— ESPN had a good day Wednesday; three of the four Wild Card series are tied 1-1, so we have three winner-take-all games Thursday. Winner-take-all games get good ratings.
Here is the schedule:
3:00 Tigers @ Cleveland
5:00 Padres @ Chicago
8:00 Red Sox @ New York
This is the first time since 1981 there are three winner-take-all games on the same day.
— Guardians 6, Tigers 1
Cleveland scored five runs in the bottom of the 8th.
Rocchio, Naylor homered in that 8th inning.
Flaherty vs Cecconi is Thursday’s matchup.
— Padres 3, Cubs 0
San Diego bullpen got 16 outs, allowed one baserunner.
Machado hit a 2-run homer in the fifth inning.
Darvish vs Taillon is Thursday’s matchup.
— New York 4, Red Sox 3
Austin Wells had game-winning hit, in the 8th inning.
Trevor Story knocked in all three Boston runs.
Early vs Schlittler is Thursday’s matchup.
— Dodgers 8, Reds 4
Mookie Betts went 4-for-5, with three RBI
Spots 7-9 in Dodger batting order went 7-12 with five runs scored.
Dodgers move on to play the Phillies in the next round.
— Monday in New York City, Mets’ president of baseball operations David Stearns hosted a press conference the day after the Mets’ season ended without the Mets making the playoffs, even though their payroll was $340,085,003.
What went wrong? Mets were 45-25 on June 13th, then went 38-54 the rest of the season.
Lot of tough questions at the news conference, Stearns kept his cool, it is all part of the job, but it had to be a rough couple of hours for him.
Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso earned a combined $125,975,000 this year, that’s $126M for three guys, but three really good guys, money well spent. Some of the other high-paid players didn’t do so well.
$22,009,731- Sean Manaea
$20,250,000- Brandon Nimmo
$19,500,000- Starling Marte
$17,000,000- Frankie Montas
$7,500,000- Jesse Winker
These are the guys that Stearns has to answer for; the Marlins had a payroll of $69,510,827 and they went 79-83, only four games behind the Mets.
By way of comparison, Stearns’ old team, the Milwaukee Brewers had the #23 payroll this year, $115,136,217, and they got a first round bye in the playoffs.
— Famous birthdays, October 2nd:
Lorraine Bracco, 71
Dave Beard, 66
Mark Rypien, 63
Kelly Ripa, 55
Aaron McKie, 53
Tyson Chandler, 43
Joe Ingels, 38
Lance McCullers Jr, 32
— Brian Snitker won’t be back as manager of the Atlanta Braves next year; he went 835-691 in 10 years managing the Braves, winning the 2021 World Series, but Snitker is going to be 70 in a couple weeks, and the Braves went 76-86 this year, their first losing season since 2017.
— Colorado Rockies went 43-119 this year; they fired GM Bill Schmidt this week, largely because their team really sucks- the last three years, they’ve lost 323 games. Colorado had winning years as recently as 2017-2018, but that seems like a long time ago.
— Red Sox P Garrett Crochet threw 100+ pitches in 16 games this season, the most of any major league pitcher this year.
— Movie of the Day: Hustle (2022)- A basketball scout discovers a great ballplayer in Spain, and sees the prospect as his chance to move up from scouting to being an assistant coach.
Adam Sandler is the scout, Queen Latifah is his wife, Robert Duvall has a cameo as the owner of the 76ers, and a lot of NBA players appear in the movie.
If you like basketball, you’ll like this movie. It is really good.
— Cleveland Browns will start rookie QB Dillon Gabriel Sunday when they play the Vikings in London; Browns scored only 14 ppg in their 1-3 start.
Gabriel will become the 41st different quarterback the Browns have started since returning to the NFL in 1999, the most in the league during that time.
— Last 25 years, 2018 Houston Texans are the only team that started a season 0-3 and made the playoffs that year.
— Pitches thrown by the starting pitchers the last couple days:
Tigers- Skubal 107, Mize 62
Guardians- Williams 88, Bibee 87
Red Sox- Crochet 117, Bello 28
Bronx- Fried 102, Rodon 91
Padres- Pivetta 85, Cease 69
Cubs- Boyd 58, Imanaga 67 (opener Kittredge threw 20)
Reds- Greene 65, Littell 52
Dodgers- Snell 91, Yamamoto 113
