Newsletter Excerpt, October 9, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: Overmanaging"

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Stephen Vogt has won the last two AL Manager of the Year awards, and Will Venable is going to win this year’s. This week, though, both have overmanaged, making this series the least watchable of any so far. I can appreciate tactical intrigue, but we’ve seen 49 pitching appearances in four games. That’s not intriguing, it’s exasperating. 

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Newsletter Excerpt, October 8, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: Balls to the Wall"

 

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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He thought it was gone, walking backwards across home plate, watching, bathing in the crowd’s cheers.

I thought it was gone, and even as the ball flew towards deep center, I was mentally rewriting my lede and wondering who would pitch the ninth for the Brewers.

The crowd...the crowd knew it was gone. Look at their faces as the ball descends. It’s their time. No roof here. 

Garrett Mitchell knew it wasn’t gone. Already playing deep, he worked back towards the wall, feeling the grass give way to the track, clocking the ball’s flight. If you take the context out, the game, the series, the crowd, the wall, it’s a pretty routine fly ball. He makes a short leap to catch the ball, fighting the hands of Padres fans reaching for team history.

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Newsletter Excerpt, October 7, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: King For A (Second) Day"

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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Enter Michael King. King, the team’s #1 starter, who had allowed one run in 12 playoff innings, including five frames on Sunday, stepped up to throw two innings of shutout relief to lock down the Padres’ 4-3 win over the Brewers, extending the NLDS at least one more day. 

This was not a great option for Stammen, but it did seem he’d planned for it. He lifted Pivetta in the fifth and rapidly went through Jason Adam, Yuki Mastui, and Bradgley Rodriguez to set up King. The righty starter was clearly not himself, picking up some extra velo out of the pen but having problems commanding his arsenal. He got just five called strikes and two whiffs on 40 pitches. He was bleeding velocity in the ninth. Jake Bauers, William Contreras, and Brice Turang made him work hard in the ninth, eating 20 pitches on a strikeout and two walks. 

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Newsletter Excerpt, October 6, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: Reset"

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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Note that I’ve described a lot of balls in play. This was an off night for Cam Schlittler, who didn’t have the stuff we’re used to seeing from him. He induced just seven swings-and-misses on the night, and in those spots where he needed a strikeout, he couldn’t get one. Schlittler gave up 11 hard-hit balls to 23 batters and struck out just two men, his lowest in a start since last year’s ALDS against the Blue Jays. He picked a bad night to have a bad night.

Schlittler carried the Yankees for six months, and on a night he needed to be helped out a bit, the hitters, the defense, and the bullpen gave him less than no support. Jacob Misiorowski, his counterpart in the NL, also had a bad start, but his team backed him with solid defense, a couple of big RISP hits, and five shutout innings of relief. Schlittler got none of that.

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Newsletter Excerpt, October 5, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: Six Pitches, Three Minutes, Two Runs, One Hero"

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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Fastball, 103.5, foul ball, 1-2

Pitch #38 was Miller’s best effort at ending the proceedings. It was the hardest pitch he threw all night, the hardest one he’d thrown in weeks, one of the ten hardest he threw all season. History won’t remember, but it was 103.5 and dotted, just above the bottom of the zone and right edge of it. Eno Sarris’s Stuff+ graded it as “Holy crap!” If he throws that pitch 100 times, on 95 of them the game ends.

Jackson Chourio fouled it straight back, and hours later, I really have no idea how he did it. To be 22 and have those hands, that kind of hand-eye, and that level of baseball instinct. For five minutes before I die, let me feel the way Chourio did in extending the game by spoiling a nearly perfect pitch.

It’s not that I’ll ever forget how the game ended, but Chourio fouling off 103 down and on the black in a slider count is going to stay with me just as long.

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Newsletter Excerpt, October 4, 2026 -- "Postseason 2026: Thinking Inside the Box"

 

 

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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                 AB  R  H  BI

France 1B         4  0  1   0

So let’s start here: Ty France’s boxscore line probably would not have changed even if his ninth-inning fly ball had not hit a part of American Family Field’s roof. The ball, hit at 105.3 mph off the bat at a 49-degree angle, was highly unlikely to leave the yard. Statcast had it an expected batting average of .050, and a homer only in Daikin Park, home of the Crawford boxes. Go digging a bit, you find that balls hit at a 49-degree angle almost never become homers, and when they do, they’re hit harder, or in an unusual ballpark, or aided by wind. This isn’t “it would have been impossible for it to be a homer,” but rather, “all of the evidence we have suggests that it would have been highly unlikely.”

So why the big hullaballoo? The booth. Going off their eyes and France’s reaction, color analysts A.J. Pierzynski and Adam Wainwright very quickly decided that France’s ball, unimpeded, would have left the yard. Their reactions set the tone for the public conversation. They were wrong.

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