strikeouts to lead the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Atlanta Braves.

• Today is going to be a busy day for baseball.

The Arizona Fall League is only a few games into its five week schedule. The Tigers have some players to follow out there, including top prospects Bryce Rainer and Zyhir Hope, infielder John Peck, hard-throwing relief prospect Jalen Evans, along with starting prospect Win Scott. We’ll be updating their progress weekly throughout the Fall League season. However, the most interesting note from the fall developmental league is an unannounced experiment with defensive positioning for outfielders.

The Fall League is generally designed to provide competition and development for prospects who missed time during the regular season. At times, players will go out there even when they didn’t miss much time if there’s something specific, like a positional change, that they’re working on. The Fall League has also been used as a laboratory for a lot of rule changes the league has implemented over the last few years.

Banning extreme infield shifts started as a Fall League experiment, as did the pitch clock and the ABS challenge system. MLB uses it as a testing ground, and other rule changes, like checked swing challenges, have been tried but not implemented in the major leagues, or anywhere else in the minor leagues. At least not yet.

Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs is out covering the AFL and reported today that the league is experimenting this season with restricted positioning for outfielders this time around. You should read his full description, and the league’s response to his inquiries here. Essentially though, they seem to be experimenting with forcing corner outfielders to stay within a certain distance of their respective foul lines, while playing relatively shallow as well.

It was back in 2023 that MLB decided to limit shifts for infielders, requiring all of them to stand on the dirt until the pitch is delivered, and stopping the second baseman and shortstop from shifting to the other side of second base. These changes haven’t had any noticeable effect on ground balls going for hits.

One would assume that the league wouldn’t have implemented the shift limits if they didn’t at least work in the AFL, but that’s just an assumption, as it hasn’t changed the amount of ground balls going for hits in the big leagues. Perhaps teams simply positioned their first baseman a little more toward second base or slightly deeper to help make up the difference. Maybe they started favoring defensive ability as a bigger part of their first base equation. Whatever the league thinks up, teams and players are going to adapt.

The overarching issue the league can’t seem to solve to its satisfaction is the strikeouts. They would do well to stop bothering to try. Teams, notably the Tigers among them, have gotten a lot better at training batspeed with their hitters. With that is likely to come a greater emphasis on contact hitters. If you know you can build light hitting contact guys into major leaguers with at least average raw power, then contact is going to become a lot more valuable commodity in the draft, and that might be the only antidote to the reign of swing and miss stuff around the game. The Tigers already have Kevin McGonigle and Max Clark in this vein, and teenaged shortstop prospect Jordan Yost and others might follow suit in time.

Young players in top shelf high school competition and in college are already seeing velocity that would’ve blown the hair of major league hitters back years ago. It’s going to take time to see if the younger crop of hitters coming up is better suited to put more balls in play. Instead of drafting pre-fabricated sluggers with major swing and miss issues, teams might be able to take light-hitting young players with elite hand-eye coordination and bat control into more power threats, keeping power in the game while also getting some ways toward defeating the tyranny of the whiff.

My only point here is that everything the league does to manipulate outcomes and increase offense has failed, and the sharpest teams quickly adapt and exploit changes. Sticking outfielders close to the foul lines would certainly be a much more difficult change to deal with from a pitching and defensive standpoint. Of course, so would simply making outfielders play without gloves. You want old school? We can go all the way back. This kind of thing can get silly in a real hurry.

The shift bans did nothing of note. Forcing pitchers to abandon their sticky substance of choice didn’t help offenses. Nor did the pitch clock. Nor has the ABS system. The league says they want more offense, but since they dejuiced the baseball, they don’t want crazy home run numbers and a full, three true outcomes, style of game either. What they really want is fewer strikeouts, and nothing they’ve tried has been remotely successful. Trying to manipulate defenses to allow more balls in play to go for hits is just gimmicky in my book, but more importantly it just hasn’t done any good, and probably won’t unless they go to some real extremes.

So far, this is very much just the experimental phase of any changes to outfield positioning. Probably we’ll see them experiment with some different ideas in the next few years. Maybe nothing will ultimately come to pass. The question is still just what people actually want to see, and how any of these things can actually accomplish what the league seems to want to accomplish when so many competing changes are going on all at the same time. We’ve seen more stolen bases with the bigger bases in use, and stolen bases are great action plays. Won’t that lead to prioritizing catcher defense over offense? There’s always a reaction. We might add stolen bases, but cut into catcher offense due to greater demand for arm strength and accuracy.

Personally, I would like the league to just chill out for a while and see how teams and players adapt to the enormous amount of changes they’ve already made. Throw in the varying springiness of different batches of baseball, and the league has created all sorts of little mini eras over the last decade. Comparing say, Justin Verlander’s career to Cy Young’s, is already kind of impossible. In the future, all this artificial manipulation of game elements is only going to add more and more layers of complexity to those sorts of evaluations.

We’re only four seasons from the National League adopting the designated hitter full-time. Now we have shift bans, bigger bases, pitch clocks, sticky stuff checks, the three batter minimum rule for pitchers, the Pitchcom system, the ABS challenge system, and a planned checked swing challenge system coming soon. There was a time when replay was controversial. Rapidly changing rulesets have come fast and furious ever since.

Some of these changes have been positive, and some haven’t, and we might all have different views as to which is which. There’s nothing wrong with experimenting in the Arizona Fall League or in the independent leagues, looking for ways to improve the game. It would just be nice to have a moratorium at some point so we can actually let things play out. Give teams time to study things and adapt and innovate on their own. The Brewers more than anyone, but the Rays as well, started bunting way more often this year. Maybe that will be part of the equation as well. Baseball often provides its own adaptations and counter balances if we just give it time, but it still looks like the league intends to keep trying to manipulate the game to make it look the way some in MLB committees want it to look. We can only hope for a point at which the players are allowed to just play the same game for a few years. They might come up with better, or at least more organic solutions, but only if there is finally an era with some consistency.

Down two games to none to the Rays is the worst possible spot for the Yankees to be heading into Game 3 of the ALDS on Wednesday night. But there are a few positives – not with their play so far, obviously – that they can cling to as they try to save their season. 

They have lefties scheduled to start Game 3 and Game 4 (should they make Game 4 necessary, anyway). They’re at home and, let’s be honest, there’s really no chance they play as poorly as they did in Game 2’s flop fest. Right?

Right?!!?

Here are three things to watch in Game 3 as the Yankees try to prevent the Rays from a second big celebration in the Bronx, where they cliched the AL East last month: 

Friendly confines

Can the Yanks take advantage of home field and prove the resiliency they’ve been talking up since their Game 2 humiliation? The Rays had a clear advantage in the first two games at Tropicana Field – the speedy turf plays to their strengths, they know the backdrop the dome’s roof gives to fly balls, and they were awfully difficult to beat there, going 55-26 at home. 

The Yankees were 46-34 at Yankee Stadium this season, including 4-2 against Tampa Bay. So they weren’t as dominant a home squad as the Rays were. But they’re also built to thrive on the short right field porch. They hit the most home runs at home this season and had the eighth-best home OPS. 

Of course, the Yankee offense has been stymied by Rays pitching this series – Ben Rice and Austin Wells have two hits apiece, but the rest of the lineup is an unfathomable 1-for-46 (.022). The Rays are starting road warrior Nick Martinez, a Fordham product who had a 2.38 road ERA this year, including a 2.25 in two starts in the Bronx.

A loud, supportive crowd behind them should help. At least at first. Boot a few early, like Game 2, and that atmosphere will likely change. 

Fried factor

Homers are not really the Rays’ game, but it’s worth noting they only hit 36 of them against left-handed pitchers this season, tied with the Marlins for the fewest in MLB. Only five teams had a worse OPS against southpaws than Tampa Bay. The put-it-in-play Rays batted 15 points lower against lefties than righties during the regular season. Still, they’re so good that they were 31-17 in games started by left-handers.

And Max Fried, of course, is not your average MLB lefty. Neither is Game 4’s scheduled starter Carlos Rodón. Fried allowed one run in six innings in his start in the Wild Card Series and the Yanks could use a repeat in Game 3.

Tampa Bay likely will insert righty Ryan Vilade into the lineup – he hit seven homers and had an .818 OPS against lefties this year. Junior Caminero hits every kind of pitcher (eight homers, .916 OPS against lefties) and Yandy Díaz (eight homers, .780 OPS against southpaws), will be his usual challenge. 

Decisions, decisions!

Aaron Boone said on Tuesday’s off-day that he was "considering a couple of things" in terms of lineup changes. He’s used eight lefties and George Lombard Jr. so far in the series, but the huge platoon tilt has not worked. The Yanks have scored just twice, both on Rice solo homers, own a .369 OPS, and are striking out more than usual.

Oof!

They could use José Caballero at third instead of Ryan McMahon, who made an error on the first play of Game 2 and is 1-for-7 in the postseason. After Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s poor-judgment night at second base in Game 2, does he come out? Anthony Volpe could start there. 

With Fried -- a groundball pitcher -- on the mound, the Yanks need defense.

New York might be giving up a couple of supposed platoon edges by replacing two lefties with two righties against the righty Martinez, but it might be worth it. Martinez thrives on soft contact, so maybe Caballero’s speed translates into an infield hit that could jump-start an inning. 

MLB divisional series action Wednesday, Oct. 7 is headlined by the Tampa Bay Rays, who are just one win away from sweeping the New York Yankees in Game 3 and securing their spot in the American League Championship Series.

The Rays opened the series with a 1-0 victory, thanks to a masterful performance from Drew Rasmussen, who held the Yankees hitless until two outs in the eighth inning. Jonathan Aranda’s solo homer off Yankees ace Gerrit Cole proved to be the difference, giving Tampa Bay an early advantage and setting the tone for the series.

Game 2 saw the Rays capitalize on the Yankees’ defensive struggles, with Richie Palacios delivering a clutch two-run single in the fifth inning. The Rays won 5-2 for a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series.

Now, the Rays have a chance to clinch a spot in the ALCS with a win, while the Yankees are fighting to avoid elimination and keep their playoff hopes alive.

More: White Sox, Dodgers, Rays, Brewers can all advance with MLB playoff wins today

Monday night was a brutal one for the Yankees as multiple defensive miscues and missed chances at the plate cost them Game 2 of the ALDS against the Rays. Now, they’ll have to return home and win twice just to get the series back to Tropicana Field for a decisive Game 5. At least in Yankee Fan Land, morale is low. The team, though, got Tuesday off for the travel day to go back to the Bronx, and hopefully they used it to get in a new mindset ahead of Wednesday’s Game 3.

However, the playoff still rolled on Tuesday, with both NL series in action. Let’s take a look at what went down on the other side of the bracket.

National League Division Series Game 3

Los Angeles Dodgers 3, Atlanta Braves 1
(Dodgers lead series 2-1)

The Dodgers snatched home-field advantage back in Game 3, thanks to a strong outing from Yoshinobu Yamamoto to outduel Atlanta ace Chris Sale, who succumbed to more playoff heroics from Enrique Hernández.

The marquee pitching matchup between Yamamoto and Sale mostly delivered. For LA, Yamamoto went seven innings, allowing one run on four hits and a walk, while striking out 10. The difference between him and Sale came down to one inning where the Dodgers’ offense struck.

With the game still scoreless in the top of the fourth, Sale allowed a leadoff single to Andy Pages. While Sale got the next out, Hernández came up with another big playoff moment, homering to give the Dodgers the lead. Freddie Freeman hit a solo shot a couple batters later to add on to LA’s lead. The former Braves fan favorite had been robbed of a shot to left by Mauricio Dúbon earlier, but this one was out of reach of anyone in uniform.

The Braves got on the board themselves in the fifth when a run scored on a Drake Baldwin groundout. The issue with that was that Atlanta had the bases loaded with only one out, but that single run on the grounder ended up being the only one they scored from that spot — against Yamamoto or the Dodgers’ bullpen. Much-maligned relief signing Edwin Díaz nailed down the save for LA, which can advance to its fifth NLCS this decade with a win today behind Tyler Glasnow or on Friday with Tarik Skubal. The defending champs are now in excellent shape.

San Diego Padres 4, Milwaukee Brewers 3
(Brewers lead series 2-1)

Needing a win at Petco to keep their season alive, the Padres staved off elimination, albeit in a very close game that went down to the final at-bat.

The Padres jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the third inning, but the Brewers clawed back those runs over the fourth and fifth inning to even things back up. However, San Diego answered back themselves, with Jake Cronenworth hitting a go-ahead homer in the bottom of the fifth. Then in the sixth, a costly error from Cooper Pratt — whose speed had helped Milwaukee tie the game up earlier — not only kept the third out from being recorded, but allowed Xander Bogaerts to race home, having started the play at second base.

Throughout the game, the Brewers had plenty of chances. They ended up outhitting San Diego 11 to six. However for the game, Milwaukee left 11 runners on base. Some of those came in the ninth as well.

In the late stages, the Padres turned to ace Michael King out of the bullpen, with Mason Miller on paternity leave and Adrian Morejon’s shoulder barking. He got through the eighth without much issue, but then walked two batters in the ninth, setting up Milwaukee with one last chance. However, King induced a game-ending double play out of Christian Yelich, allowing the Padres to keep the series alive. San Diego will try to do it again tonight to send the series back to Wisconsin for a winner-take-all Game 5.

The count drags on. Basic numbers revealing basic problems.

6 — Six wins against the Colorado Rockies. That number should be read with added emphasis: just six. Italics needed. The Giants had double-digit win totals against Colorado in 2025 and 2024, but in 13 confrontations in 2026 against the bottom dwellers of the division, of the Majors, the Giants were 6-7. It was San Francisco’s first losing record against Colorado since 2020.

While the years wandering east of 2021’s Eden have been disappointing, there’s a significant difference between 80 and 65. That difference can be explained by looking at the head-to-head record against Colorado. The 2024 and 2025 Giants certainly weren’t the Rockies. The 2026 Giants…well, if you lose more often than you win against a bad team, you probably are one as well.

7 — Seven ejections for first-time manager, Tony Vitello. TV bagged that league-leading lucky number in the 3rd inning of game 162. 

Home plate umpire Ryan Blakney took exception to Vitello taking exception to not getting a strike call on a Mookie Betts check-swing. Upon review, Vitello was pretty animated. Upon review, he was justified. Betts should’ve been ruled out, he wasn’t. The Giants manager made his frustrations known on the matter, and his offseason started early for it.

Ejections are all about messaging. Managers argue because they want to show their players that they have their back. When they spew expletives at umpires, they’re really holding each player to their chest and whispering: Listen to my heart, it beats for you.

For Vitello, the “losing control” was one of the only things he could control. Six of his seven ejections came after July 1st. The Giants season was half-way done and fully lost — but obviously there were still relationships to foster and maintain with many of the players that will be returning in 2027. No matter how bad the team is, how meaningless the outcome, it’s the manager’s job to try and win that game. While we’re still iffy on the in-game decisions, Vitello seemed at ease with the performative bluster of spitting into an umpire’s mouth. So he huffed and he puffed, making himself an easy target for those boys in blue.     

8 — Eight players that started the 2026 season at the Double-A level or lower. By September, a more accurate name would’ve been the San Francisco Giant Flying Squirrels.

Jonah Cox initially made the leap on May 31st, flying over Sacramento entirely to reach San Francisco from Richmond. Yunior Marte similarly hurdled the River Cats with the Giants selecting his contract in late-August. Three months prior he was playing A-ball in Eugene.   

Pretty much everyone else climbed the developmental ladder one rung at a time. Drew Cavanaugh got called up to Sacramento on May 12th and a month and a half later, he was in San Francisco to fill in as a back-up backstop.  Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson, started the year in the Guardian’s AA-affiliate Akron and then moved to Richmond in the Patrick Bailey trade. He was in San Francisco for good by the end of August. Turner Hill, Cesar Perdomo, Scott Bandura, and Bo Davidson all debuted in the final month, month-a-half of the season.  

Jumping two farm levels from A to Triple-A in a single year isn’t all that crazy, but it’s definitely less common to hurdle from the middle Minors to the Majors. To have eight players start their year as Flying Squirrels (or an Emerald if you’re Marte) and end the year as Giants is quite the transformation. While we should applaud the grit of some, who not only floated but even swam after being thrown in the deep end, the fact that the top-tier of the organization had to reach so deep into their pockets to fill out a roster says a lot about how the year went.    

This also complicates things in the near future. With the Collective Bargaining Agreement set to expire December 1st, and a potential lock-out looming, adding some of these players to the 40-man meant they’ll be directly affected by the fall-out. They’ll be unable to play for the minor league affiliates, locked-out of team facilities, and barred from communicating with coaches, trainers, and other team officials. 

9 — Nine innings in a baseball game. Nine Giants positioned on a baseball field. Nine games played before San Francisco emerged victorious against the Diamondbacks, which brings me to… 

10 — Ten total losses to the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Giants were 3-10 against them. Good for a dismal .231 win-percentage — San Francisco’s  lowest win-% in a season against Arizona since their formation in 1998.

2026 was the Giants’ fifth straight season with a losing records against AZ, but this one easily takes the cake in terms of embarrassment. The D-Backs swept them twice. They lost eight in a row before winning their first. Ketel Marte single-handedly beat them on multiple occasions. Arizona body-slammed them into the dust early on, and the Giants decided it was best to just lie there, bedded in the desert, baking in the impossible Phoenix heat.   

While inter-division performance isn’t as weighted as it once was on this newish schedule. When the two-divisions were introduced to each league in 1969, the Giants played 90 games against the five other teams in the west  —  still nearly a third of their games are against the Dodgers, Padres, Rockies and D-Backs. 13 games each, and the Giants had a losing record against every one of them. A 17-35 spread over. Their  32.7 win-%  good for another low, San Francisco’s worst in the Divisional era. 

11 — eleven times swept in a series. Compare that to their one (1) sweep mentioned in a previous post. They were held winless in five different series against NL West teams (2 ARI, 2 LA, 1 SDP, and lost two of three twice to Rockies). 

12 — a dozen different relievers with a blown save. That’s tied for the most in franchise history in a single season. This probably doesn’t shock you considering the merry-go-round that was the Giants bullpen. 2025 trade deadline sales and offseason roster construction pretty much ensured that San Francisco’s back-end would be a wishy-washy closer-by-committee / who’s-rested/ who’s hot/ who drew the short-straw. Unsurprisingly, this arrangement didn’t work out. 

The trials and tribulations of the 2026 Giants bullpen have been well-documented. They will live on in infamy. As a team, the Giants recorded 27 blown saves in total, logging a low 52.6 Save%, which was the fourth lowest in Majors. 

12 is also the number of pitchers who recorded a save for the Giants, which was the third most of any team this year, and the most in their franchise history (dating back to 1969 when Save stat became official). 

To be clear, these are not the same 12. Eight of the relievers who recorded a save also blew one, which means there were four arms who recorded a save and didn’t screw one up, and four arms who screwed one up and never made a save. That’s 16 different pitchers tasked with seeing a lead through to the final out. Employing the throw it at the wall and see what sticks methodology is less than ideal when it comes to bullpen managing — but can you blame Tony Vitello for employing it? 

I vaguely remember him announcing Caleb Kilian would be the closer in mid-June, but the opportunities to actually save a game were few and far between. Kilian secured the save in his first opportunity. The next game he surrendered four in the 9th to the Athletics. He then bagged a couple more saves…then got lit up for three in the 9th against the Rockies…then he couldn’t maintain a tie in the 9th against Kansas City… Ten days later he was playing for the Phillies.  

Vitello tried it all. He played the crappy hand he was dealt.

13 —  Thirteen times the Giants were shutout by an opponent. To be fair, that’s not a particularly egregious amount. Seven other teams were held scoreless in more games this past season. In terms of California-era club history, 13 other (hey, another 13!) Giants teams were shutout in more games, the most being 18 in 1992. 

I guess this number stands out more when you consider the hopes we had for the Giants offense. The 2019 Giants were shutout 19 times. The 2010 team, 16; and 2014, 15. On paper, this 2026 line-up was supposed to have more punch. They did, and they didn’t. They were as tempermental as a motel shower’s temperature control — red hot one day and ice cold the next. It took them forever to get going. They were 21 innings deep into the season before they scored their first run. By the first day in May, they had already been shutout six times. 

14 — Fourteen players logged at least one defensive inning in left field.

Now, the number 14 isn’t particularly relevant or important. Is that a lot? Probably, but I just want to talk about what happened in left field; or, the real reason this Giants season was doomed from the jump. 

This has nothing to do with roster construction, or below-average performance, or injuries — this goes back to one little decision made at the start of the year: the decision to start Heliot Ramos in left field. Perhaps an innocent, even obvious, decision for rookie manager Tony Vitello then, but a fatally myopic one in hindsight. When Ramos trotted out to position himself in the left corner of the diamond he became the first Giants player since Barry Bonds’s departure after 2007 to start consecutive Opening Days in left field. I was salty (in a cheeky way) about it at the time. I’m good-naturedly ticked-off now. It’s clear that the “curse” is bona-fide  — a curse without quotation marks added. Respect wasn’t given where respect was due. Bonds required an offering. For just one day, one inning even, a player should have been sent out as an oblation. 

Instead Ramos defiled sacred ground…and where is he now?      

15 — Fifteen different lead-off batters. 15 different names penciled in at the top of the lineup to start a game. The tip of the Giants spear. Some teams had Pete Crow-Armstrong, or James Wood, or Shohei Ohtani — clear-cut lead-off leaders, no-brainers for the manager. Wake-up, and before even their first cup of coffee, write their name, in Sharpie, thick-tip and all-caps, it’s never going to change. 

But Tony Vitello and the Giants, it wasn’t who’s on first, but who’s batting first? As the season progressed, it became another task completed by a committee based on a variety of variables. Overall, there wasn’t a ton of production from the spot. Their 96 wRC+ from their lead-off hitter ranked 25th in the league. The .296 on-base percentage — one of the more important metrics for a player averaging the most plate appearances in a game — ranked last.  

Willy Adames and Luis Arraez both logged 31 games hitting first, tied for most on the team. Drew Gilbert, who fell into the role later in the season and served surprisingly well out of the top-spot, logged twenty starts exclusively against right-handed starters. Gilbert matured a lot over the year as he rose to the top spot. He hit .286 with a .557 slugging percentage and .378 OBP (82 PA). Arraez, Ramos, Adames, Lee — nobody was anywhere close to those numbers. 

16 — Sixteen players on the  60-day injured list by season’s end. That’s just…crazy. It’s also created quite a headache for the front office now that those 16 names have been put back on the 40-roster.  As of writing this, there are 56 names on a 40-man list — those numbers aren’t mathin’. 

17 — Seventeen big league debuts, Seventeen debut patches. Seventeen sets of family and friends clustered in the stands, hanging on every pitch thrown as their son or brother or nephew or partner realizes their life-long dream. The Giants led the Majors in those moments. That’s kind-a cool. Also kind-a connected to the health issues that tore the roster to shreds.   

71 — Seventy-one is seventeen but backwards, so it fits. Seventy-one is also the amount of  players to represent the Giants in a baseball game during the 2026 season, tying a record set by the 2025 Atlanta Braves. The Giants reached this height in the second to last game of the season, with a familiar face in Camilo Doval. 

Doval pitching in the 9th inning of a tie game against the Dodgers was not on my Giants’ season bingo card. Nor was a guy named Tugboat striking out Shohei Ohtani. But much like the 17 debuts, or 8 Double-A call-ups — the 71 different jerseys is a dubious honor, and an illustrative one. Teams don’t reach this kind of number if things are going according to plan. It wasn’t the plan to know the names Shay Whitcomb or Ryan Borucki or Jason Foley. I wasn’t dying to watch Andrew Knizner play baseball again. But by year’s end, what were we left with? What choice did we have? The roster churn generated some serious white water, and while the rapids were rough, they carried the rickety Giants raft down river.

It’s become an annual ritual for the Orioles front office. Every offseason, when fans are clamoring for the O’s to sign a top-tier ace pitcher, Mike Elias inevitably says “no thanks” and instead throws some money at an aging, back-of-the-rotation veteran. It’s a tried-and-true formula that Elias continues despite the fact that it basically never works.

Oh, sometimes the veteran will eat up innings and provide clubhouse leadership, like Kyle Gibson in 2023. But more often than not, the pitcher will show his age and get absolutely torched, like, well, Kyle Gibson in 2025. This past winter, after the O’s again failed to land a frontline starting pitcher, Chris Bassitt became the latest grizzled vet to engage in the Orioles’ yearly tradition. He signed a one-year, $18.5 million deal with the Orioles on Feb. 13, nine days before his 37th birthday.

It wasn’t much consolation for Orioles fans who’d had visions of the team landing a true #1 starter, but the signing of Bassitt made some sense. The former All-Star was an experienced AL East pitcher, spending the previous three seasons with the Toronto Blue Jays and posting an above-average 109 ERA+. And he said all the right things after joining the club, insisting that he signed with the O’s because he thought they had the talent to win the World Series.

Orioles fans, scarred by the team’s previous forays into the old-guy starting pitcher market, asked one thing above all of Bassitt: don’t be the next Charlie Morton. The O’s had been burned a year earlier when they handed a $15 million deal to Morton to coax him away from retirement, only for the 41-year-old righty to implode with a 5.42 ERA before being jettisoned at the trade deadline. You wouldn’t think it would be a high bar for Bassitt to clear. And yet, he crashed right into it.

Bassitt made a lousy first impression on Orioles fans when he coughed up four runs in 4.1 innings in his team debut, then got blistered for six runs in two innings his next time out. He didn’t even pitch five innings in an outing until his fourth start, a scoreless performance against the Guardians, but then went right back to stinking. After 10 starts in an O’s uniform, Bassitt’s ERA was 5.51 — even worse than the dreaded Morton mark. The Orioles, despite Bassitt’s bold claims, were nowhere close to winning a World Series, and Bassitt himself was a big reason why.

On June 3, Bassitt left his start at Fenway Park after three innings, and not just because he was struggling again. He exited the mound with low back discomfort, an ailment that landed him on the IL for more than two months. Ineffective and injured, Bassitt’s tenure with the Orioles was shaping up to be one of the worst in recent team history.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the end of his story. Bassitt returned to the Birds in mid-August and showed significant improvement in his second act, going 5-1 with a 3.74 ERA. The Orioles won six of his eight starts. Those numbers aren’t dominant, but they’re much more in line with the pitcher the O’s thought they were getting when they signed him. One wonders if the back injury was affecting Bassitt long before the Boston start. Whatever the case, the two months of rest served him quite well.

Bassitt’s overall season stats — a 9-5 record, 4.59 ERA, and 1.0 fWAR — weren’t as dreadful as they were shaping up to be during his awful first half. Still, time comes for us all, and nearly all of Bassitt’s numbers at age 37 were his worst in a decade, including his ERA+ (89), WHIP (1.549), H/9 (10.6), and K/9 (6.5). Bassitt wasn’t fooling many batters, ranking in the eighth percentile in K% and just the fifth percentile in chase percentage.

He wasn’t Charlie Morton bad, and certainly not 2025 Kyle Gibson bad, but Bassitt wasn’t worth $18.5 million. Based on FanGraphs’ general principle that 1 WAR is worth about $8 million in free agency, Bassitt’s performance merited less than half of the salary he got. The Orioles shouldn’t and won’t re-sign him, unless they’re convinced that the second-half Bassitt is the version they’ll get for a full season. We can only hope that’s not something they’ll talk themselves into.

I’ll say this about Bassitt: as a clubhouse presence, he provided the veteran leadership the Orioles badly needed. It wasn’t enough to transform the O’s into a good team, of course, but Bassitt was candid and forthright about the many flaws with the Orioles and what needs to be done to fix them. In The Baltimore Banner’s 2026 Orioles postmortem, Bassitt spoke about the need to address fundamentals up and down the organization.

“I think the most impactful and important changes for this organization going forward is the people like Shane Baz, [Kyle] Bradish, Pete Alonso, Gunnar Henderson to walk into a room next year with the entire minor league system, especially coming from Gunnar, who’s been through this minor league system, and say, ‘Hey, I know what we’ve done in the past. But what we’ve done in the past is not good enough. And we are about to make some small changes, some major changes, some things that are non-negotiables, some things that are not going to be tolerated anymore.’”

Bassitt emphasized that the Orioles need to focus on “all the little things. Rules off the field, rules on the field. Baserunning rules, hitting rules, your work, your game preparation, your lifts. Whatever it may be. Pick the subject, there’s rules for it.” Bassitt added, “I think players in this room have got to grab the reins and responsibility of what it takes to be a big leaguer who really wants to win.”

You know, I’m starting to think the Orioles should re-sign Bassitt after all — to be their new manager. (I’m kidding. Well, sort of. But Bassitt’s comments were more insightful and enlightening than anything I’ve ever heard Craig Albernaz say.)

In all likelihood, Chris Bassitt’s tenure in Baltimore was one year and done. But if the Orioles hope to pull themselves out of the malaise they find themselves in, they’d be well served to heed his advice for the future.

Two days ago, we asked who your top free agent target was. Today, it’s time for the reverse. Very few free agent possibilities meet with unanimous agreement; there’s always reason to believe that a player might not pan out, or that they might not be worth the price they’ll command. It’s more fun to dream of a new signing being that long-awaited missing piece than to dread them being a mistake, but you can’t always be positive.

Today’s question is: Are there any free agents you’d prefer the Phillies steer clear of?

Two questions for the (zero) price of one. Backs against the wall, the Braves can only end tonight in one of two ways (I guess there could be a freak rain delay?): force a winner-take all Game 5, or bow out of their 2026 campaign.

That they’re in this place isn’t surprising given that they have A) allowed homers, and B) not hit many homers. They stole one game of the series while getting outhomered, but asking them to steal multiple that way is an even tougher sell than a single win. The Braves have been out-homered 7-2 in three games, and well, allowing seven homers in three games is basically a nightmare, especially for a team whose main claim to 90-plus wins was having relievers who didn’t allow key homers late.

While they’ve faced good pitching, the Braves have a .245 wOBA and .251 xwOBA in the Division Series so far; the Dodgers are at .309 and .339, respectively. So, something’s gonna need to change, or something very wacky is going to need to happen for the Braves to live to fight another day… or series.

Who’s going to be responsible for one or the other? Have at it.