Cup of Coffee: October 5, 2023

Rangers, Twins, D-Backs, and Phillies all advance with sweeps; Preller and Melvin stay with the Padres, plus discussion about the Rays' attendance, the FEMA alert, and more.

Hi folks. Welcome to Free Thursday! We won’t have any playoff baseball today because every single Wild Card Series ended in a clean 2-0 sweep. The Rangers, Twins, Diamondbacks, and Phillies each vanquished their foes as quickly as possible to advance into the Division Series. As a result, Saturday will be the next time we have meaningful baseball to watch, when the remaining eight teams open their LDS series.

Along with recaps of Wednesday’s Game 2 action across the league, we’ll talk about the Padres keeping A.J. Preller and Bob Melvin, some criticism of the Rays’ attendance, the Mets/Marlins suspended game, that FEMA alert we all got (hopefully), and more.

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And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Rangers 7, Rays 1: Adolis García kick-started a four-run outburst in the third inning against Zach Eflin, drilling a solo home run to left field. Josh Jung would later triple in a run, helped by a questionable dive attempt in right field by Josh Lowe. Rookie Evan Carter capped things off with a two-run home run, becoming the youngest Ranger to hit a playoff homer. To put things out of reach, Marcus Semien and Corey Seager hit RBI doubles in the sixth to make it 7-0.

Nathan Eovaldi didn’t need nearly that much run support, but it didn’t hurt. He went 6 2/3 innings, giving up one run on six hits with no walks and eight strikeouts. The run the Rays pushed across in the seventh, on a Curtis Mead single, helped them avoid tying the Dodgers’ postseason consecutive scoreless innings record (34, 1966-74). The Rays had been shut out in 33 consecutive innings dating back to the sixth inning of the first game of the Wild Card Series against the Guardians last year.

Josh Sborz, who got the final out of the seventh, worked a scoreless eighth before handing the ball off to José Leclerc in the ninth. Leclerc had runners on second and third with one out, but was able to strike out Manuel Margot and Mead to send the Rangers into the ALDS.

This is the Rangers’ first ALDS appearance since 2016. They’ll match up with the AL East champion Orioles, who won 101 games during the regular season. And for the second consecutive year, the Rays — winners of 99 regular season games — can’t advance out of the Wild Card Series.

Twins 2, Blue Jays 0: Manager John Schneider controversially took out starter José Berríos, who had been rolling, in the fourth inning. Berríos had issued a leadoff walk to Royce Lewis. With lefties Max Kepler and Alex Kirilloff due up, Schneider brought in lefty Yusei Kikuchi for the platoon advantage. Kepler reached on an infield single and Donovan Solano, pinch-hitting for Kirilloff, walked. Carlos Correa then put the Twins on the board, singling on a weak liner up the middle. Kikuchi gave up one more run on a double play, but was able to see his way out of the inning without further damage, his team trailing 2-0. The decision to remove Berríos — which likely came from the Jays’ front office, not Schneider — will be second-guessed.

In the top of the fifth, the Jays were threatening with runners on second and third with two outs. Correa darted towards the second base bag and starter Sonny Gray threw behind to pick Vladimir Guerrero Jr. off of second base to end the inning.

Sonny Gray bent but didn’t break en route to five shutout innings, striking out six. The Twins’ bullpen was more than up to the task from there. Louis Varland and Caleb Thielbar combined for a scoreless sixth, then Brock Stewart and Griffin Jax put up zeroes in the seventh and eighth. Jhoan Durán came on in the ninth and, after a brief delay to attend to a blister, the right-hander slammed the door with three strikeouts in the ninth to punch the Twins’ ALDS ticket. It’s the Twins’ first playoff series win since the 2002 ALDS against the Athletics.

Many will go back to go back to the Berríos/Kikuchi decision, but the Jays’ loss is ultimately on the offense, which scored one run in 18 innings in the Wild Card Series. They were 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position in Game 1 and 1-for-5 in Game 2. They had one extra-base hit: a Guerrero double in Game 1. That ain’t gonna cut it.

Diamondbacks 5, Brewers 2: This game had the same recipe as Game 1: the Brewers took an early lead, then the Diamondbacks’ offense hung a crooked number. The Brewers went up 2-0 in the first inning on a Sal Frelick sacrifice fly and a Willy Adames RBI single. The D-Backs wouldn’t answer until the fifth, as Freddy Peralta had until that point pitched a pretty good game. Alek Thomas put them on the board with a solo homer off of Peralta. In the sixth, Arizona broke out for a four-spot, going ahead 3-2 on a two-run Ketel Marte RBI single. They then added two more runs after reliever Abner Uribe uncorked a wild pitch and Lourdes Gourriel Jr. blooped a single to left field.

Zac Gallen settled down after the shaky first inning, holding the Brewers scoreless over his final five innings. He left the game giving up the two runs on five hits and three walks with four strikeouts. Ryan Thompson blanked the Brewers in the seventh, then Andrew Saalfrank escaped a jam set up by Kevin Ginkel in the eighth. Paul Sewald got into a bit of a pickle himself in the ninth, putting runners on second and third, but struck out William Contreras to seal the deal.

The D-Backs have won their first playoff series since the 2007 NLDS against the Cubs. They now have to game plan against the Dodgers.

Phillies 7, Marlins 1: A night after Zack Wheeler shoved, Aaron Nola did the same thing. The right-hander, who struggled mightily during the regular season, stymied the Marlins’ offense over seven shutout innings, scattering three hits and a walk while striking out three.

The Phillies plated two runs in the third inning on a Kyle Schwarber double and a Trea Turner single. J.T. Realmuto swatted a solo homer in the fourth. Then, in the sixth, Bryson Stott put the game out of reach with a grand slam to make it 7-0. He’s the second Phillie in franchise history with a postseason grand slam, joining Shane Victorino (2008 NLCS vs. Brewers).

Rookie Orion Kerkering, who started the season at Single-A Clearwater, worked a 1-2-3 eighth inning on nine pitches. Josh Bell singled in a garbage-time run in the ninth against Gregory Soto, but it was way too little, way too late.

The Phillies earn an NLDS rematch with the Braves in what may be the most anticipated of the four Division Series. They defeated their NL East rivals in four games last year, advancing to the NLCS to play the Padres.

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The Daily Briefing

A.J. Preller, Bob Melvin both to remain with Padres in 2024

There has been a lot of speculation regarding the futures of Padres POBO A.J. Preller and manager Bob Melvin. Not only did the team regress, winning seven fewer games than in 2022 and missing the playoffs entirely, the relationship between Preller and Melvin was reportedly frayed. The most likely outcome to their situations seemed to be that one or both of them would not be with the organization going into the 2024 season.

Scratch that. Both Preller and Melvin will reprise their roles with the Padres in 2024. Per The Athletic’s Dennis Lin, Melvin said, “Bob is our manager, and he’s going to be our manager going forward. Both he and I are very excited about the challenge of getting this group back to the postseason next year.”

Melvin has one year remaining on his contract while Preller is signed with the Padres through 2026. Preller will have less cash to play with as the Padres plan to reduce payroll down to around $200 million after running it up close to $250 million during the season. And they’ll likely have to replace NL Cy Young Award favorite Blake Snell and All-Star closer Josh Hader.

Sean McDonough criticizes Rays fans for poor attendance

The Rays set an ignominious record in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series against the Rangers on Tuesday, drawing only 19,704 fans to Tropicana Field. It’s the smallest non-pandemic crowd for a postseason game since the 1919 World Series. The attendance wasn’t much better in Game 2 on Wednesday, reported as 20,198.

During Wednesday’s broadcast, after Rays fans booed their under-performing team, ESPN announcer Sean McDonough joked, “Some boos starting to come down from the group. I’m not sure we can call it a crowd. The group here at the Trop.”

It’s true that the Rays don’t draw well. During the regular season, they averaged 17,781 fans per home game, the fourth-lowest total among all 30 teams, behind only the Royals (16,136), Marlins (14,355), and Athletics (10,275).

But McDonough left out some very important context: their games were scheduled for 3 PM ET on weekdays. The game times were announced with very little prep time, meaning time to allow fans to request time off work, to rearrange preexisting plans, etc. In Game 2 of the 2021 ALDS against the Red Sox, 37,616 fans showed up to Tropicana Field. But it was a 7 PM ET game on a Friday. It’s still well short of, say, the 45,000-plus who showed up to Citizens Bank Park in Game 1 on Tuesday, but it’s not historically bad.

The Rays deserve the criticism they’ve received over the years for being cheap, for being anti-labor, and so on. They’ve earned their low attendance figures. But the biggest factor to the Rays’ lack of ticket sales during the Wild Card Series was their time slot. That’s MLB’s choice.

Mets awarded 1-0 win over Marlins in suspended game

Remember that suspended game the Mets and Marlins played in New York last week? The Marlins scored two runs in the top of the ninth to take a 2-1 lead just before the rain started coming down hard and umpires had to call the game. Given the tight end-of-season schedule, Major League Baseball would only have made the two teams finish the game if it affected the postseason picture. Fortunately, it didn’t.

The Associated Press is reporting that MLB is awarding the Mets a 1-0 win over the Marlins in that game, citing rule 7.02 (b) (4) (A) which says, “If one team is ahead, the team that is ahead shall be declared the winner (unless the game is called while an inning is in progress and before the inning is completed, and the visiting team has scored one or more runs to take the lead, and the home team has not retaken the lead, in which case the score upon the completion of the last full inning shall stand).”

The stuff in parentheses is the key here. The Mets had a 1-0 lead at the end of the most recently completed full inning, so MLB is just rewinding the game to that point.

The Mets officially end the 2023 regular season with a 75-87 record. The Marlins finish at 84-78. And, of course, all of the statistics earned by the players in the top of the ninth, including an RBI double by Jazz Chisholm Jr. and an RBI single by Yuli Gurriel, as well as the runs charged to reliever Anthony Kay, do not count.

Diamondbacks sign GM Mike Hazen to extension through 2028

Prior to Wednesday’s Wild Card Series Game 2 against the Brewers, the Diamondbacks announced that GM Mike Hazen signed a contract extension that will keep him with the organization through 2028, Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reports.

Hazen, 47, became the D-Backs’ GM after the 2016 season. In his first season with the club in ‘17, the D-Backs won 93 games and defeated the Rockies in the NL Wild Card Game. However, they were swept out of the NLDS by the Dodgers. Entering the ‘23 campaign, they hadn’t made the postseason since and finished last in the NL West twice, so this year marks a huge step forward.

Under Hazen’s stewardship, the D-Backs have made some savvy veteran acquisitions and seen some young prospects flourish. Outfielder Corbin Carroll will likely win the NL Rookie of the Year Award next month. As if their Wild Card Series win over the Brewers didn’t illustrate it enough, this is a franchise headed in the right direction.

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Other Stuff

Did you enjoy the FEMA alert?

As previously announced, FEMA sent out an emergency alert to everyone’s cellphones, TVs, and radios at 2:20 PM ET.

In the run-up to the alert, QAnon maniacs spread all kinds of conspiracy theories, including that the alert would be used by the federal government to spread the Marburg virus in people who got the COVID-19 vaccine.

As someone who’s been vaccinated, I don’t think I became a zombie. What say you? Anyone here have a craving for brains all of a sudden?

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Have a great day, everyone.