Good
morning. With apologies to Blue Jays and Mariners fans who are pulling out their hair right now, the two most beautiful words in baseball are “Game Seven.”
- With all due respect to Seattle and Toronto, most of today is about the Dodgers and Shohei Ohtani’s incredible performance in Game Four of the National League Championship Series. Just in case you haven’t heard, Ohtani struck out ten over six scoreless innings and hit three home runs in the Dodgers 5-1 win over the Brewers. Ohtani was named the NLCS MVP.
- Paul Casella breaks down all three of Ohtani’s home runs, including the second one that cleared the roof in right center field at Dodger Stadium.
- Ohtani became just the seventh player to hit a ball out of Dodger Stadium and just the second Dodgers player. Willie Stargell is the only player to do it twice.
- Sonja Chen reports on the adjustments that Ohtani made that changed him from slumping at the beginning of the playoffs to whatever that was in Game 4.
- Stephanie Apstein notes that Ohtani snapped out of the slump by remaining true to himself.
- Ben Lindbergh writes that words and statistics can’t capture what Ohtani did in Game 4.
- Jayson Stark proclaims Othani’s Game 4 as the greatest game in baseball history. (The Athletic sub. req.)
- Michael Baumann writes that Ohtani had the greatest playoff game in MLB history.
- Matt Snyder concurs that Ohtani had the greatest postseason game ever. Honestly, I could link to three or four more articles saying the same thing.
- Jeff Passan has more on Ohtani’s dominating performance, including his teammates reaction.
- Jack Baer compares Ohtani’s game to the other greatest games in baseball history.
- Anthony Castrovince has five ways that Ohtani could make history in the World Series.
- Sonja Chen notes that Dodgers infielder Mookie Betts is now four wins away from becoming one of the few players to have won four World Series titles. Only 18 players have won four titles since the start of divisional play in 1969. Of course, Yogi Berra won ten before divisional play.
- Matt Snyder recaps how the Dodgers “flipped the switch” from “middling” during the stretch run to dominating in the playoffs.
- Chad Jennings has the ten steps the Dodgers took to go from disappointing to dominant. (The Athletic sub. req.)
- Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said that Los Angeles is ready to “really ruin baseball” by winning the World Series. James H. Williams reports.
- Dylan Hernández argues that the Dodgers aren’t “ruining baseball.” He writes the Dodgers are just better at this than everyone else.
- David Adler looks at every team that has won back-to-back World Series titles.
- Thomas Harrington has ten stats on the Dodgers pitching dominance.
- Jake Mintz details how the Dodgers train their translators to make things work smoothly for their Japanese stars.
- Sonja Chen looks at Roki Sasaki’s warmup music that is catching on at Dodgers games.
- Fabian Ardaya looks at whether the Blue Jays or Mariners would be a better matchup for the Dodgers in the World Series.
- Moving on (finally!) to the American League, Ken Rosenthal has the inside info on Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer’s foul-mouthed confrontation with manager John Schneider (The Athletic sub. req.) that has become a signature moment for Toronto.
- Schneider is also upset with Mariners fans who cheered when Blue Jays star George Springer got hit in the knee with a pitch.
- Six facts about Scherzer’s Game Four performance.
- Brittany Ghiroli looks at all the weird superstitions that Mariners fans are employing to try to get their team to the World Series (The Athletic sub. req.) for the first time.
- Tom Verducci explains how Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the Blue Jays righted the ship after losing the first two games of the ALCS at home.
- In shocking news over the weekend, Jeff Passan and Pete Thamel report that Tennessee Volunteers head coach Tony Vitello is now the favorite to be named the new manager of the Giants. This is the kind of outside-the-box thinking that will either be a stroke of genius or a fantastic failure. Or something in between, I guess. But Vitello turned the Volunteers from an SEC bottom-feeder to a College World Series champion in 2024.
- Andrew Baggarly reports on what the Giants and team president Buster Posey are thinking hiring out of the college ranks and what the implications of the move are. As Baggarly notes, Vitello has been offered the job. He just has to decide if he wants it and if the Giants can meet his asking price.
- Adam McCalvy outlines all the roster decisions the Brewers have to make this winter.
- Andy McCullough explains why the Brewers might consider trading All-Star Freddy Peralta (The Athletic sub. req.) this winter.
- Mike Axisa asks what’s next for the Brewers?
- Will Sammon asks if the Mets could trade for Tigers ace Tarik Skubal this winter. (The Athletic sub. req.)
- John Harper reports that any Mets trade for Skubal would be “complicated.”
- Sad news as former Yankees and Mariners catcher Jesús Montero died after a traffic accident at age 35. Montero was once a top prospect for whom stardom was predicted. Our sympathies go out to Montero’s family, friends and former teammates.
- And finally, a new documentary is coming out called Diamond Diplomacy about the ways that baseball has been used to unite the United States and Japan.
