Worldwide Sports News

New York Daily News | Gary Phillips: Put down the torches and pitchforks, people. The fan reaction was overwhelmingly negative to the Yankees’ champagne celebrations of clinching a postseason berth with a win over the Twins on Monday (they had technically already clinched with Toronto losing earlier). However, Aaron Judge provided a new and valuable perspective on the importance of celebrating even the small victories.

“There’s a lot of guys in this room that are going to wear this pinstripe jersey one time, and they might not have [another] opportunity to ever make it to a postseason. So you gotta celebrate that because, at the end of the day, you work your butt off in spring training and all season long to get an opportunity to go out there and win a World Series.”

To that point, eight Yankees have never made it to the postseason, including rookies George Lombard Jr. and Spencer Jones, trade deadline acquisitions Luis García Jr. and Heliot Ramos, and journeyman-turned-relief-ace Brent Headrick. However, the most poignant example is Michael Fulmer, who missed all of 2019 and 2024 to injury and contemplated retirement following his second Tommy John surgery in 2023. Fulmer soaked in the celebrations he once thought he’d never get to be a part of, but made sure to share a final point. With every hug he received, the message remained the same: “Job’s not finished.”

The Athletic | Brendan Kuty ($): Being the starting shortstop for the Yankees is one of the heaviest, most scrutinized burdens to bear in MLB, much less for a 21-year-old rookie called up midseason and handed the job. Anthony Volpe knows this better than anyone, and that’s principally because of the astronomically high bar set by a certain Derek Jeter. Now, George Lombard Jr. gets to experience the full weight of the job, but he’s not going into it unprepared.

In January, Lombard sat down for a private breakfast with Jeter and used the opportunity to pick the brain of the player perhaps more qualified than anyone to speak on what it takes to play for the Yankees. At that point, Lombard was coming off a successful half-season at High-A followed by some minor growing pains at Double-A, and was preparing to participate in major league spring training. Lombard focused his questions around the parts that the cameras don’t capture:

“I think the better questions — and the ones that are more valuable — are all the non-baseball (questions). How he approached dealing with New York. Dealing with everything that comes with it. The media. The off-the-field stuff. How, in his case, being the captain, dealing with all of those responsibilities.”

More than preparation, routine, media, and many other team-related responsibilities, the piece of advice that struck Lombard the most sounds simple: to be an authentic, stand-up human being. That impacts all facets of the game, from interactions with teammates to remaining grounded, humble, and hungry to always improve.

New York Post | Greg Joyce: Ryan Weathers is progressing in his rehab from a left forearm flexor strain suffered on August 22nd. Weathers threw his first bullpen session on Tuesday, throwing 15 pitches with the velocity sitting at 87-90, which he assured was harder than he normally throws in his bullpen sides between starts. The next step is to throw another bullpen on Friday followed by live batting practice. It’s a race against time to get fully built back up before the regular season ends Sunday after next, but Weathers has the added advantage of potentially not having to build up to a full starter’s workload if the plan is to deploy him out of the bullpen in the postseason. At the time of his injury, Weathers was 5-8 in 25 starts, with a 3.60 ERA, 3.62 FIP, and 143 strikeouts in 137.1 innings.

For the second straight day (they might be on #3 by the time you read this) the White Sox went with a tried-and-true Guardian-dominating strategy: They started a left-handed relief pitcher.

But Chris Murphy was terrible. Adell & Bazzana hit b2b jacks off him and things were looking good. But as usual, the Guards did nothing against the “bulk” pitcher—one run was because he threw errantly to first base and drilled the helmeted umpire with his bouncy projectile.

The sleepy offense might have been enough, but Craig Yoho’s attempts to find the strike zone Only Lived Once and Hunter Gaddis couldn’t miss any bats.

Steve Vogt managed this game like he should have—like winning it would possibly earn him a 1st round playoff bye eventually—and got Sabrowski, Gaddis and Cade Smith in way earlier than usual. Cade was awesome and kept things close for our September and October hero Brayan Rocchio.

Other good news

• the Blue Jays wet themselves against Detroit

• the Twins remained hilarious.

Less great news

• Orioles won. We call this naquinmaxxng.

• Rangers won.

The Dbacks had a real opportunity tonight to ride the momentum of the late heroics from last night as well as pick up a game on the Padres and the Cubs, yet the offense sputtered again in fantastic fashion.

Michael Soroka pitched well giving the team 5 IP allowing only 1 ER while striking out 6. The bullpen also continued to be terrific tossing 5 scoreless innings. All in all Dbacks pitching allowed only 1 run to the Marlins offense tonight for 10 innings which should have been plenty to get past a team like the Marlins.

Unfortunately it would not be as this Dbacks offense perhaps slumped to its lowest low of the season not being able to score against a very mediocre Marlins pitching staff for 9 innings after a first inning solo home run from Gabi Moreno.

There were a few questionable plays in this one including a blocking of home plate which is apparently completely legal if the infield is playing in according to Torey Lovullo in the post game presser. However the reality is this game shouldn’t have had to be that close. Especially when your pitching comes out and does what they did tonight. Its really not even worth diving that deep into the game when its pretty much the same thing day in and day out, this offense cant score. They went 1-13 tonight with RISP.

Of note, Pavin Smith continues to start almost every night since he has been called back up and he went 0-3 again tonight. Lars Nootbaar, who to his credit has been pretty hot, went 0-5 with 4k’s. Same can be said for Jordan Lawlar who also has been swinging a good stick lately, went 1-5 with 4 ks including an extra miserable 11th inning at bat where the Marlins reliever threw him nothing but fastballs middle middle and Lawlar struck out.

The Dbacks will look to salvage a series win tomorrow night against the Marlins and hope that they can get another opportunity like this with another Padres loss. They will send Merrill Kelly to the mound with almost no room for error with how this team has been swinging it. Snakes Alive (barely)…

Two weeks from tonight, the Red Sox will likely face the Yankees for Game 1 of the Wild Card series in New York. Not only that, but assuming the Yankees are unable to chase down the Rays and then choose to stack their rotation with Cam Schlittler at the top, the Sox will be facing a power right hander on the road in a game the opponent has to win and also has a solid bullpen to lock things down.

In other words, they’ll be facing a situation rather similar to what confronted them in Texas on Tuesday night:

• Jacob deGrom is a power right hander worthy of a Game 1 start, and still has a fastball that sits in the upper 90s.
• The Rangers are just one game behind Houston for the AL West lead, so they need to win to keep pace.
• The Texas bullpen has been strong all season, and they’ve only lost one game when leading after six innings.

So for all the red herrings that run rampant in September baseball, tonight’s pedestrian performance by the offense isn’t one of them. This is as close as you’re going to get to a practice run for the setup on September 29th, and I’m sorry to say, the Sox failed miserably!

• They struck out 15 times.
• They went hitless with runners in scoring position.
• Not a single Sox player batting one through eight managed an extra base hit.

If you rank all 71 plate appearances in this game by leverage index, the Sox were actually at the dish for 11 of the 13 highest moments. However, they didn’t manage a single hit during any of them. Meanwhile, Texas cashed in with a Corey Seager single and an Elias Diaz double during their only two high leverage at bats of the night.

In the end, this game perfectly illustrated what I consider to be the biggest problem with this Red Sox team: As good as they are at working together as a group, and as good as they are at pounding the pulp out of subpar pitching, and as good as they are at taking advantage of cracks in an opposing bullpen, they don’t seem to have the artillery necessary to match up when the war turns nuclear.

Tonight, they faced a great starter who despite only lasting five innings managed to strike out eight. That was enough to link directly to a deep and reliable Texas bullpen, who shut things down the rest of the way from there. This tenacity without thump routine scares the hell out of me because this is exactly how I fear a trip to Yankee Stadium might go at the end of September.

The Sox spend the whole night needing just one or two big hits, but the one that truly matters never comes, and we wait forever for a ship that doesn’t come in. The opponent bridges a power starter to a potent bullpen, and the Sox just don’t have an answer. They certainly didn’t when the Rangers used that formula tonight.

Studs

Nick Sogard: For all the lousy results at the plate in this game, Sogard was the exception. His third inning homer knocked in both Boston runs, and he then later added both a sac bunt and this tremendous double play on defense to end the Texas fifth:

The bullpen: Brayan Bello, Alec Gamboa, Wyatt Olds and Jovani Moran combined to go 5.1 scoreless innings and give the Sox a chance to come back. Unfortunately, the bats stayed silent.

Duds

Wilyer Abreu: Looked totally overmatched in this game. 0-4 with three strikeouts.

Andruw Monasterio: Pinch hit with the platoon advantage and the bases loaded in the eighth inning. He struck out on 97mph heat, ending the last best chance for the Sox on the night.

Patrick Sandoval: This one is obvious, and in a game earlier in the season he’d be the No. 1 dud for this dreadful performance in which he gave up four runs in just 2.2 innings. But let’s face it, this guy isn’t going to sniff a meaningful inning in October unless he somehow sneaks into the absolute last spot on the pitching staff and a game goes about 17 innings. So while he stunk again, and he’s a frustrating watch, and that 44 pitch second inning was a complete debacle, nothing he did here is a threat to carry over into the playoffs.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the offense.

Play of the game:

This play is worth noting because not only did it result in what turned out to be the winning runs, but it also underscored why many fans find themselves holding their breath every time a ball is hit towards Trevor Story nowadays.

Tigers 10 Blue Jays 1

That was less than fun.

We’ve done well on bullpen days, but the problem with bullpen days is if it doesn’t go to plan, you can’t really change on the fly. If a pitcher is having a bad day, you really have to use him anyway. Especially if it is the ‘bulk guy’. You can’t have nine guys pitch an inning each, someone has to give you at least a couple of innings, but preferably more.

Today, Michael Lorenzen was to be the bulk guy but he was hit hard. But the team couldn’t take him out after just two outs. Lorenzen got two quick outs, getting a strikeout and a ground out. All looked good. Then he lost the zone. Two walks. And then a double. Then a home run. Four runs came up very quickly. He gave up one more run in the fifth.

Other than that Mrs Lincoln, how was the show?

Well, Braydon Fisher got the first four outs, Brendan Cellucci got the next five (he looked terrific). All the Braydons, Brendans, Brendons remind me of when my kids played hockey, I could swear there were 20 kids and four names total.

Spencer Arrighetti gave up 2 unearned runs helped along by catcher’s interference and a throwing error, both by Kirk in his two innings. Since Lorenzen couldn’t give us more than two innings, Arrighetti was needed to pitch too (and he is supposed to start or be bulk guy on Friday. Joe Mantiply gave up two more runs in the ninth.

I’d imagine there will be a pitcher move or two tomorrow.

Offensively, we didn’t do much, just 6 singles total. Amazingly we got a run out of that. As much as Lorenzen was terrible, we weren’t going to win with just one run scored.

An=bout the only good moment was an amazing play by Ernie Clement at second base, a diving stop, popup and throw.

Jay of the Day: Let’s give one to Cellucci (0.08 WPA) and Fisher (0.07).

Other Award: Lorenzen (-0.39) and Kirk (-0.10)

Tomorrow is a 3:00 Eastern start. Max Scherzer (2-8, 6.38) vs Keider Montero (9-8, 3.55). A win would be nice. Or at least a good effort.

Have you ever had to fire someone?

I haven’t. I’ve yet to climb the employment ladder high enough to where someone else’s paycheck is in my hands, which is bad news for my bank account and great news for my constitution. I’m not sure I have it in me.

Once, for about 45 seconds, I harbored dreams of working in a professional sports front office, as it seemed the closest I would ever get to seeing my childhood athletic dreams materialized. Then I watched Moneyball, and saw Brad Pitt’s character teach Jonah Hill how to cut players and that dream ended on the spot. I’m not made for that job.

Buster Posey, we can conclude, is comfortable firing people, trading people, and cutting people. It comes with the job, but we knew it before he was named president of baseball operations of the San Francisco Giants. I would shake plum out of my cleats if asked to stand in against the slowest changeup in the Majors, yet Posey repeatedly stared down the barrel of triple-digit fastballs; were I to play in the pros, I would have retired on the spot after getting hit by a pitch, but Posey took them — and much worse — in stride.

That Posey has a stronger constitution than I do is hardly news. We’ve known it for nearly two decades.

Which is good, because Posey — or the Jonah Hills that he delegates to — have a lot of difficult conversations to have in about two weeks. The Giants have an almost unfathomable 16 players on the 60-man roster, a number that is compounded by the fact that they have just one impending free agent (J.T. Brubaker).

Pull out your TI 84, beep and boop a few numbers in, and you’re left with this: the Giants need to clear 15 players when the season ends just to get back to 40. By the time you factor in opening space for Rule 5 protections, free agents, and hell, maybe even a waiver claim of their own, and that number will comfortably be in the 20s.

Those aren’t fun conversations to have, but they are ones that are, as regulated by the CBA, mandatory. And they’re conversations that will, at some level, be informed by what happens over the final two weeks of the season.

And really, that’s what’s left to watch. The Giants roster right now is teeming with people who will be waiting anxiously to be tapped on the shoulder when they arrive at the ballpark at the conclusion of the season to pack up their gear. Those players are auditioning for their futures, and while one shouldn’t exactly find glee in watching someone dance for their life, it does offer some interesting storylines to follow.

Many of those players shined on Tuesday, as the Giants broke a four-game losing streak with a lopsided 10-3 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.

There was shortstop Christian Koss, for instance, desperate to stick around as the backup infielder. He had a three-hit night, which featured perhaps the defining moment of the game. With two on and two out in the third, Koss came to bat with the Giants leading 5-1. That four-run advantage so early hung right in the perilous sweet spot: small enough to seemingly guarantee a bullpen implosion, and large enough to ensure it would hurt.

Koss jumped on an Andre Pallante sinker and inside-outed it down the line, seemingly tucking it right inside the bag for a double. To the great horror of everyone wearing a Giants jersey, the first base umpire — who had to jump to avoid being castrated by the baseball and, as such, probably didn’t have the best view — called the ball foul, with no help from the home plate umpire to get the call correct.

And yet, two pitches later, again facing a Pallante single, Koss again inside-outed it down the line, scoring both runs and giving you the feeling that the Giants would, in fact, win the game.

And then there was second baseman and third baseman Osleivis Basabe, also hoping to avoid the chopping block and stay on as a backup infielder. He squandered a pair of runner-on-third, less-than-two-outs situations in the opening innings, only to make up for it in the fourth with a two-out RBI single.

Left fielder Turner Hill seems likely to have his spot secured through the winter, but difficult decisions will need to be made, good players will need to be cut, and Hill entered the game on quite a slump, as he seeks to seperate himself from the roughly three trillion other outfielders vying for spots on next year’s roster.

As if to stamp his case, Hill wasted no time impacting this game, and wasted no opportunity, either. In the first inning, after Basabe had failed in a situational at-bat, Hill picked up his teammate with a two-out RBI single.

In the third inning, again after Basabe had failed in a situational at-bat, Hill found the right part of the infield for a productive, run-scoring out.

And in the ninth inning? With the game already decided and the team already loose and happy, Turner realized it was the perfect time for his first career home run.

Along the way, he snuck in not one, not two, but three leaping catches in the outfield.

While those players are battling not just for spots on next year’s active roster, but for spots on the 40-man roster through the winter, some players have more secure spots.

Blade Tidwell is one such player, as his performance this year has certainly guaranteed that, barring a trade, he’ll be employed by the organization come March, be it as a Major League starter, a Major League reliever, or a Minor Leaguer.

He was sensational.

The third batter he faced, Alec Burleson, smoked a monstrous home run, but other than that, the Cardinals wanted no part of the Giants youngster. He pounded the strike zone, throwing 62 of 95 pitches for strikes. He challenged repeatedly, walking just one of the 25 batters he faced, while trusting his stuff in every count. He kept hitters off balance, changing velocities, bouncing between pitches and movements and locations, and allowing just three hits all game.

In all, Tidwell went 6.2 strong innings, struck out four batters, gave up just two runs, and earned his first win in a Giants jersey.

One other such player is Bryce Eldridge. He may be the youngest player on the roster, but with so many veterans injured, he somehow feels like the elder statesman of the lineup. And with Rafael Devers sidelined, there can be no denying Eldridge’s crown as the best hitter on the team, by a wide margin.

But, if you had any doubts about that, Eldridge immediately put them to rest. On just the eighth pitch of the game, Eldridge — with Drew Gilbert on first, no outs, and a 2-1 count — put the kind of charge into a baseball that very, very, very few humans can.

It was the 17th home run of his rookie season, and it traveled further than any other ball at Busch Stadium has this year: 461 feet.

Eldridge would add a fourth-inning walk to jumpstart a rally, and an eighth-inning double to score a run, and all the while he made one thing clear: he is now, as much as Logan Webb is, the face of the franchise. He is the player to build around.

And in a season where all else has gone to hell, he is the player worth being excited about.

The Mariners are officially losers in 2026.

Logan Gilbert was pretty good, but the offense was nonexistent, and the Mariners lost 2-1 in Anaheim on Tuesday. It was the 82nd loss of the season, meaning they will officially post a losing record for the first time since 2020.

Logan Gilbert got the ball. He embarrassed Zach Neto to begin the game, getting a nasty whiff on a splitter below the zone that dropped Neto to his knees for a K.

Gilbert had good velocity and sharp stuff in this one. He picked up seven strikeouts on 18 whiffs. He worked around a bit of traffic early but got through four innings scoreless. It didn’t quite unravel for Gilbert from there, but the Angels eventually figured him out on the third pass through the lineup. In the fifth inning, Wade Meckler roped a single up the middle and scored on a double from Vaughn Grissom. In the sixth, Josh Lowe turned on a two-strike splitter that caught too much of the zone and zipped it over the fence. Those were the only two runs Gilbert allowed. 

It just so happened they were the only two runs the Angels would need. The Mariners picked up just seven hits and no walks. Their only run came on a triple from Dom Canzone that Mike Trout misplayed in center, followed by a sharp double into the gap from Julio. It wasn’t the worst display at the plate this year, but only because of the competition.

I don’t know how much else there is to say. Seranthony Domínguez was fine in an inning of work, as was Gabe Speier. Taylor Saucedo pitched for the Angels, and that was fun to see him again. Cal Raleigh wore a chest protector with Roberto Clemente on it, and several players wore 21 in his honor. Honestly, as far as losses go, this one wasn’t so bad, and made me nostalgic for the losses in the early part of the season, when the misery was simple and brief.

The Mariners with the loss dropped the series to the Angels. There was a time this would have been an unthinkable result in the final stretch, much like dropping consecutive series to the A’s earlier in the month. But the Mariners entered the week as the very worst team in the majors by WAR since the All-Star break, nearly 4 WAR behind the Angels in 26th. It would have been something of an upset had they gone into The Big A and taken the series. One could even argue the Mariners are underdogs in the upcoming trip to Colorado, though I’ll be kind and call it a push.

Regardless, the Mariners easy September schedule looked like a gift in the preseason, something that could propel them to an impressive win total and a second consecutive division title. Instead, it’s served to underscore just how bad this team has been over the final few months. Tuesday’s loss was all but a formality, to stamp a losing record on the 2026 season. All that’s left is the end.