The Cycle, Issue 88: Ten. Days. Left.
A viewer’s guide to the penultimate weekend feat. Yankees-Red Sox, updates from the AL wild-card and NL East & West races, Sal Perez, Jon Lester, Shane Baz, the Kiermaier Card Controversy & much more!
In this issue of The Cycle . . .
Series 50: The Cardinals appear to have put the NL wild-card race away, but the AL wild-card, NL West, and NL East remain compelling and competitive with just 10 days left in the regular season.
Magic Numbers and Eliminated Teams: Five teams were eliminated this week, and two more clinched playoff spots, including the first division title of the season
Did You See That?: Salvador Perez’s home-run record, Jon Lester’s 200th win, Shane Baz’s debut, the Kevin Kiermaier Card Controversy, the longest home runs of the year, exciting NL West action, two clinches, and a variety of other highlights and oddities
On Deck: A viewer’s guide to the penultimate weekend of the regular season, featuring a Yankees-Red Sox showdown in Boston with the AL wild-card race in the balance
Injured List: The Giants lose one of their best bats while the Phillies lose one of their worst arms
Transaction Reactions: Three managers get extensions, and Ryan Pressly’s option vests
Feedback
Closing Credits
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Series 50
AL Wild Card
The Red Sox have won seven in a row and now hold a three-game lead on the third place Blue Jays, who lost three of four this week against the Rays (1-2) and the Twins (Thursday’s weekend-series opener). The Blue Jays struggles, meanwhile, created an opportunity for the Yankees, who swept the Rangers in three games this week, thus gaining a half-game on Boston (who only played two against the Mets) and leapfrogging the Jays into the AL’s final playoff spot.
Meanwhile, on the undercard, the Mariners travelled to Oakland this week and swept the Athletics in a four-game set, effectively ending the A’s playoff hopes and keeping within striking distance of the AL East scrum by climbing to within one game of Toronto.
The Mariners’ remaining schedule is all Angels and A’s, with their final six games coming at home. They are a combined 19-9 against those two teams this season, but the A’s will be looking for revenge when they travel to the Emerald City next week.
Back east, the Yankees have to run the gauntlet to hold onto that wild-card spot. They will play three in Fenway this weekend, the three in Toronto next week (which may be the crucial series in this race), and finish with three at home against the Rays. That puts them at a disadvantage relative to the Sox and Jays despite their current lead over Toronto.
While the Yankees are playing the Red Sox and Rays, the Jays play the last-place Twins and Orioles. The Red Sox, meanwhile, follow this weekend’s series against the Yankees with a season-ending road trip down the coast to face the last-place Orioles and Nationals. That’s a significant advantage for the Blue Jays and, especially, the Red Sox, the latter of whom seem to have a clear path to the postseason from here (Clay Davenport gave them a 94 percent chance before the Jays lost to the Twins on Thursday). Still, the Yankees control their own destiny, at least for now. The six games they play in the next seven days will determine if that remains true heading into the final weekend.
NL West
The Giants and Dodgers both won two of three this week, so the Giants’ one-game lead in the West coming out of last weekend is unchanged going into this weekend. The race was far more eventful in real time, however. On Wednesday, the Giants expanded their lead to two games by beating the Padres 8–6 after the Dodgers lost to the Rockies 10–5. On Thursday, those outcomes reversed, restoring the status quo, but both games went into extra innings, as I detail in Did You See That? below.
We’re at the point in this race that every game matters, and every series these two teams play is a Series to Watch, regardless of the quality of the opponent. For the Giants, that’s three in Colorado this weekend, then a six-game home stand against the Diamondbacks and Padres to finish the season. For the Dodgers, it’s three in Arizona this weekend, then a six-game home stand against the Padres and Brewers. With a one-game lead and the softer schedule, the Giants have a clear advantage, but it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. There’s no room for error here for either team.
NL East
The Braves and Phillies both won three of four this week, so this race is also unchanged save beyond the crucial shortening of the remaining schedule. The Phillies were shut out by John Means and the Orioles on Monday, briefly falling three games behind Atlanta, but the Braves dropped the finale of their series in Arizona on Thursday, surrendering five runs in the seventh inning to lose 6–4, while the Phillies beat up the Pirates’ bullpen to win the opener of their four-game weekend set at home against the Pirates, to climb back to within two.
Two games with nine to play is a tall order for the Phillies, but they have the Pirates this weekend and the Marlins next weekend—while the Braves face the Padres and Mets—and three games against the Braves in Atlanta in between. Thus, both teams still have the ability to control their own destiny in this race, which is far closer than it appears.
It is also more complicated than it appears. Both teams have one postponed or suspended game to make up. The Braves will start their series in San Diego this weekend with a partial double-header and just nine outs remaining to overcome a one-run deficit in a double-header game that was suspended in the middle of the fifth inning back on July 21. Then, if the two teams are separated by a mere half game after the games of Sunday, October 3, the scheduled final day of the regular season, the Phillies will have to play a make-up game at home against the Rockies on Monday, October 4, the currently empty off-day between the scheduled end of the regular season and the American League Wild Card Game that Tuesday. The good news for the Phillies there is that they would still have three days off before the start of the Division Series if they needed to play that game and did win the division.
NL Wild Card
In the course of just two weeks, the Cardinals’ 12-game winning streak has taken St. Louis from three games behind the Padres and Reds in this race to six games ahead of them in the loss column with just 10 games left to play. San Diego and Cincinnati’s postseason hopes have been all but extinguished as a result.
This race is effectively over. Even if the Phillies were to somehow play well enough to catch the Cardinals, doing so would almost certainly vault them into first place in the NL East, thus removing them from this race entirely. In turn, they would likely do enough damage to the Braves, via that head-to-head series next week, to keep Atlanta from overcoming the Cardinals, as well. Meanwhile, the Reds and Padres are just too far back to catch up at this late date. If the Padres hold on to win their suspended game against the Braves on Friday, it will merely round them up into a tie with the Reds. Both will still trail St. Louis by six games in the loss column with nine games left to play, and both will be eliminated from the postseason with any combination of losses and Cardinals wins adding up to five.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals’ big lead will allow them to set up their rotation for the postseason. Jack Flaherty will come off the disabled list to start Game 2 of their double-header against the Cubs on Friday, and should get a second start next week of that one goes well. Meanwhile, Adam Wainwright already appears to be on schedule to start the NL Wild Card Game on extra rest on Wednesday, October 6, after one more tune-up against the Brewers next week.
Magic Numbers
Clinched: White Sox (AL Central); Rays, Brewers, Dodgers, Giants (postseason)
3: Astros (AL West), Brewers (NL Central)
4: Rays (AL East)
6: Cardinals (NL Wild Card)
9: Braves (NL East), Giants (NL West), Yankees (AL Wild Card)
Eliminated Teams
The following teams were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs this week:
September 23: Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies
September 21: Los Angeles Angels, Detroit Tigers
September 20: Chicago Cubs
Already eliminated: Marlins, Nationals, Royals, Twins, Pirates, Rangers, Diamondbacks, Orioles
Did You See That?
Monday, September 20
Salvador Perez hit his 46th home run of the year on Monday, breaking Johnny Bench’s record for the most home runs by a catcher in a single season, but not, as I explained last Friday, the record for most home runs as a catcher. That still belongs to Javy López with 42 in 2003. Perez has hit just 31 of his home runs this season while in the game as a catcher, which isn’t even the most this season, as Mike Zunino has hit all 31 of his home runs as a catcher this year.
In other milestone news, Jon Lester won his 200th game on Monday with a quality start in a 5–2 Cardinals win in Milwaukee. Lester has had a heck of a career. After his rookie season came to an early end due to a lymphoma diagnosis, he beat the disease, then started and won the final game of the 2007 World Series the following October at the age of 23. The next May, he threw a no-hitter at Fenway Park. He would go on to win a second championship with Boston in 2013, was the ace of the 2016 Cubs team that snapped that franchise’s 108-year championship drought, is a five-time All-Star, and has finished in the top five in the Cy Young voting three times.
All of that said, at 37, he is well and truly over the hill. In 69 starts over the last three years, the veteran lefty has a 92 ERA+, his strikeout rate has dropped precipitously, from 21.6 percent in 2019 to just 12.8 percent this year, and his home run rate has inflated similarly relative to his peak. He was lousy with the Nationals earlier this year, and looking at his peripherals alone, he has been even worse since being traded to the Cardinals at the deadline. However, St. Louis’s outstanding defense, plus a little bit of luck, has him enjoying something of a dead-cat bounce with a 2.27 ERA in his last six starts thanks in large part to a .184 opponent’s average on balls in play.
That doesn’t diminish Lester’s milestone, but it does suggest that he won’t get much further than this. As I wrote about Tim Hudson, one of the pitchers most comparable to Lester, when Hudson was on the verge of his 200th win in 2013, “reaching that total in one’s age-37 season . . . is hardly indicative of a Hall of Fame career” (Hudson got 5.2 percent of the vote in his first year on the Hall of Fame ballot this year, just barely skirting the five-percent cutoff). Five years later, I wrote that 235 wins is a far more significant milestone, one that Justin Verlander (nine wins) and Zack Greinke (16 wins) could reach next year, but that Lester would need three more seasons of double-digit wins to achieve, making it extremely unlikely he will.
Wins are far from the entirety of any pitcher’s story, but they have more value as a career metric than on a seasonal basis. The likelihood of Lester finishing his career just slightly above 200 wins conforms to his likely legacy as a very good pitcher with a memorable career who nonetheless fell comfortably short of the Hall of Fame.
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On the other end of his pitching career is 22-year-old Rays right-hander Shane Baz, who made his major-league debut on Monday and picked up the first of an as-yet-unknown number of wins. The 12th overall pick in the 2017 draft, Baz was acquired by the Rays with Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow in the increasingly infamous 2018 deadline deal that sent Chris Archer to the Pirates. This July, Baseball Prospectus ranked Baz 13th on its mid-season list of the game’s top prospects.
Baz (pronounced “Boz,” like Brian Bosworth’s nickname) drew a tough assignment in his first start, facing the Blue Jays, who rank third in the majors in runs scored per game and had averaged 7.4 runs per game on the month prior to this week’s series against the Rays. Despite the challenge, the young righty was incredibly impressive. Armed with an upper-90s four-seamer, a mid-80s slider he threw nearly as often, and a low-80s curve, Baz allowed just two baserunners in five innings while striking out five. Both of those baserunners came on solo home runs (by Teoscar Hernández and Lourdes Gurriel Jr.), but that was a product of Baz’s aggressive approach. A staggering 78 percent of his 65 pitches were strikes. He got a Rays hitter to swing and miss 14 times, which is more than once every five pitches, and both of his breaking pitches were equally effective.
Particularly impressive was Baz’s first-inning confrontation with the current best hitter on the planet, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Baz fell behind Guerrero 2-0 on a pair of fastballs above the zone, but then got Vladdy to swing over a pair of breaking pitches below the knee. He then came back and blew Guerrero away with a 99 mph heater up in his eyes for a third consecutive swing-and-miss from an incredibly dangerous hitter with a significantly below-average strikeout rate (the video below is cued up to that at-bat).
Baz will make his next start against the Marlins on Sunday and could get a third major-league start before the regular season ends. It will be interesting to see if the Rays then try to include him on their postseason roster (they’d have to appeal to the league to do so, since Baz wasn’t on the 40-man roster on September 1, but they would likely be granted permission), and, if so, how they use him in October. Rays lefty Shane McClanahan made his major-league debut for the Rays in last year’s Division Series, working out of the bullpen, and another 22-year-old, Matt Moore, was the Rays’ Game 1 starter in the 2011 Division Series after making his major-league debut that September and his only major-league start to that point on September 22, so there is some precedent there, particularly with this organization.
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Another notable pitching debut on Monday was that of 31-year-old Cleveland lefty Anthony Gose. Once a centerfield prospect with the Phillies and Blue Jays, Gose last appeared in the majors in 2016. He switched to pitching in the Tigers’ system in 2017 and has remained dedicated to working his way back ever since. Gose is one of several pitchers from this year’s American Olympic baseball team who have returned to the major leagues this year after long absences, joining Scott Kazmir, who started for the Giants on Wednesday, and Team USA closer David Robertson, who has struck out 13 men in eight innings with the Rays.
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Monday was also the day of the Kevin Kiermaier Card Controversy. If you haven’t heard about it, in the sixth inning of the Rays 6–4 win over the Blue Jays, Teoscar Hernandez threw out Kiermaier trying to turn an E5 into a Little League home run. Kiermaier was out by a mile, so he tried a sort of hesitation play at the plate, pausing before reaching home, then sticking his left foot between the legs of Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk and falling backward, hoping his toes would reach the plate before Kirk could reach down to apply the tag. It almost worked.
Kiermaier was out, but as Kirk made the tag, a scouting-report card fell out of Kirk’s wristband and into the dirt in front of Kiermaier. On the replay, Kiermaier can be seen staring at the card, then deciding to pick it up and take it with him back to the dugout. When he got there, he immediately handed it off to a coach in a powder blue hoodie.
Questioned about it the next day, Kiermaier’s said he thought the card was an outfield positioning card that fell out of his own pocket. That’s a lie. He spent enough time looking at the card while still in the dirt near home plate to know if it was familiar or not, and he appears to have handed it off in a surreptitious manner without having taken a second look. If he thought it was his, he would have stuck it back in his pocket. What’s more, Sportsnet’s Arash Madani reported during Tuesday’s game that the Blue Jays sent a bat boy over to the Rays dugout to retrieve the card, but the Rays did not return it.
The Blue Jays were, understandably, not pleased, and the incident erupted into a big controversy about sportsmanship and counterintelligence on Tuesday. Then, on Wednesday, Jays reliever Ryan Borucki, pitching with a 7–1 lead in the eighth, hit Kiermaier in the back with a pitch, and both benches emptied (though no fighting occurred). Borucki was immediately ejected, and he and manager Charlie Montoyo incurred suspensions (three games for Borucki, one for Montoyo, which he served Thursday night, a game the Jays lost).
I rarely believe pitchers when they hit a batter squarely then say the ball slipped out of their hand, and Borucki certainly had both a motive and an appropriate game situation to plunk Kiermaier. However, watching the replay, I think Borucki may have been telling the truth. The ball really does appear to slip out of his hand. If so, it seems what happened here is that Kiermaier made a bad baserunning decision, then stole something valuable from the Blue Jays, and somehow the Blue Jays were the ones that were punished. This will do nothing to mute Kiermaier’s near-toxic level of self-confidence.
Meanwhile, I don’t think there’s any question that Kiermaier and the Rays did the wrong thing in taking and keeping the card. I will go as far to say that it strikes me as a symptom of a culture—both in baseball and the United States as a whole—in which any action taken to gain an advantage in a competitive environment is considered fair play as long as it benefits your side, even when it is clearly unsporting, unfair, or even illegal. This is the same culture that begot the Astros brazen sign-stealing scheme and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to hold hearings for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. In terms of doing the right thing, it doesn’t get much simpler than, “if someone drops something, pick it up and give it back to them.” That’s All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten-level stuff. Don’t overthink it.
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Finally, to cleans our palates, let’s wrap up this extremely eventful Monday with Adam Duvall hitting the third-longest home run in the majors this year. Duvall’s fifth-inning, two-run jack off Diamondbacks righty Taylor Widener, in the Braves 11–4 win in Arizona, went 483 feet onto the concourse behind the left-field bleachers in Chase Field.
The only two home runs hit farther this year both happened when The Cycle was on hiatus in August. Tommy Pham hit a solo shot 486 feet off Germán Márquez at Coors Field on August 17. The longest home run of the year came eight days later at Fenway Park, when Twins first baseman Miguel Sanó hit a hanging slider from Nick Pivetta 495 feet, well over the Fanatics billboard atop the Green Monster, just to the left of centerfield, and completely out of the ballpark. That one has to been seen to be believed. So, even though it happened a month ago, I’m including it here:
Tuesday, September 21
Tuesday was as uneventful as Monday was eventful. The big excitement was in the NL West, where the Dodgers needed 10 innings to beat the Rockies 5–4 on a one-out Albert Pujols pinch-hit single that plated the Manfred Man in the top of the 10th, and the Giants-Padres game also went down to the winner’s last at-bat.
The game in San Diego was the better of the two. Both teams scored one in the first on solo home runs by Tommy La Stella and Manny Machado. The Padres then built a 4–1 lead against Kevin Gausman with Machado contributing a second home run and Tommy Pham also going deep. The Giants then came back against Joe Musgrove in the fifth and sixth to take a 5–4 lead, but Padres catcher Austin Nola tied the game up leading off the bottom of the sixth on just his second home run of the season. That 5–5 tie lasted into the ninth, thanks in part to Wil Myers robbing Steven Duggar of a two-run home run for the final out in the top of the eighth. However, consecutive one-out singles off Padres closer Mark Melancon in the ninth by Brandon Belt, Buster Posey, and LaMonte Wade Jr. broke that tie, handing a 6–5 lead to the Giants’ submarining closer, Tyler Rogers. Myers led off the bottom of the ninth with a relatively easy grounder to short that somehow got past Brandon Crawford for an E6. That brought Fernando Tatis Jr. up representing the winning run. Tatis worked the count full, but struck out looking at an 84-mile-per-hour rising fastball at the knees. Jake Cronenworth then singled to put the winning run on base for Machado, but Machado hit into a 3-6-1 double play to end the game.
Wednesday, September 22
The Rays became the first American League team to clinch a playoff berth this season with a 7–1 win at home over the Blue Jays on Wednesday. This is the Rays’ third-straight playoff berth, a franchise record, but they still have a magic number of four to win the division.
Elsewhere, in the process of beating the Brewers 10–2 to extend their winning streak to 11 games, the Cardinals took advantage of another circus catch in center by Lorenzo Cain to score two runs on a sacrifice fly, thanks in part to Harrison Bader’s elite footspeed.
Meanwhile, in Phoenix, Adam Duvall hit two balls a combined 772 feet, but was called out before reaching second base on both. On the first, Duvall hit a 410-foot home run over the centerfield wall, but the runner on first base, Austin Riley, wasn’t sure if the ball was caught and retreated back past Duvall, resulting in Duvall being called out for passing Riley. So, instead of a three-run home run, he was credited with a two-RBI single. You may remember that Justin Turner did the exact same thing to Cody Bellinger on Opening Day. That now seems like an omen given what a dreadful season Bellinger has had. I’d hate to see Duvall suffer from the same bad mojo, but in the eighth inning of that game, he hit a ball 372 feet off the top of the wall in left and was called out at second after former pitcher David Peralta fired the ball back in. Duvall looked safe on the replays, but despite the Braves challenging the call, it was not overturned, again leaving Duvall with a single and a seat on the bench (to be fair to the umpires, the closer I look at the replays the more it seems that Duvall’s toe passed the front of the bag before his foot actually made contact with it, thus the play was much closer than it appears).
In the Bronx, Adolis García protected a one-run Rangers lead in the fifth inning my making a perfect, 95-mile-per-hour throw from right field to nail Yankees backup catcher Kyle Higashioka attempting to score on a would-be sacrifice fly, resulting in an inning-ending double play. The next time Higashioka reached base, manager Aaron Boone pinch-ran for him. As a result, when the score was tied in the eighth and García reached on a one-out error by the uncharacteristically erratic Gio Urshela, it was Gary Sánchez behind the plate, not Higashioka, when García attempted to steal second. Sánchez got revenge for his fellow backstop with a perfect throw of his own, then drove in Urshela with a two-run home run in the bottom of the inning as the Yankees went on to win 7–3.
Speaking of guys named Sánchez and impressive throws from outfielders, down in Miami, Marlins rookie right fielder Jesús Sánchez threw out Nationals pitcher Josiah Gray at first base on a would-be single to right with the always-exciting 9–3 putout. That came two days after Sánchez pulled a Kevin Mitchell with this barehanded catch of a Lane Thomas fly down the right-field line.
Thursday, September 23
The Chicago White Sox became the first team to clinch a division title in either league this year with a 7–2 win in the first game of their double-header against second-place Cleveland Thursday afternoon. Luis Robert and Eloy Jiménez, both of whom were at one point feared lost for the season, hit back-to-back homers in the second inning of that one, and Tim Anderson hit two, all four shots coming off Aaron Civale.
With the division in the bag, the White Sox first since 2008, Anderson, Jiménez, Robert, José Abreu, and Yoán Moncada all got the nightcap off, resulting in a lineup that looked like this:
S - César Hernández (2B)
R - Adam Engel (LF)
S - Leury García (SS)
S - Yasmani Grandal (DH)
L - Brian Goodwin (RF)
R - Andrew Vaughn (3B)
L - Gavin Sheets (1B)
R - Billy Hamilton (CF)
L - Zack Collins (C)
It still took a walk-off home run (by Oscar Mercado) for Cleveland to win that game.
In the other Central division, the Brewers looked like they were finally going to snap the second-place Cardinals’ winning streak and shave some more games off their magic number, jumping out to a 5–0 lead on Adam Wainwright while Adrian Houser held St. Louis to one run over six innings. Once the bullpens got involved, however, the comeback was on. The Cardinals scored four in the seventh, tying the game on a two-run home run by Paul Goldschmidt off Brad Boxberger, plated a leadoff walk by Nolan Arenado and a subsequent single by Dylan Carlson against rookie lefty Aaron Ashby in the eighth to take a 7–5 lead, and Goldschmidt topped things off with a solo home run off Ashby in the ninth for an 8–5 win, the Cardinals’ twelfth in a row.
Then there was the action in the NL West. In Denver, the Dodgers and Rockies both scored three in the first, but Colorado got two more in the fifth on a two-run home run by Raimel Tapia off Max Scherzer, who had his first poor start as a Dodger. With Kyle Freeland going six innings, that 5–3 Rockies lead held into the eighth, when Trea Turner led off with a single off Jhoulys Chacín, stole second, and scored on an AJ Pollock double. Trailing by one in the ninth, the Dodgers were down to their last out when Mookie Betts, Corey Seager, and Trea Turner delivered consecutive two-out singles off Carlos Estévez to tie the game. Max Muncy then plated the Manfred Man with a leadoff homer in the top of the 10th, and the Dodgers won 7–5.
Meanwhile, in San Diego, the Padres struck first, scoring four in the first against Logan Webb. The Giants came back however, taking a 5–4 lead on a two-run home run by Mike Yastrzemski off Yu Darvish in the second and a three-run job by Austin Slater off lefty reliever Tim Hill in the sixth. The Padres took the lead back in the bottom of the sixth on two-out solo shots by Trent Grisham and Ha-Seong Kim, who got the start at third base, but the Giants tied it up at 6–6 on two-out doubles by Wilmer Flores and Tommy La Stella off Pierce Johnson in the seventh. So it remained into extra innings, by which point the Dodgers score was final. Ross Detwiler stranded the Manfred Man at second base in the top of the 10th, but the Padres got him home on a sacrifice bunt by Kim and a walk-off single by catcher Victor Caratini to reduce the Giants’ lead in the West to one game, once again.
On Deck
Series to Watch:
Yankees @ Red Sox: With the Yankees having slipped ahead of the Blue Jays and the Red Sox having added a game to their wild-card lead via their active seven-game winning streak, the stakes of this series aren’t quite as high as we had hoped, at least with regard to the head-to-head matchup, but they remain incredibly high for New York, and if these two teams both hold their current positions, the AL Wild Card Game will feature this same matchup in this same ballpark on October 5.
All of the pressure is on the Yankees in this series, and down the stretch, as explained in my breakdown of the AL wild-card race above. There is no soft spot in their remaining schedule. They have to beat the best teams in their division, one after another, to claim that final wild-card spot. The Yankees enter their final three series against the Sox, Jays, and Rays with a losing record on the season against all three. Against Boston, the have gone 6-10 while being outscored 66–55. That includes a 1-6 record at Fenway Park this year.
However, in the three series the two teams have played since the All-Star break (six games in the Bronx, four in Boston), the Yankees have actually bested the Red Sox 6-4 and outscored them 38–30. The Yankees entered September ice cold, but have now won seven of their last 10 (admittedly against weak competition), and Joey Gallo, who was similarly ice cold after arriving from the Rangers just before the trading deadline, has caught fire with six home runs and just eight strikeouts in his last eight games.
Of course, the Red Sox, who tumbled out of the divisional race and into the wild-card picture in August, are currently on an active seven-game winning streak themselves and have scored at least six runs in every one of those wins, averaging 8.4 runs per game during the streak.
In a sartorial footnote, the Red Sox brought back their yellow-and-baby-blue City Connect uniforms for last weekend’s series against the Orioles and have won the last five of those seven games wearing those uniforms, which the team now seems likely to wear for every game until the streak is snapped (which could provide an extra incentive for the Yankees to snap that streak, and perhaps an extra reason for non-Red Sox fans to root for the Yankees to do so).
The Red Sox have largely recovered from their COVID-19 outbreak earlier this month, with Xander Bogaerts, Kiké Hernández, Christian Arroyo, Chris Sale, Nick Pivetta, Matt Barnes, Hirokazu Sawamura, Josh Taylor, and Martín Pérez all restored to the active roster from the COVID-19 IL. However, they recently lost Rule 5 set-up ace (and former Yankee farmhand) Garrett Whitlock to a pectoral strain, and the Yankees will have the good fortune of missing both Sale and impressive rookie Tanner Houck in the rotation this weekend. The Yankees, meanwhile, have recently activated righties Luis Severino and Domingo Germán from the injured list, and both will be available out of the bullpen, where their services are desperately needed, this weekend.
This series kicks off with a must-see matchup of Gerrit Cole and Nathan Eovaldi Friday night. The sneakily effective Nestor Cortes takes on Nick Pivetta on the MLB Network on Saturday (also MLB.tv’s Free Game of the Day), and lefties Jordan Montgomery and Eduardo Rodriguez will wrap up the regular-season series between the two teams on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball.
Braves @ Padres: The Padres are effectively playing spoiler at this point, but they did so nicely against the Giants on Thursday and should relish the role down the stretch as they follow this series with one more each in L.A. and San Francisco. San Diego has lost 10 of their last 13, but they could pick up an easy win to start this series in the resumption of the suspended game they already lead by one run in the middle of the fifth. Tim Hill and Jesse Chavez are the active pitchers in that game, which is a regulation seven-inning double-header game, as, I believe, the regularly scheduled nightcap will now be, as well.
The Braves are just 12-15 since August 23 and have seen their lead in the NL East shrink by three games over that span. The need to do well in this series to maintain some padding heading into their showdown with the Phillies next week. The good news for Altanta is that the San Diego rotation is in shambles. The Braves will send Max Fried to the mound in Friday’s regularly scheduled game and start Huascar Ynoa on Saturday. The Padres have Joe Musgrove lined up for Sunday’s finale. The other starting pitchers have yet to be determined, with the Braves likely to throw a bullpen game on Sunday, and the Padres likely to do the same in at least one of the first two games.
Also:
The following four series aren’t particularly compelling matchups, but each could play a role in determining the outcome of one of the three remaining undecided races, and thus each bears at the very least intense scoreboard watching this weekend.
Giants @ Rockies: The Giants lead the season series 12-4 and have nearly doubled the Rockies’ run total over the course of those 16 games. Most recently, the Giants swept three games in Coors Field earlier this month.
Pitching matchups: Alex Wood vs. Peter Lambert; Anthony DeSclafani vs. Jon Gray; Kevin Gausman vs. Antonio Senzatela
Dodgers @ Diamondbacks: The Dodgers lead this series 14-2, have out-scored the D’backs 115–44, and one of those Arizona wins required extra innings. Most recently, the Dodgers swept three in L.A. in mid-September.
Pitching matchups: Tony Gonsolin vs. Humberto Castellanos; Clayton Kershaw vs. Zac Gallen; Julio Urías vs. Humberto Mejía
Blue Jays @ Twins: The Twins won the opening game of this four-game set Thursday night and have now split four games on the season against Toronto while outscoring the Jays 19–16. The two Minnesota wins against Toronto this year came in Michael Pineda’s last two starts. Friday starter José Berrios was the winning pitcher in the rubber game of the previous series between the two teams last Sunday.
Pitching matchups: José Berríos vs. Bailey Ober; Robbie Ray vs. TBA; Alek Manoah vs. Griffin Jax
Pirates @ Phillies: The Phillies’ win in the opening game of this four-game set Thursday night evened this season series at 2-2, but the Phils have outscored the Bucs 29–20 in those games, plating 27 of those runs in their two wins, which were the last two games these two have played, on August 1 and yesterday.
Pitching matchups: TBA vs. Kyle Gibson; Wil Crowe vs. Ranger Suárez; Max Kranick vs. TBA
Friday, September 24
Pitching Matchup and Game of the Day
Gerrit Cole vs. Nathan Eovaldi, Yankees @ Red Sox, 7:10 pm ET
Okay, maybe Chris Sale vs. Gerrit Cole would have more star power than this matchup, but Eovaldi has earned his place as the marquee Red Sox pitcher in this series. He’s a fringe Cy Young contender this season, leading the AL in home-run rate (1.9 percent), the majors in walk rate (4.4 percent), and the AL in fielding independent pitching (2.72) across 173 2/3 innings, with a 5.88 strikeout-to-walk ratio and a 132 ERA+. In his last eight starts, he has a 2.27 ERA and 8.00 K/BB, has struck out exactly one third of the batters he has faced, and the Sox are 7-1 in those eight games.
The one loss? A hard-luck 2–0 loss in the second game of a double-header against the Yankees on August 17. On the season, Eovaldi has a 2.01 ERA in five starts against New York, but has received just 13 runs of support in those five games, and the Sox have gone 2-3 in those games.
As for Cole, he leads the AL in strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.08), strikeout rate (34.2 percent), deserved run average (3.13), and, for what little it’s worth, wins (15), and is locked in a battle with the Blue Jays’ Robbie Ray for the AL’s Cy Young award. He’s coming off an ugly outing against Cleveland (5 2/3 IP, 7 R), but has only had two consecutive bad starts all year (on June 27 and July 4, the former against the Red Sox at Fenway Park) and had a 1.35 ERA in his six starts prior to his last turn.
Cole has only faced the Red Sox three times this year, and only managed a quality start in one of those, the only one of the three the Yankees have won, a rain-shortened six-inning complete game on July 17 in which he also matched up against Eovaldi. Cole has a 5.06 ERA in those three games against the Red Sox, and his big problem has been the home run, as he has allowed four in 16 innings against Boston, three of them in that ugly June 27 outing. Two of those four home runs have been hit by Rafael Devers, who has otherwise struggled against Cole in 17 career plate appearances (he is 1-for-14 with seven strikeouts against Cole when not homering).
Saturday, September 25
Pitching Matchup of the Day
Sandy Alcantara vs. Shane McClanahan, Marlins @ Rays, 6:10 pm ET
This isn’t the Pitching Matchup of the Day just because these two Florida hurlers have a combined nine A’s in their names. Alcantara (accent on the second syllable) has been a horse for the Marlins this year, posting a 3.05 ERA (136 ERA+) in 194 2/3 innings, and is finishing strong with a 2.24 ERA in his last eight starts, averaging nearly 7 1/3 innings per start over that stretch, and striking out 68 men in those 58 1/3 innings with a 0.79 WHIP and 8.50 strikeout-to-walk ratio. What’s more, six of those starts came against teams competing for playoff spots (the Padres, Braves, Reds twice, and Mets twice).
Rookie lefty McClanahan is making his second start since taking a 10-day time-out on the IL due to a back issue. He has a 2.88 ERA over his last 11 starts despite a .359 opponent’s average on balls in play. He has a 2.72 FIP over that span, with just four home runs allowed, a 3.83 K/BB, and 69 strikeouts in 59 1/3 innings. The Rays have been keeping his pitch-count low, but he almost always gets through five innings, regardless, doing so on just 64 pitches his last time out.
Game of the Day
Yankees @ Red Sox, Nestor Cortes vs. Nick Pivetta, 4:10 pm ET, MLB Network
This pitching matchup isn’t even half as exciting as Friday night’s but this series is too compelling and important to go with anything else. Twenty-six-year-old Cuban lefty Nestor Cortes is already on his third stint in the Yankees’ organization and seems likely to stick this time around. He was excellent in long-relief earlier in the year, and since joining the rotation in late July he has posted a 3.20 ERA in 10 starts with 60 strikeouts in 56 1/3 innings a 4.00 strikeout-to-walk ratio. His two appearances against Boston this year were both two-inning relief appearances, one good, one bad. The one thing to watch with Cortes is the longball. He has a worrisome flyball rate and has allowed at least one home run in each of his last nine starts.
Speaking of problematic home-run rates, Nick Pivetta has allowed 19 home runs in his last 17 starts with a 5.23 ERA over that span, a problem exacerbated by an inflated walk rate. Pivetta has just two quality starts in his last 11 turns, and the Red Sox are just 2-6 in his last eight starts, including a loss against the Yankees on August 18 in which he was unable to get out of the second inning. That remains his only appearance against the Yankees this season. Don’t be surprised if this is one of those high-scoring, four-hour Yankee-Red Sox games.
Sunday, September 26
Pitching Matchup of the Day
Marco Gonzales vs. Shohei Ohtani, Mariners @ Angels, 4:07 pm ET
Hopefully Ohtani will make one more start on the final weekend of the regular season, but another Ohtani start is promised to no one, so be sure to catch this one. Ohtani made his last start on eight day’s rest and held the A’s to two runs over eight innings while striking out 10. This start comes on six day’s rest after that one, and he could start on the final day of the season on another six day’s rest, but that will depend on how he comes out of this one
Ohtani isn’t the only reason to watch, however. The Mariners are still hanging on in the AL wild-card race (whether or not that’s still true come Sunday remains to be seen, of course), and Gonzales has a 2.81 ERA in a dozen starts since the All-Star break, with the Mariners gong 9-3 in those games. Gonzales hasn’t actually pitched that well—he’s a fly-ball pitcher with a below-average strikeout rate, a .213 BABIP over those 12 starts, and 10 home runs allowed in his last six turns—but he makes his opponents earn their way on base with excellent control and relies heavily on the excellent fielders behind him, providing a stark contrast in styles against Ohtani’s filthy, overpowering strikeout stuff.
Game of the Day
Yankees @ Red Sox, Jordan Montgomery vs. Eduardo Rodriguez, 7:08 pm ET, ESPN
By the first pitch of this game, we’ll know the result of the Blue Jays game, and probably the Mariners game, so what the AL wild-card race looks like heading into the season’s final week will depend on this game. If the Yankees are going for the sweep, the two teams will enter this game tied. If the Red Sox are going for the sweep, the Yankees may have already fallen out of their current playoff position and will be desperately trying to climb back in. If the two teams split the first two, this will determine which team gains a game on the other in this series, and possibly if the Yankees are able to hold on to that second wild-card spot.
In this crucial contest, the Yankees will send lefty Jordan Montgomery to the mound. Montgomery has a 2.31 ERA over his last 10 starts despite a .328 BABIP in those games, but the Yankees are just 5-5 in those games due largely to their poor run support for the 28-year-old. Montgomery has a 3.63 ERA in four starts against Boston this year, but the Yankees have lost three of those games, scoring just six runs in those three contests.
The Red Sox’s 28-year-old lefty, Eduardo Rodriguez, has pitched in some bad luck this year, but still has a 3.64 ERA over his last nine starts despite a .341 BABIP. Rodriguez has had a particularly tough time at Fenway Park this year, with a 6.16 ERA and a .371 BABIP in 12 starts at home. He has faired better against the Yankees, in general, with a 3.00 ERA, 6.00 K/BB, and .286 BABIP in four starts, though he had to leave his July 23 start against the Yankees after just one inning due to a migraine.
Injured List
Activated:
Dodgers LF A.J. Pollock
Giants LF Alex Dickerson
A’s RHP Chris Bassitt
Yankees RHP Domingo Germán
White Sox OF/1B Andrew Vaughn
Reds C Tyler Stephenson
Brewers LHP Brett Anderson
Phillies OF Travis Jankowski
Tigers RHP Joe Jiménez
Placed on IL:
As of Friday there are 10 days remaining in the 2021 regular season, so, barring a backdated assignment, the players listed below are the last to be placed on the 10-day IL this year who will be eligible to return during the regular season.
Giants LF/1B Darin Ruf: right oblique strain
The Giants effectively traded Ruf for Alex Dickerson with a pair of IL moves on Thursday. That’s a significant downgrade for a team still locked in tight battle for the division, as Ruf has been among the team’s most productive hitters this season. Ruf’s move is back-dated to September 20, making him eligible to return for the final series of the regular season against the Padres, but it rules him out for six of the remaining nine games, and it’s not yet clear if the Giants expect him to be able to return for that final series.
Reds 3B Mike Moustakas: right foot planta fasciitis
Moustakas missed 69 games from mid-May to early August with this same issue, so, with the Cardinals running away with the final wild-card spot in the National League, this should end Moustakas’s season. This was a lost year for Moustakas, who appeared in just 62 games, hit .208/.282/.372 (66 OPS+), and was a full win below replacement level, per Baseball-Reference’s calculations. He turned 33 on September 11 and has two more guaranteed years on his contract with the Reds. His injury makes room for the return of catcher Tyler Stephenson from the COVID IL.
Phillies LHP Matt Moore: low back strain
Moore, who missed a month earlier in the season with a back injury, reinjured his back taking batting practice and is on the same schedule as Ruf (back-dated to September 20, eligible to return for the final regular-season series). Unlike Ruf, his team shouldn’t miss him. Moore was unsurprisingly awful in his return to the majors after a surprisingly effective season in Japan last year. Optimistically installed in the Opening Day rotation, he lasted just three starts before hitting the COVID IL with a 9.82 ERA. He returned as a reliever, spent another month in the IL in June with the back injury, returned as a starter, pitched his way back to the bullpen in six starts, then just kept bouncing back and forth between the two roles, failing in each with a 6.97 ERA in seven starts and five relief appearances since the All-Star break. I don’t want to be cruel, but it seems entirely possible that the Phillies might be in first place right now if they had never let Moore throw a pitch this season. Rookie lefty Cristopher Sánchez takes Moore’s place in the bullpen.
Orioles IF Ramón Urías: right adductor strain
The 27-year-old Urías had a nice little season as a utility infielder for the Orioles, hitting .279/.361/.412 (110 OPS+) in 296 plate appearances. Add his quality play in the field at shortstop, second and third base, and he was worth roughly two wins, per Baseball-Reference’s WAR. Second baseman Jahmai Jones has been recalled to take his roster spot.
Transaction Reactions
Astros RHP Ryan Pressly’s 2022 option vests
Coming into the year, the Astros held a $7 million club option on Pressly for 2022, but the value of that option increased as Pressly’s appearance total increased this season. On Wednesday, it vested at $10 million with his 60th appearance. Pressly, who will turn 33 in December, has been excellent for Houston since being acquired from the Twins at the 2018 trading deadline, posting a 2.19 ERA (202 ERA+) with 282 strikeouts in 160 1/3 innings over 164 relief appearances. He did struggle with a knee injury late in 2019, and was shaky in that year’s postseason as a result, but he hasn’t had any further issues with the knee, and was excellent in last year’s postseason, save for his one lowest-leverage appearance. An All-Star in the last two years the game was held, he ascended to the closer’s role in 2020 and has converted 25 of his 27 save opportunities this year while allowing just one of seven inherited runners to score. Reliever performance is famously volatile, but Pressly is among the most reliable short relievers in the game.
Reds extend MGR David Bell through 2023
I don’t have any particularly strong opinions about Bell as a manager, but, last year, in his second year at the helm of the Reds, the team snapped a six-year playoff drought (yes, because of the expanded playoffs, but the second, third, and fourth wild-card teams in the NL last year were all effectively tied when the season ended), and this year he kept a Reds team from which little was expected relevant to the playoff picture until the penultimate week of the season. If his front office had bothered to get him a shortstop over the winter, he might have actually led the Reds back to the postseason. At the very least, there was no reason for the Reds to make a change. Bell’s previous contract was due to expire this fall. He is now locked up through the last guaranteed year of Joey Votto’s contract.
Diamondbacks extend MGR Torey Lovullo for 2022 plus an option for 2023
I remember Torey Lovullo as a journeyman infielder who spent 22 games with the Yankees in 1991 and reemerged as the Angels’ starting second baseman in 1993. I also remember Torey Lovullo as the Next Great Manager in Waiting for what felt like (and quite possibly was) a decade and a half at the start of this century. Lovullo finally got his chance, later than many expected, at the age of 51, when the Diamondbacks hired him prior to the 2017 season. That year, Lovullo took over a team that had lost 93 games the year before and led them to 93 wins and a wild-card berth. For his effort, he was named the NL’s manager of the year.
The next year, the Diamondbacks stood alone atop the NL West as late as August 31, but their offense collapsed in September, and they finished nine games out in third place just one game over .500. That winter, the front office traded the team’s best player, first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, and let lefty Patrick Corbin and centerfielder AJ Pollock leave as free agents. Still, when the trading deadline arrived, the Diamondbacks were just 3 1/2 games out of a wild-card spot. That’s when the team traded staff ace Zack Greinke to the Astros.
Despite that insult, Lovullo’s D’backs went 31-22 (.584) over the season’s final two months, finishing second in the division and just four games out of that second wild-card spot, having effectively lost no ground despite losing their best starting pitcher. Had the D’backs added instead of subtracted at the deadline, as I argued at the time they should have, they very likely could have been a playoff team that year.
In the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the Diamondbacks played well at home, but were abysmal on the road, and in 2021, they have been just plain abysmal, losing 17 straight games in June, going 8-48 (.143) in May and June combined, and limping to the finish, well on their way to a 110-loss season (they’ll have to win four of their remaining nine to avoid it). It’s not clear that any of that is Lovullo’s fault, though one has to wonder if some malaise hasn’t crept into the manager’s office at times during this season. Among other things, this year’s D’backs have challenged just 10 calls, compared to a rate of 44 per 162 games over the previous four seasons, and had just two overturned.
Extending Lovullo after what has happened to this team since the end of the 2018 season seems more like a punishment than a reward, but he waited so long to get a managing job that I suppose it’s better to be a major-league manager with a bad team than a former manger without one. The extension is mercifully short, just adding a guarantee for 2022 and an option for 2023. No word on if that was the team’s preference or Lovullo’s.
Orioles extended MGR Brandon Hyde for 2022
The Orioles apparently extended Hyde by one year last fall, but we only just found out about it. That or they picked up an option we didn’t know he had, and maybe they extended him past 2022, there’s quite a bit of mystery still surrounding his contract. Similarly, it’s difficult to discern much about Hyde’s abilities as a manager given the lousy teams he has been charged with leading. Would a better manager lose “only” 105 games with this Orioles team? Hyde’s primary skill seems to be an ability to maintain his sanity amid all of that losing and to stay in character as a manager trying to win ballgames during his postgame press conferences. I suspect that, once (if) the Orioles start to turn the corner, they’ll bring in someone else to lead the team, and that keeping Hyde in place is a confirmation that the Orioles don’t expect that to happen next year.
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Closing Credits
Rolf Magnus Joakim Larsson, better known by his stage name Joey Tempest, was the lead singer of Europe, the Swedish pop-metal two-hit wonders (does anyone still remember “Carrie”?), who bring us our Closing Credits song today. Tempest reportedly came up with the inescapable synth hook to the band’s biggest hit, “The Final Countdown” a good five years before the band made a song out of it. Can you imagine having that thing rattling around in your head for five years? I suppose it’s been rattling around in mine for 35, but I’ve never had to worry about forgetting it or just how to turn it into a worldwide smash that might go to number-one in 25 countries, which “The Final Countdown” did when it finally came out in 1986 (though it topped out at number-eight in the U.S.).
When I think of that, I imagine Tempest going to sleep each night with that synth line echoing in his head, unsure if it’s the worst or best thing he’s ever written. One thing’s for sure, it’s better than the actual lyrics to “The Final Countdown,” a song that is vaguely about space travel, though I suspect also about the need to escape the planet in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse.
We’re leaving together
But still it’s farewell
And maybe we’ll come back
To Earth, who can tell?
I guess there is no one to blame
We’re leaving ground
Will things ever be the same again?
It’s the final countdown!
With just 10 days remaining, the Final Countdown of the 2021 regular season has arrived, and if you’ve ever heard the song before, that synth line is going to be stuck in your head all weekend, even if you don’t click on the video below.
You’re welcome.
The Cycle will return on Monday with a recap of the weekend and a preview of the final week of the 2021 regular season, featuring crucial series between the Braves and Phillies, and the Yankees and Blue Jays. Until then: