Newsletter Excerpt, November 7, 2025 -- "QOs and DePo's"

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The NFL hasn’t worked out for DePodesta, and you can understand his taking an opportunity to return to where he had his greatest success. DePodesta is smart and data-driven, traits the Rockies desperately need. My biggest concern is just the length of time he’s been gone; baseball, and particularly player analysis and development, has aged a century in the last decade. The metrics, the tools, the thinking are nothing like the game DePodesta left in 2016. Even assuming he’s kept up a little as a long-time baseball guy with an interest in the sport, he’s going to have to learn a lot in a short period of time. He’s also going to have to drag the Rockies into the 2020s by building out a modern player development system almost from scratch.
 

 

 

 

Awards

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)

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My picks for the major awards:

 

AL MVP: Aaron Judge, Yankees

AL Cy Young: Tarik Skubal, Tigers

AL Rookie of the Year: Nick Kurtz, Athletics

 

NL MVP: Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers

NL Cy Young: Paul Skenes, Pirates

NL Rookie of the Year: Drake Baldwin, Braves

 

I don't pick Managers of the Year. 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, November 4, 2025 -- "Postseason 2025: Coda"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)

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By the end of the World Series, I am usually done. (I did, in fact, sleep for the better part of the last two days.) On Sunday, though, I wanted Game Eight. I did not want to let this Series go. I wanted more Shohei, more Mookie, more Vladito. I wanted more of that catcher shaped like a mailbox and that right-handed pitcher who looks like a movie star. I wanted more of that 22-year-old in his first pro season shoving on a $150 million lineup, and the 37-year-old on his way into retirement getting one last big out with the bases loaded in the 12th inning. More Daulton Varsho diving, more Ernie Clement raking, more Justin Wrobleski dealing. More people learning who those three guys even are. 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, November 2, 2025 -- "Postseason 2025: One Inch"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)

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IKF was out by an inch. If he gets a bigger lead, if he gets a better jump, if he runs through the plate instead of sliding, the Blue Jays are World Champions today. (An inning later, Mookie Betts would repeat the last mistake.) For all the energy we spent on Addison Barger’s choices Friday night, and for all the Blue Jays’ baserunning errors in this Series, Kiner-Falefa’s awful path from third to home was the most costly of all. 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, November 1, 2025 -- "Postseason 2025: A Play"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)

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"Dave Roberts flailed a bit as well. It may just be that Roberts and I have such wildly divergent opinions of his pitchers that I’m going to disagree with everything he does. I thought he left Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who wasn’t as sharp as he’d been in Game Two, in a batter too long. Yamamoto retired Daulton Varsho in the sixth with two on and two out to escape the inning. Turning to Justin Wrobleski, who is probably his best reliever, Roberts got a shutout inning with two strikeouts on 16 pitches. Rather than leave Wrobleski in for the eighth, he went to Roki Sasaki." 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 30, 2025 -- "Postseason 2025: Yes, Shovage"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)

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I’m curious whether the marathon game caused these last two Dodger losses. You would expect a nearly seven-hour game to affect older players more than younger ones. The Dodgers have the oldest set of position players in baseball, with a playing-time weighted age of 30.7. The Blue Jays are more than two years younger at 28.1. Of the 19 players with at least ten plate appearances in the Series, seven of the eight youngest play for the Blue Jays, and the eighth, Andy Pages, has been benched.