While he wait to see which of the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays will earn the unenviable task of taking on the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, the whole sport is still trying to come
to terms with the greatest single game performance in the sports history. Shohei Ohtani single-handedly polished off the Milwaukee Brewers by hitting three home runs, including one of the longest shots ever seen in Chavez Ravine, while firing six scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts. To do all that in winning a league championship series puts it even further over the top as the sports greatest single game ever played.
As FanGraphs’ Michael Baumann explored on Saturday, there are only a handful of postseason games that could even begin to be compared to the Shohei Game.
Even among the greatest postseason performances by a pitcher explored in the article, the only game that seems remotely comparable to me is the mighty Bob Gibson’s Game 7 of the 1967 World Series as his St. Louis Cardinals kept the Boston Red Sox curse going for nearly 40 years until they finally broke through in 2004.
In that game, Gibson fired a complete game, allowing two earned runs while striking out 10. He also went 1-for-4 with a home run. On the pitching side that certainly compares well to six scoreless frames, but Ohtani’s three homers just puts it into the stratosphere.
This is a level of greatness that is difficult to put in context because he’s cleared the highest bar and won’t stop pushing it ever higher.
Take a look at the three homers from field level. It just doesn’t get better than this. Ohtani may not go to play long enough to have the greatest career of all-time, but he is the greatest player of all-time. No one else can do the things he’s capable of, and Game 4 was the highest expression of that two-way brilliance.
Going back to school?
Tennessee Volunteers head coach, Tony Vitello has emerged as Buster Posey’s top target to replace Bob Melvin as the San Francisco Giants’ new manager. Jeff Passan of ESPN reported on Saturday that a decision was expected by sometime on Monday. This news sent some mild shockwaves through the industry. Vitello has no relevant experience in the professional ranks, and this would be a completely out of the box hire. Whether that means it’s a terrible idea or a stroke of genius will take time to determine should this happen, but it’s certainly got everyone talking about the relationship between the college and pro game.
Teams have leaned into college coaching talent more in recent years. Brewers manager Pat Murphy was a former head coach in the college ranks, but he also had plenty of experience as a minor league manager, a bench coach in the major leagues, and a brief stint as the interim manager of the San Diego Padres.
Obviously A.J. Hinch pursued and landed Chris Fetter after the former U of M pitching coach helped lead the Wolverines to the College World Series in 2019 under head coach Erik Bakich. Again though, Fetter had at least some pro experience as a scout with the Los Angeles Angels and as minor league pitching coordinator with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Vitello took over the Volunteers after the 2017 season and has complied a 341-131 record, turning them into one of the elite baseball powerhouses. They made three College World Series appearances and won their first national championship in baseball back in 2024, and the timing seems right for him to take the leap to pro ball. On the other hand, his big strength is as a recruiter, which isn’t going to translate much to the major leagues.
Whether he’ll be able to transition from coaching college kids to handling highly paid MLB players remains to be seen, and there is plenty of reason to be skeptical about that part of the job in particular. Buster Posey has not made much sense to me as an executive running a team so far, but hey, he is trying some unique things to get the Giants back into the mix in the NL West. We’ll know shortly if Vitello is his latest gambit.
McCovey Chronicles has thoughts on the possibility.
Eugenio Suarez gets loose in Game 5 of the ALCS
When the Seattle Mariners traded for Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suarez at the trade deadline, it was heralded as an aggressive, bold effort to finally get the Mariners over the hump. And then Suarez fell flat. Extremely flat.
After hitting 31 home runs with a 140 wRC+ in the first half of the season, Suarez struggled with the Mariners. He still hit 18 homers for them in August and September, but he also hit just .196, posting a 103 wRC+. Those struggles continued in the postseason, as Suarez had just two hits in the ALDS against the Tigers. One of them was a solo shot to be fair.
That all changed on Friday night. Suarez launched a second inning solo shot in Game 5 of a deadlocked ALCS series against the Blue Jays. And then in the eighth inning, with the bases loaded, he went deep to right field off of Seranthony Dominguez for a grand slam that won the game and put them in the driver’s seat in the series with a 3-2 lead and needing just one win in Toronto in Game 6 or 7 if necessarily, to book the franchise’s first ever trip to the October classic.
This is why you go get a guy like Suarez. To lengthen the lineup and add plenty of additional right-handed power in the postseason. So while he didn’t have that much impact in the regular season, he came through when it really counted the most, and that slam will be long remembered in Seattle, no matter what happens the rest of the way.
For the cost of a non-100 first base prospect in Tyler Locklear and a pair of solid relief prospects, the Mariners front office may have gotten themselves what they came for, the first World Series appearance in franchise history. That’s the equivalent of trading Hao-Yu Lee or Max Anderson, to put it in Tigers terms. It doesn’t mean that the Diamondbacks viewed those players as equivalent, but personally I don’t think they got a whole lot for Suarez there.
Around the horn
The Astros signed former high end Blue Jays pitching prospect Nate Pearson to a one-year, $1.35M deal on Friday. The hard-throwing Pearson is now 29 years old and has never been able to establish enough command of his fastball and breaking ball to stick in the major leagues. The Cubs had him in their system this year as a reliever, but he was still terrible in an 11 game stint in their bullpen this season.
ESPN looked at the eliminated teams this postseason, with brief assessments of how they can take the next step. Unsurprisingly, the recommendations for the Tigers are to bolster the pitching staff and try to balance out the somewhat all or nothing offense with more contact.
FanGraphs has postseason managerial scorecards for the Cubs’ Craig Counsell and the Phillies’ Rob Thomson.
The Dodgers are expected to seriously pursue star outfielder Kyle Tucker this offseason. That would just be gross at this point.
Theo Tollefson has a dynasty preview of Twins top prospect, Walker Jenkins for Pitcher List. You might as well get familiar with Jenkins. Should he finally put the injury bug behind him, he should be irritating Tigers fans for a long time to come, starting in 2026.
Chris Brown takes a first look at the Tigers roster and Rule 5 decisions on tap this offseason for Tigers Minor League Report.
