Baseball: Dodgers vs Padres

There is no love lost between the Dodgers and Padres in baseball. Both sides reminded us of their mutual dislike during a heated Game 2, which resulted in San Diego evening up the National League Division Series at one game apiece with a 10-2 blowout win over Los Angeles. On Sunday, Manny Machado and Jack Flaherty got into a pair of heated discussions.

Jurickson Profar and Will Smith had their second disagreement of the season at home plate, months after the Dodgers’ backstop called the Padres’ outfielder “irrelevant”. The meeting between the two NL West rivals was something every baseball fan wanted to watch this October. Through two games, it has not had a shortage of drama. And now it is a best-of-three series for a chance to move on to the NL Championship Series.

The rivalry is good for baseball. As the series shifts to Petco Park, the Dodgers will look to accomplish something they have not done since the 2021 postseason: Win a game on the road. If the Dodgers do not, their season will come to an end in the NLDS for a third consecutive season. The Padres, on the other hand, will look to continue their momentum in what will be another hostile environment.

San Diego is 2-0 at home this postseason and eliminated Los Angeles with two wins at Petco Park during the 2022 NLDS.

The Dodgers are just not going to sit down and watch Padres go with their business. In September 2024, the Yankees lost their baseball series finale to the Seattle Mariners, but the biggest story was the health of Juan Soto. Soto made an incredible catch in foul territory but slid into the wall, banging his knee. Soto was in visible pain but finished the game.

Soto will get some X-rays done. With the Yankees having already clinched a postseason berth, and with a four-game lead in the AL East, the team could be conservative and give Soto a day off. In addition to Soto, the Yankees had to be careful with RHP Jake Cousins after he suffered right pec tightness. Cousins may need a few days off to recover. Cousins has been one of Aaron Boone’s most trusted relievers.

Clay Holmes pitched two days in a row to end the Seattle series, so he will not be available. Marcus Stroman pitched a few innings to get his second career save, so he could be an option. Luke Weaver is also a name to watch. Gerrit Cole’s last time out was an adventure. Cole held down the Red Sox for most of the game but he intentionally walked Rafael Devers with the bases empty and imploded from there.

Cole had been solid, allowing just four runs over his last 17 innings pitched.

In five career starts at the Oakland Coliseum, Cole has a 2.30 ERA and a 1.085 WHIP. It has been a disappointing sophomore season for Anthony Volpe. While Volpe has improved from a year ago, though with less power, he is nowhere near where the Yankees thought he would be. So far, Volpe is slashing .245/.292/.367, and Boone finally benched his young shortstop for a game.

Volpe returned for the final two games of the Seattle series, where he went 1-for-7 with three strikeouts. Volpe is the Yankees’ future at the position so they need for him to show some life, especially as he enters his first postseason. In three games at the Coliseum, Volpe is 7-for-12, so maybe a trip to Oakland is what he needs. The Yankees enter this series four games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles for the division lead, with a magic number of six. Once the three-game set with Oakland is done, the Yanks host the Orioles for three games.

Baltimore is hosting the red-hot Detroit Tigers, so they could have their hands full. With the uncertainty surrounding Soto, Aaron Judge will be needed more than ever. That could also backfire as Oakland pitches around Judge even more with Soto not in the lineup. Brent Rooker is having a career year. Rooker is batting .304 with a career-high 38 bombs.

Rooker seems like the sort of guy who will take Yankees pitching deep at least once.

On October 5th 2020, the second round of the 2020 Major League Baseball (MLB) playoffs are underway, with the two American League Division Series beginning play at neutral sites. The Houston Astros pounced on the Oakland Athletics in a scorching afternoon matchup at Dodger Stadium before the New York Yankees got the jump on the Tampa Bay Rays behind a four-homer attack that included a game-breaking grand slam by Giancarlo Stanton. The designated hitter’s ninth-inning grand slam against the mighty Rays bullpen sealed a 9-3 victory to help New York take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series in San Diego.

The big takeaway is that the Bronx Bombers picked up where they left off in Cleveland, making mincemeat of yet another elite pitching staff. This time around, the victim was 2018 Cy Young winner Blake Snell. Home runs by Clint Frazier, Kyle Higashioka and Aaron Judge off Snell gave the Bombers a 4-3 lead through five innings, which they never relinquished.

The Yankees used the formula they have used all season to score runs: the long ball. New York scored 49.5% of its regular-season runs via home runs, and 21 of the Yankees’ 31 runs so far this postseason have come via home runs (68%). The Yankees have now hit 11 homers in their first three postseason games of 2020, the most postseason homers any team has ever hit in a three-game span.

If Game 1 is any indication, the Yankees have lived up to their claims that their 2-8 regular-season record against Tampa Bay is a distant memory and that they are truly a fully operational death star when they have a fully healthy lineup.

The Rays still have one of the deepest pitching staffs in the majors, and will counter with yet another ace, Tyler Glasnow, in Game 2, while the Yankees will go with a surprising choice in 21-year-old rookie Deivi Garcia. Carlos Correa homered twice in the Astros’ Game 1 win over an A’s team that beat them 70% of the time during the regular season, backing a four-hit game from George Springer and an impressive performance from the team’s collection of young pitchers. Both of Correa’s home runs went out to straightaway center field, totaling 829 feet, on a warm day when the ball was jumping off the bat. Astros manager Dusty Baker noted over that his team was not playing its best ball heading into this ALDS.

Baker was still waiting for his accomplished hitters to get going. In Game 1, Correa, Springer, Jose Altuve, and Alex Bregman combined for 11 hits and drove in eight runs. That might spell trouble for the rest of the field. On October 2nd 2020, the Miami Marlins have punched their ticket to the NLDS with a 2-0 win over the Chicago Cubs in Game 2 of the best-of-three Wild Card Series at Wrigley Field.

Sixto Sanchez threw five scoreless innings with six strikeouts in the win for the underdog Marlins. Garrett Cooper hit a solo home run for Miami and Magneuris Sierra added an RBI single for the game’s only scoring. With their sweep, the Marlins extended their undefeated postseason series streak. The club is now 7-0 in playoff series, having won the 1997 and 2003 World Series.

The No. 6 seed Marlins will face the No. 2 seed Atlanta Braves in the best-of-five NLDS.

Sanchez came out on top in the duel. Sanchez looked primed for the big stage in his first career postseason start. Sanchez faced some trouble in the fifth inning when he found himself facing Cubs right fielder Kyle Schwarber with the bases loaded and two outs. Sanchez pitched himself out of the jam and got Schwarber to pop up on an 88 mph changeup for the final out.

Sanchez had got poise too. Sanchez definitely echoes Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez. In fact, Sanchez has cited Martinez as his baseball idol and even has Pedro’s No. 45 as a tattoo. Sanchez is the seventh-youngest pitcher with a start of five or more scoreless innings pitched in his postseason debut. The only other younger pitchers to do it are Jim Palmer, Chief Bender, Steve Avery, Wally Bunker, Storm Davis, and Waite Hoyt.

Furthermore, Sanchez threw 65 of his 89 pitches as four-seam fastballs, with a blistering average of 98.3 mph. In his start, Sanchez hit the 100-mph or higher mark on seven pitches, tying him with Nathan Eovaldi for fourth most in a postseason start since the pitch tracking began back in 2008. Yu Darvish certainly had a solid start as well, and he has been a steady presence for the Cubs throughout the regular season.

The Cooper home run did not come until Darvish’s 90th pitch of the game.

But Darvish’s start was soured by Chicago’s offense in Game 2, or lack thereof. Speaking of which, the Cubs scored just one run in the two-game series. In the Game 1 loss, the Cubs got their lone run on Ian Happ’s two-out homer in the fifth inning. Happ had two of the Cubs’ four hits in Game 1. The lineup was not any better in Game 2 with their 2-3-4 hitters (Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Schwarber, and Kris Bryant) going 0-for-11.

That was a main chunk of the club’s championship core from their 2016 World Series run. Jason Heyward went 2-for-3 while Javier Baez was 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. The Cubs have not really found much postseason success since winning in 2016. With their Game 2 loss to the Marlins, the Cubs have now lost nine of their last 13 postseason games. The Marlins have continued to add to their magical postseason resume.

The franchise now owns a 7-0 playoff series record. The 2020 postseason is just the club’s third playoff appearance and first since winning the 2003 World Series. The undefeated record is impressive. But what makes it more impressive is the fact that they added to the win column as major underdogs. Considering their NL Wild Card Series win comes just a few months after the team suffered a massive covid outbreak at the start of the 2020 regular season, it was all the more remarkable.

Just days into the delayed and abbreviated 2020 season, the Marlins suffered at least 20 positive cases of covid, with 18 total players testing positive.

The club was forced to quarantine in a hotel in Philadelphia before gaining clearance to resume their season. And once they did, they played several doubleheaders to make up for the postponed games. The resiliency of this group of Marlins players is really something special to witness. It was unclear whether outfielder Starling Marte will be cleared to play during the Division Series.

The Marlins trade deadline pickup suffered a broken hand on a hit by pitch in Game 1. Marte is arguably Miami’s best all-around player. The club has Marte listed as day-to-day, and the Marlins hope he will be able to play through the injury later in the postseason. Marte suffered a nondisplaced fracture of the bone running between his left pinky and wrist on a fastball.

After a weird, truncated regular season in which their most notable accomplishment was having none of their players contract covid, the Chicago Cubs made the MLB playoffs for the fifth time in the past six years. There were no fans in the stands in 2020, which means there was no vending. Wrigley Field is one of the few remaining American stadiums that is situated in a residential neighborhood rather than a 14-acre parking lot.

On game days, Wrigleyville is usually thronged with people in Cubs gear, with each new arrival of the elevated train disgorging hundreds of new fans.

The game began with “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by local anthem celebrity John Vincent. The big-lunged Vincent is known for extending the final note of the phrase “land of the free” and the crowd always reacts to this feat the exact same way. First, they cheer at a normal volume. Then, they get sort of quiet. Then, when they realize that Vincent is still holding his note, they erupt in ear-splitting cheers and applause.

But with no crowd to egg him on, Vincent seemed to pull up short. Even though nothing is the same 2020, the stadium personnel are committed to having things sound the same, more or less. The PA announcer still shouts out each hitter’s name, and the batters still hear their chosen walk-up songs. The Cubs were up 1–0 in the top of the seventh, but the Marlins were threatening.

As the half-inning ended, a recording of long-dead Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” emanated from Wrigley. Back in 2003, the last time the Cubs played the Marlins in the playoffs, Wrigleyville was coursing with excitement. The stadium was packed for every game of that National League Championship Series, and the fans who could not get inside filled the bars and streets.

In Game 6, a foul ball in the left field boxes resulted in the most famous act of fan interference in baseball history.

The Cubs lost. The Marlins went on to win the World Series. As Fernando Tatis’ San Diego Padres teetered on the verge of postseason elimination, out came the serious side of him, the brooding one, beaming intensity, flirting with anger. The Padres’ 11-9 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 2 of their wild-card series illustrated not just what they needed to be but what they are capable of being as they prepare for a win-or-go-home Game 3.

Down their two best starting pitchers because of injuries, working bullpen games because of their replacements’ ineffectiveness, the Padres trailed by four runs in the sixth inning when Tatis swaggered to the plate. For more than three weeks, Tatis had found himself in a desperate slump. Over the last 20 days of the season, Tatis hit .164/.242/.291, lost 125 points off his OPS and gave away the NL MVP award.

Tatis was frustrated, searching, and leaving 10 men on base over the first game-and-a-half of his first postseason was not helping matters. Then Giovanny Gallegos threw five consecutive sliders to Tatis, and he did not miss the fifth. It soared over the left-field wall, cutting a 6-2 deficit to 6-5. A batter later, Manny Machado took Gallegos deep to tie the score.

An inning later, Wil Myers homered to put the Padres ahead by a run. Up came Tatis again, this time facing Daniel Ponce de Leon.

Tatis saw fastball after fastball. The sixth was the best pitch of all, 97 mph on the outside corner, murder on most hitters. Tatis blasted it to the opposite field. Tatis represents so many of the great things about modern baseball, including a deep desire to win. The first home run awoke the Padres. Machado has invigorated them. Myers’ felt inevitable.

Tatis’ second served as a reminder. Myers’ second made history. Only once before had teammates homered twice in the same postseason game. It happened in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. The teammates were Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. This better resembled the Padres who looked like the second-best team in baseball behind their division rivals and the team they will face if they beat St. Louis, the Los Angeles Dodgers.