Newsletter Excerpt, October 22, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: World Series Preview"

 

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The Rays’ path to a championship is through their starting rotation. Drew Rasmussen, Freddy Peralta, and Nick Martinez, in some order, pound the strike zone, deny free passes and make opponents try to win on batted balls. Those guys turn things over to the Rays’ bullpen, and you’ve heard me on those stats: third-best record when leading after six, best when leading after seven, 85-0 when leading after eight. Even with Cash throwing Seymour to the wolves, the Rays’ pen has coughed up just one lead in these playoffs, and none after the sixth inning. 

The Brewers, the better team during the season by a significant amount, the more impressive team in these playoffs while playing a more difficult slate, just have more ways to win. They can draw walks or generate offense on contact and one-run strategies. They can hit singles or homers. They can strike batters out and make plays on defense. They have more lineup depth and bullpen depth. As we saw against the Dodgers and Padres, they can win from behind. 

As I write this, there’s some doubt about how the Rays will lay out their starting rotation. I don’t think it will matter to anything but the series length. Brewers in six, maybe five if Martinez starts Game One.

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Newsletter Excerpt, October 21, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: Rest vs. Rust, Third Time Around"

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.

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Since 2022, teams coming off long rest and holding a rest edge have gone 13-12 in their first game back. That described the Dodgers against the Blue Jays in World Series Game One last year, when the Jays jumped them for an 11-4 win. The Dodgers’ loss last year added to a very small sample of results, since 2012, in which one team started an LCS or the World Series with at least five days’ rest. 

I wrote this last year:

I wonder if there is something to getting past four days, which is the length of the modern All-Star break, that has an effect. Since 2012, teams playing the first game of an LCS or World Series with at least five days’ rest and a rest advantage over their opponent have gone 1-4 [now 1-5] in the first game back. That’s a sample size of five [now six] games, so I went back to the start of the century: Since 2001, LCS and Series teams with at least five days’ rest and a rest advantage are 5-9 [now 5-10] in their first game back. 

I’m not 100% convinced this is signal, but it at least directionally supports the idea that once you get to five days off at this point in October, teams may be a bit thrown off by the rest.

The Brewers enter Friday’s Game One after seven days off and with a four-day rest advantage over the Rays.

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Newsletter Excerpt, October 20, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: Tampa Bay Hur-Rays"

 

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Caminero and Diaz hit those homers off pitchers who didn’t have much left to give. Even with the rainout, a blowout loss, and some offdays, Cade Smith and Hunter Gaddis had been worked extremely hard over the last couple of weeks. The two of them pitched in nine of the Guardians’ 11 playoff games over 17 days. Nine appearances in 17 days would be a lot for a reliever in the regular season; to pitch so often in postseason conditions was that much harder. Vogt’s decision to lift Parker Messick after two innings in Game Five was a factor in the team’s Game Six loss. Vogt got 13 2/3 innings from Messick in four starts, turned his #3, Foster Griffin, into a bulk guy, and buried his #4, Tanner Bibee. He simply went too far in turning games over to his bullpen this month, needing to have more faith in what was a good rotation. The quality of the Guardians’ core and the weakness of the AL Central means Vogt will likely have more chances to get it right.

Debating the pitching decisions of a manager whose team scored three runs a game, and two runs a game over the final five contests, seems a little beside the point. There’s probably nothing Stephen Vogt could have done to change the fact that the Guardians didn’t hit the ball hard enough to put runs on the board. After having no barreled balls in Game Five, they had just one, DeLauter’s double off Peralta, in Game Six. For the series, they slugged .325 with ten extra-base hits, and until last night, the Rays had taken away the Guardians’ walks: 11 allowed in the first five games. 

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Newsletter Excerpt, October 19, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: Thinking Inside the Bunt"

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Simpson took a fastball on the inner half for strike one. Gaddis went back to his four-seamer, this time over the outer half, and Simpson quickly squared and dropped a bunt down the third-base line. This wasn’t a sacrifice attempt, boxscore be damned, this was a bunt for a hit, and it was perfect. The ball bounced on the dirt, hopped on to the grass, and stayed there instead of kicking foul like many bunts do. This one hugged the edge of the turf like an old friend. Given Simpson’s speed, it was as clean a hit as any 450-foot homer.

[Jose Ramirez has entered the chat]

The first thing you notice, when the camera angle changes, is Ramirez sharply changing direction. He’d been playing in on the grass, because with a runner on first and Simpson up, a bunt was likely. Ramirez, though, had been shaded towards the middle of the diamond, so to play this perfect bunt, he had to move to his right. He made that adjustment not in a direct line, the way you might angle towards a fly ball, but with a quick step that resembled a wide receiver’s cut. This one step was critical, because without it, Ramirez would have been moving away from first base when he fielded the ball, and unable to get much on his throw. Instead, Ramirez is able to barehand the ball, plant his leg and throw.

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Newsletter Excerpt, October 18, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: Up Top Shows Up"

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.

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So if we’re looking back in a few days at a Rays’ series win, we can circle a three-pitch sequence in the third inning of the Rays’ 7-3 win yesterday. With the team down 1-0, two outs and nobody on, Diaz went with a good two-seam fastball on the outer edge and lined it into the right-center gap, stretching a double into a double. Two pitches later, Aranda, hitless in the series, broke his bat and that streak with a bloop single to center off a good sweeper. Foster Griffin hadn’t make a mistake, but the game was tied.

Then in the sixth inning, game still tied at one, Aranda worked a six-pitch walk from Daniel Espino. Chandler Simpson, batting third as a tactic to counter the Guardians’ use of an opener, walked on seven pitches. Espino got ahead of Caminero 0-2 and went after him with the high fastball that had been so effective in striking out Caminero in Games One and Three. This time, though, Caminero jumped on it, pulling it just over Jose Ramirez’s glove to score Aranda and give the Rays the lead. All three of the hitters atop the Rays lineup now had hits, and two had scored the team’s only runs.

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Newsletter Excerpt, October 17, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: Rain Delay Theatre"

 

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.

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I still think of rotations as five men in five days, with “normal” rest being four days. That’s really not the case any more. Rasmussen, to pick a guy, made seven starts on four days’ rest, 18 on five days’ rest, and five on six or more days’ rest. Peralta made ten starts on four days’ rest, 22 on five or more. Across MLB, just 29% of all starts were made on four days’ rest. The five-man rotation has really become a six-day rotation, another contributing factor to the diminishing workloads of starting pitchers. (Fantasy players have surely noticed the decline of two-start weeks over time.)

So knowing he’s getting just one more start from Rasmussen and Peralta each in this series, Cash has chosen to keep them on their usual six-day rotation rather than the every-fourth-game calendar that is more typical for the postseason. I don’t think it’s how I would have done it, but I can see the rationale. I would imagine, if the Rays advance, Cash will then use the two on four days’ rest in the first two games of the World Series.

(There’s a conversation that begins, “If they’re only going to pitch every sixth day or so, why can’t they pitch deeper into games?” that we can have in December. Pitcher development and usage are broken.)

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