THE MORNING HORSEHIDE HERALD

THE OCTOBER DESK: THE SEASON'S LAST PAGE IS WRITTEN THIS AFTERNOON — PHILADELPHIA AND ARIZONA SETTLE THE NATIONAL'S LAST BERTH, HOUSTON AND TEXAS SETTLE THE WEST, AND THE LOSER OF THAT LATTER QUARREL GOES HOME OUTRIGHT

Game one hundred sixty-two arrives with two questions still open, and every one of the afternoon's fifteen contests done by suppertime — the whole schedule, fittingly, played in daylight.

The first question is the one this paper has chronicled through a fortnight of Philadelphia agonies: the Phillies, thumped 12-1 by Tampa Bay on Saturday for a fourth consecutive defeat — their bats managing but one unearned run to snap a one-and-twenty-inning scoreless drought — nonetheless still hold the National's final wild card by a single game over Arizona, whose own six-game winning streak was halted in San Diego. The arithmetic is mercifully plain. Philadelphia wins this afternoon against the Rays, with the ace Wheeler taking the ball, and it claims a fifth consecutive October; Philadelphia loses, and it survives only if Arizona also falls at San Diego, the tiebreaker being already in the desert's pocket, as this paper has noted. Lose while Arizona wins, and the Phillies complete what their own scribes are calling the second-worst collapse in the franchise's long and collapse-acquainted history.

The second question is the West's, and it is winner-take-all in the fullest sense: Houston and Texas stand level at eighty wins and one-and-eighty losses, and with all three of the American's wild cards long since spoken for — New York, Boston, and the South Siders — the loser of this race simply goes home. Houston, holding the Silver Boot tiebreaker in its saddlebag still, is champion of the West with a victory at West Sacramento or a Texas defeat in Minnesota; Texas must win and have Houston lose. And when the smoke clears, Tuesday opens the Wild Card rounds: Boston at New York in the Bronx, the Cubs at San Diego by the bay — and the West's new champion entertaining the South Siders.

THE FAREWELL DESK: TEN STRIKEOUTS APART AFTER FORTY YEARS OF SHARED HARNESS — SCHERZER TAKES A TORONTO MOUND THIS AFTERNOON WITH THE LEDGER, AND PERHAPS HIS OWN CAREER, IN THE BALANCE

The game's two great contemporaries have jockeyed for the same laurels since they shared a Detroit rotation from 2010 through '14, and they will not stop merely because one of them has retired. With Verlander's six strikeouts in Saturday's farewell, his all-time account stands precisely ten clear of Max Scherzer on the career leaderboard — and Scherzer, who is not ready to declare his own intentions, takes the mound for Toronto against Cincinnati this very afternoon, knowing it could be his final turn. Between them the two have banked four hundred ninety victories, six thousand six hundred seventeen and a third innings, and six Cy Young Awards; the strikeout ledger is the last account still open. Scherzer, for his part, will render no verdict on retirement until the winter — he means, he says, to see how things unfold. The Herald will keep the vigil it kept for his old stablemate: attend, Toronto, on the chance there is not another.

THE HONORS DESK: A LETTER 'C' IS STITCHED WHERE NONE HAS EVER BEEN — YELICH IS MADE THE FIRST CAPTAIN IN MILWAUKEE'S HISTORY, WITH YOUNT'S BLESSING SOUGHT AND GIVEN FIRST

Before Saturday's 3-2 dispatch of St. Louis, the club with the game's best record did a thing it had never done in its half-century and more: it named Christian Yelich captain and stitched the letter to his jersey. The man's lone condition does him as much credit as the honor: he would not accept until Robin Yount — in Yelich's own reckoning the true first captain, though no letter ever said so — had been asked and had given his wholehearted blessing. "Without his blessing," said Yelich, "I wouldn't have wanted to accept it." Someone in the clubhouse carried the idea to the manager Murphy, who walked it up through the owner Attanasio and the baseball chief Arnold before putting it to Yelich, and thence to Yount. A club sitting on a hundred and two victories has little need of ceremony; it made room for this one anyway, and rightly.

THE MILESTONE DESK: CAMINERO RINGS UP FORTY AND A HUNDRED FOR A SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR — AND IN A LOST COLORADO SEASON, GOODMAN STRIKES HIS FORTIETH AND ONE-AND-FORTIETH IN A SINGLE EVENING

Junior Caminero keeps three numbers dear — forty, one hundred, and one hundred sixty-two — and on Saturday in Philadelphia he banked the second of them for the second year running. His first-inning two-run blast off Aaron Nola, home run number two-and-forty, carried him past a hundred runs driven in for the season; the fortieth homer had come on the eleventh of September, on the first walk-off blow of his life, the same swing that clinched Tampa Bay's return to October. "We were looking for another season with 100 RBIs," said the young third baseman. "Thank God we complete it." There remains the third number: he means to start every one of the hundred sixty-two, and this afternoon closes the books.

Colorado's evening in Chicago, meanwhile, produced the season's least-heralded slugging landmark: Hunter Goodman struck his fortieth home run in the third inning and his one-and-fortieth — a three-run affair — in the ninth, a pair of thunderclaps from a club fifty-eight and one hundred three on the year. And atop the American's home-run table, Pete Alonso holds at three-and-forty, the sole proprietor of the crown he seized from a four-way knot on Friday, as this paper recorded, with one afternoon remaining to any challenger.

THE INFIRMARY WARD: TREINEN'S SHOULDER GIVES WAY IN THE BULLPEN AND HIS OCTOBER IS OVER BEFORE IT BEGAN — MIZE JOINS THE INVALID LIST IN SAN DIEGO, AND THE WARD'S EARLIER GUESTS AWAIT THEIR VERDICTS

The cruelest entry of the day required no batted ball at all: Blake Treinen, warming in the Dodger bullpen during Saturday's 4-3 victory by the bay, injured his shoulder in the act of preparing, and the manager Roberts pronounced the season — and thus the postseason — finished for him. "I don't know if it was a complete blowout, but really unfortunate," said Roberts, with imaging to come and the invalid list certain. In San Diego, Casey Mize — whose difficult Friday evening this paper recorded — was placed on the fifteen-day list with a sprained right ankle, Gavin Sheets returning from the invalid rolls in the corresponding move. The ward's earlier admissions hold their beds: Corbin Burnes, shelved Friday with the inflamed shoulder, will seek a second opinion before any next step is chosen, and Luis Arraez's examined ankle — the sprain is pronounced a serious one — leaves his availability for whatever October Philadelphia can still reach very much in doubt.