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The good news is that the Dodgers’ primary doomsday scenarios (San Diego winning or getting swept à la 2023) are either extremely unlikely to happen or mathematically impossible.

A champion contender taking a commanding 2-0 NLDS series lead, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat? What a game. Oh wait. I’m thinking of the almost criminal—if it were against the law— mismanagement of the Padres’ super bullpen by Craig “Likely needs to update his resume ASAP” Stammen on Sunday.

Where one side of the bracket that was expected to be a five-game dogfight now looks to be all but over before it really got started, the other side of the bracket that was all but handed to the Dodgers now looks to be a dogfight.

The bad news is that the only scenario left is arguably the most annoying, and oddly enough, it feels like the Dodgers somehow snatched defeat out of the confused jaws of victory.

Echoes of 2022 or The Bye Week was for that?!?

As an aside, when do the pitchforks start coming out for Blake Snell?

The phrase “Playoff Kershaw” justifiably rankles feathers within the Dodgers community. Whether it was fair or not, the fact remains that Kershaw was often put into a position to get lit up. And he wasn’t consistently awful. While Jack Flaherty and Bobby Miller also had their playoff duds, they either were passable at times or never got another chance.

Not so with Blake Snell, who somehow seems to have unjustifiably dodged criticism. With Game 2’s execrable performance, Snell has laid an egg in his last three consecutive postseason starts.

• Game 1, 2025 World Series: L, 5 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 3 BB, 4 K, 1 HBP, HR
• Game 5, 2025 World Series: L, 6 2/3 IP, 6 H, 5 ER, 4 BB, 7 K, 2 HR, 2 WP
• Game 1, 2026 NLDS: ND, 3 2/3 IP, 3 H, ER, 5 BB, 5 K

Those are some ugly pitching lines. Yes, Snell did pitch 1 1/3 IP in Game 7…and nearly gave up what would have been Vlad Guerrero, Jr.’s last home run at Rogers Centre until Game 150 of the 2026 campaign.

If one were looking for a positive, at least he didn’t cough up five runs again this time. That happenstance is likely due to Dave Roberts mercifully pulling the plug on Snell’s evening rather than any heroics on Snell’s part. As things stand, Snell is probably done this series, which, all things considered, is probably a good thing.

Overall, my mind just goes back to a dud of a Game 2 with a left-handed starter who underperformed, with Robert Suarez shoving with the game on the line, the Dodgers’ offense underperforming, and the Dodgers coughing up home-field advantage?

Last night? No, Game 2 of the infamous 2022 NLDS, where a hungrier opponent outplayed a suddenly flat Dodgers squad to win what turned out to be the final game at Dodger Stadium in 2022.

This current team has so many 2022 vibes, I’m half expecting baseball texts from my deceased father. If the current iteration of the Dodgers is not careful, last night’s dud could be the final game at Dodger Stadium both this year and for a long time with the impending lockout in December.

The same old song.

Let’s not belabor the point; I saw this outcome as a possibility:

Conversely, I can see how [the 2026 Dodgers] would fall flat on their face. You did too; it was called the Summer Swoon. What if everyone I just mentioned plus Shohei Ohtani couldn’t hit water from a boat? That failure, especially with runners in scoring position, would likely do it.

The team has gone 0-9 with runners in scoring position, while leaving 13 runners on base in two games. The Dodgers have only scored by home run this series. Don’t need a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to figure this one out.

This essay is not to take anything away from Atlanta, but it’s more an indictment that the Dodgers had a 2-0 lead just waiting for them, begging for them to take it, only to get stifled by persistent issues that were never adequately addressed.

If the last couple of nights have given any semblance of a theme, it’s this: too much emphasis on hero ball, not enough emphasis on passing the baton to put up a crooked number. I lost track of how many meatballs were spit on and how many swings at pitches well outside the zone occurred. Take your walks, people! Also, if there has been a pitching change, maybe look at a couple of pitches rather than swinging first pitch.

It feels odd to criticize the Dodgers for self-centered play, but Game 2 showcased every wart that I have been complaining about for six months.

• Leaving scores of runners on base? Check.
• Not taking the extra base? Check. (Mookie Betts not stealing third base only to have two tailor-made sacrifice flies happen back-to-back will irk me for a while.)
• Relying too much on beating the B squad? Check.
• Relying too much on the home run? Check.
• The pitching not being bailed out by the offensive offense? Check.
• Lousy situational hitting? Check. Check. Check.

For lack of a better way to describe it, it feels like the Dodgers broke an unspoken compact. The team was generally bad for two months this summer and last summer. Yes, that mindset arguably ruins baseball, but in exchange for subpar play, the team is supposed to be ready for October.

Yes, the team won by the literal skin of its teeth last year against an upstart Toronto Blue Jays team that went from first to worst faster than you can say “flash in the pan 2021 San Francisco Giants.” Still, the losses last year felt more like “oh, this team is tired,” versus “oh, this team is flat.”

At least the 2022 team gave us a fun summer and a rollicking regular season campaign of 111 wins. This current team did not give us a fun summer. It felt more like a slog and an inevitability. The point is that if the team is going to sleepwalk through the summer, it’s to ensure that games like Game 2 do not happen.

So you’ve coughed up Home Field Advantage … again.

The Dodgers now head to Atlanta, where they did not play particularly well this year, getting swept in all three games. Truist Park will likely be rowdy as the Braves effectively worked the only gambit they had: do another bullpen game, as the Dodgers frittered away home-field advantage…again.

I had it in my head the Dodgers had been absolutely terrible at Truist Park since COVID, before checking and realizing the following:

• 2026 – 0-3
• 2025 – 2-1
• 2024 – 2-2
• 2023 – 2-1
• 2022 – 2-1
• 2021 – 1-2 / 0-3 (NLCS)

Overall, the Dodgers are 9-9 in the regular season and 0-3 in the postseason at Truist Park. Ironically enough, in my travels, where I have been the bane of the Mariners (5-0 lifetime) and Giants (8-16 lifetime), when it comes to Atlanta, I have never been present for a Dodgers victory.

Kershaw coughed up a lead in a game where Atlanta had four errors, and Trevor Bauer was ineffective in 2021. Bryce Elder kept the Dodgers at bay until Atlanta walked off the Dodgers in 2023. The good news for everyone involved is that I will be nowhere near Atlanta for the remaining two games of this series.

The bad news is while poor Stephen Nelson will have the radio call, there is not a single restaurant in the area that I can recommend. I was generally underwhelmed by the entire Battery neighborhood. If you’re going to make an entertainment district and somehow mimic the charms and hours of Fresno, California, did you really make an entertainment district at all?

Yoshinobu Yamamoto versus Chris Sale should be a duel of the ages. The problem is we saw that duel play out on August 27, when Sale made a first-inning home run stand up in a complete-game shutout. In order to retake control of this series, the Dodgers need to take advantage of their supposed depth to do something that they haven’t done all year: win in Atlanta.

They’ll have two tries to do it.

After Saturday’s controversial ending to Game 1 of the Padres and Brewers series, it looked like the Padres were going to even the series and put the roofball issue aside with a clean slate for the rest of the series. Instead, ace closer Mason Miller was tasked with getting six outs to and holding a 3-2 lead. Instead, he ran out of gas deep into the ninth inning as the Brewers put together a series of strong at-bats. Miller walked three in the inning and could only locate his slider, and even that was backing up on him as he presumably wore down. With the bases loaded Jackson Chourio fouled off a ferocious 103 mph fastball on the outer edge and down to stay alive. Miller missed with a slider and came back with 101 mph down the pipe. Chourio lined a single to right field, and two runs scored to give Milwaukee a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series.

On the other side, pitching also ruled in the Braves at Dodgers Game 2 matchup. With almost no starting pitching to work with, the Braves built a slim lead and held on with another bullpen game. Blake Snell was terrible, walking five in a short outing, but escaped with only a run allowed in his 3.2 innings of work. Yet his good fortune didn’t carry them to victory as the Braves added on single runs in the fifth and seventh inning. Ace reliever Didier Fuentes carried the Braves through 3.2 innings before finally giving up a solo shot to Max Muncy with two outs in the ninth, making it 3-2. Raisel Iglesias came on to get the final out, and so the series is even at a game apiece as they head to Atlanta for the next two games on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Monday afternoon, the American League side of the bracket gets back to work with the Rays and the White Sox each up 1-0 over their opponents.

The White Sox will look to put the Guardians in a deep 2-0 hole as they send LHP Anthony Kay (10-9, 4.44 ERA) against tough right-hander Gavin Williams (14-8, 3.75 ERA). That broadcast from Progressive Field starts at 5:00 p.m. ET on TBS.

Meanwhile the Yankees need their ace to win them a game against the Rays. RHP Cam Schlittler (14-6, 1.95 ERA) will take on a rejuvenated RHP Freddy Peralta (10-11, 4.42 ERA), who has pitched much better since the Rays acquired him from the Mets. That broadcast from Tropicana Field starts at 8:00 p.m. ET, also on TBS.

Join us here to chat about both games while we enjoy other fanbases’ problems and ignore the state of Detroit sports at the moment.

With the Arizona Diamondbacks’ campaign now in the books, it’s time to look back at all the moves made by GM Mike Hazen over the course of the year, and see which ones worked out for Arizona, and which ones don’t. I’m going off the list of transactions here, which basically begins after the end of the last World Series. Oddly, it doesn’t include the re-signing of Zac Gallen, but I’d like to forget all about that as well…

The best

#1. Traded RHP Jack Martinez to the Cardinals, for Nolan Arenado and cash.

Arenado’s time with St. Louis had been a mixed bag. He had finished 3rd in MVP voting in 2022, but 2023-25 he had averaged barely two bWAR, while earning St. Louis between $20-27 million. They wanted out from under the remaining two years, so heavily discounted them for Arizona. We paid $5 million, and got a player worth 3.4 bWAR – his best season since 2022. Nolan hit 30 homers, had a 122 OPS+, and might be a nominee for his 11th Gold Glove. Meanwhile, his replacement in St. Louis, Nolan Gorman, was below replacement level. Arizona has Arenado for 2027 at a very reasonable $6 million, but even if he spontaneously combusted today, we’ve got our money’s worth.

#2. Signed Jonathan Loaisiga as a free agent.

The day before, the team inked relief pitcher Loaisiga to a minor-league contract with an invite to spring training, after the Yankees declined to exercise his $5 million option. The decision was described at the time as an “easy decision… New York simply can’t hold any sort of confidence in his durability moving forward.” But you wonder if they might think otherwise now. For Loaisiga made the roster out of spring, and was a key component in the renaissance of the Diamondbacks bullpen. He proved perfectly durable, pitching 67 times, posting a 2.42 ERA and 2.88 FIP across 67 innings, worth 1.7 bWAR. He’ll get guaranteed money this winter, and won’t be cheap.

#3. Signed Michael Soroka as a free agent.

As we headed towards Opening Day, it seemed that Soroka’s role would be a minor way. After the late signing of Zac Gallen, he was expected to start in the bullpen, and the anticipated return of Corbin Burnes looked set to push Michael further down the depth chart. But he ended up starting 21 games for the D-backs, and pitched very well in those. He has an ERA of 3.41 (a 121 ERA+), a FIP that was lower still (3.18), and trailed only Eduardo Rodriguez among Arizona pitchers by bWAR, at 2.2. Even with incentives which added an extra $1.35 million onto his base salary of $7.5 million, he still proved a very worthwhile investment by Hazen.

#4. Signed Taylor Clarke as a free agent.

Another essential Clarke in the Arizona bullpen was Clarke, whose 70.2 relief innings led all pitchers for Arizona. And that doesn’t include his two games as an opener. It was a return home for Taylor, who had been drafted by the D-backs back in 2015, and debuted with the team in 2019. He came back after four years in the Royals organization, and had a strong campaign, working to a 2.96 ERA, even if his final outing, against the Padres was probably not the one he’ll want remembered. He didn’t strike out many, but he walked even fewer. A sub-one WHIP for any reliever with that many innings is always a good thing.

#5. Traded Daniel Eagen, Brian Curley and Sandro Santana to the Cardinals for Lars Nootbaar.

There was a lot of disappointment at the trade deadline when this was the only significant move made by Hazen. But say what you like, Nootbaar did the job for which he was asked, with an OPS+ of 113 across 42 games. That job was to hit right-handed pitching, and at an OPS of .800, he had the highest numbers there among any of the dozen left-handed batters tried by Arizona – and mostly found wanting, the group collectively having an OPS of .664. In particular, the Noot was better than the D-backs Big 3: vs. RHP, Geraldo Perdomo was at .762, Corbin Carroll .727, and Ketel Marte only .688. Not bad for Nootbaar, though the prospect cost was higher than I’d like.

The bad

#5. Signed Max Kepler as a free agent.

This entry is a personal one. I mean, Kepler only played 41 games for Arizona: how bad could he be? Well, pretty damn bad, with a .565 OPS (58 OPS+), and so was swiftly cut. However, he should never have been signed to begin with, performance entirely aside. For the team inked Kepler while he was still serving an 80-game suspension, for a positive test in January for Epitrenbolone. He had shown no remorse and offered no explanation (not even the “ringworm” defense). But Arizona still opted to throw years of a laudable position. consciously avoiding unrepentant PED cheats out the window, for… -0.6 bWAR.

#4. Traded Jake McCarthy to the Rockies for Josh Grosz.

Was torn between including this, or the Blaze Alexander trade. But our utility infielders were good enough I didn’t really miss Blaze much. Obviously, Jake’s numbers were severely inflated by Coors: his OPS outside of Colorado was 159 points lower. But even that .727 road OPS would have been welcome on the D-backs, especially with him being a left-handed hitter (though McCarthy actually had reverse splits this season). If we still had Jake, we probably would not have needed either to sign Kepler, or trade for Nootbaar, and McCarthy’s outfield defense was likely superior to both. Add his 1.9 bWAR, take off Kepler, and it’s more than the gap by which we missed the playoffs.

#3. Signed Carlos Santana as a free agent.

A deal worth only $2 million probably doesn’t deserve as prominent a place. But it was symptomatic of the black hole which was first-base for the Diamondbacks. I’m not clear exactly what Hazen’s plan was for the position, but if it featured Santana – a 40-year-old coming off a 78 OPS+ season – it seemed poorly considered and doomed from the start. And lo, it was a complete disaster, particularly in the early going. In mid-June, 74 games into the season. Arizona’s first-basemen had a .561 OPS – no team had posted a figure that low since 1920. Things improved a little thereafter, but our 1B still finished at .636, dead-last in the majors, with Ildemaro Vargas getting most playing-time. Santana? 2-for-24 in eight games.

#2. Signed Merrill Kelly as a free agent.

Kelly wasn’t the worst starting pitcher on our books: you’ve probably already figured out who #1 here is. But unlike Gallen, he is also on the team’s books for 2027. We should perhaps have paid attention to the sharp fall-off late last year, after Merrill’s trade to Texas. His ERA for the Rangers was over a run higher than with the D-backs, and that trend continued into 2026. Merrill had an ERA of 4.94, a FIP of 5.32 and an overall value of just 0.3 bWAR. He cost Arizona $19 million this season, including the signing bonus, and will receive $21 million next year, CBA permitting. We can only hope for better. No, really. That’s all we can do: hope.

#1. Signed Zac Gallen as a free agent.

You are perhaps detecting a theme here. This feels like the infamous case where the D-backs beat catcher Jorge Fabregas in arbitration, and paid him what he wanted anyway. The team made Gallen a qualifying offer, he rejected it and entered free-agency. Then when none of the other 29 teams offered anything as good, we still gave it to him. We should have listened to the free-market, because Gallen was epically bad. His -1.7 bWAR was the lowest value posted by a starter for Arizona in over twenty years, since Russ Ortiz touched -1.8 in 2005. This will sting for a bit. Due to the deferrals in the deal – the only positive – he’ll get a check from the team for $4.675 million on July 1 of 2032, 2033, and 2034.

After their season ended with a loss to the Yankees in the AL Wild Card last week, Red Sox brass had a sit-down conversation with star slugger Willson Contreras.

“We actually had a great conversation, [manager Chad Tracy] and I, with Willson yesterday,” chief baseball officer Craig Breslow revealed in a press conference on Monday. “We met for over two hours and we talked about a whole host of things. Many of those things I will keep private just to protect, or preserve the relationship that we have, but it was incredibly constructive. Willson would be the right person to ask directly, but he spoke very, very highly of his time here.”

The conversation came on the heels of Contreras publicly stating his frustrations with Boston’s reliance on data to make decisions and doing a lip-zipping motion to demonstrate his feelings about Tracy pulling Sonny Gray early from their Game 2 season-ending loss.

Tracy has been widely criticized for his choice to pull both Payton Tolle and Gray early from their starts in the first and second Wild Card games, respectively. The Red Sox went on to get swept by the Yankees, outscored by a combined 18-2.

“Making decisions about data, about all the stuff we cannot do anything about it…At the end of the day, it’s not about data. It’s about executing the game plan,” Contreras said after Boston was eliminated last Wednesday.

Gray expressed his own frustration with Tracy’s decision to pull him after a mere 70 pitches.

“I think I’m the best pitcher in the American League going through the order a third time. I think that’s a fact,” Gray said after the game. “I would have liked to have been trusted in that moment.”

Tracy signed a three-year extension with the team before the conclusion of the season, removing his interim tag and keeping him with the club through the 2029 season.

There are several distinct and telling signs of a roster designed the way the Cincinnati Reds have put together theirs. The fabric of it, if you will.

Back in 2022, the front office decided to end the pursuit of playoff glory with the then-current iteration of players on the roster and instead invest in future runs. That meant cashing in on established players like Sonny Gray, Tyler Mahle, and Luis Castillo and instead turning their sights towards a future – one with younger players with more team control and fewer salary obligations.

That’s how teams dedicated to keeping their budget at a minimum work. They cash in on the players getting expensive and nearing free agency in order to collect younger, cheaper players with more years to grow into being big leaguers, with hopes the latter can form a new core on a much less imposing budget.

Here we are, though, with the Cincinnati Reds heading into the 2027 season with those then-future hopes of postseason glory still unrealized. However, the players they began assembling five years ago are now barreling into their own arbitration years, and the fabric of the roster is about to get more expensive in a new, different manner.

MLB Trade Rumors long ago created their own proprietary model for estimating the salaries of arbitration-eligible players, doing their best to unmask the otherwise nebulous process and reveal just what takes players from their league-minimum rates into their first big paychecks after they log the requisite amount of service time. And this winter, the Reds will have a full dozen players who’ll be going through that process (if not non-tendered), with nearly half their expected active roster expected to command a total of nearly $43 million.

That group is headlined by Elly De La Cruz, whom MLBTR estimates will command a salary of $7.9 million in his first trip through the arb process. The arbitration process leans heavily on straightforward production statistics like homers and steals, and obviously Elly – who just joined the 30-30 club for the first time – has logged those in spades. So, too, has Spencer Steer across his first four full years as a big leaguer, and he’s estimated to command a $5.7 million salary for 2027 that mirrors that of lefty Nick Lodolo behind Elly’s nearly $8 million mark.

Reds Arbitration Estimates

Tejay Antone – $1.5 million

Nick Lodolo – $5.7 million

Graham Ashcraft – $2.2 million

Tony Santillan – $2.5 million

Spencer Steer – $5.7 million

JJ Bleday – $4.8 million

Matt McLain – $4 million

Brandon Williamson – $1.3 million

Andrew Abbott – $4.5 million

Elly De La Cruz – $7.9 million

Oswaldo Cabrera – $1.1 million

Dane Myers – $1.5 million

All told, it’s a reflection of the larger problem facing the Reds. They have assembled a roster that’s aging into free agency and getting more expensive all while facing dwindling team control while having piled up not nearly enough wins for the expectations of the front office (or the fans). And now, the people pulling the strings get to decide if they want to pay the increased rates to keep this core around for another year or move on to younger, cheaper players (a la their 2022 strategy) in order to begin building towards some other far-off pipe dream.

In case you were sleeping under a rock, Drew Rasmussen gave the Yankees their worst performance in playoff history by nearly no-hitting them in Game 1 of the ALDS, including a (for them) record 23 swinging strikes, a feat all the more remarkable given that he didn’t pick up his tenth until the top of the fourth.

It was a dazzling outing, but here are my favorites from his night under the spotlight.

1. Top 1 – Ben Rice strikes out swinging.

This was the tone setter. After a cutter to what should have been Bronx star Ben Rice’s wheelhouse, Rasmussen fed two change ups that Rice whiffed on each time. Delicious.

2. Top 4 – Spencer Jones strikes out swinging.

Ok to show you this next pitch we need context, because the fourth inning is where Rasmussen settles in.

This video comes back late from the highlight grab by Simpson and nearly misses a ludicrous cutter. I can’t imagine what this must look like out of the hand for Spencer Jones, but it must have been houdini magic.

Seeing that, Rasmussen fed him another cutter in the zone to let him try and hit it — Jones couldn’t…

Rasmussen then follows it up with what might be my favorite pitch of the night, going up and in on Jones and completely blowing his mind. He sees another fastball, he knows he’s supposed to swing, and he doesn’t stand a chance, because this time it’s the four seam variety.

Brilliant.

3. Top 4 – George Lombard Jr. strikes out swinging

This is another sequence to be adored, in the following at bat. Rasmussen freezes Lombard with a cutter inside, fans him on a change low and away that Lombard did not stand a chance on, and then breaks out the four-seam again. This trick works on both hands.

It’s a bit textbook, but it’s also phenomenal pitch calling by Hicks.

4. Top 5 – Trent Grisham called out on strikes.

Grishamsaw three pitches this at bat and doesn’t take the bat off his shoulder, and if I’d been standing there I don’t know that I could have done more than wet myself. It was a change that drops in high and away, a cutter down and in, and then Rasmussen challenges Grisham with a sinker to make you think you need to hit the deck — but whips back into the zone. Yeesh.

5. Top 3 – Cody Bellinger strikes out swinging.

Ok, chronologically this should have been second, but I can’t help myself.

Why this one? It’s just so damn funny. The third inning is one of the few where Rasmussen struggled and he was feeding Bellinger above the zone, but the star outfielder couldn’t help himself and tried to get climb the ladder and hit this?? When he’d already whiffed outside the zone on a closer pitch??? What was he thinking?