Wednesday, September 16

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Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Today’s edition is brought to you by David Adler.

Here’s a headline: Powerhouse team clinches division behind best pitcher in baseball.  

Now guess what team, and what pitcher, we’re talking about. 

Could it be … the Brewers and Jacob Misiorowski? Yes. 

But could it also be … the Dodgers and Blake Snell? Maybe also yes. 

Milwaukee just clinched the National League Central behind Misiorowski, who’s been the best pitcher in the league this year. A day later, the Dodgers have the chance to clinch the NL West behind Snell — who might be the best pitcher in the league right now. 

Snell starts for L.A. tonight against the Reds (6:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV), and the Dodgers’ magic number is 1. They’ll clinch the division with a win or a Padres loss to the Rockies (that game starts at 8:40 p.m. ET).

And you could make the argument that, since the two-time Cy Young winner returned in August, there’s been no one better. 

Snell’s 1.04 ERA is the lowest of any pitcher who’s thrown at least 30 innings since the start of August. He’s 4-0 in his six starts, he hasn’t allowed more than a run in any of them, and he’s striking out 11.9 batters per nine innings.

Lowest ERA since start of August

Min. 30 IP 

1. Blake Snell: 1.04
2. Jesús Luzardo: 1.08
3. Max Fried: 1.49
4. Reid Detmers: 1.65
5. Cam Schlittler: 1.69

Everything is humming for Snell, too. His fastball is sitting at 96 mph, fifth highest among lefty starters, and opposing hitters are batting .137 with 20 strikeouts in 51 at-bats decided on the heater. And all of Snell’s secondaries are inducing swing-and-miss rates over 40% — 44% on his curveball, 44% on his changeup and 55% on his slider.

By pretty much every metric, he’s been dominating. If only he’d been healthy all year, we might be talking about Snell for a third Cy Young right about now. Either way, we’re looking at a guy who could be as good as anyone in the playoffs. 

 

 

GAMES OF THE NIGHT

We already had one huge game today — the Guardians beat the White Sox to retake the division lead in the AL Central, with Petey Halpin belting the clutch go-ahead home run.  

Here are three more with playoff implications to keep an eye on tonight. 

Braves at Cubs (7:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV) 

The Braves are inching closer to the NL East title, and they can clinch a postseason spot tonight. It’ll require some help, but it starts with beating the Cubs in the rubber game of this series. After that, Atlanta needs either a Padres loss to the Rockies OR a D-backs loss to the Marlins. 

Red Sox at Rangers (8:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV) 

Every win matters for the Rangers, and they’ve managed to pull off three straight against two playoff contenders, the D-backs and Red Sox. Thanks to Jacob deGrom’s effort in yesterday’s series opener against the Sox, Texas remains just one game back of the Astros in the AL West and trails only the White Sox by 1 1/2 games in the Wild Card race.

Marlins at D-backs (9:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV) 

The D-backs will have to hope last night’s extra-inning loss to the Marlins won’t come back to haunt them in the playoff race. Arizona didn’t lose any ground in the Wild Card standings, since the Padres also lost, but a bounceback today would be big heading into the team’s next series against the Yankees. 

SIMPSON HOMER? WE WERE SO CLOSE

Here’s a play that might look pretty ordinary. But bear with us, because it’s more than meets the eye:

That’s Chandler Simpson hitting a 356-foot double off the wall at The Trop. OK, so what? 

We almost just saw a historic swing, that’s what. See, Simpson has NEVER hit an over-the-fence home run in a Major League game or a Minor League game. He did hit one at Spring Training this year, but as far as the real games, this is literally the closest the Rays speedster has ever come in 517 games as a pro.

But the craziest part is, this double was the first ball he’s hit in the big leagues that even had a chance to leave the yard. 

Simpson might win the batting title, but power just isn’t a part of his game. He really has a 1-of-1 hitting profile. 

See this? 

This shows you that Simpson’s 356-footer — the farthest ball he’s hit in his career, by the way — would have been a home run at exactly one of the 30 MLB ballparks. (That one? Yankee Stadium.)

Of the 880 batted balls Simpson has hit over his two seasons with the Rays, this is somehow the very first one that would have been gone at even one single Major League stadium. Every ball off Simpson’s bat was a 0/30 … until now.

So you’re telling us there’s a chance. 

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

We love a good inside-the-park home run. We also love a good slow home run trot. Yesterday we got both — and if you look at them side by side, it’s pretty hilarious. 

• Coby Mayo hit the inside-the-parker for the Orioles. He circled the bases in just 16.31 seconds.
• And then there was Junior Caminero’s walk-off home run for the Rays. His home run trot took 40.65 seconds — the longest true home run trot ever tracked by Statcast. 

That’s right — Caminero’s home run took more than twice as long as Mayo’s. WAY more than twice as long, actually. 

And this is maybe the funniest part: In the time it took Mayo to go all the way around the bases … Caminero hadn’t even gotten to FIRST base.  

The home-to-first section of the Rays star’s home run trot (well, it was more like a home run walk) took a grand total of 16.6 seconds — a cool three-tenths of a second slower than Mayo’s entire home-to-home sprint.

At the time Mayo was flying through home plate, Caminero would have been, oh, right about here: 

Baseball is the best. 

POLAR BEAR FETCHES BASEBALL

Mets fans still love Pete Alonso, and it’s mutual.

After Alonso slugged his 300th career home run against his old team at Citi Field last night, he had to get the ball back. Luckily, he hit it in the right place. 

A trio of Mets fans came up with the milestone baseball — and two of them were wearing Alonso jerseys. 

Those jerseys were promptly signed by the Polar Bear himself after the game. From there, coming up with a few more pot sweeteners to trade for the ball was easy. Alonso even brought out a couple of beers. 

 

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