Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Lo and behold, the Tribune did some honest-to-goodness reporting over the weekend with a story on the Cubs’ Marquee Network. It seems that ratings have plummeted fifty-six percent since network’s debut in 2020. Now, this is where it gets interesting—the Cubs are taking in $90 million-plus in yearly TV rights from the venture, better than the $60 million they were pulling down when the team was part of a joint venture with the Blackhawks, Bulls and White Sox. How do they do it, you might ask? People like me make it possible. If I want a cable package with sports, I have to pay for Marquee, never mind I don’t want to watch the North Siders unless they’ve lost at least fifteen in a row. Now, consider that every MLB team gets in the ballpark of $100 million each year in revenue sharing. In other words, no matter how bad the Cubs might be, they start the season with $190 million, give or take, in the bank. That should be a problem for Cubs’ fans to deal with. It should not be a problem that I contribute to by paying my monthly cable bill.

Dusty Baker

“The leaves are falling like raindrops,” commented my wife on our hike today along a trail at Morton Arboretum, west of the city. She was right. In fact, not only could you see the leaves fall, you could hear them, too. I wonder if the ten-year old walking past us in his Astros’ tee-shirt noticed. Off of last night’s 6-5 ten-inning loss to the Phillies in game one of the World Series, a whole bunch of Astros’ fans may have been distracted today. Their team blew a five-run lead. The last time that happened was twenty years ago, when the Giants did it in the 2002 World Series. What do the Astros and that Giants’ team have in common? Dusty Baker as manager. I don’t get the affection thrown Baker’s way. His teams—Giants, Cubs, Reds, Nationals, Astros—have all lost in the postseason. So far, Baker hasn’t won a World Series for the life of him. Then again, this is a man who made a habit of doing his Sergeant Schutlz imitation when it came to Barry Bonds and PEDs. Baker knew nothing, nothing, about that. Whether or not the Astros rebound to win the Series, people will keep pushing to get Baker into Cooperstown. In which case, put his plaque next to Tony La Russa’s and Bud Selig’s. Sergeant Schultz, each and every one.

Pathetic, with a Capital P

This being Friday, the once-mighty Chicago Tribune ran its now-customary six-page sports’ section, all the news that fits, I guess. But if I went to the e-edition, I could “check out a 4-page digital-only World Series preview.” They shouldn’t have bothered. Page one consisted of photos, the World Series trophy most of all. Page two featured a story on Dusty Baker pulled from the Sacramento Bee. Page three was a Philadelphia Inquirer story on the Phillies, which left page four for an AP piece on Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. Obviously, not worth the paper it could’ve been printed on. In some ways, this is karma. The Tribune under the longtime auspices of Colonel Robert R. McCormick was a reactionary powerhouse the envy of Rupert Murdoch. How the mighty of fallen. A paper that all but created the All-Star Game on its own is now reduced to cut-and-paste on the internet for its World Series preview. There was a decent story in the sports’ section proper on the Series, but there should’ve been a whole lot more. Regrettably, those days are long gone, like the Colonel.

Agonistes, South Side

As I’ve said, if the Second Coming coincides with a Bears’ game, the Chicago media will cover the Munsters first, Jesus second, space permitting. That’s just the way it is in these parts. Baseball, basketball and hockey fans can either accept that reality or go nuts, their choice. The 2-4 Bears played the 3-3 Patriots Monday night, and I got to read about the Munsters’ 33-14 upset win in the morning papers. I swear there were times this year when the Sox or Cubs have played on the East Coast, the game was over at nine, and there’d be no hardcopy story the next morning. And I’ve started checking online, too. Again, I swear there’ve been times… Who doesn’t want to beat Bill Belichick? I sure didn’t want the Munsters to lose. And they play the Cowboys next. America’s team, Jerry Jones? I think not. Another upset, please. But if that wish is answered, it comes at a cost to Jesus and a whole lot of football agnostics. Such is life for a South Sider these days.

Compare and Contrast

If my daughter were Rob Manfred, the World Series would start tomorrow, with at least some chance of finishing in October. Somehow, November does not easily lend itself to the idea of a “Fall Classic.” If only Manfred’s ways were Clare’s. Speaking of and with my daughter the other day, I mentioned how similar—and yet so very different—her buddy Kyle Schwarber is to possibly her least favorite White Sox player of all time, that being Adam Dunn. As for the similar part, baseball-reference.com used career figures to project Dunn at thirty-seven homeruns and ninety-five RBIs with a .237 BA over a 162-game season. With Schwarber, its’s thirty-nine/eighty-eight/.233. But figures don’t begin to tell the story here. Dunn never went to the postseason in fourteen seasons; in contrast, Schwarber has played in the postseason in all but one of his eight years in the majors. Some of that is luck, and some of it is reputation. Bat .412 in a seven-game World Series the way Schwarber did in 2016 (accumulating more at-bats than he did in the regular season that year), and teams take notice. Which is why the Red Sox and Phillies both have wanted him. Schwarber has that “it” factor that enlivens a dugout and clubhouse. When Dunn hit a homerun, he trotted around the bases, took his high-fives and sat down. Schwarber connects, and his teammates all join in the party. Dunn was a downer, Schwarber is a scintillator. And those are the guys who, barring injury, can play forever.

On the One Hand/On the Other

First and foremost, the Yankees won’t be going to the World Series. I’ll leave it to Chris Russo to add the dagger, “again.” I wonder if it’s a day of mourning throughout the state of New Jersey? My notion of a well-built baseball roster definitely would not be the Yankees, not with all the thirty-year old players they have. Then again, I wouldn’t pick the Phillies, either. Bryce Harper has always struck me as nice, but overrated and overpaid, talent. The same goes for J.T. Realmuto while Nick Castellanos is just overrated. But not this year. This is the kind of team Kenny Williams always tried to put together, if on the cheap. Take a gamble; spend the money; and it works. Once in a while, at least. If I were the Yankees, I’d want to know what paying Gerrit Cole $324 million got me. Calling Scott Boras. And I see that baseball-reference.com gives Mr. Castellanos a --0.1 WAR on the regular season. What would his agent say to that? Then again, Castellanos hit well against Atlanta in the NLDS. Go figure. Then sit back and enjoy a World Series that promises to stretch into November. Brrr.

Can't Bear to Look

Some people can’t bear to look in the mirror for fear of what they might see. SoxFest is that mirror for Jerry Reinsdorf and loyal underlings. Yesterday, the White Sox announced there’d be no fan convention next year “due to several factors.” Funny, I just looked but couldn’t find the announcement posted on the team website. Anyway, I’m pretty sure the motivation for cancelling was fear of peasants showing up with pitchforks, proverbial and otherwise. What a gutless bunch. This move leads me to suspect that a hot rumor making the rounds currently, that the Sox will interview Ozzie Guillen next week, is more hope than fact. If the Sox were going to hire Guillen, why cancel SoxFest? It would make Woodstock look like a wardens’ convention.

Who Knew?

We were driving home from a trip to Nordstrom’s and the Container Store (and how we got out of there in under a day is a miracle), when Clare called. Michele put her on speaker for me to hear, “I’m glad for Kyle Schwarber.” Who knew? Keep in mind this is a girl who wore an A.J. Pierzynski jersey to her bachelorette party, held in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. This is also the person I once advised to keep her anti-Cub views bottled up for an upcoming White Sox-Cubs’ game at Wrigley lest her future husband pay the price for his beloved’s smart mouth. Still, I could understand. My daughter was known for her bat throughout high school and college. In college, she was moved from second base to the outfield. And she had a little bit of Rodney Dangerfield about her, respect-wise. In an intersquad game at the start of her sophomore year, Clare went 5-for-6, with a homerun and two doubles. Afterwards, the coach said if someone like Clare could perform like that, they all could. Ouch. During his time with the Cubs, Schwarber moved between the outfield and first base, with a handful of games at catcher, his natural position. Clare has always been irritated that Schwarber tore his ACL at the start of the 2016 season, a catcher or first baseman forced to play the outfield. Call it professional empathy, if only girls could play baseball at the major-league level. Schwarber is still playing more outfield than DH, but I’m pretty sure that’s where he’ll end up fulltime before long; he turns thirty next year. As for his new team, the Phillies, what can you say? I mean Schwarber is batting leadoff, his forty-six homeruns accounting for only ninety-four RBIs, though he did score 100 runs. The Phillies shouldn’t work, but they do this year. It’s entirely possible eighty-seven wins in the regular season could lead to a World Series’ crown. And at least one South Sider rooting for the Phillies’ leadoff hitter.

What If?

A story in today’s Sun-Times indicates Chicago-area voters aren’t keen on the idea of subsidizing a Bears’ stadium in Arlington Heights, not that the Munsters have asked, not yet anyway. How times have changed. The White Sox got a free stadium in 1991—they pay rent, though no one seems to know exactly how much—by threatening to move to Florida; before that, they thought they could get a nice subsidy because, as a team brochure from the time put it, “This is an economic reality of baseball today!” today being 1986. I bet you the Bears wish it was still 1986. Fresh off a Super Bowl win, they could’ve had the facility of their dreams. And if the Sox had gotten their way and built in west-suburban Cook County? My guess, based off the god-awful concept drawing in that brochure showing a series of exterior ramps straight out of a parking garage, is they would’ve been hollering for a new stadium by now. And they would’ve wanted back into the city, and they would’ve taken a stadium on the land that once housed Comiskey Park. The more things change…

On the Radio Dial

Visits to the hospital have been replaced with visits to the rehab center. Getting there from here takes two tollways and a state highway. Ever since Ed Farmer died, the White Sox on the radio are a hard listen for me. Len Kasper is fine, I just get so wrapped up in games I become a hazard on the road; e-6 could lead to road rage. Same thing with the Cubs’ duo of Pat Huges and Ron Coomer. Them I can‘t stand, a sentiment that manifests itself by constant screaming. Passengers and fellow motorists are not amused. Football, though, I can listen to, if only as a way to pass the time on the way to a destination that holds little, if any, enjoyment. Sunday, we listened to the Jets-Packers’ game, made especially pleasurable by Aaron Rodgers losing performance; I’m that much of a Bears’ fan. The play-by-play got me to thinking of two voices long passed. If you never heard Jack Brickhouse call a game with gossip columnist Irv Kupcinet at his side providing color, you missed one of the greatest comedy teams of all time. No Munsters’ miscue, regardless how monumentally bad, could stop Brickhouse and his buddy “Kup” from pouring on the whitewash. Take the second quarter, and we’re in this game. It’s a short pass on fourth down, No, wait, the [fill in the blank for the opponent] blocked Bobby Joe Green’s punt! It just wasn’t the Bears’ day, Kup. That’s right, Jack. If the people at the front desk wondered why I was smiling so, it was memories of Martin and Lewis behind the microphone going through their signature routine. The emperor has wonderful new clothes, George Halas a good football team.

If Just for a Day, or Two

Well, this just got interesting. The sabermetrics’ crowd must be pulling at their collective hair after the Yankees outhomered the Guardians last night 3-0, only to lose the game 6-5 on five ninth-inning Cleveland singles, the last one by Oscar Gonzalez (who sure looks like Frank Thomas, circa 1990) on a 1-2 pitch with two out, two runs scoring. Oh, the horror. Wait, there’s more. Over in San Diego, the Padres overcame a 3-0 seventh-inning deficit against the Dodgers, scoring five runs on four singles, a double and a walk. The winningest team in all of baseball had no answer. Instead, LA batters went six-up, six-down, to lose the deciding NLDS game, 5-3. Better yet, the last four Dodgers all struck out. Dare I hope the Guardians manage one more win tonight or tomorrow to deny baseball a big-market World Series? Try and stop me.

Just for a Day

No doubt, the powers that be in baseball are hoping for a Yankees-Dodgers’ World Series. Guardians-Padres, not so much. But it was fun to see those two teams win yesterday while employing lots of small-ball and old-school baseball. In New York (and God help us if aliens ever judge humanity’s fate on the behavior of Yankees’ fans), the long ball was nowhere to be seen when it counted most, that being the tenth inning of a 2-2 game. Jose Ramirez blooped a ball to left and immediately thought two bases, forcing a hurried throw to second from Josh Donaldson. Donaldson’s throw sailed into the outfield, and Ramirez made third base. Somewhere, Tim Anderson is smiling. Oscar Gonzalez followed with a bloop of his own to score Ramirez. That brought up Josh Naylor, who must’ve thought he was in Chicago the way he doubled over the head of center fielder Harrison Bader; Gonzalez scored from first on Naylor’s double. That gave Cleveland closer Emmanuel Clase a 4-2 lead going into his second inning of work. And, guess what? Not a Yankee reached the fences in the bottom of the tenth, not even with a runner on and one out. Nope. In fact, the Bronx Bombers fanned fifteen times while collecting just one homerun. All of which makes today’s game in Cleveland all the more interesting. As to the Padres-Dodgers, San Diego held Los Angeles to one run on six hits. The mighty Dodgers struck out twelve times in a 2-1 game, including twice in the ninth inning. Wait for the long ball, die by the long ball. Of course, everything could change today. Aaron Judge may stop striking out (seven times in eight at-bats against Guardians’ pitching), and the Dodgers could return to their hammering ways. But I hope not.

McCaskey, Barnum and Bailey

With a few more games like last night’s 12-7 loss to the Washington Commanders, the Bears’ Justin Fields may go down as the second, right-handed, coming of Bobby Douglass. Where will the pass go, how many yards will he run for in a loss? This is all so fittingly McCaskey. When the White Sox looked to sidle up to the public trough for a new stadium, they made it seem like a good deal because they had so many talented young players, starting with Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura and Jack McDowell. Sox fans could be forgiven to think a necessary deal had been made with the devil, a classic ballpark in exchange for a boatload of talent that would win for a decade or more. They know better now a la Joni Mitchell. And the Bears have what? Right, a young quarterback who doesn’t seem to be improving. But, hey, the McCaskeys want to build a state-of-the-art sports-and-entertainment complex out in Arlington Park. And they say they’ll only ask for public money for the entertainment part. Maybe by the time they move into their new home, they’ll have that quarterback thing figured out. Just kidding. There’s an old Polish saying—not my circus, not my monkeys. Not my Bears.

Talking

Clare and I have been talking a lot since the season ended about who the White Sox should hire to replace Tony La Russa in the dugout. We’re both pretty much in agreement that Miguel Cairo showed enough in the interim role to get the nod. My daughter also asked me, sort of, if she was doing the right thing with her son, with the mom putting a foam baseball in his fourteen-month-old hands and the father opting for a football. Sounds good to me. From what I gather, some parents want to get their kids on a Harvard track, ASAP, while others are content to shove a screen in their hands as soon as they’re big enough to hold one. Clare and Chris, bless their parental hearts, don’t want their son getting addicted to cartoons and video games before he can even talk. As for Harvard, it can wait. Leo was over the other day and found a pair of my shoes under the bed; this proved an endless source of delight. He lifted one of them up; inspected it all around; stuck a hand inside; and touched the outside. Back went the shoes under the bed, back went the baby to play with the shoes. “Do you know what he was doing?” I asked after our latest breakdown of managerial candidates. “He was learning about color, texture, size and weight. Those are all valuable lessons.” Along with throwing the right ball, of course.

Echoes

For the past few days, I’ve been thinking of a time when I was in my twenties, driving out West. Either Dan or Jim was with me, the one dead now for sixteen years, the other someone I haven’t spoken to in a decade or more. We had no business driving at night on a road that snaked through the mountains, but this is what people do in their twenties. I have a sense I was behind the wheel—it was my father’s Ford Galaxie 500, and I felt responsible—while Dan or Jim played with the radio dial. The only light for miles around was generated by the Ford’s high beams and the dashboard, which was probably too weak to show the fear etched on our faces. Out of nowhere, which was just outside our windows, the radio started broadcasting an Oakland A’s game. The voices faded in and out, my co-pilot forever fiddling with the nob so that we could hear someone who had nothing to do with driving through the mountain darkness. That game kept our focus and may have saved two young lives. I was visiting in the hospital yesterday and put on the Phillies-Braves’ NLDS game. The patient didn’t particularly care for baseball but knew that I did. This is just one in a lifetime of examples of his all-around decency. We talked, watched the game, and then he was gone for tests. They brought him back just after Philadelphia had held on for a 7-6 win. “Is there another game on?” he wondered, but I had to go.

Both

Baseball is in equal parts beautiful and cruel. Anyone who ever stepped into Comiskey Park off of 35th Street can attest to the former; that lush green field practically jumped across the main concourse to greet fans. The Guardians’ fifteen-inning, walk-off win against the Rays on Saturday also qualifies. As for cruel, consider the Phillies’ the sweep of the Cardinals in their wild card series. If sentiment ruled in sports, the Cardinals would’ve taken two games in St. Louis, where the fans were hoping to see Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina stave off retirement until at least the NLDS. Instead, the Cards gave up six ninth-inning runs—all after one out and nobody on—to lose 6-3in game one before getting shut out 2-0 in game two. See you in…Cooperstown in five years, guys. The Mets losing to the Padres could qualify as either beautiful or cruel, depending on your perspective. Me, I see the team with the highest payroll in baseball ($282.7 million) lose two out of three, and it makes me think. Why do owners want a salary cap/luxury tax? Mets’ owner Steve Cohen didn’t care how much a winner cost. He bought and bought players until he thought he had enough talent for a World Series’ title. Nope. Between the humiliation and the cost of all those contracts, that’s true market discipline, folks. In my humble opinion, owners would be wise to drop the luxury tax for some kind of salary relief on arbitration. I have no problems with the most talented players getting the most they can, but the B players who cash in through arbitration? No, and if that makes me a mouthpiece for management, so be it. Of course, management wants no part of such a deal. That’s both stupid and sad.

Question and Answer

Is there anything less funny than a clown? Yes, a sportswriter acting like a clown. I can think of two, one in the Sun-Times, the other in The Athletic, both extolling the virtues of Joe Maddon as the next White Sox manager. Joe Maddon the innovator would interest me, but that version of Maddon disappeared when he relocated to the North Side. Maddon was lucky to be in the right place at the right time in 2016, but the South Side in 2023 would count as wrong on both counts. Any clown should be able to see that.

Six Months and a World Away

You couldn’t ask for a prettier end to the season, all sunny with a temperature in the mid-seventies. Once upon a time, I would’ve leaned on my daughter to go to the game with me, but she’s all grown up now, with a family and career to tend to. But that didn’t stop Clare from calling on her way home from work, “to complain,” as she put it. “It’s the last game of the year, and they’re getting their butts kicked. Great. Now we have to wait until next year. But who knows what will happen by April?” She could’ve inserted any number of examples here, some good, many not. I tried to counsel her that White Sox baseball will be unfolding all through November and December, so she won’t need to wait for spring training in that regard. But you would like something to wash away the taste of a 10-1 shellacking by the Twins. On a beautiful day that won’t be often repeated until the leaves come back to remind us to look for baseball.

It All Depends

Elvis Andrus hit a three-run homer last night in the White Sox 8-3 win over the Twins. Since coming over from Oakland, Andrus has 25 runs scored and 28 RBIs in 177 at-bats. Tim Anderson, whose injury brought Andrus here, has 28 runs scored and 25 RBIs in 332 at-bats. Talk about production. That said, I wouldn’t sign the recently-turned thirty-four year old for next year. Then again, the Sox could trade Anderson, in which case signing Andrus to play short until rookie Colson Montgomery is ready would make sense. It all depends what direction the Sox choose to go. One thing I know for sure is they can’t keep Jose Abreu, Gavin Sheets and Greg Vaughn. Abreu has been great for nine seasons, but he turns thirty-six in January. And let’s not forget Eloy Jimenez. That’s four players best suited for first base or DH. As much as it pains me to say, I’d let Abreu walk. Of course, if Rick Hahn could pull off a great deal centered on Sheets or Vaughn, then it would make sense to keep Abreu. Too bad I don’t trust Hahn to channel his inner Roland Hemond. Whether Hahn steps up or pulls another James Shields, he’s going to have to do something. At least two of the ostensible core should go, either to shake things up or improve team speed and defense. Along those lines, Luis Robert would be the most likely to stay. But the Sox really need a second baseman. I was hoping Romy Gonzalez would seize the chance, but he’s struck out thirty-eight times in 101 at-bats. Move Yoan Moncada back to second and give Jake Burger a shot at third? Package Robert for middle-infield talent? It all depends.

Adieu

In what I’m guessing was his last start in a White Sox uniform, Johhny Cueto pitched seven innings for the win last night as the White Sox topped the Twins, 3-2. Unlike Tony La Russa, Cueto should be wearing a uniform, somewhere, next season. La Russa made it official in a press conference before the game, alluding to a second health problem that will keep him from managing next year. Along the way, he took a swipe at the media while talking about “love” and “family,” in all the wrong places, I might add. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Tony. Sox GM Rick Hahn dusted off his “was done by” voice to address the media as well. As quoted in today’s The Athletic, Hahn said, “If there ever got to the point where I felt like I wasn’t the right person in my role, I’d step aside.” Rick, we passed that point quite some time ago. Signing Dallas Keuchel, Yasmani Grandal and Joe Kelly while trading for A.J. Pollock and Jake Diekman would have gotten just about any general manager not employed by Jerry Reinsdorf fired. Lucky you. In all fairness to Hahn, he’s not a complete disaster. He can always point to trading for Dylan Cease and Eloy Jimenez and drafting Andrew Vaughn in his defense. Maybe he’ll outdo himself picking a new manager. If only we knew what Ozzie Guillen said behind closed doors to get himself blacklisted. Guillen is an actual Chicagoan, equal parts smart and profane, though I wish he lived south of Madison Street. But, as a player, he did reside in the same inner-ring suburb I call home. If Hahn were to rehire Ozzie, ticket sales would go through the roof. But, like I said, something happened behind closed doors. I don’t want Bruce Bochy; he’s too old and not a Spanish speaker. Miguel Cairo has done enough to deserve serious consideration. We’ll see. Hahn talked change through trades rather than free-agent signings. In which case, allow me to suggest….

Old School

Lance Lynn pitched seven innings of one-run ball in San Diego yesterday to pick up a 2-1 win. Elvis Andrus homered; Adam Engel singled in a run; and Jake Diekman didn’t pitch. Save no. thirty-six for Liam Hendriks. The White Sox used to win a lot of ballgames this way. Sox pitching recorded just eight strikeouts, so people actually had to catch the ball. Sox batters picked up just five hits, so they had to make them count. Somewhere, Billy Pierce and Nellie Fox are smiling. Tony La Russa is expected to announce his retirement today, which will kick off the search for a new manager. The only relevant question is, Will Jerry Reinsdorf leave well enough alone this time? You wonder what the over-and-under on that is.

Veeck as in Wreck

I could talk about how average Dylan Cease looked last night in a 5-2 loss to the Padres or how Elvis Andrus shouldn’t have been allowed back on the field after getting picked off of second base in the eighth inning, or how Jake Diekman gave up another run in relief, but why bother? It’s all been said before. Better to note the passing of Maryfrances Veeck last month at the age of 102. She was the wife of White Sox owner Bill Veeck and someone who was kind enough to do a blurb for the book I wrote on Comiskey Park. We stayed in touch for a while; Maryfrances liked smart people. Let’s just say she made me feel and act smart. Like her husband, Maryfrances never hid from people. After his death in 1986, she volunteered her time to several activities, often through her parish in Hyde Park. If you were on Maryfrances’s side, you knew you were on the right side. That knowledge kept me going to fight for the preservation of Comiskey Park. Maryfrances Veeck was right, the team her husband once owned so very wrong. I hope to live long enough to see that change someday. If only it happens by the time I reach 102.

Silver Linings

I keep reading how the White Sox have this competitive window and it’s closing. Buy into that, and you buy into the notion of compete/rebuild cycles. Why is it, then, that the Braves, Cardinals and Dodgers always seem to compete without ever needing to rebuild? A good part of the answer is that they draft well, no matter how low their draft position might be any particular year. Consider that the Braves chose third baseman Austin Riley with the last pick of the first round in 2015 while we took Carson Fulmer. Rookie sensation center fielder Michael Harris went in the third round in 2019, well after we’d picked pitcher Andrew Dalquist, who so far has a 5.73 ERA over three minor-league seasons. And, before I forget, we picked catcher Zack Collins in 2016 ahead of either Gavin Lux or Will Smith, both taken by the Dodgers in the first round. The Sox also had two picks that draft, the second being reliever Zack Burdi. You know what that means, right? We could’ve drafted both Lux and Smith. Not only did Collins and Burdi go bust, we missed out on a second baseman and catcher who’ve both looked very good in LA, Smith back of the plate in particular. So, it was nice to see rookie pitcher Davis Martin and second-year right fielder Gavin Sheets play major roles in last night’s 3-1 win over Yu Darvish and the Padres. Martin won his third game of the year by giving up one run on six hits over 5.2 innings, with eight strikeouts against zero walks. Martin finishes the season with a 3.65 ERA and 1.18 WHIP over 61.2 innings. Not bad for a fourteenth-round draft choice back in 2018. Sheets, meanwhile, chipped in with two hits, including his nineteenth double of the year and a run scored. Just as important was his fourth outfield assist of the season, which cut down Jurickson Profar at the plate in the bottom of the fifth inning with what would’ve been the tying run. Thank you very much. Sheets, a second-round pick in 2017, looked clueless at the plate back in May and June. He’s turned things around with fifteen homers and fifty-one RBIs in 364 at-bats, numbers to intrigue his current team or a possible new one if another general manager wants to acquire a left-handed bat connected to a 6’5” body. I’d rather he stays, but we’ll see. What counts is seeing players you’ve developed thrive. So, last night makes this season a little less of a disaster and gives me something to dream about come winter.