The Morning Horsehide Herald — the Third of October, Two Thousand and Twenty-Six

Is it spring training yet? No — the pennants are being decided, and spring must wait its turn.

0 days until the first pitch of the Division Series — four Game Ones this very day, beginning at one o'clock on Lake Erie's shore (Saturday, the 3rd of October, 2026).

News Around the League

THE OCTOBER DESK: THE QUIET DAY PASSES AND THE FOUR QUARRELS OPEN IN A SINGLE AFTERNOON — CHICAGO AT CLEVELAND AT ONE, ATLANTA AT LOS ANGELES AT FOUR, NEW YORK AT TAMPA BAY AT HALF PAST SIX, SAN DIEGO AT MILWAUKEE AT HALF PAST EIGHT

The calm this paper forecast arrived on schedule: Friday passed without a contest anywhere in the land, the travel day observed by all eight survivors, and today the October proper begins at the fuller measure. The card, verified against the league's forward ledger, reads thus: the Pale Hose call at Cleveland at one o'clock, Hagen Smith (3-3, a 1.29 figure) against Parker Messick (12-9, 2.56), the rookie left-handers squared off; Atlanta calls at Los Angeles at four, the hosts sending Tarik Skubal (12-7, 2.72) against a visiting starter yet unnamed; the Yankees call at Tampa Bay at half past six, Gerrit Cole (10-9, 3.61) against Drew Rasmussen (16-5, 2.67); and the Friars call at Milwaukee at half past eight, Robbie Ray (13-8, 3.59) against Jacob Misiorowski (16-5, 1.80), the leader of all the game in earned runs.

The second chapters follow hard upon: Sunday carries San Diego at Milwaukee at four o'clock and Atlanta at Los Angeles at eight; Monday, Chicago at Cleveland at five and New York at Tampa Bay at eight; and Tuesday the National League quarrels remove to Atlanta and San Diego. Four series, every one a best-of-five, and the particulars of each are entered below — the Herald having spent the idle Friday at the armory, as a paper should.

THE CENTRAL QUARREL, FOURTEENTH MEETING: A DIVISION SETTLED BY ONE GAME RESUMES ON LAKE ERIE'S SHORE — ROOKIE LEFT-HANDER AGAINST ROOKIE LEFT-HANDER AT ONE O'CLOCK, AND THE SUMMER'S LEDGER GIVES THE GUESTS THE EDGE

The thirteen meetings of the summer were not enough to settle the argument, so Cleveland and the Pale Hose will hold a fourteenth with everything at stake. The division fell to the Lake Erie men by a single game, 85 victories against 84, and by the narrowest of mechanisms — a three-game set taken at Progressive Field in the middle of September, the lead changing hands for the last time. Yet the season's ledger between them belongs to Chicago, seven games to six, the aggregate scoring 58 runs to 57; seven of the thirteen were settled by a single run, and four ended in walk-offs. Chicago held at least a share of first place for six-and-ninety days, Cleveland for nine-and-eighty. "Obviously we know Chicago really well," allows the Cleveland manager Vogt. "A really good team offensively. They've got a lot of power and they match up really well with us pitching-wise."

The pitching opens with a curiosity the deadball fathers never saw: two rookie left-handers, each his club's chosen man. Messick, whose Game One assignment this paper entered Friday, has faced the Chicagos four times this summer at a 2.81 figure, nine-and-twenty strikeouts against five passes in five-and-twenty innings and two-thirds. Smith, for his part, makes his second start of the week — three scoreless innings in Tuesday's Wild Card victory over Houston — and has held Cleveland to a 3.18 figure across his innings against them; three or four efficient frames would seem his ration, after which the manager Venable may call on young Grant Taylor and the rest of a bullpen that shut Houston out across the final five frames of the clincher. The South Side club used an opener one-and-thirty times this season, the most in the majors, and with idle days Sunday and Tuesday, Venable declares both Smith and Taylor may appear in any of the first three games. The first October meeting of the Central neighbors in their whole long acquaintance, and it could scarcely be drawn tighter.

THE EXPECTATION OVERTURNED IN CHAVEZ RAVINE: SKUBAL, NOT YAMAMOTO, TAKES THE BALL FOR GAME ONE — WHILE ATLANTA, ITS ROTATION ON THE INVALID ROLLS, DECLINES TO NAME A STARTER AT ALL

The expectation this paper recorded Friday is overturned: the Angelenos hand Game One not to Yamamoto but to Tarik Skubal, the left-hander acquired at the summer's Trade Deadline. The reasoning is a tailored one — the Atlanta order struggled against southpaws all season — and the price is acknowledged: Yamamoto, who last autumn threw consecutive complete games in the Championship Series and the World Series and then closed out the seventh game of the latter on no rest at all, was the only arrangement that returned the Japanese right-hander twice on regular rest in a five-game series. "I loved delivering that message," said the manager Roberts of informing Skubal. "I don't always get to deliver good messages, and that was a good one." The pitcher learned his assignment on the five-and-twentieth of September, walking off the mound after seven scoreless innings in San Francisco. His October credentials want nothing: a 2.04 figure across six postseason starts, six-and-fifty strikeouts in nine-and-thirty innings and two-thirds — every one of those starts made on the road, in his Detroit years. Saturday, at last, a home crowd. "Usually when I walk out onto the field in a playoff game, it's received with a lot of boos," said Skubal. "I'm excited to get some cheers in there for us."

Atlanta, by the sharpest contrast, arrives with no starter named at all, its rotation depleted exactly as this paper entered Friday: Sale unavailable before Sunday's second game, Mahle before Tuesday's third, Pérez — on the invalid rolls with the low back since the first of September — likewise barred until Game Three. The likeliest arrangement asks Grant Holmes, who threw but two innings in Thursday's clincher, for the early frames, perhaps behind the left-hander Suter as an opener. The handedness will also arrange the home order: against left-handed pitching the champions lead off Betts rather than Ohtani, and Skubal's presence makes the choice for them. Triple-digit heat is in the forecast for the four-o'clock first pitch — the two clubs' first October meeting since the 2021 Championship Series, which Atlanta took on its way to the title, and the hosts' first step toward a third consecutive one.

THE CAPTAIN'S CASE, THIRD HEARING: NEW YORK WEIGHS JUDGE'S NAME FOR THE DIVISION SERIES ROLLS AS THE DEADLINE ARRIVES — THE CALF HAS NOT YET RUN THE BASES, BUT THE SHIRT SAYS 'NO TIME LIKE OCTOBER'

The case this paper has followed since the calf first gave way on the sixteenth of September reached its final hearing Friday at Tropicana Field, where Aaron Judge — dressed for work hours before his teammates arrived, a shirt across his chest reading "No time like October" — awaited the club's verdict on his place on the Division Series roster, due by the evening. The docket of his rehabilitation is thorough: a platelet-poor plasma injection in late September, four turns of live batting practice Monday in the Bronx, further at-bats Wednesday at the Double-A grounds in Somerset, more hitting Thursday, and an early workout Friday across the bay in Tampa. What the captain has not yet done is run the bases, though the manager Boone suggests he may not need to — "sometimes running the bases, they replicate things in other ways," says he, framing the question before the club thus: "Is he going to be available at some point in this series potentially as a player?" The moderate strain of the soleus ordinarily asks three weeks; the three-time Most Valuable has spent seventeen days arguing with the arithmetic.

With or without him, the series wants no garnish. The Yankees and the Sunshine nine have met in October once in all their quarrelsome acquaintance — the 2020 Division Series, played in the neutral yard at San Diego and ended by Brosseau's blast off Chapman — and never once with both home crowds in attendance. Tampa Bay, the American's top seed at 98-64, went 55-26 in its return to the home dome this summer, and celebrated its division title on the Yankee Stadium lawn besides. New York's answer is the man it pays for precisely this assignment: Cole has given the Rays nine earned runs across his last six starts against them, a 2.09 figure. "Every time we play them, it's a tight game, it's a dogfight," says Rasmussen, who takes the ball opposite. The captain himself, whatever the rolls say by game time, put it plainest: "It's going to be a grind the next five games."

THE TOP SEED'S EXAMINATION: MILWAUKEE'S HUNDRED-THREE-WIN SUMMER MEETS THE ONE CLUB THAT SWEPT IT — RAY CHOSEN OVER BUEHLER TO EXPLOIT THE SUDS MEN'S ONE SOFT SPOT, AND MISIOROWSKI ANSWERS WITH THE BEST FIGURES IN BASEBALL

The season's best club takes the field at last tonight, and the examiners are the one nine that handled it roughest. The Suds men won a franchise-record 103 games, took the Central for the fourth consecutive year — no club had ever done it — and claimed the first seed of the whole field, closing at 18 won and 6 lost for September. Yet when they visited San Diego in August they were swept in three, their batsmen held to three hits in eight-and-twenty tries with runners in scoring position, and it was there that Jake Bauers, the thirty-year-old enjoying the season of his life, issued the prescription the clubhouse still quotes: "I just think we need to chill the [heck] out a little bit." They did — went straight to Dodger Stadium, took three of four, and never looked back. The Friars, for their own part, matched that 18-6 September stride for stride, needing every win of it to secure the league's top Wild Card berth, and arrive carrying a bullpen that has not yet surrendered a run this October, as this paper's Thursday columns recorded.

The pitching choices tell the whole strategy. San Diego passes over Buehler to start Robbie Ray, the left-hander got at the Deadline — for Milwaukee's order, first in the majors against right-handed pitching by the weighted measures, ranks but thirteenth against the southpaws, and Ray carries a career 2.82 figure against the Cream City club with a .193 average against. Milwaukee answers with the summit itself: Misiorowski, leader of all baseball in earned runs (1.80), strikeouts (252), base-runners per inning (0.80), and batting average allowed (.157). The hosts restored a bat for the occasion besides, activating Andrew Vaughn from the ten-day invalid rolls Friday. First pitch at half past eight; the first October meeting of the franchises born together in 1969 continues Sunday at four.

THE RESTING CHAMPIONS, A FULLER ACCOUNTING: OHTANI CONCEDES THE KNEE AND THE BICEPS MUST BE 'MANAGED' THROUGH OCTOBER — THE CHAMPIONS AWAIT THE RETURN OF A SWING LAST SEEN IN AUGUST

When this paper last took the champions' pulse, on the eve of the Wild Card round, Ohtani pronounced himself "feeling great physically"; Friday, speaking to the scribes for the first time since before his September stay on the invalid rolls, the four-time Most Valuable supplied the fuller ledger. The right biceps and the left knee that have troubled him since early summer remain unsolved. "I haven't been able to get a good grasp of the root cause of all this," said he through his interpreter. "That process is going to happen during the offseason... as of now, it's something I'm just going to have to manage." He will not pitch this postseason — the mound ambitions that produced 8 victories against 2 at a 1.79 figure through fourteen starts were shelved when the knee barked in July — and the bat's recent testimony is sobering: a .198 average with four-and-thirty strikeouts in the four-and-twenty games before his trip to the rolls, five hits in one-and-twenty tries upon his return, no home run since the eighteenth of August, and a season's total of thirty — his fewest in three Los Angeles summers — after six-and-twenty had come by midsummer at a .296 clip.

The bye week was spent on repairs: simulated at-bats against teammates and the pitching machine, rest for the joints, work for the timing. "I know that once the lights turn on, the postseason starts, the focus will be heightened," says the manager Roberts. "I expect good things. I really do. We just haven't seen it enough... for me to forecast it." The Herald, which entered the champion's own rosier bulletin in these columns Wednesday, enters Friday's candor beside it and lets the reader weigh the pair — observing only that a man who hits thirty home runs in a season his physicians would call lost remains a man no pitcher cares to see in October.

THE ALMANAC DESK: THE MACHINE'S FIRST SEASON IS AUDITED — FOUR-AND-FIFTY OF EVERY HUNDRED CHALLENGED CALLS OVERTURNED, AND THE CATCHERS PROVE THE SHARPEST LAWYERS AT THE NEW BAR

The automated ball-strike system closed the books on its first regular season, and the audit makes agreeable reading for the challengers: four-and-fifty percent of all challenged calls were overturned, the human eye corrected by the machine more often than it was confirmed. The catchers proved far the most successful class of petitioner — fitting enough, for no man in the yard studies the strike zone at closer range — with the batsmen trailing well behind. This paper's readers have already seen the device's October debut: the first game-ending challenge in postseason history, raised by the catcher Realmuto in Philadelphia's Game Two resurrection, a called ball converted to strike three with the season in the balance — the new jurisprudence, as these columns recorded Thursday, arriving at the sport's biggest moments right on schedule.

And from the North Side, a first entry in the winter ledger this paper opened Thursday: the Cubs' operations chief Hoyer, surveying a lineup that scored one run in its two October games, declares the winter's first business will be the pitching — "pitching acquisition" the stated priority, with nothing, says he, off the table. The free agencies of Happ and Suzuki already stand on the docket; the North Side winter promises industry.

No tables this morning — Friday passed without a contest from coast to coast, the lone such pause the bracket will grant until the rounds are settled, and the Herald has spent it as the eight survivors did: in preparation. Today the quiet ends emphatically. Four Division Series open inside eight hours — Chicago at Cleveland at one o'clock, Atlanta at Los Angeles at four, New York at Tampa Bay at half past six, San Diego at Milwaukee at half past eight — and from this morning until the last pennant question is answered, every edition of this paper will carry October's fuller measure: no playoff game a two-sentence note, every contest given its full accounting. The morrow's number will bring the first four verdicts. Until the next dispatch, keep your scorecards near and your enthusiasms nearer.

~ THE HERALD ~

The Herald Acknowledges Its Debts

MLB Box Scores — Saturday, October 3, 2026 — Boxscore
Baseball-Reference.com — Upcoming Schedule and Upcoming Dates — Baseball-Reference
Courtney Hollmon, Skubal gets the nod over Yamamoto for LA in NLDS Game 1 — MLB.com
Sonja Chen and Mark Bowman, Braves-Dodgers NLDS Game 1 FAQ (4 p.m. ET, FOX/FOX One) — MLB.com
Scott Merkin and Tim Stebbins, White Sox-Guardians ALDS Game 1 FAQ (1 p.m. ET, TBS/HBO Max) — MLB.com
Adam Berry and Bryan Hoch, Yankees-Rays ALDS Game 1 FAQ (6:30 p.m. ET, TBS/HBO Max) — MLB.com
Adam McCalvy and AJ Cassavell, Padres-Brewers NLDS Game 1 FAQ (8:30 p.m. ET, FS1) — MLB.com
Bryan Hoch, Will Aaron Judge be on the Yankees' ALDS roster? Here's the latest — MLB.com
Sonja Chen, 'Giving everything he has': Ohtani seeks power surge in NLDS — MLB.com
Robot umpires flip 54% of challenged calls as Reds lead way — ESPN
Jesse Rogers, Cubs' Jed Hoyer makes 'pitching acquisition' top offseason priority — ESPN