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. 53 · Sunday, the Thirtieth of August, Two Thousand and Twenty-Six

Reporting 17 contests from the day prior.

The Game of the Day

SOSA ASKS FOR THREE IN THE CAGE, AND CROW-ARMSTRONG FILLS THE ORDER TO THE LETTER: CUBS 17, REDLEGS 5

On a Wrigley afternoon thick with the club's own legends, Sammy Sosa places a request of the young center fielder — 'I want three out of you today' — and Pete Crow-Armstrong obliges precisely: homers in the first, the second, and the seventh, four hits in six trips, six runs batted in, and a first career three-homer game that lifts his season's worth, by the modern reckonings, above every Cub summer since Sosa's own — while the Reds are reduced by the eighth inning to pitching their catcher

Down in the batting cage beneath Wrigley Field on Saturday, before a pitch had been thrown, Sammy Sosa placed an order. "He was like, 'I want three out of you today. I need three,'" Pete Crow-Armstrong reported afterward, and the young man confessed that the audience unsettled him more than any pitcher has lately managed: "There were legends on legends down in the cage before the game. If anything, the most intimidating part of today was doing my pregame routine in front of Sammy Sosa and Billy Williams." Whereupon he went out and filled the order like a grocer's boy. A leadoff blast off the left-hander Abbott's fastball to open the home first — his four-and-thirtieth. A curveball ripped off the right-field pole an inning later for two more — five-and-thirty. And in the seventh, with the count of the afternoon long since settled, a three-run drive to left-center off Santillan for six-and-thirty, the first three-homer game of his major-league life, four hits in six trips, six runs batted in, and thirteen total bases as the Cubs buried Cincinnati seventeen runs to five.

The arithmetic desk begs leave to place the afternoon in its proper cabinet. It was Crow-Armstrong's fifth game this season of ten total bases or better — a count matched since 1900 only by Larry Walker, Johnny Mize, and Jimmie Foxx, with Nelson Cruz's six standing alone above — and by the FanGraphs reckoning his season's worth now stands at 9.1 wins above the replacement standard, a figure exceeded in all the Cubs' annals only by Hornsby's 1929, Sosa's own 2001, Banks's 1959, and Santo's 1967. The company, in short, is the pantheon, and the man keeping it is a center fielder of four-and-twenty who also holds two-and-thirty stolen bases. Asked to adjudicate the Most Valuable question, his teammate Bregman declined the pretense of suspense: "I think everyone here knows what we think about Pete's season." The reader will find in the ward below the morning's other entry in that argument — the two-time laureate Ohtani's mound return, postponed anew the selfsame day.

Nor did the master carry the freight alone: the Cubs struck nineteen hits, Suzuki three of them with his three-and-twentieth homer, Bregman three more with his twentieth, the catcher Carson Kelly a three-run blast among four driven in, and Taylor four hits besides, while Abbott was excused after three innings bearing seven runs. By the eighth the Queen City's bullpen ledger had run so far into the red that the catcher Trevino was handed the ball — the position player's inning yielding Kelly's double and Suzuki's homer among four hits, which the Herald records without cruelty, the practice being lately epidemic. Cincinnati's consolations were genuine if outnumbered: Sal Stewart's thirtieth homer and Suárez's twentieth — the milestone desk below sings the rookie's fuller glory. So dies a three-game Chicago skid, as this paper noted it running; the North Siders stand seven-and-seventy wins against nine-and-fifty defeats, eight astern of Milwaukee with the wild-card's first chair still five games safe, and the set concludes this evening at 7:20 by the Eastern clock, Burns and his fourteen-and-three opposing Imanaga.

News Around the League

THE INFIRMARY WARD: THE UNICORN'S GATE, HALF-OPEN ONLY YESTERDAY, SWINGS SHUT AGAIN — WHILE RENGIFO LEAVES BY CART AND CAVALLI BY COMEBACKER

The appointment this ward held open only yesterday morning is canceled. Shohei Ohtani will not take the mound in this afternoon's Detroit finale, his manager Roberts confirmed Saturday, and the timetable for his return to pitching is now frankly indefinite: the two-way marvel reported that he did not feel his best after Friday's abbreviated bullpen session, the left knee's old soreness having resurfaced in company with the right biceps and, in the manager's accounting, the "overall body." "If any pitcher was feeling like this," Roberts said, "we wouldn't run him out there" — and more candidly still: "To be quite frank, I just don't see everything getting to 100% by the end of the season. But there's a lot of pitchers that are not 100% and still viable." The club will determine the next steps upon returning to Los Angeles on the first of September; Glasnow, who was appointed to pitch this afternoon in any arrangement, now carries the whole of it. Ohtani's ledger when the knee first closed the gate on the third of July: eight-and-two, with an earned-run figure of 1.79 across fourteen starts.

The ward's other beds filled quickly. In Tampa Bay, the Padres' Rengifo was carried from the field by cart, his knee the complaint by the wires' account, on an evening already unkind to him, as the card below relates. In Washington, the Nationals' starter Cavalli departed his engagement with Miami when a comebacker struck his right ankle. And in the Bronx, the rookie shortstop Lombard — whose sorrows at shortstop this paper chronicled only Thursday — left the nightcap with discomfort of the right knee, though the first imaging read kindly and his manager Boone pronounced it "a day to day situation."

THE DEALINGS DESK: THE METS SET ROBERT UPON THE WAIVER WIRE AS THE SEPTEMBER BELL NEARS, AND KELENIC TAKES ANOTHER SWING AT NEW YORK

The waiver wire, lately the busiest thoroughfare in the game, has received another passenger of quality. The Mets have placed the outfielder Luis Robert Jr. upon it, by the account of a source — the club itself declining to confirm — offering any of the other nine-and-twenty clubs the chance to claim him and assume the remainder of his wages: some three millions of this season's salary and a two-million buyout of next year's twenty-million option, which New York is thought unlikely to exercise. The irony is that the merchandise has rarely shown better: unwanted at the August deadline fresh off a spinal complaint, Robert has since batted .311 with six homers across nineteen games and learned left field besides. The calendar explains the timing — a man must be in his organization before the first of September to be eligible for October's wars — and the Herald notes that the wire has been no thoroughfare of commerce lately: Suárez and Friedl, whose placement these pages recorded Wednesday, both passed through unclaimed. Elsewhere the transactions column records a homecoming of sorts: Jarred Kelenic, seven-and-twenty years of age and taken sixth overall by the Mets in the draft of 2018 before his wanderings began, has signed a minor-league engagement with the Yankees and reports to their Scranton garrison.

THE MILESTONE DESK: STEWART STANDS ALONE AMONG REDS FRESHMEN AT THIRTY AND ONE HUNDRED, CHOURIO BANKS HIS THIRD TWENTY BEFORE AGE THREE-AND-TWENTY, AND SÁNCHEZ RINGS UP TWO HUNDRED AGAIN

Three entries for the ledger of accomplishment. In Chicago, Sal Stewart's thirtieth homer — struck amid Saturday's general bombardment, as the lead column relates — made him the first rookie in all the Cincinnati club's history to pair thirty homers with a hundred runs batted in, his total standing at one hundred four atop the entire National; the researchers note that should he finish master of all baseball's table, only Ted Williams in 1939 and Dropo in 1950 managed the feat as freshmen, and that his Rookie of the Year argument against the Cardinal Wetherholt and the Met Benge now carries history in its saddlebags. In Milwaukee, Jackson Chourio opened Saturday's scoring with his twentieth homer — a third consecutive season of twenty though he stands but two-and-twenty years of age, a distinction owned by only seventeen men ever, half the prior sixteen now enshrined at Cooperstown: Ott, Williams, Mathews, Mantle, Kaline, Robinson, Cepeda, and Griffey the younger. And in Anaheim, the Phillies' Cristopher Sánchez struck out the side in the fifth to reach two hundred strikeouts for a second consecutive summer, then declined to linger over it: "I'm proud of back-to-back 200-strikeout seasons, but we just have to keep going." His stated ambitions — a Series, a Cy Young, the club's first twenty-game winner since Halladay in 2010 — the desk records as entirely plausible.

THE VALEDICTORY DESK: KENT'S NUMBER ASCENDS BY THE BAY, AND BONDS SUPPLIES THE EMBRACE — AND THE SHAKE — OF OLD

Before the nightcap by the Bay on Saturday, the Giants raised Jeff Kent's No. 21 to the rafters of Oracle Park, making the new Hall of Famer the sixteenth of that franchise so honored, with Marichal, Baker, Posey, and Will Clark among the receiving line. The exchange the house had waited for came from Barry Bonds: the two old teammates, whose frost in shared flannels was the stuff of a thousand columns, embraced — and then, to general laughter, reenacted their famous dugout scuffle of 2002, Bonds seizing Kent and shaking him with theatrical relish. "He and I have never gone out to dinner, but I'll go to war with that guy any day of the week," Kent testified. "If Bonds and I weren't fighting in the dugout, we wouldn't have what we've got." The honoree, elected to Cooperstown by the Contemporary Era committee, turned advocate on the spot — "Barry, keep with it brother, you've got a shot, man" — and sentimentalist besides, for his son Kaeden, three-and-twenty and lately acquired into the Giants' system in the Ramos trade, homered twice for their Eugene farmhands on Thursday. The home nine, as the card relates, honored the day by winning the game that followed.

THE PROTOCOL DESK: THE CORRESPONDENCE EXTENDS TO THE LINEUP CARDS — WOTUS IS EJECTED BEFORE A PITCH IS THROWN

The lively correspondence between the umpiring estate and the National's West, remarked in yesterday's number, has now reached the pregame formalities. Ron Wotus, senior counselor to the San Francisco baseball operation, was ejected from Saturday's opening game during the exchange of lineup cards — before a single pitch had been thrown — the crew chief Porter having declined to continue a conversation Wotus wished to prolong regarding Friday evening's disputed calls: the strike-three-that-wasn't to Nootbaar, uncontested by the home catcher, and the fair-ball ruling that fattened Arizona's five-run third. "At one point, he didn't want to discuss it anymore, and I did," Wotus explained with admirable economy. "I was ejected, so that's what it was about." The desk's running tally for the week by the Bay: the manager Vitello twice, the ace Webb once, and now a senior counselor dispatched at home plate with the lineup cards still in hand — a completeness of representation the Herald can only admire.

The Rest of the Card

THE ROOKIE BENNETT SILENCES THE BRONX, AND THE NINTH ADDS THE FLOURISH: HUB NINE 6, BRONX BOMBERS 0

The daylight half of the separate-admission twin bill belonged entirely to Jake Bennett, the rookie left-hander, who fired six scoreless innings on three hits with seven strikeouts and not a walk, nine-and-fifty of his three-and-eighty pitches finding the zone. "He was the Bennett we're used to seeing," ruled the interim manager Tracy. Abreu's three-and-twentieth homer opened the scoring in the first, Rutschman collected three hits, and the ninth added four — Monasterio's two-run single the heaviest freight — while Rodón absorbed the loss. The evening's answer, and the rubber match's stakes, follow directly below.

FRIED RETURNS ON SIXTY-THREE PITCHES, AND THIRTEEN SINGLES CARRY THE NIGHTCAP: BRONX BOMBERS 9, HUB NINE 2

The appointment yesterday's desk note recorded was kept: Max Fried, restored from his elbow's bone bruise, took the evening half and gave the Yankees three innings and two-thirds of encouragement on three-and-sixty pitches. "It was nice to get back out there and get the competitive juices flowing," said the left-hander, and his mates did the rest by the humblest means imaginable — thirteen singles, nary a homer, every post in the batting order scoring a run, five of them crossing in the eighth, with Rice driving home three. Sogard's third homer was Boston's account; Blackburn took the decision, and Lombard's knee is the ward's business above. The split leaves the ancient rivals level at six victories apiece on the season, and this afternoon's rubber at 1:35 — Suarez opposing Warren — settles a series that may yet decide an October tiebreaker. New York's grip on the top wild-card chair stands at three games over Boston.

THE HISS, THE BASKET CATCH, AND A SINGLE THAT BOUNCED ITS WAY TO GLORY: DETROITS 2, BOYS IN BLUE 1

The ninth inning at Comerica Park was Javier Báez's private theater. First the glove: Teoscar Hernández's drive to left-center — a homer in eleven parks, by the trackers' certification — sent young Clark sprinting 122 feet from center until he heard the hiss by which Detroit's outfielders announce themselves, and Báez, having covered 112 feet of his own from left, took it in a basket at the warning track, catching his snapped necklace with the other hand. "The ball's more important in that moment," he allowed. "But I have both." Then the bat: a leadoff double in the home half off Dreyer, a sacrifice from Clark, two walks to fill the bases, and McGonigle — hitless in sixteen trips — lofting a ball that struck the ground and bounded over the left-field fence, a walk-off single by ground rule, of all the endings the pastime keeps in its coat. Báez had scored Detroit's first run too, aboard for Torres's double in the third; Jansen took the victory against his old employers, Snell's six innings going unrewarded. The champions thus stand level with Atlanta at one-and-eighty wins and five-and-fifty defeats in the contest for the National's second bye — and this afternoon's finale, as the ward relates, belongs to Glasnow alone.

TATIS STEALS HOME, AND TAMPA BAY STEALS THE GAME BACK: GULF COAST CLUB 7, MISSION NINE 6

San Diego assembled a six-to-three lead by the seventh with genuine panache — Tatis stealing home outright, France striking his nineteenth homer, Machado driving in two — and then watched four runs undo it in the home half: Yandy Díaz's three-run single, abetted by Rengifo's errant throw, and the fleet Simpson slapping the go-ahead single before roaring at his own dugout, a display from the quietest man in the room. "Just kind of blacked out right there," he grinned. Caminero's six-and-thirtieth homer — now a single blast behind Alvarez's American lead — and Aranda's seventeenth had kept the hosts within reach; Baker sealed his nine-and-thirtieth save, and the league leaders' three-and-thirtieth comeback victory of the season, their one-and-eightieth overall, stretches the East to four games and a half over New York. The set concludes at 1:40 this afternoon, Ray opposing Rasmussen; Rengifo's cart is the ward's sadder business.

BENINTENDI SUPPLIES THE FIRST RUN AND THE LAST WORD, AND JENKINS OPENS HIS ACCOUNT: SOUTH SIDERS 3, NORTH STARS 2

Andrew Benintendi singled home the game's first run and settled its verdict with a sixth-inning homer, his fourteenth, while between his contributions the young Walker Jenkins — whose debut these pages attended Friday — drove home the first run of his major-league life by force-out in the second. Fedde took the decision, Hudson his seventh save, and the White Sox have won four running, their grip on the Central now four games and a half over Cleveland, whose own Saturday sorrows appear below.

LOWE OPENS THE LEDGER, FLORES CLEARS THE BASES' WORTH: SMOKY CITY NINE 6, CARDS 2

Brandon Lowe greeted the afternoon with a leadoff homer, his eight-and-twentieth, and the fifth inning settled matters when Rafael Flores Jr. struck a three-run blast, his seventh, with Gonzales's run-scoring double closing the accounts in the ninth. Mlodzinski pitched to his seventh victory; the young Báez's fifth homer was St. Louis's brightest moment on an afternoon that dropped the Redbirds four games and a half from the National's last chair, their obligations now running chiefly to the arithmetic of other clubs' defeats.

TWO RUNS DELIVERED ON A SINGLE BALL FOUR: TORONTOS 4, PUGET SOUND MEN 3

Seattle banked a three-run lead behind Raleigh's nineteenth homer and Ward's two-run single, and surrendered it by increments of carelessness: in the fifth, Springer's bases-loaded walk became a two-run transaction when Bazardo's fourth ball skipped past the catcher and Bateman came scampering home from second; in the sixth, Bateman singled the account level and Kirk singled it ahead, and there it stayed. Soriano collected the win, Varland his one-and-thirtieth save, and the Torontos — two straight now — sit a game and a half from Cleveland's wild-card chair, of which more below.

KELLY THROWS SEVEN CLEAN, AND NOOTBAAR'S SLAM FINDS THE COVE: D-BACKS 7, FRISCO NINE 1

The daylight half by the Bay went entirely to Arizona: Merrill Kelly pitched seven shutout innings, and Lars Nootbaar — Friday's leadoff-homer hero in these pages — emerged from the bench in the seventh to strike a pinch-hit grand slam that cleared the right-field arcade and found the waters of McCovey Cove, the first Arizona man to bathe a ball there since Varsho in September of 2020. "The guys in front of me did a good job of loading the bases," the modest author explained. The victory draws the D-backs dead level with idle-no-more San Diego for the National's final chair; the pregame ejection is the protocol desk's business above.

ON THE DAY OF KENT'S NUMBER, ELDRIDGE COLLECTS FOUR AND THE HONORS ARE DIVIDED: FRISCO NINE 7, D-BACKS 2

The nightcap answered the matinee: with Kent's one-and-twenty fresh upon the wall, the young Eldridge drove home four runs on three singles, Devers added two more among his own three knocks, and Sanmartin pitched to the victory as San Francisco took the evening game seven runs to two and split the day's labors. Vargas drove in a pair for the visitors, whose gains of the afternoon were thus half returned by nightfall — the last chair shared this morning, as the card above relates.

CREWS BOOKENDS THE AFTERNOON AND SETTLES THE TENTH: CAPITAL NINE 5, FLORIDIANS 4

Dylan Crews opened Washington's account with a two-run single in the third — the catcher Mack's errant throw compounding the damage as House and Vivas followed with blows of their own — and closed it in the tenth, singling home Nuñez for the walk-off after Miami had clawed level, Stowers's two-run double and Heriberto Hernández's tying two-run homer, his two-and-twentieth, doing the visitors' work in the seventh. Ribalta took the win, and the Capital nine have three straight; the Fish, four games from the National's last chair, must resume the argument at 12:15 this very afternoon on the same grounds.

PÉREZ HOLDS THE LINE, AND DUBÓN RUNS THROUGH THE STOP SIGN: ATLANTA 2, MOUNTAIN MEN 1

Colorado led by Castro's sixth-inning single until the eighth, when the Braves assembled a two-out rally of singles by Olson and Dubón and Michael Harris II's sharp double to left — Dubón running clean through his coach's stop sign at third and scoring at a stroll when the throw went to second. Martín Pérez supplied five and two-thirds sturdy innings, Suter took the decision, and Fuentes sealed his third save. Six straight victories now for Atlanta, whose one-and-eighty wins stand level with Los Angeles this morning in the contest for the National's second bye — an appointment of arithmetic the desk note weighs below.

TWO HOURS OFF THE INVALID LIST, SOTO RIPS THE GO-AHEAD: METROPOLITANS 6, HOUSTON NINE 2

Juan Soto, restored Saturday from five weeks' exile with a strained left calf, fouled a pitch off his leg in the fifth, hopped about while "everything went through my mind," then stepped back in and lined the go-ahead single to right at a hundred miles to the hour. "He's right up there with the absolute best hitters on the planet," observed the interim manager Green, "so it's unsurprising that he finds his timing quicker than the rest of us do." Jared Young drove home three, the triple among his blows, and McLean pitched to his tenth victory; Yordan Alvarez's seven-and-thirtieth homer, stretching his league-leading runs-batted-in count to three-and-ninety, was the visitors' principal reply. Houston departs Queens holding the West by two games over Texas — both beaten Saturday — while the Mets bank a second straight.

A TWELFTH VICTORY IN THIRTEEN GAMES, AND ROJAS DRIVES HOME FOUR: MISSOURIANS 8, GUARDIANS 3

Cleveland led early on Angel Martínez's two-run homer and was buried methodically thereafter: Collins's two-run double in the fifth, Perez's go-ahead double in the sixth ahead of a four-run outburst fattened by Ramírez's error, and Josh Rojas — a two-run single in the sixth, a two-run homer in the eighth — accounting for four runs batted in altogether. Gose collected his first victory, and the Kansas City surge this paper has chronicled all week runs now to twelve victories in thirteen games. Cleveland's hold on the American's last wild-card chair is a single game over Baltimore with Toronto a game and a half astern, and the set concludes at 1:40 this afternoon, Lugo opposing Messick.

CHOURIO OPENS HIS THIRD TWENTY-HOMER LEDGER, AND THE BEST RECORD ROLLS ALONG: CREAM CITY NINE 5, ARLINGTON MEN 3

Jackson Chourio's twentieth homer opened the scoring — the milestone desk above has the marvel of his youth — and Contreras added his thirteenth as Milwaukee dispatched Texas for a fourth consecutive victory, Drohan pitching to the decision and Megill sealing his five-and-twentieth save. Nimmo's fourteenth homer and Freeman's first were the visitors' account. The Brewers stand five-and-eighty wins against one-and-fifty defeats, the game's best ledger by a comfortable margin — and Monday evening they call at Wrigley Field, where the Central's top two meet with eight games between them.

THE BULLPEN BENDS FOUR TIMES AND BREAKS NOT ONCE: BIRDS 5, WHITE ELEPHANTS 3

Baltimore's relief corps spent the final four innings escorting baserunners off the premises: Hoppe pitched out of a bases-filled sixth, and in the seventh Yennier Cano, summoned with the sacks loaded and one out, froze into his statuary pose after striking out Gelof and Butler back to back on splitters. "That was electric, and we needed it," ruled the manager Albernaz. Cowser's thirteenth homer led the offense, Baz took the win, and Kittredge sealed his eighth save; two straight now for the O's on their western swing, a single game from Cleveland's chair — an arithmetic growing warmer by the morning, as the card above attests.

TEN INNINGS IN ANAHEIM, AND TURNER CASHES THE EXTRA FRAME: QUAKERS 4, SERAPHS 2

Marsh's early run-scoring single held until Neto's three-and-twentieth homer leveled the account in the eighth, whereupon the tenth settled it: Schwarber doubled home Realmuto on a drive that glanced off two Angel gloves, and Trea Turner singled home two more. Duran took the decision, and Sánchez's two-hundredth strikeout — the milestone desk's business above — anchored the staff's evening. Twelve victories in fourteen games now for Philadelphia, whose second wild-card chair is four games clear of both San Diego and Arizona.

A Sabbath survey of the tables, taken in one draught. In the American: Tampa Bay's lead in the East is four games and a half over New York, with Boston seven and a half astern and today's Bronx rubber deciding the season's series between them; the White Sox hold the Central by four and a half over Cleveland; Houston keeps the West by two over Texas; and the wild-card row reads New York, Boston, and Cleveland's last chair by a single game over surging Baltimore, a game and a half over Toronto, and two over Texas. In the National: Atlanta by five in the East, Milwaukee by eight in the Central with the game's best record at five-and-eighty wins, and Los Angeles by nine in the West — but mark the second bye, where Atlanta's six straight victories and the champions' Saturday stumble leave the two clubs dead level at one-and-eighty wins apiece; and mark the last chair, where San Diego and Arizona this morning sit in each other's laps, with Miami four back and St. Louis four and a half. Today's card runs to fourteen engagements, all verified against the schedule, opening at 12:15 with the Fish and the Capital nine resuming yesterday's tenth-inning quarrel. The desk directs the reader's eye to the 1:35 hour in the Bronx, Suarez opposing Warren with a possible October tiebreaker in the balance, and to a crowded 1:40: the Royals' twelve-of-thirteen surge concludes its Cleveland business with Lugo opposing Messick, Glasnow carries the Detroit finale alone — the unicorn's postponement being the ward's sorrow above — and Ray opposes Rasmussen at Tampa Bay. The evening belongs to Wrigley at 7:20, Burns and his fourteen-and-three against Imanaga; and Monday the Brewers themselves call at that same yard, where the Central's top two shall have it out. Until the morrow's dispatch, keep your scorecards near and your enthusiasms nearer.

~ THE HERALD ~

The Herald Acknowledges Its Debts