Worldwide Sports News

Maikel Garcia was instrumental in the Royals 5-4 win last night, over the White Sox.

KC raced to an early lead in the first inning. Carter Jensen and Bobby Witt Jr. recorded singles to open the game. Jac Caglianone moved them into scoring position and Maikel Garcia drove them home with a two-run single. The Royals took an early lead. It was a near-perfect start as White Sox opener Bryan Hudson lasted one-third of an inning. KC tallied two additional runs as Vinnie Pasquantino added an RBI single and scored on an error.

Zion Rose named the Royals top Arizona Fall League prospect by MLB.com

One of three 2026 Draft picks in this year’s AFL class, the former Louisville outfielder missed time this spring with ankle and hamstring injuries, making this a good opportunity to pick up more at-bats and grow even more comfortable in the Royals system. Rose, who was a surprise pick for some at No. 6 overall, earns strong reviews for his bat-to-ball skills, speed and power potential, though he’ll need to elevate more on contact to get his raw pop into games. He hit .268/.389/.338 with one homer and 14 steals in 19 games with High-A Quad Cities after the Draft.

If you didn’t already know, through the first two games of this homestand, the Royals will likely decide who wins the division this season.

If you haven’t checked it out in a while, here is the Royals Top 30 prospects list.

With the minor league season ended, here are some injury updates on some Royals players.

Kevin O’Brien of Royals Keep pondered what the Royals should do with Daniel Lynch IV next year.

Philip Ruo of Royals Keep talks about the Royals 2027 roster problems.

Brian Burrows of Kings of Kauffman talks about Royals prospect, Brett Squires.

Braves ace Chris Sale cemented his 9th 200 strikeout season the other night.

Yankees Ben Rice has tied the AL lead for most homers this season.

Are the Cubs ever going to clinch their playoff spot?

Speaking of that, the Diamondbacks are still alive in the race

Aaron Judge is in danger of missing start of playoffs as well

Here it is, your song of the day: Calypso by John Denver

Good morning, Purple Row!

The Colorado Rockies will finish their penultimate series of the year today with a final game against the Arizona Dimaondbacks. They’ve already lost the series by dropping the first two games but will look to avoid a sweep before heading east to Chicago where they will finish off their season against the White Sox.

Notably, today’s game will be the final home game of the 2026 season for the Rockies. One last baseball game in Denver before settling in for an offseason of uncertain length. Despite the Rockies crossing the 100 loss mark for the fourth straight season, the impending end to the daily routine of baseball will still be a loss for many. Take advantage of these last few chances to watch live Rockies baseball.

First, though, let’s dig into some news from around the league.

Rockies News & Links

• Rockies hit latest low, become fifth team with 4 straight 100-loss seasons | ESPN.com — As mentioned, the Rockies reached triple-digit losses on Wednesday. As it turns out, this streak puts the franchise into rare and undesirable company. If you can’t remember a team having matched this four-season streak previously that’s because the Rockies are just the fifth team ever to have done so and the first since the expansion New York Mets in the early 1960’s.
• Rockies lose 100 games in four straight seasons as Colorado joins ill-famed MLB fraternity | Denver Post ($) —  Kyle Newman of the Denver Post digs even deeper into the state of the franchise in the wake of their extremely poor four season streak. Where ESPN provides the cliff notes for a league wide audience, the Post dives into the ins and outs of how the 2026 team collapsed in the final two months of the season. It ends with a reminder that it’s possible that the Rockies could become only the second team in MLB history to extend a 100 loss streak to five straight seasons without a drastic turnaround next year.
• Freeland deals with ‘rush of emotion’ in possible final home start at Coors | MLB.com —  It’s very possible that Kyle Freeland pitched his final outing for the Colorado Rockies on Wednesday. After the game, the ten-year veteran who has spent his entire professional career with the organization, did not hold back the emotional impact the possibility of his time with the Rockies having come to an end had on him.
• Rockies GM Josh Byrnes sees progress at Coors Field, but ‘it’s not good enough’ | Denver Gazette ($) —  As we enter the offseason it’s important for fans to understand that the folks in charge of baseball operations in the Rockies organization are being realistic about the amount of work remaining to turn the club around. Rockies GM Josh Byrnes speaks on that topic with Kevin Henry and is open about how far the team still has to go before becoming a competitive team. It’s a refreshingly self-aware interview for a fanbase that had become accustomed to hearing that the team was in a better shape than their record indicated under the previous leadership team.

Around Baseball

• After Rockies secure fourth straight 100-loss season, Angels aim to avoid first | The Athletic ($) —  While the Rockies may have the most losses in the league for a second straight season, they are not the only team struggling to avoid ending the season on a low note. Fabian Ardaya takes a look around MLB and highlights the Los Angeles Angels attempts to avoid their first 100 loss season, the Athletics struggles to put together a winning ballclub before their impending move to Las Vegas, and the St. Louis Cardinals who are at risk of posting consecutive losing seasons for the first time since 1959.
• Queens Crowned Baseball Royalty, Beat Firebells in WPBL Championship | Fangraphs —  The inaugural season of the Women’s Professional Baseball League concluded on Tuesday night. Kiri Oler of Fangraphs breaks down the Championship series game by game. If you didn’t catch the games while they were on this is a great way to catch up on how the leagues first championship was won. The final game in particular was a perfectly poetic capstone to a thrilling first season.
• The MLB Strike Zone Got A Lot Smaller In 2026 | Baseball America ($) —  If you entered the season thinking that the addition of the ABS Challenge system would alter which pitches are called strikes, you’d be correct. J.J. Cooper breaks down how the effective strike zone has noticeably shrunk in the first season of the Challenge system. Most fascinatingly, the piece also goes into how pitcher’s have adapted to this changing zone.
• This Wave Of Japanese Talent Is The Beginning Of A Pipeline | Baseball Prospectus ($) —  Robert Arthur looks into a recent spike in the total percentage of MLB innings and plate appearances that Japanese born players are contributing. As it turns out, a increasingly reliable performance data on players outside the US has given MLB front offices the confidence required to make investments that would have seemed risky just a decade ago.

Please keep in mind our Purple Row Community Guidelines when you’re commenting. Thanks!

Tuesday night’s game against the San Diego Padres was reminiscent of the 2024 playoffs when the Dodgers were forced to employ a bullpen in the NLDS to keep their playoff hopes alive against those same Padres. Both outcomes were the same, with the bullpen shutting down the Friars and getting a big win.

That postseason saw a lot of bullpen usage, and in this one the Dodgers are stacked with starters. Still, the bullpen is always a big part of the postseason.

As Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic points out, 41 days ago manager Dave Roberts was asking the media what choices did he truly have to deploy in the ninth inning of games. Now, he could have several options.

Edwin Diaz, the closer they paid handsomely in the offseason, has not had a great season. He’s been on the IL twice and had an era over 11.00 at one point this summer. But since returning from his latest IL stint, he has faced 11 batters, struck out six and only allowed two to reach base.

“I think it’s one of those things where if you’re one of the 12 pitchers on a postseason roster, you’re in the trust tree,” Roberts said “He’s put himself right smack in that conversation. Given all that he’s had to go through this year to right the ship is a big credit to him.”

Roki Sasaki is also someone who will be in the mix for the ninth inning spot. He has also just returned from his own IL stint, pitching with dermabond on his blister. He allowed two singles, but worked around them for a scoreless inning in Tuesday night’s game. He will appear in Friday night’s game as he continues to work towards a spot in the bullpen that will likely vary as the postseason goes on.

Tanner Scott has been the Dodgers’ most reliable arm out of the bullpen this season, and Roberts has remarked how it would be nice to be able to use Scott in high leverage spots that may not come just in the ninth inning.

“I think if there’s an opportunity, for example, for Tanner to pitch a high-leverage inning in the seventh or the eighth inning, it’s just hard to pass that up if he’s the best option right there,” Roberts said. “You just don’t know where the ninth inning is going to be.”

Roberts also added that the team is sitting in their best position with regards to the bullpen as they have ever been. Evan Phillips and Brock Stewart round out the current options, and the team hopes that Edguardo Henriquez can recover from his back issues to appear in the playoffs. With the starters this team has overall this may be the best pitching staff the Dodgers have ever sent to the playoffs.

We’ve spent much of the last week discussing how the Red Sox won’t be playing much baseball in Boston this weekend thanks to an impending nor’easter. But what if I were to tell you it’s also still possible (however unlikely) that they might not be playing much baseball in New York next week either?

Don’t worry, it’s not weather related this time. Instead, it’s because there’s still a bizarre, long shot scenario teetering at the edge of the table where the Red Sox could fall to the No. 6 seed in the American League.

At first glance, this seems impossible. At 85-73, Boston is four games clear of the White Sox with four to play, and even if the Red Sox were to lose out with the White Sox winning all of their remaining games, Boston also holds the head to head tiebreaker by virtue of their 6-0 record against the South Siders this season.

So, it’s over, right?

Wrong!

There’s still one monkey wrench that can flip the board, and that’s Cleveland’s presence. If the 82-76 Guardians win the rubber game at Fenway Park today and then also end up in a theoretical 85-77 tie with both pairs of Sox at the end of the weekend, all sorts of kooky stuff happens.

First of all, in a three-way tie scenario where one of the teams is not in the same division, the tie to determine that division (in this case the AL Central), takes precedent, and must be broken first. Well, guess what? The White Sox hold the tiebreaker over the Guardians, which means if the Red Sox end up tied with both of them, Chicago takes the division, leaving Boston to face off against Cleveland in the tiebreaker for the final seeding.

Right now, the Red Sox hold that tiebreaker over Cleveland thanks to their 3-2 head to head record. However, if the Guardians win today, that becomes 3-3, and the tiebreaker flips to the Guardians on interdivision record. In other words, Cleveland would go to the No. 5 seed, the Red Sox would land in Texas to play either the Astros or Rangers (whoever wins that wretched AL West division) as the No. 6, and Guardians would get shuffled all the way over to New York to play the Yankees.

On one hand, this is far fetched. But if you break it down piece by piece, it becomes one of those things that gets less and less ridiculous the more you look at it.

Let’s start with the Red Sox. They will be throwing Ranger Suarez today against Cleveland, who will counter with Daniel Espino. With the way Suarez has been throwing the ball the last few times out, that looks like a Boston win at first. But remember, the Sox used both Whitlock and Chapman last night, meaning they might not want to push them too hard and go there again today. Additionally, Suarez’ start is coming exactly five days before Game 1 of the Wild Card series, which means they’ll probably pull him after 75 or 80 pitches like they did with Sonny Gray on Wednesday.

Break it all down, and the Guardians are probably going to get a shot at the weaker part of the Red Sox bullpen they didn’t see today. Throw in Ceddanne Rafaela and Willson Contreras possibly not playing, and all of a sudden this becomes a hard game to predict.

From there, the Red Sox are likely going to play a double header against the Cubs on Friday, trying to get as many games in as possible before the nor’easter arrives. Well, as we’ve discussed all week, the Cubs are going to need those games as they fight for seeding in the NL Wild Card race. They enter play today one game behind the San Diego Padres for the top Wild Card billing. Meanwhile, the Red Sox will be done with the Payton Tolle / Sonny Gray / Ranger Suarez part of the rotation for the regular season and will probably be throwing Patrick Sandoval in one of these games. Is it really that hard to see the Cubs taking both ends of that double header?

Meanwhile, back in Chicago itself, the White Sox would need a sweep at home over the weekend to keep any chance of this crazy scenario alive. Well, guess what? They’re playing the Colorado Rockies. And not just the Colorado Rockies, but the Road Rockies. The worst team to ever do it!

Years ago, when I was over at Purple Row, I wrote about how the game is rigged against the Rockies, and how they face a literal competitive disadvantage because of a Coors Hangover Effect that happens when their hitters travel. On that note, the 2026 Road Rockies have been striaght trash! They’ve already been swept in 28 percent of their series this year, and have lost ten games in a row away from Coors Field. They’re so bad, they haven’t won a road game since August 26th!

The point here is that it’s not that hard to see how they could go into a rowdy atmosphere in Chicago this weekend and get their doors blown off. The White Sox are just one game behind the Guardians for not only the AL Central crown, but also for the No. 2 seed and a bye, so they will almost certainly be throwing all their resources at this race right down to the wire.

Of course, they also have to win their game in Kansas City this afternoon to even get this lunacy off the ground, but if they do that, you don’t have to squint too hard to see how this snowball might start running downhill. Again, all this silliness probably gets quashed in the net 36 hours by one of several candidates, but if we’re still sitting here on Saturday morning and the possibility of all this still alive, things will get really, really weird, really, really quick. And that’s before you throw in the weather with the Red Sox possibility waiting through days of rain to play Game their 162.

Can you imagine if they have to come back on Monday and play one last game against the Cubs and they can literally pick their path with a loss (through Texas and the AL Central winner) instead of having to go through New York and Tampa?

It’s nuts, and it would be nothing short of a bonkers scenario. But this is the 2026 Red Sox, and bonkers has kind of been the theme of the season. We’ve already seen some of the worst Red Sox baseball of all time at Fenway Park early in the season, a historic winning streak to fuel a remarkable turnaround, a team that has a penchant for playing well with plane problems, and now a huge nor’easter threatening to upend the schedule. If there was ever a year where something this daft might play out, wouldn’t it be this one?

Then again, Kansas City might beat the White Sox in a handful of hours and everything you just read will be rendered moot. Man I love wacky baseball!

You can’t say the Dodgers didn’t give the rest of the National League West a chance.

It wasn’t a great chance, certainly. But consider this: The Dodgers spotted their division rivals 157 games before rolling out their varsity lineup.

The Dodgers clinched the division a week earlier. They still could win 100 games.

On Wednesday, with that preferred batting order making its season debut and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the mound, the Dodgers fielded the 10 men you might well see in Game 1 of the playoffs next week.

Or, as the Dodgers might say, Opening Day.

The Dodgers can say their schedule starts in October, and their goal is for everyone to be healthy and effective then. But that presumption depends upon the supporting cast: the boys of summer that might never play come fall but must play well enough so that the stars can play postseason ball.

“It’s just the depth,” Freddie Freeman said.

Everyone has depth, to some degree.

“We’ve got really good guys that can cover guys when they get hurt,” Freeman said. “You’re going to go through injury bugs over the course of the year. It’s on people to step up. We’ve got some guys that are on the bench that can fill in.

“You have guys that can potentially be playing every day on some other teams.”

In April, Mookie Betts and Tommy Edman were on the injured list. By the time both men had come off the injured list, Teoscar Hernández and Will Smith were on it. By the time Hernández and Smith had returned, Andy Pages was on the injured list, soon to be followed by Shohei Ohtani.

Rookie infielder Alex Freeland has more at-bats than Smith. In roughly the same number of at-bats, backup catcher Dalton Rushing has more home runs and a higher OPS than Smith, the starting catcher.

The Dodgers rank second in the majors in OPS.

Four Dodgers pitchers started at least 20 games, but Yamamoto is the only one projected for the playoff rotation. Emmet Sheehan and All-Star Justin Wrobleski each started more games than Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, combined.

Eric Lauer, who had won once in six starts for the Toronto Blue Jays, won six times in an eight-start stretch for the Dodgers.

The Dodgers rank fourth in the majors in earned-run average.

“We’ve had more injuries than we would have liked this season, but with that came opportunities for guys that gained a lot of valuable experience,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said.

“Now, going into October, we feel like we have a chance to have a roster as representative of the talent level we have as you can reasonably expect.”

The Dodgers buy depth, right?

“I won’t say anything about that,” Friedman said.

They buy everything else. And what other team would spend a combined $10 million on utilitymen Kiké Hernández and Miguel Rojas?

How about the farm system? The Dodgers traded three prospects for Tarik Skubal, the best player available at the trade deadline, and the league website nonetheless ranks the Dodgers’ farm system as the best in all the land.

So, we’ll ask again: What about buying depth?

“Obviously, we have a very high payroll,” Friedman said, “but I think leaving it at that diminishes the incredible work that our scouts, our baseball ops, our player development, our Latin American scouts — our entire department — and the success they’ve had in their respective areas, and how it’s all come together.

Read more:The Dodgers’ Josue De Paula can hit. Now he’s out to prove he can play defense, too

“I think it really minimizes it in a way that’s not fair to excellent people doing excellent work.”

That excellent work includes 97 wins, so far, from the 53 men to play for the Dodgers this season. On Wednesday, finally, the Dodgers had their A team: Freeman, Edman, Betts and Max Muncy starting in the infield; Teoscar Hernández, Pages and Kyle Tucker in the outfield; Smith at catcher; Yamamoto at pitcher; and Ohtani at designated hitter.

One of the charms of baseball is a cliche: Anything can happen — in a single game or in a short series. The Dodgers lost to the San Diego Padres on Wednesday. The A team is 0-1 this season, with October to go.

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

The Phillies will have to play at least one more game before they can officially punch their ticket to the postseason. Last night’s brutal showing with runners in scoring position made sure of that. But today is another great day to clinch.

On to the links.

Phillies news:

• Tuesday’s win provided a possible blueprint of what the Phillies postseason strategy will be. ($)
• The Brewers being in town means so is former GM Matt Klentak. He sat down with Phillies Extra to discuss acquiring some of the key pieces of this current Phillies team as well as Milwaukee’s pursuit of Tarik Skubal.($)
• You know Brad Lidge from his perfect 2008 season as the Phillies closer. You may not know that now he is an accomplished archeologist. A fascinating Q&A with the former relief ace. ($)

MLB news:

• A forecasted nor’easter this weekend is already wreaking havoc on the scheduling of three games at Fenway Park with crucial postseason implications for the National League.
• Shohei Ohtani returned to the lineup last night as his health looms like a specter over the NL postseason field.
• Who are some players about to play in their first postseason that could end up going down as heroes?

Good morning, Camden Chatters.

It’s Sept. 24 and the Orioles are, technically, still alive in the postseason race. Will wonders never cease?

The Orioles’ elimination number remains at 1 after a productive Wednesday in which they swept a doubleheader against the Blue Jays to close out their Camden Yards schedule for 2026. Combined with a White Sox loss in Kansas City, it remain mathematically possible for the Orioles to claim the third wild card spot. All they need is to sweep their final series at Yankee Stadium while the White Sox lose every remaining game against the Royals and Rockies. Oh, and also the Orioles would have to leapfrog whichever of the Rangers and Astros doesn’t win the AL West.

Simple, right? Might as well start printing the playoff tickets now.

OK, OK, I get it. It’s not happening. The O’s will be eliminated, possibly as soon as tonight. But it’s nice that they didn’t have to suffer that ignominious fate in front of their home fans. They played a pair of well-played games — and officially knocked the defending AL champion Blue Jays out of playoff contention — to end their home season on a high note. Check out Mark Brown’s recap of the opener and Tyler Young’s write-up of the nightcap.

The twin bill demonstrated what the 2026 season could have looked like for the Orioles if they’d been clicking all year. The O’s got some effective starting pitching performances from unlikely sources, especially Trey Gibson, who tossed the finest outing of his major league career with 6.2 shutout innings. Their bullpen was solid, with six different relievers delivering scoreless outings. And Pete Alonso did Pete Alonso things, crushing his 41st home run and later leading the entire O’s team onto the field to acknowledge the fans before they left town for the year.

The Orioles ultimately are going to come up short for a litany of reasons that we don’t need to rehash here, but they’ve got a chance to finish the season at .500 if they take all three games from the Yankees this weekend. If not, they can at least try to sustain their recent competent play and hopefully bring some positive momentum into the 2027 season, whenever it might begin. For now, that will have to do.

Links

Holliday to undergo surgery on left wrist; Basallo to concussion IL – MLB.com

The Orioles’ two youngest players saw their disappointing 2026 seasons come to an end. If there’s any hope for a turnaround next season, it’s guys like this who are going to need to take a step forward.

Kyle Goon: The threat of a lockout looms over 2027. But in home finale the Orioles spark positive thinking. – The Baltimore Banner

The possibility of having games wiped out in 2027 is upsetting for so many reasons, not the least of which is: what the heck am I going to do with my time? Are you telling me I’m supposed to get another hobby? Get outta here with that.

Is it too late for the O’s to re-sign Trevor Rogers beyond this season? – Steve Melewski

It’s not too late until Rogers puts pen to paper with another team. Which might not happen for a while, considering the aforementioned lockout.

Would an Orioles general manager under Elias have autonomy? | MAILBAG – BaltimoreBaseball.com

I can venture a guess. The O’s have gone more than a year (and counting) without bothering to fill the GM role, so it sure seems like it’s not something Elias values highly.

Orioles birthdays and history

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! Five former Orioles were born on this day, including Rafael Palmeiro (62), one of the most prolific sluggers in O’s (and MLB) history. Palmeiro had two stints with the Birds in his 20-year career, hitting 223 of his 569 major league homers as an Oriole. He would be in the Hall of Fame if not for, well, you know. Happy birthday, Raffy.

Other former Orioles with Sept. 24 birthdays include infielders Travis Ishikawa (43), Jesse Garcia (53), and Kevin Millar (55), and the late outfielder Curt Motton (b. 1940, d. 2010).

On this date in 2000, Orioles ace Mike Mussina pitched a masterpiece in what turned out to be his penultimate start in an O’s uniform. Mussina dominated the Red Sox at Fenway, throwing seven scoreless innings and racking up an eye-popping 15 strikeouts without walking a batter. The Orioles managed to get him a win by scoring a run in the top of the eighth on Gene Kingsale’s sac fly, and closer Ryan Kohlmeier escaped a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the ninth to secure the 1-0 victory.

Random Orioles game of the day

On Sept. 24, 1984, the Orioles won two games for the price of one, sweeping a doubleheader against the Yankees at Memorial Stadium. Mike Boddicker led an easy 8-1 victory in the opener with a complete game, scattering 10 hits — all singles — and allowing only one run. The O’s also had 10 hits but turned them into eight runs, with John Shelby, Gary Roenicke, and Mike Young all homering.

In the nightcap, the Orioles pulled off a thrilling come-from-behind victory, scoring five runs in the bottom of the eighth to erase a 6-2 deficit. An error by Yankees reliever Jay Howell opened the floodgates for a Roenicke RBI single and a Benny Ayala three-run homer. Cal Ripken also homered in the game. Reliever Nate Snell worked a scoreless eighth and ninth for the victory. The doubleheader sweep gave the O’s and Yanks identical 83-73 records, though both had long since been eliminated from the AL East race.

Most fans are aware of both the legend and the reality of Chicago White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper. And we as White Sox fans have committed so much of him to memory, most prominently “Coop’ll fix ’em” and the four straight complete games that polished off the 2005 ALCS.

So recounting his resumé is not the objective here, although I’d be remiss not to at least mention that the dominant 2005 rotation was largely of his making, from tutoring Mark Buehrle on his way up to the majors to creating the force that was Jon Garland to looking under the hood and tweaking the engines of Orlando Hernández, Freddy García and José Contreras to unleash their bewildering stretch of greatness on baseball’s biggest stage.

During my relatively brief time writing for and covering the White Sox — nearly Cooper’s entire, uncommonly-long 18-year tenure as pitching coach — I rubbed elbows with him, and get to know him a bit. So this is not an obituary, but a remembrance.

Three snapshots really stand out to me when remembering the man, and the first is not a pleasant one.

In Toronto in late May, anticipating soon having six starters to fit into five rotation spots, I’d written that Mark Buehrle could be the White Sox starter to take a short shift in the pen. Not should, but based on a slow start to the season, Buehrle’s consummately-amenable nature, and the fact that any “demotion” to the pen would last a turn or two before inevitable injury struck down one of the six starters, could.

When Coop saw me in the clubhouse, he was mad. Clutching a copy of my feature, he undercut me with defense after defense of Mark, All-Star this and Opening Day starter that. Was Don wrong? Of course not. Was he taking a spec piece probably intended to provide off-day copy by a writer interested in throwing ideas out there to see what stuck and perhaps blinded enough by a 5.12 ERA to miss a 3.88 FIP a bit too seriously? I … think so?

Honestly in the moment I felt both pride that Don was reading me, given that part of the them vs. us nature that pervades a clubhouse is the team pantomime that writers covering the team are not part of the White Sox “us,” nor can they pay enough attention to any one of us as to influence any decision-making. But also, there was bemusement that my feature had gotten him so riled. From there, with the knowledge that the White Sox were acknowledging me as a voice to reckon with, I could be a little more mindful of corralling my wildest ideas — but also take advantage of the existence of a wider communication pipeline that had opened, not just with players but Ozzie Guillén and his staff.

Rewind to 2010, and a trading deadline that saw the White Sox nab Edwin Jackson from the Arizona Diamondbacks, a pitcher everyone and his uncle knew was a key chip to flip to Washington to acquire GM Ken Williams’ most desired target for the second half, Adam Dunn. While the drama surrounding Nats GM Mike Rizzo upping his demands at the last minute and Williams’ colorful disgust over Rizzo’s unprofessionalism, Cooper steered us to another scoop.

The dugout was white-hot with front office disgust and true limbo for Jackson, by then already an MLB journeyman on his way to residence on a record 14 different teams, when Don tapped me and ESPN’s Doug Padilla out from the dugout and onto the infield for an impromptu hype session. With rapture in his eyes, Cooper explained how he knew he could “solve” mechanical issues that were keeping Edwin down in his career (earlier that very summer, EJax had thrown a very wild no-hitter, epitomizing his incredible potential and aggravating reality all in one start). Knowing Coop had already worked his magic with several pitchers on the South Side, both Doug and I came away convinced that the best days of Edwin Jackson were ahead. (And real talk, Jackson’s 30 starts in Chicago from trading deadline 2010 to deadline 2011 were worth 4.2 WAR, by far the best stretch of his 17-year career in the majors.)

But truly, my core memory of Don Cooper was sitting in the visitor’s dugout at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, water lapping at our ankles during one of those infamous torrents tearing through the middle of our country. Our conversation had started on the dugout steps, the game already delayed by drizzle, and as the drops pelted more aggressively we chose not to tear off and into the clubhouse or press box, but shift to the bench, and continue talking. I am not certain why that happened; perhaps as I was a relative newcomer to the White Sox beat Don was curious to get to know me, but I don’t think that was the case. It was two guys, just interested in talking for a while.

Recorder off, notepad mostly unscribbled, we had a casual conversation that likely started with me trying to mine Don for “all” of his pitching guru secrets but mostly spun into talk of family (inside the clubhouse and out) and distant career aspirations. Knowing of many pitchers/pitching coaches who successfully managed, as well as his impeccable reputation at the time, I brought up the topic of managing in the majors. Truly, my feeling was that it was only a matter of time, if Don wanted it, before he left Chicago to move into managing at Triple-A or straight into the majors; I was resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t be a White Sox coaching lifer. And Don did confirm, in a modest way, that he had considered it, and remained curious to see whether his leadership of arms could extend to stewardship of a full roster.

How interesting it turned out to be that by the end of 2011, his first (and as it turned out, only) managerial opportunity was with the White Sox, after Ozzie Guillén abandoned the team for Miami and right-hand man Joey Cora was then instructed to pack his bags as well. Not once thinking I was going to help spur Don into raising his hand for the interim gig by texting him “now’s your chance” and encouraging him to make sure the White Sox knew he wanted to be considered for the top job in 2012, that was in fact what happened.

Of course, Don’s response to that text, well remembering the encouragement I’d given him to aim higher during our damp dugout discussion months earlier: “Who is this?”

Always joking, always keeping it loyal, always keeping those outside of the 25 in the clubhouse on their toes.

Baseball, and especially those who were lucky enough to experience the sport through your eyes and words, will miss you, Don.

The Chicago Cubs scored more runs than anyone in baseball this year and their offense is still the strongest in the field by both raw production and park-adjusted numbers. Even with Alex Bregman questionable after taking a foul ball to the face.

Milwaukee has the best record in baseball, but fewer home runs than any other team playing in October, and by a wide margin.

The Yankees have as much raw power as anyone in this field, and none of it will matter much if Aaron Judge isn't healthy enough to be in the lineup, and right now, there's no guarantee he will be.

The Dodgers have more star power in one lineup than anyone else in the sport, if Shohei Ohtani, Will Smith and Kyle Tucker are all healthy by the time it matters, which right now, they aren't.

And Houston might have the single best hitter of any team in this field, Yordan Alvarez, an MVP candidate having one of the best seasons in baseball, attached to a team still fighting just to make the playoffs.