Team news
[Dbacks.com] How Carroll jumped his way into Gold Glove contention – “He’ll go as hard as he can and get to it and come up and get it in,” [Dave] McKay said. “Because he realizes the value in working on your jumps at all times, rather than [only doing it] when there’s that ball that’s hit away from you, where you actually have to go hard to get it. He just works on it all the time.” When last season started, McKay said Carroll’s jumps were just so-so, but after realizing the importance of them, Carroll put
in the time before games working on them and the improvement was obvious.” He puts in the time,” McKay said. “That’s the thing about Corbin: He always wants to get better at whatever it might be.”
[SI] One Move the Arizona Diamondbacks Must Make – One of the more premier closers in baseball, coming off a down season, is set to be a free agent — two-time All-Star Devin Williams. If he chooses to test the free agent market, which appears likely, the D-backs should not hesitate to get involved early and aggressively. Williams posted the worst ERA of his career (4.79) in the 2025 season. But that number falls nowhere close to the true story of the veteran righty’s season. Despite the raw ERA, Williams’ FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) was a stellar 2.68. His expected ERA was 3.07 and his expected FIP was 2.95. He was worth +10 Pitching Run Value (per Statcast) despite the overall poor run prevention numbers.
[Dbacks Under Review] Jack Hurley Discusses Monster Game in Arizona Fall League – The first two weeks of the Arizona Fall League have been a bit slow for Diamondbacks outfield prospect Jack Hurley. Through his first six games, he was hitting just .105 with a .450 OPS. Then on Thursday, Hurley broke out with a monster performance. He flirted with the cycle, finishing the game 4-for-5 with a double, triple, and two home runs. His eight RBI accounted for half of Salt River’s runs in a 16-6 blowout of the Glendale Desert Dogs. “It was one of those days where I was seeing it well,” said Hurley. “[Thursday] was a good day catching barrels, putting together good at-bats, swinging at the right stuff. Ultimately, it comes down to swinging at the right pitches.”
And, elsewhere…
[Guardian] Rob Manfred optimistic MLB stars will play at 2028 Los Angeles Olympics – MLB has discussed creating an extended All-Star break to allow participation in the 2028 Games, to be held from 14-30 July. An agreement with the players’ association is necessary and sponsor deals could be impacted. “I am positive about it. I think that the owners have kind of crossed the line in terms of, we’d like to do it if we can possibly make it work,” Manfred said Saturday before Game 2 of the World Series. “There are logistical issues that still need to be worked on.” At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, the baseball tournament took place over 11 days, including a four-day group stage followed by knockout rounds and culminating in gold and bronze medal games. Baseball at the LA Games is likely to have a more compressed format.
[MLB.com] With Fall Classic knotted up, 3 things to watch for in Game 3 – Does Mad Max have another vintage game in him? One of the highlights of this postseason, a truly nostalgic throwback moment, was when a 41-year-old Scherzer not only got the Blue Jays a desperately needed ALCS Game 4 victory over the Mariners but even scowled off manager John Schneider when he came to the mound to talk about pulling him. (Schneider seemed positively giddy about it: “I’ve been waiting all year for that,” he said, smiling.) It was a terrific moment, with Scherzer, who had a 10.20 ERA in September and hadn’t pitched in a month, putting his team on his back just when you wondered if his career might be over.
[Free Beacon] Can Baseball Get Better Without Getting Boring? – Longtime writer and baseball fan Jane Leavy, in her new book, Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It, provides a list of failures that have led baseball to this point. “Assuming its place in the sports firmament, baseball abandoned its station,” Leavy writes. “Watching the metastatic growth of the NFL and NBA without bothering to recalibrate its nineteenth-century self to the frantic present. Hiding their eyes from the pumped-up steroid physiques in the nineties. Embracing whole-hog the Moneyball coup d’état. Facilitating the technological rampage that distorted the core values of the game.”
And finally, with Halloween coming up, I’ve been watching and reviewing a lot of classic horror…
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Rating: B+
Dir: James Whale
Star: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester
An enormous amount here to appreciate and enjoy, once you settle in and get in line with the film’s tone. There are points where the look of the movie simply does not feel like you’re watching something close to ninety years old. The re-animation sequence which brings the Bride to life is particularly strong in this regard, and remains impressive in its pacing, editing and composition. The sets here are gorgeous too, even the ones which are clearly supposed to be forests. There have been entries in this feature where I’ve been hard-pushed to find decent stills. Not the case here, where I could capture almost any frame, and it would do the job well.
