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. 97 · Tuesday, the Thirteenth of October, Two Thousand and Twenty-Six

Reporting 2 contests from the day prior.

The Game of the Day

THE ONE-AND-NINETIETH PITCH IS THE ACE'S LAST, AND IT COMES DOWN FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX FEET AWAY — DeLAUTER AND BAILEY UNDO RASMUSSEN BY INSTALLMENTS, LOWE UNTIES THE KNOT, AND THE LAKE ERIE MEN, FOUR TIMES VICTORIOUS RUNNING, CARRY THE OPENER OUT OF THE ENEMY'S DOME: GUARDIANS 7, RAYS 3

Down 2-0 by the first inning to a Tampa Bay club that had not lost a game since the regular season's final Sunday, Cleveland waits out Drew Rasmussen — whose previous 13 starts had every one of them ended in a Rays victory — and then dismantles the evening piece by piece: Chase DeLauter's opposite-field homer in the sixth, Patrick Bailey's 436-foot reply on the ace's 91st and final pitch to open the seventh, Nathaniel Lowe's two-run single in the eighth, and a three-run ninth manufactured largely by José Ramírez's legs, while Foster Griffin and five relievers hold the American League's top seed to one run across the final eight innings

For five innings beneath the dome at St. Petersburg on Monday night, the pennant round's American opener obeyed the form sheet to the letter. The Rays, 98 games victorious this summer and unbeaten since the 27th of September, scored twice before Cleveland had recorded three outs — Junior Caminero and Jonny DeLuca singling home the runs in the first — and Drew Rasmussen, rested to the point of luxury, carried the 2-0 advantage through six innings on 90 pitches, pitching as a man whose previous 13 starts had every one concluded in a Tampa Bay win.34 The house brand was all in evidence: the airtight glovework, the opportune single, the strangling of the opposing offense. The visitors from the lake, fresh from three straight elimination wins in the Chicago round, were being quietly shown the arithmetic by a club that had been resting on its sweep of the Yankees.4

Then Chase DeLauter leaned on a pitch and drove it the opposite way, over the left-field barrier, and the form sheet began to smolder. That was the sixth inning and made it 2-1; in the seventh, Tampa Bay elected to send Rasmussen out once more, and Patrick Bailey met the ace's 91st pitch — his first of the inning, and his last of the night — and deposited it 436 feet to right-center, the longest blow of the catcher's major-league life, for the tie.3 "We got punched early," said the Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt. "Our pitching staff, credit to them for stopping it and keeping us in the game as long as they did. The offense came alive... Hitting a couple balls out of the yard made it a new game."3

The new game belonged to the visitors. In the eighth, José Ramírez and DeLauter singled their way aboard against the reliever Wells, and Nathaniel Lowe lined a two-run single to center off Ian Seymour — both runs entered against Wells's account, and the defeat with them — to put Cleveland ahead 4-2 to a roar from the traveling contingent.4 Cedric Mullins answered with a solo shot off Erik Sabrowski in the bottom half, and then the ninth dissolved into the particular chaos that follows José Ramírez around October. A tag play, overturned on Cleveland's challenge, let Angel Martínez score on Ramírez's single; moments later Ramírez widened his lead off second until the pitcher Kevin Kelly could look at nothing else, broke with the delivery, and drew Caminero sprinting to third to cover — whereupon Jo Adell grounded a double through the ground the third baseman had just vacated, and two more runs crossed.4 "He's 'Hosey,'" said Vogt. "He just has a knack for finding his way on base. When he does, he makes things happen."4

The final accounting: 14 Cleveland hits, tied for the fourth-most the franchise has ever recorded in a nine-inning postseason game, and seven runs in the last four innings against a pitching apparatus that surrenders nothing by reputation.4 Behind Foster Griffin's four innings of two-run work came Daniel Espino, Joey Cantillo, Hunter Gaddis — the win credited to his name — Sabrowski and Cade Smith, an inning apiece.3 The victory is Cleveland's fourth without interruption, tied for the second-longest October streak in the franchise's annals behind the six that opened the 2016 tournament, and the club has scored 30 runs in the five games since it stood two defeats from winter.4 "There were some situations where this group definitely could have folded," said Lowe, reaching back to the Chicago series for his evidence, "but we didn't."3

So the round's first lead belongs to the lower seed, with the third, fourth and fifth games all waiting at Cleveland — no small matter between two clubs hauling the game's heaviest waits, the Guardians without a title since 1948 and the Rays without one in their 28 years of existence.5 Tampa Bay, for its part, declines the fainting couch. "We know exactly who we are," said Caminero. "We won 98 games for a reason. We won the division for a reason."3 The second game goes this very evening at eight o'clock Eastern at the dome, Parker Messick against Freddy Peralta, and the Herald takes up that pairing — a homecoming on one side, a resurrection on the other — elsewhere in this number.2

The Postseason Card

THRICE THE ANGELENOS NOSE AHEAD, AND THRICE THE ANSWER ARRIVES BEFORE THE INNING CAN CLOSE — WILD BILL STRIKES THREE BLOWS OF RECORD, BAUERS STANDS A TWELVE-PITCH SIEGE OF SEVEN MINUTES, AND THE CREAM CITY NINE GO TWO GAMES UP: BREWERS 7, DODGERS 4

Yamamoto, the reigning World Series Most Valuable Player, is run off after eight outs — the shortest postseason start of his life — by a third inning he cannot escape; William Contreras ties the game twice and wins it once, the fourth man in postseason history with three tying or go-ahead hits in a single game and the first since 1997; and four Milwaukee relievers retire all 15 men they face, the most wholly perfect bullpen innings any October game has ever recorded, as the series packs for Los Angeles with the titleholders in arrears

The second game of the National League round, before 42,516 at American Family Field on Monday, resolved into a call-and-answer the visitors could not win. Three times in the first six innings Los Angeles took a lead — Mookie Betts scoring on Teoscar Hernández's sacrifice fly in the first, Tommy Edman crossing on a thrown-away pickoff in the third, Kyle Tucker and Edman scoring in the fifth on a bunt heaved wide and Freddie Freeman's sacrifice fly — and three times Milwaukee drew level or better before the same inning closed.6 The visitors' four runs required only three hits, the home side's starter Logan Henderson having donated two throwing errors to the cause; the rest of their evening required rather more, and they did not have it. "They're playing really well over there," allowed Max Muncy afterward. "They're a very good team."6

The hinge of the night ran twelve pitches and seven minutes. With two aboard and two out in the third, Jake Bauers settled into a siege of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, fouling off six two-strike offerings from five different pitch types before the 12th pitch, a curveball, bounced for ball four — the longest plate appearance of Bauers' career, the longest anyone has forced upon Yamamoto in his American employ, and only the 12th postseason walk of a dozen pitches or more since such things were first counted in 1988.8 "It just got to a certain point where it was straight compete mode," said Bauers. "A little bit like a blackout." Two pitches later Christian Yelich lined Yamamoto's 75th and last offering into center for two runs, and the reigning World Series Most Valuable Player, who threw a complete game at this club in this round a year ago, was gone after eight outs, the briefest postseason start of his life. "He just didn't have it tonight," said Dave Roberts. "Which is very rare." His Milwaukee counterpart Pat Murphy called the walk "a turning point, I really do."86

And still the game required winning, which is where William Contreras conducted his clinic. The catcher dug a tying single out of his shoetops in the first; he tied it again in the fifth with a drive measured at 436 feet to straightaway center off Kris Bubic; and when the Dodgers put Brice Turang aboard on purpose in the sixth to face him, he lashed the go-ahead single to left and flung his bat with what witnesses described as equal parts elation and disdain.76 Three tying or go-ahead hits in one postseason game: only Sandy Alomar Jr. in 1997, Steve Garvey in 1984 and George Brett in 1978 had done it before him. "That's Wild Bill," said the rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt. "Big knock after big knock. He's a dog."7 The insurance arrived in the eighth from Turang and Bauers, singles both, giving Milwaukee its first margin greater than two runs — in either direction — of the entire postseason.6

What followed the starter was, again, flawless: May, Romero, Uribe and Ashby retired every one of the 15 men they faced, five perfect innings, the most wholly perfect bullpen work any postseason game has recorded, and the relief corps' account for the month now shows a single earned run across six games.67 So Milwaukee, swept from this round by this opponent a year ago, carries a 2-0 lead west — a position from which clubs have claimed the series 79 times in 95 tries — having spent the enemy's two aces, Skubal and Yamamoto, for no return at all.6 The captain declines the laurel: "We haven't accomplished anything yet," said Yelich. "It was a good start. But still a long way to go." The third game goes Wednesday at eight o'clock Eastern at Dodger Stadium, where Los Angeles must decide, among other matters, whether their greatest batsman plays in it — a question the Lineup Desk takes up above.2

News Around the League

THE LINEUP DESK: THE GREATEST INSTRUMENT IN THE GAME MAY BE SET DOWN — LOS ANGELES WILL WEIGH RESTING OHTANI FOR THE THIRD GAME, THE WIRE REPORTS, AFTER TWO MONTHS OF HURTS HAVE DIMMED THE LAMP

The titleholders return home trailing and carrying a question no club has ever wished to ask. According to a report from Katie Woo and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the Dodgers will discuss whether Shohei Ohtani should sit for Wednesday's third game — a sentence that would have read as satire in July and reads as arithmetic in October.9

The figures make the case the eyes have been making for weeks. Ohtani has managed lingering injuries to the right biceps and left knee since at least June, hurts that sent him to the injured list in September; across his last 35 games, regular season and postseason together, he has batted .197 with a .629 on-base-plus-slugging. He has not homered since August 18 — a drought of 110 plate appearances, the longest of his career — and this postseason stands 3-for-20 with seven strikeouts, dropped already from second in the order to the cleanup spot.9 "He doesn't feel great," the manager Dave Roberts told the reporting parties. "It's having a conversation with him tomorrow, kind of try to figure out what's best for him, what's best for us. He certainly has earned that conversation and deserves it."9

Should the conversation end in rest, the beneficiary would likely be Josue De Paula, ranked the game's fourth-finest prospect by MLB Pipeline's reckoning, who reached base in half of his 42 plate appearances after a September summons and has been confined this October to three pinch-hitting errands. His outfield glove being the acknowledged weakness, the young man's bat can enter the lineup only through the designated hitter's door — which is to say, only at Ohtani's expense.9 The Herald observes merely that October is the month in which even the grandest accounts come due, and that the titleholders' ledger now shows two debts and dwindling collateral.

THE CASUALTY DESK: TWO RAYS MEET AT SPEED BENEATH A FOUL FLY AND BOTH RISE TO TELL OF IT — CAMINERO TAKES THE BLOW IN THE CHEST AND KEEPS HIS POST, DeLUCA TAKES IT IN THE SHOULDER, AND TAMPA BAY EXHALES

The fright of the American opener outlasted its score. In the ninth inning Monday, Brayan Rocchio lifted a foul fly toward the Cleveland bullpen down the left-field line; Jonny DeLuca pursued it from his post in left, Junior Caminero ran back from third, and in the noise of 35,361 neither man heard the other coming. The ball fell untouched. The players did not — left shoulders absorbing most of a collision that sent DeLuca rolling into the bullpen bench and left Caminero seated against the low wall in evident pain.10

The reckoning, mercifully, was small. Caminero — struck mostly in the chest, he said, the headache "just kind of the normal aftereffect" — remained in the game and trotted back to third base while the dome's loudspeakers offered the theme from "Rocky." "I feel good. Feel good overall," he reported afterward. His manager Kevin Cash concurred: "I think he just got the wind knocked out of him, and he seems to be totally fine now." DeLuca owned to a banged-up shoulder and hand and expected no lasting trouble from either. "Just two guys going hard at it, and obviously it's pretty noisy," the outfielder shrugged. "I think Cami's good. I'm pretty good."10 The Rays, a run down in a series growing heavier by the evening, will take the diagnosis as the day's one unqualified victory.

THE HOMECOMING DESK: TONIGHT AT EIGHT, THE BOY FROM PLANT CITY TAKES THE HILL HE ONCE WATCHED FROM THE CHEAP SEATS — MESSICK, AGED SEVEN AT THE 2008 WORLD'S SERIES, FACES PERALTA, A MAN REMADE ON THE GULF SINCE AUGUST

The second game of the American League round, this evening at eight o'clock Eastern at Tropicana Field, prints two biographies on one card. Parker Messick was seven years old on October 23, 2008, when he watched from these very stands as the Rays took a World Series game from Philadelphia; tonight the left-hander from Plant City — a town he commends for its people, its food and its Strawberry Festival — starts a pennant-round game on that same floor, with family and friends in the seats and his hometown throwing a watch party besides. "I have so many good memories here," said the Guardians' young ace, who went 12-9 with a 2.56 earned-run average this season and has thrown 193 innings against a previous professional high of 138 1/3. "To be able to do it on this stage now is just an incredible opportunity."11 His last outing, an abbreviated 65-pitch start in the Division round, he waves off — "missed some pitches by tiny margins that ended up in walks" — and his fastball in it ran above his season's average velocity, which he offers as evidence the arm remains sound in October.11

Opposite him stands the resurrection. Freddy Peralta came to Tampa Bay from the Mets on August 2 carrying a 4.99 earned-run average from his 22 New York starts; on the Gulf he has been another pitcher entirely — a 3.25 figure in his Rays service, by the ledger, including a September of 0.96 across five starts — and in his Division-round outing he threw 65 percent fastballs at nearly 97 miles the hour, well above his season custom.1312 "What clicked is him coming over here and just flushing whatever had gone on," said Cash, "approaching it like a fresh start."12 The deadball desks will relish the footnote: Peralta spent his first eight seasons and nine postseason errands in the employ of Milwaukee — the very club now two games to the good in the other league's round — and tonight pitches to keep his own round from slipping to 2-0 before it leaves for Cleveland.12

THE QUARTERMASTER DESK: EACH SIDE SHUFFLES ONE CARD FOR THE PENNANT ROUND — CLEVELAND ADDS A THIRTEENTH ARM IN CECCONI, AND TAMPA BAY SUMMONS YOUNG HOPKINS, LATELY OF THE DEVELOPMENT LIST, WITH HIS HUNDRED-MILE BOLT

Both American League quartermasters amended their manifests before Monday's opener, and both amendments bought pitching. Cleveland added the right-hander Slade Cecconi and set down the utility man Daniel Schneemann, electing to carry 13 pitchers after a Division round that wrung the staff like wash — three games in four days, seven pitchers used in one and eight in another. "Having that 13th pitcher was really important to us," said Vogt, who prizes Cecconi — 21 starts this season before a late move to the bullpen — as a man who "can throw up to 40, 50 pitches" in a single errand. The cost is bench flexibility: the rookie Angel Genao now stands as the lone spare part across the middle infield.14

Tampa Bay's exchange was a reliever for a reliever and a story besides: the left-hander Garrett Cleavinger out, and in his place Brody Hopkins, a hard-throwing young right-hander who in early August sat on the development list at Triple-A Durham, learning the bullpen trade, and who now finds himself dressing for a Championship Series. His manager's commissioning speech was brief. "He just said, 'You ready to pitch?'" Hopkins recounted. "And I'm ready to pitch." The young man brings a fastball of triple-digit reputation and breaking stuff his employers describe in terms usually reserved for weather. "Going from the dev list to the ALCS in two months, it's pretty crazy to think about," he allowed. "I'm juiced and ready to go."15

THE DESERT DESK: THE FALL CIRCUIT HANDS OUT ITS FIRST LAURELS — FIVE HITS IN A DEBUT FOR CLEVELAND'S FRANCISCA, WHO BATTED .556 FOR THE WEEK, AND A FASTBALL OF A HUNDRED AND THREE FROM WASHINGTON'S SUSANA

From Arizona, where the game's apprentices play out October in the sunshine, the Fall League has named its first weekly honorees. Welbyn Francisca, a 20-year-old infielder in the Cleveland chain, announced himself with five hits in his very first game for the Surprise club and closed the week leading the circuit at .556 with a .944 slugging figure and seven runs driven in across four games — the continuation of a season in which he climbed three levels and struck 19 home runs in 79 games, finishing at Double-A Akron among the Eastern League's youngest men.16

The pitching laurel went to Jarlin Susana of the Washington chain, who struck out eight and allowed one earned run over 5 2/3 innings spanning two starts for Salt River — and who supplied the week's most emphatic single datum, a fastball registered at 103.8 miles the hour, paired with a slider spinning near 3,000 revolutions.16 Cleveland's October is otherwise occupied, as the rest of this number attests, and Washington's ended with the summer — but both nurseries, evidently, are in bloom.

Tonight the American League holds the floor alone — the second game at the dome at eight o'clock — while the National League travels; its third game goes Wednesday at eight at Dodger Stadium, and Thursday both rounds sit at once, Tampa Bay at Cleveland at six and Milwaukee at Los Angeles at nine.2 A reader keeping this month's ledger will have noticed its governing law: the clubs pronounced dead keep batting. Cleveland stood two defeats from winter a week ago Sunday and has not lost since; Milwaukee was swept from its round a year ago and now holds that same round by the lapels; and the titleholders' two aces have been spent without a win to show. The game honors no form sheet for long — that is its oldest kindness, and this paper's favorite. Until the morrow's dispatch, keep your scorecards near and your enthusiasms nearer.

~ THE HERALD ~

The Herald Acknowledges Its Debts

  1. MLB Box Scores — Tuesday, October 13, 2026 — Boxscore
  2. Baseball-Reference.com — Upcoming Schedule and Upcoming Dates — Baseball-Reference
  3. Keegan Matheson, Guards come up big late to rally past Rays in ALCS opener — MLB.com
  4. Tim Stebbins, 'Hosey' does it: Ramírez's havoc on basepaths key to Guards' 4th straight win — MLB.com
  5. Adam Berry, Tim Stebbins and Keegan Matheson, Guardians-Rays ALCS Game 2 FAQ (8 ET, TBS/HBO Max) — MLB.com
  6. AJ Cassavell, Crew overcomes 3 deficits in seesaw Game 2, tightens grip on NLCS — MLB.com
  7. Adam McCalvy, 'Wild Bill' takes charge for Brewers with 3 hits, 3 RBIs -- and 0 worries about next contract — MLB.com
  8. Zach Sweet, An ace's undoing: Bauers' 12-pitch walk vs. Yamamoto 'changes the game' for Crew — MLB.com
  9. Sonja Chen, Dodgers to discuss sitting Ohtani for NLCS Game 3 (report) — MLB.com
  10. Adam Berry, Caminero, DeLuca dodge serious injury after scary collision — MLB.com
  11. Tim Stebbins, Messick, once a fan at The Trop, will take the hill there as Guardians' ALCS Game 2 starter — MLB.com
  12. Jake Rill, Peralta again looks to harness Trop energy, even ALCS with Game 2 start — MLB.com
  13. Freddy Peralta Stats — Baseball-Reference
  14. Tim Stebbins, Guardians swap in Cecconi for Schneemann, bolstering staff for ALCS — MLB.com
  15. Adam Berry, Hopkins in, Cleavinger out on Rays' ALCS roster — MLB.com
  16. Michael Avallone, Guardians' Francisca, Nats' Susana pick up Week 1 Arizona Fall League honors — MLB.com