Is it spring training yet? No — but the championship season is upon us, a finer thing still.

THE MORNING HORSEHIDE HERALD

"Every Score Set Down, No Deed Unsung"

~ Being a Faithful Daily Chronicle of the National Pastime ~

Volume I · No. 44 · Friday, the One-and-Twentieth of August, Two Thousand and Twenty-Six

Reporting 9 contests from the day prior.

The Game of the Day

THE FINAL OUT FALLS OUT OF A GLOVE, AND SIX RUNS POUR THROUGH THE HOLE: CARDINALS 10, REDS 9, IN A NINTH INNING OF TEN RUNS AND NO MERCY

Down to their last out and trailing by one at Cincinnati, the St. Louis nine are reprieved when the center fielder Myers drops Wetherholt's routine fly — six runs follow at once — whereupon the Reds answer with four of their own and send the grand-slam man McLain to the plate with the bases full, only to watch Walker, author of the early lead, squeeze the game's last breath at the right-field wall

Of all the entries in a scorebook none is more contemptuous than the routine fly ball — the out so assured that the crowd reaches for its hats before the ball comes down. Thursday afternoon at Great American Ball Park, with two out in the ninth, the Cardinals trailing five-to-four, and the pinch-hitter Pereira just struck out for what should have been the penultimate indignity, JJ Wetherholt lofted precisely that entry toward left-center. Dane Myers ranged a long way to call off TJ Friedl, who had entered only an inning before as a defensive substitution, and the ball struck his leather and fell to the grass. Two runs crossed on the drop — the tying and the go-ahead — and the inning, thus pried open, would not be shut: Burleson singled home a seventh run, Joshua Báez walked with the bases full for an eighth, and José Fermín, who had scored the tying run moments earlier and came round to bat a second time in the frame, lined a two-run single for ten-to-five. Six runs, every one of them after the game stood a strike from ending.

The Reds declined to accept the verdict quietly. The manager Marmol, hoping to spare his closer a day's work amid a grinding stretch, entrusted the five-run cushion to Soriano, and the cushion was promptly devoured: Eugenio Suárez singled home one, the rookie Sal Stewart lined a two-run stroke — his six-and-ninetieth run driven in, a figure examined at length in the news columns — and Stephenson walked with the sacks full to draw within a single tally. So Riley O'Brien pitched after all, and found himself facing Matt McLain — whose grand slam in the sixth, his twelfth homer, had turned a four-to-nothing deficit into the lead St. Louis spent eight innings chasing — with the bases loaded and the game standing on a swing. McLain drove the ball deep to the right-field wall, and Jordan Walker gathered it in for the final out. 'I was very happy with that catch,' O'Brien allowed afterward. 'I was begging him to catch it.'

The ledger will note ten runs in the ninth inning alone, and a symmetry the almanac may never see again: Walker, whose three-run homer in the third — four driven in on the day, four-and-ninety on the season — built the early lead, stood under the ball that ended it; McLain scored the first run of the answering rally and made its last out; and the National's three foremost run-producers — Stewart at six-and-ninety, Walker at four-and-ninety, Burleson at three-and-ninety — were all on the same premises, trading blows. Strzelecki took the decision, Burke the defeat, and O'Brien's three-and-thirtieth save remains the fattest count in the National. The Cardinals, winners of seven in ten, climb to six-and-sixty wins and sit two and a half games from the league's final chair; the Reds — whose Myers, the reader may recall, was the two-homer hero of these very columns on Tuesday — are left eighteen games adrift in the Central, playing, as they have said themselves, for seasons yet to come.

News Around the League

THE MARTE AFFAIR REACHES ITS MEDICAL CHAPTER: AN AUDIENCE AT SALT RIVER FIELDS, AN INFLAMED KNEE, AND TEN DAYS ON THE SHELF

The strangest story of the week, chronicled in these columns since Tuesday's edition, has arrived at something like a resolution. Ketel Marte and his agent sat for several hours Thursday afternoon at Salt River Fields with the Arizona general manager Mike Hazen and manager Torey Lovullo to discuss the events of the past week — the second baseman's failure to appear at Fenway Park on Monday, and his consignment to the restricted list that followed. The magnetic examination of his left knee, forecast in Wednesday's infirmary column, found inflammation, and the club has moved him to the ten-day injured list; because a man cannot be backdated off the restricted list, the sentence runs from Thursday in full. An injection has been administered, and the club's hope is that he returns when the ten days are served, or shortly after. Of the meeting itself, Hazen offered the discretion of a diplomat: 'I'm not gonna get into specifics. I feel like the conversation and meeting was productive... He'll talk to his teammates at some point and we'll go from there.' The Diamondbacks, one game from the National's final chair, will conduct their September with the mystery filed but not fully solved.

THE PROSPECT DESK: SEATTLE REPORTED TO SUMMON THE FINEST PITCHING PUPIL IN ALL THE MINORS

The wires report — by sources, the club not yet confirming — that the Mariners are promoting Kade Anderson, a left-hander of two-and-twenty years who is by the Pipeline scribes' reckoning the best pitching prospect in baseball and the fifth-best prospect of any kind. The figures read like a misprint: across eighteen starts at Double-A Arkansas this season, an earned-run figure of 1.06, with a hundred five-and-thirty strikeouts against a mere thirteen walks in three-and-ninety innings and a third. Selected third overall out of Louisiana State in last summer's draft, Anderson did not throw a professional pitch until this year and has spent the season making the assignment look beneath him. He would join a rotation of Gilbert, Woo, Kirby, and Miller on a club that sits three games from the American's final chair and has just been handled roughly in Milwaukee — which is to say, a club in need of exactly this kind of reinforcement, at exactly this hour. The Cubs arrive in Seattle this evening; the watch begins.

THE MILESTONE DESK MEASURES A ROOKIE AGAINST TED WILLIAMS: STEWART'S SIX-AND-NINETY RUNS DRIVEN IN LEAD ALL BASEBALL

The desk has saluted Sal Stewart's thunder before — his seven-and-twentieth homer turned Wednesday's game in Cincinnati, as this paper recorded — but the arithmetic now demands a fuller accounting. With two more driven in on Thursday, the Reds' rookie stands at six-and-ninety runs batted in through his club's first hundred eight-and-twenty games, the largest figure in either league. Barring calamity he is a near-certainty to become but the seventh rookie of this century to reach a hundred; the seven-and-score plateau of a hundred twenty has been scaled by only seven freshmen since the statistic became official in 1920. And the grandest prize of all is genuinely in play: should he finish atop the major-league table, the Elias scribes certify he would be only the third rookie ever to do it, and the first in six-and-seventy years — Ted Williams led all baseball with a hundred four-and-forty in 1939, and Walt Dropo tied for the lead with the same figure in 1950. The pursuers make the chase delicious: Jordan Walker at four-and-ninety and Alec Burleson at three-and-ninety — the very Cardinals who have spent the week trading blows with Stewart's club, as the morning's lead dispatch attests.

THE INFIRMARY WARD: VLADIMIR'S THUNDEROUS REHEARSAL, GIMÉNEZ'S HAMSTRING, AND A FRIGHTENING PITCH TO MECKLER'S HELMET

The brightest entry issues from Single-A Dunedin, where Vladimir Guerrero Jr., recuperating from the concussion he suffered in a collision at third base a week ago, made his first rehabilitation appearance and treated the Florida State League with appropriate disdain: a run-scoring double struck at nearly nine-and-ninety miles per hour off the bat, two walks, and an early exit with nothing left to prove. The Blue Jays hope to restore him Saturday in the Bronx, the first day he is eligible. 'As soon as he's ready, feeling good and cleared and he feels like he's got his timing, we're going to try to get him back in there,' said the manager Schneider. The same club's ward, alas, admitted a new patient hours later: the shortstop Andrés Giménez left Thursday's victory at the Trop in the fourth inning with tightness in his right hamstring, though an initial examination showed good strength, no magnetic study is scheduled, and the club will see how he feels this day. In Houston, the Angels' rout carried a frightening moment — Wade Meckler took a sinker of better than ninety miles per hour off the helmet in the fifth and walked off under his own power after the trainers' inspection, while Schanuel departed an inning later with soreness in his right side. And the road back grows crowded elsewhere: the wires note Cody Bellinger and J.P. Crawford both began rehabilitation assignments in the minors, each club counting the days.

THE ALMANAC DESK: THE PLAYERS TAKE THE WEEKEND, AND WILLIAMSPORT WAITS AT ITS END

This day begins Players' Weekend, the game's three-day exhibition of its own personalities, returned for a third consecutive year with all thirty clubs participating. The program assigns each day a theme — this day the players' pursuits beyond the diamond, Saturday the causes they champion, Sunday an appreciation of those who carried them to the majors — with custom gear on the field and an auction for the faithful who covet it. The desk notes with approval that the programming includes a sit-down between the former All-Star Yonder Alonso and the Reds' young colossus Sal Stewart — celebrated at length in the columns above — on growing up in Miami with Alonso and Manny Machado as mentors, and a tour of Ozzie Albies' fish collection, which the Herald declines to summarize for fear of spoiling it. The weekend closes where this paper has twice said it would: at Williamsport on Sunday, where the Brewers and Braves — who begin their acquaintance this very afternoon in Milwaukee, as the bill of fare relates — repair to the Little League Classic to perform before the smallest and sternest jury in baseball.

The Rest of the Card

TWO THOUSAND NOTCHES AND A TIPPED CAP: RANGERS 2, NATIONALS 0, AND TEXAS RECLAIMS ITS SHARE OF THE CHAIR

The consolation this paper promised Texas yesterday was redeemed with interest. Jacob deGrom opened the evening at Arlington with swinging strikeouts of Lile and Ortiz — the second of them the two-thousandth of his career — and paused, in the middle of the first inning, to tip his cap to a crowd that understood. He then went about the rest of it: ten strikeouts in all across six scoreless innings, one hit and one walk permitted, both to young Brady House, while Seager's thirteenth homer and Lopez's sacrifice fly supplied the whole of the scoring and Latz closed his five-and-twentieth save. The register is worth the ink: deGrom is the five-and-ninetieth man to reach two thousand strikeouts and the second-fastest ever by games and by innings, trailing only Randy Johnson on the one count and Chris Sale on the other, and only the third to strike his two-thousandth in Texas flannels, after Ferguson Jenkins and Cole Hamels. 'Personal accomplishments are cool, but the goal is to win,' said the author, and his club did both: blanked six-to-nothing by Washington on Wednesday, the Arlington men returned the whitewash within four-and-twenty hours and climb back into a share of the American's final chair. 'Today was kind of vintage deGrom,' offered the manager Schumaker, a man who once batted against the original.

TWO-AND-TWENTY FIRST-PITCH STRIKES IN THREE-AND-TWENTY TRIES: BRONX BOMBERS 6, ORIOLES 1, AND COLE PASSES CLEMENS

The broom came out at Camden Yards, and it was wielded by a man of five-and-thirty throwing strike one as no Yankee has in this century. Gerrit Cole opened two-and-twenty of his three-and-twenty batters with a first-pitch strike — the highest such rate of his career and of any Yankee since at least the year 2000, by the researchers' accounting — and struck out eight across six innings of one-run ball, running his count in pinstripes to one thousand and fifteen — past Roger Clemens, at one thousand and fourteen, for twelfth place on the franchise's all-time strikeout table. 'That's the G.O.A.T.,' said Cole of the man displaced. 'That's a big-time name.' The support was ample: three runs in the third upon Caballero's fielder's choice, Rice's single, and Ramos' double, then sixth-inning homers from García Jr. and Jones, with Chisholm's triple cashing a sixth run and Yarbrough pitching three spotless innings for the save. Beavers' homer was the entire Baltimore reply. The Yankees have won four running and hold the American's first wild-card chair at nine-and-a-half games' remove from the scramble below; the Orioles have lost four running and slip two games from the last one.

HOLMES CARRIES NOTHING-AT-ALL INTO THE SEVENTH: ATLANTAS 2, WHITE SOX 0

In a makeup of a June rainout on the South Side, Grant Holmes — whose rotation seat had lately attracted impertinent questions — answered them by flirting with history: no hits through six innings and into the seventh, until Vargas walked and Benintendi lined a clean single, the only safety Chicago would manage all evening. 'Absolutely, I looked at it every inning,' the pitcher confessed of the scoreboard, a candor the Herald prizes. No Atlanta man has thrown a no-hitter since Kent Mercker in April of 1994, and the manager Weiss let him chase it before the walk and the knock made the question moot; Fuentes then struck out three straight to strand the threat, and Iglesias closed his six-and-twentieth save. Riley drove in both runs — a double in the third, a single in the seventh — and Dubón collected three hits. The victory arrests an Atlanta slide of five defeats in six, administered chiefly by Minnesota's sweep, and opens a stretch of three consecutive first-place opponents: two at Milwaukee beginning this afternoon, the Williamsport finale on Sunday, and the champion Dodgers waiting behind them. 'We got a good team, and we're in first place,' said Weiss. 'It's a good group.'

TWO HUNDRED STRIKEOUTS FOR THE MAN NOBODY SHOULD TOUCH: GUARDIANS 5, JINTS 2

The bill of fare posted Gavin Williams and his eleven victories against the Giants, and the big right-hander delivered a twelfth with a flourish: eleven strikeouts across five and two-thirds innings, carrying his season's count to two hundred and one — the first Cleveland pitcher to reach two hundred since Shane Bieber in 2019, and his ninth game of double-digit strikeouts this year, a total exceeded in all baseball only by Misiorowski. 'It's crazy that anybody touches him in the first place,' testified his left fielder Kwan, who spends such evenings largely as a spectator. Adames' two-run homer was the whole San Francisco account against him; Cleveland had built three in the first upon Ramírez's single, Lowe's sacrifice fly, and Bailey's knock, with Kwan and Rocchio adding singles later and Smith closing his two-and-thirtieth save. The victory seals Cleveland's first series in nearly a month — five consecutive sets had been dropped since late July — and the pillowy August schedule this paper once advertised may finally be yielding its comforts: the Guardians sit one game from the American's final chair.

A SEVENTH STRAIGHT SERIES FOR THE SHORTHANDED JAYS: TORONTO 5, RAYS 1, BEHIND BIEBER'S SEVEN INNINGS

The assignment this paper posted for Shane Bieber was executed in full: seven innings of one-run, four-hit ball at the Trop, opposite the same Seymour whose nine victories the bill of fare had advertised, and the Maple Leaf nine had their seventh consecutive series victory — their first taken inside that dome since September of 2023. The blows were distributed among the deserving: Okamoto's six-and-twentieth homer — every one now a fresh extension of the rookie record this paper saluted Tuesday — plus homers from Lukes and Daz Cameron, his first of the season, and Springer's two-run single. 'The Tampa Bay Rays, they always give us problems,' said Lukes. 'But it felt good to finally punch them back.' The performance is the more remarkable for the casualty list: with Guerrero still convalescing and Giménez departing in the fourth with a tight hamstring — both matters detailed in the infirmary column — Toronto executed a full infield line change mid-game, Clement to shortstop, McAdoo to second, Okamoto across to third, and the reserve catcher Valenzuela manning first. Toronto sits half a game from the American's final chair; the Rays, at six-and-seventy wins, remain the league's class and dropped a series anyway.

SIX IN THE FIRST, AND THE RUBBER MATCH IS SETTLED BEFORE SEATTLE SITS DOWN: CREAM CITY NINE 7, MARINERS 4

Two nights after scoring two-and-twenty and one night after scoring five in defeat, Milwaukee decided the deciding game in its opening quarter-hour: six runs in the first against Kirby, built of doubles from Sánchez, Mitchell, and Hamilton and Ortiz's single, before a single Seattle out had much company. Mitchell finished the evening with two doubles, a homer, and three driven in; the Seattle reply — Donovan's two-run double, a passed ball, Canzone's single — reached four before Patrick, Ashby, and Megill barred the remainder, the save Megill's three-and-twentieth. The Brewers thus take the series two games to one and stand at nine-and-seventy wins against nine-and-forty defeats, the finest ledger in baseball by two full games over Los Angeles — and receive the East-leading Braves this very afternoon in the weekend's marquee engagement, of which the desk note sings below. Seattle departs three games from the American's final chair, with its consolation riding in from Double-A: the Anderson summons, reported in the news columns, may put the minors' best arm in a Mariner uniform in time for the Cubs.

WITT STRIKES THE FIRST BLOW AND THE ROYAL BLUES MAKE IT FIVE RUNNING: ROYALS 6, WHITE ELEPHANTS 2

The liveliest August in the American's lower reaches rolls on. Bobby Witt Jr. opened the home first with a homer, his sixteenth, and finished with three runs scored; Perez and Massey collected three hits apiece, Loftin legged out a triple, and Collins drove in two as Kansas City banked twelve hits and its fifth consecutive victory. The remarkable Dobnak — whose 1.73 figure this paper advertised on Wednesday's bill of fare — wobbled through four scoreless innings without a decision, walking four but yielding nothing, and his earned-run mark now reads 1.58; the relief corps of Thomas, Kimbrel, Schreiber, and Pearson did the rest after Duran's brief adventure. The wandering Athletics, whose entire offense was Serven's and Walton's run-scoring strokes, have now dropped four running, and the Missouri engagement continues this evening with the basement's dignity — such as it is — still under negotiation.

EIGHTEEN RUNS, SEVEN OF THEM DRIVEN HOME BY NETO, AND THE WEST'S LEADERS ARE DRAGGED BACK TO THE WATERLINE: SERAPHS 18, ASTROS 3

An offense that had scored three runs or fewer in twenty of its last thirty games chose Thursday night in Houston to spend a month's allowance. Zach Neto supplied a career evening — five hits and seven runs driven in, on singles in the first and fourth, a three-run homer in the fifth, and a two-run double in the seventh — tying the club record for a shortstop's runs batted in that Freddie Patek set in 1980, while the bottom two-thirds of the order went fifteen-for-one-and-thirty. Guzman's two-run homer in the ninth came off the position player Wade Jr., pressed into mound service to stanch the arithmetic, and Rodriguez claimed the victory with seven innings unblemished by an earned run. 'It was so much fun, especially being on the other side of it,' said Neto, whose club took its first road series in nearly three months. For Houston the consequences are the story: at four-and-sixty wins against four-and-sixty defeats the Astros stand precisely at the break-even line this paper has twice marked for them, their lead in the West a single game over resurgent Texas — though the great Alvarez, doubling in his abbreviated evening, still sits atop all three tables of the batter's Triple Crown, his pursuit unbothered by the wreckage around it.

For the fifth morning running the American's final wild-card chair has been rearranged, and this morning it is shared: the idle Twins and the shutout-dealing Rangers sit together at three-and-sixty wins against five-and-sixty defeats — the chair's fifth arrangement in five editions of this paper, after Baltimore's Monday, Tuesday's three cotenants, Texas alone Wednesday, and Minnesota alone yesterday — with Toronto half a game astern despite beating the league's best club, Cleveland one game back, Detroit a game and a half, Baltimore two, and Seattle three, still not one claimant at the break-even line. In the National the seating holds: the Cubs keep the first chair by six games, Philadelphia — winners of six running — the second by two, San Diego the third, with Arizona one game back, St. Louis two and a half after the morning's larceny in Cincinnati, and Miami four. This day's card runs to the full fifteen engagements, all of them dressed in Players' Weekend colors. The bill of fare: at Milwaukee at 4:10, the engagement of the weekend — the East-leading Braves upon the game's best ledger, with Sale and his 2.16 opposite Misiorowski and his 1.75, the two sovereigns of the National's earned-run table, the latter all but measured for his hardware, as this paper reported Tuesday; at Philadelphia at 6:40, the ninth-inning miracle workers of St. Louis call upon Luzardo; in the Bronx at 7:05, Schlittler — proprietor of the American's finest earned-run figure — receives Toronto, with Guerrero hoping to rejoin the visitors Saturday; at Fenway at 7:10, Webb opposes Gray and his fifteen victories; at Seattle at 10:10, the Cubs arrive as the Anderson watch begins; and at Los Angeles at 10:10, the Bucs are examined by Yamamoto. Until the morrow's dispatch, keep your scorecards near and your enthusiasms nearer.

~ THE HERALD ~

The Herald Acknowledges Its Debts