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

THE MORNING HORSEHIDE HERALD

"Every Score Set Down, No Deed Unsung"

~ Being a Faithful Daily Chronicle of the National Pastime ~

Volume I · No. 91 · Wednesday, the Seventh of October, Two Thousand and Twenty-Six

Reporting 2 contests from the day prior.

The Game of the Day

TWO CAPS TIP ACROSS SIXTY FEET, AND THE SECOND SITTING GOES TO THE VISITORS — YAMAMOTO FANS TEN THROUGH SEVEN, KIKÉ AND FREEMAN STRIKE TWICE IN THREE BATTERS OF THE FOURTH, AND ATLANTA STANDS ONE DEFEAT FROM WINTER: DODGERS 3, BRAVES 1

Before a pitch is thrown the two aces exchange tipped caps across the Truist Park lawn, and for three innings the rematch of the August masterpiece honors its billing — six strikeouts apiece, nothing scored — until Enrique Hernández turns on Sale for a two-run four-bagger and Freeman, a month's drought lately behind him, clears the barrier two batters later; Yamamoto, in his first appearance since recording the final outs of last autumn's seventh game, carries a postseason-best ten strikeouts through seven innings of one-run ball, Díaz holds the ninth for his first save in nearly two months, and the champions stand one victory from a third consecutive Championship Series while Atlanta's offense, seven runs in three games, runs out of evenings to find itself

The engagement opened with a courtesy. Before a pitch had been thrown Tuesday night at Truist Park, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Chris Sale tipped their caps to one another across the diamond — two craftsmen acknowledging the appointment this paper's Tuesday number called the hinge of the whole quarrel.3 For three innings the bill was honored to the letter: six strikeouts apiece and nothing scored, the first postseason game to open so since Kershaw and deGrom traded ciphers in the first game of the 2015 Division Series.4 The 42,420 in the seats had every reason to expect the sequel to run like the original — the 1-0 shutout Sale pitched against this same club in this same yard on the 27th of August, when Yamamoto allowed one run and took the loss for his trouble.3 Then came the fourth inning, and with it the oldest chapter in the Los Angeles October hymnal.

Andy Pages singled, and Enrique Hernández — the October familiar whom his own teammates discuss in tones of baffled admiration — turned on Sale and dropped a two-run drive over the left-field wall, the 17th postseason home run of his career. The man homers once in every 19.5 October trips to the plate, against once in every 31.7 the summer long. Two batters later Freeman, who before Monday had gone better than a month without an extra-base hit, found the right-center seats for his second home run in as many games and the 18th of his playoff life. "I wish there was a recipe for that so we can all take it from him," said Freeman of his colleague's annual transformation. "He's incredible. He shows up when you need him." Sale's evening closed after five innings and seven hits, three runs in all, and Atlanta had lost behind its ace for the first time since the 21st of August.4

Yamamoto wanted no more. The splitter working from the first, he retired 12 of his first 14 men, and when Atlanta loaded the bases with one out in the fifth, the damage was held to a groundout — struck by Baldwin, who in the August meeting had supplied the lone run off Yamamoto by home run, as these columns recalled only yesterday, and now supplied Tuesday's lone Atlanta run by humbler means. Ten strikeouts across seven innings made a postseason high for a man pitching for the first time since he closed the seventh game of last year's World Series; he is the third Japanese-born pitcher to reach double figures in an October game, after Ohtani and Kuroda, and the first Dodger to pair seven innings and ten strikeouts with one run or fewer since Snell in last autumn's Wild Card round. His club has now won 10 of the 11 postseason games in which he has pitched. "He was attacking us and putting the ball where he wanted to put it," testified the Atlanta second baseman Albies. "I mean, it was really rough." The pitcher's own account was briefer: "I was able to carry that feel into today's game."3 Scott took the eighth without a run, and the ninth went to Edwin Díaz — the reclamation project whose mid-game trumpets this paper heard Monday — who banked his first save in nearly two months, having recorded but three all summer after the 7th of April.8

The manager Roberts pronounced the method: "We played tonight like an elimination game."3 The arithmetic explains the urgency and now rewards it: in best-of-five series standing one game apiece, the winner of the third has taken the series 48 times in 67, and clubs carrying a two-games-to-one lead into a fourth game on the road have gone through 26 times in 37, twenty of those clinchings coming in the fourth game itself.3 Atlanta's remaining case rests on bats that have produced seven runs in three games: Baldwin bats .130 for the October, Olson .174, and Acuña — moved to designated hitter 90 minutes before the first pitch to spare his right knee — .143 without an extra-base hit since the 19th of September. "Those guys have been our aircraft carriers all year," insisted the manager Weiss. "They're always one at-bat away from changing a game." Los Angeles has questions of its own carried lightly: Ohtani, dropped to fifth in the order for the first time in six years, went hitless again — "he's going to come to life. It will happen," shrugged Roberts — and Rojas left the eighth inning with pain in his lower back.43 The fourth game goes this evening at 6 o'clock Eastern at Truist Park, Glasnow opposite Mahle; should Atlanta force a fifth, it would be played Friday at 8 at Dodger Stadium.28

The Postseason Card

NO MILLER, NO MOREJON, NO MATTER — KING RETURNS TWO DAYS AFTER A FIVE-INNING START TO SEIZE THE LAST SIX OUTS, BOGAERTS SLAMS THE GATE WITH A GAME-ENDING DOUBLE PLAY, AND MILWAUKEE'S TWELFTH STRAIGHT OCTOBER ROAD DEFEAT TIES A MARK TWO-AND-SIXTY YEARS IN THE MAKING: PADRES 4, BREWERS 3

San Diego's third early two-run lead of the series is erased a third time, Cronenworth's first-pitch answer off Romero restores the advantage for good, and Bogaerts manufactures the decisive run with his spikes — leaping clear of a broken bat on his way to third and racing home when the rookie Pratt bounces the throw — before Michael King, who gave five innings and 72 pitches in Sunday's second game, walks the tying and go-ahead men aboard in the ninth and watches Yelich's 107-mph liner die in Bogaerts' glove; the Mission nine, their closer called to the cradle and their best left-handed reliever shelved by a weary shoulder, force a fourth game at 10 o'clock Eastern tonight, while Milwaukee — still ahead two games to one — has now lost twelve consecutive postseason road games, equaling a record the Senators and Twins spent 62 years assembling

San Diego came to its elimination evening missing the two best arms in its bullpen — Miller summoned to the paternity rolls hours before the first pitch, as the Stork Desk reports above, and Morejon shelved by a weary shoulder — and played before 47,708 at Petco Park the third consecutive game of this series to be decided by a single run. No postseason series had opened with three one-run games since the 2021 Championship Series, and only thirteen on record have ever done it.56 For the third time running the home nine banked an early two-run lead, this one in the third on Tatis' run-scoring groundout and Machado's single; for the third time running Milwaukee erased it, Contreras lifting his second home run of the series in the fourth and Chourio's sacrifice fly squaring the account in the fifth — though only after Turang had bounced out with the bases full in the top of that inning, the costliest of a night of strandings. Cronenworth answered Romero's first pitch of the bottom half with the go-ahead drive into the right-field seats, and the decisive run scored in the sixth on pure larceny: Bogaerts singled, took second on a wild pitch, broke for third as Andujar's broken-bat bouncer and half the bat itself spun toward the rookie shortstop Pratt, leapt clear of both in stride — and raced home when Pratt's hurried throw found the dirt. "You can make excuses about everything, but I fielded the ball and I threw the ball in the dirt," said Pratt. "I cost us a run."6

Milwaukee's reply made it 4-3 in the seventh, Yelich lining a single to center to cash Contreras — snapping a drought of nineteen postseason games without a run batted in, reaching back to the opening game of the 2018 pennant round — and then the evening became Michael King's. The San Diego ace, 72 pitches into Sunday's second game, had presented himself in the manager's office in the afternoon: "He came in the office today and said I'm available," Stammen related. King paced the bullpen through the seventh, breezed the eighth, and in the ninth walked Contreras and Turang with one out before Yelich lined his 40th pitch — 107.1 miles the hour off the bat, an expected average of .630 by the instruments — directly at Bogaerts, who scooped the one-hop, stepped on second, and fired to first for the ending. It was King's first save in more than four years; he is the sixteenth pitcher since the save became official in 1969 to start a game of five innings and record a save in the same postseason series, and the first since Buehler in the 2024 World Series — the same Buehler who takes the ball for San Diego tonight. "I have bullets in my arm that I don't want to save," said King. "You're in an elimination game, you want everybody to be all-in on it. Not just me included. We have a bunch of dogs down there that are all-in."5

For Milwaukee the loss carried an antique echo: twelve consecutive postseason defeats on the road, tying the dubious record the Senators and Twins assembled across 62 years and one change of address, 1925 to 1987. The franchise stands 6-24 away from home in October play and has not won on the road since the third game of the 2018 Championship Series — a club, its men note, with exactly one survivor from that evening. "I mean, this team has one person playing from 2018," said Yelich, who is that person. "So that really has no effect on this group." The manager Murphy entered a plea for the ancestors — "I wouldn't beat up the old Brewers if you don't mind," says he, noting that all but one of the clubs that handed Milwaukee those twelve went on to the World Series — and the reliever Ashby supplied the banner for tonight: "It's like we've got 40 guys versus 50,000. That's a cool feeling." Merrill, it should be entered, twice robbed the visitors with his glove in center, beginning with Chourio's first-inning drive to the wall. The fourth game goes at 10 o'clock Eastern at Petco Park, Milwaukee's starter unannounced against Buehler; a fifth, should San Diego force it, would be played Friday at half past four in Milwaukee.62

News Around the League

THE GAUNTLET DESK: FOUR CONTESTS, FOUR POSSIBLE CODAS — THE YEAR'S LAST FOUR-GAME DAY RUNS FROM THE SOUTH SIDE AT FOUR O'CLOCK TO THE PACIFIC AT TEN, AND EVERY ONE OF THEM COULD END A SERIES

Mark the date: today is the final day of 2026 with four games on the card, and each of the four could close a Division Series.8 The order of ceremonies, by the forward ledger: Cleveland at Chicago at 4 o'clock Eastern, Espino opposite Newcomb, the White Sox two games up; Los Angeles at Atlanta at 6, Glasnow against Mahle, the champions leading two games to one; Tampa Bay at New York at 8, Martinez against Fried, the Rays likewise two up; and Milwaukee at San Diego at 10, the Brewers' starter unannounced against Buehler, Milwaukee a game from the pennant round.21

For Chicago the afternoon is a homecoming besides — the whole of this White Sox October has been played on the road, and the South Side has not hosted a playoff game since 2021. Mr. Leitch of MLB.com ventures that the yard now called Rate Field has not known an atmosphere to match this one since the first two games of the 2005 World Series, the opener of which was attended by the Chicago-born churchman who, twenty years on, would be elevated as Pope Leo XIV. The scrapbook counsels humility all the same: in 2008 and again in 2021 the club came home down two games, won once, and was eliminated in the fourth game. The present edition — four October victories without a defeat, every one of them taken in somebody else's yard — aims at the franchise's fourth Championship Series and, as this paper's columns have lately rehearsed, a first home series-clinching victory in 120 years.8

THE STORK DESK: THE BULLPEN'S GRANDEST ARM ANSWERS A HIGHER SUMMONS — MILLER LEAVES AN ELIMINATION GAME FOR THE CRADLE, PERALTA TAKES HIS ROSTER SEAT, AND SAN DIEGO AWAITS TWO ARRIVALS AT ONCE

The paternity rolls, whose first October call this paper entered Sunday, have now claimed the heaviest arm in the San Diego bullpen. Mason Miller telephoned the club early Tuesday afternoon: his wife, Jordan, had gone into labor. The closer — a 1.67 figure across 66 regular-season appearances, and lately the subject of the tipping inquest these columns conducted Tuesday — was placed on the paternity list hours before an elimination game, the left-hander Wandy Peralta taking his seat on the series roster.7 The statute allows an absence of one to three days; the club anticipates its man back for tonight's fourth game — "That's what we're anticipating," said the pitching instructor Niebla — and failing that, for a fifth game Friday, when by rule it must be Peralta who gives way. His teammates waved him off without a murmur. "We have his back," said Tatis. "Let him have his family time right now." France, himself called to the same rolls in September, allowed: "I know it's a hard thing to balance, but he's doing the right thing." The stork has thus visited the San Diego club three times this season — France in September, Buehler on the eve of the third game, and now Miller.7

The evening disclosed a second subtraction more quietly. Morejon, the bullpen's best left hand, has been nursing fatigue in his throwing shoulder — "stickiness," the manager Stammen called it — and though he played catch and even took the bullpen mound before the game, the club declined to push him. How San Diego lines up behind Buehler tonight is, by the manager's own admission, contingent on both men; the club professes not to know.5

THE INFIRMARY DESK: SEVEN HITS IN ONE-AND-SIXTY AT-BATS — CLEVELAND'S COLD ORDER FOLLOWS ITS CAPTAIN'S FRACTURED SUMMER TO CHICAGO, WHERE RAMÍREZ HAS STRUCK MORE HOME RUNS THAN ANY VISITOR NOW PLAYING

Cleveland's predicament, reduced to a line of agate: the order has gone 7 for 61 in this series — a .115 mark — with eight hitless at-bats when a runner stood in scoring position, and José Ramírez, the franchise's dearest son, has yet to record a hit. The fuller explanation resides in his left wrist. Ramírez fractured the hamate bone on the 13th of June and returned in five weeks and a day — quicker than the surgeons asked — and the power never followed: twelve home runs and a .688 OPS across 125 games, his poorest figures since 2015, with two home runs in his final 53 games. The pain, he has acknowledged, will keep until winter, and the strength is not expected whole before spring training. "It has been difficult," said Ramírez. "There are days when it might feel better, and others when it feels worse. But that is no excuse. The mentality is to go out and compete and try to win."9

The manager Vogt declines the alibi on his man's behalf and the despair besides: "He's not 100 percent and hasn't been since June, but he's giving us everything he has, and we all know José's one swing of the bat away from getting it going... I have a feeling he's going to come through for us." And the venue argues for the feeling: Ramírez has hit 23 home runs at Rate Field as a visitor, the most of any man now active and second in all history to Cabrera's 26. Cleveland, two defeats into the series with none to spare, will learn by suppertime whether the one swing arrives in time.9

THE ARCHIVES DESK: AT TWO GAMES DOWN, NEW YORK TAKES ITS SCRAPBOOK OFF THE SHELF — THE FLIP OF 2001 AND THE RALLY OF 2017 ARE READ ALOUD IN THE BRONX, WHERE FRIED AND THE UNANSWERABLE RICE MUST HOLD THE LINE TONIGHT

No franchise keeps a thicker scrapbook, and at two games down the Bronx has turned to the comfortable pages. Mr. Lupica of MLB.com directs the anxious reader to the 13th of October, 2001 — third game of a Division Series against an Oakland club that, like these Rays, had bettered New York's season record and taken the first two games — when Jeter crossed the whole infield to collect an overthrown relay and backhanded his famous flip to Posada, the runner Giambi beaten by a step, the game held 1-0, the series in time won entire. Beside it sits 2017, when the club climbed from the same 0-2 grave against Cleveland. The less comfortable page — last October's 0-2 against Toronto, never answered — the readership declines to open.10

The case for hope bats left-handed. Rice is hitting .467 for the October with four home runs and eight runs batted in through four games, carrying the offense as he carried it through the captain Judge's absent summer; and the starting pitching has committed no crime, Cole and Schlittler having yielded three earned runs between them in the series while the defense kicked away the second game behind them. Tonight the ball goes to Fried, who opened the Wild Card round with six innings of one-run ball against Boston. The sober entry on the facing page: Tampa Bay has beaten New York nine times in fifteen meetings this season, puts every ball in play, and does not beat itself. The manager Boone states the assignment without ornament: "We've got the chance to do something great... We've responded to difficult times all season. Now we gotta do it again." And, more plainly still: "We gotta get a game."10

The National League supplied both of the day-prior entries and left both of its quarrels standing two games to one — Los Angeles a win from the pennant round after the aces' rematch went to Yamamoto, San Diego alive by the width of a double play. Now comes the densest page left on the calendar: four contests today, every one a possible ending — Cleveland at Chicago at 4 o'clock Eastern, Los Angeles at Atlanta at 6, Tampa Bay at New York at 8, Milwaukee at San Diego at 10 — and no day hereafter holds more than two, the Championship Series opening the 11th of the month in the National League and the 12th in the American.2 Until the next dispatch, keep your scorecards near and your enthusiasms nearer.

~ THE HERALD ~

The Herald Acknowledges Its Debts

  1. MLB Box Scores — Wednesday, October 7, 2026 — Boxscore
  2. Baseball-Reference.com — Upcoming Schedule and Upcoming Dates — Baseball-Reference
  3. Sonja Chen, Yamamoto (10 K's) dazzles, putting Dodgers 1 win from return to NLCS — MLB.com
  4. Paul Casella, Yamamoto-Sale duel doesn't disappoint, and other takeaways from NLDS Game 3 — MLB.com
  5. AJ Cassavell, Led by King's all-in relief effort, Padres fight and force Game 4 — MLB.com
  6. Adam McCalvy, Unable to sweep, '40 of us versus 50,000' mentality driving Brewers into Game 4 — MLB.com
  7. AJ Cassavell, Padres closer Miller misses NLDS Game 3 on paternity list, could return for Game 4 — MLB.com
  8. Will Leitch, 4 games. 4 potential clinches. Here's everything to know today — MLB.com
  9. Martín Gallegos, J-Ram says wrist pain is 'no excuse' as he seeks signature playoff moment — MLB.com
  10. Mike Lupica, Yanks have seen this 0-2 script before and flipped it — MLB.com