Lee Lowenfish

Greetings from a NYC where I'm posting just moments from the start of two days of quadruple MLB Wild Card games.  Although I have long been an advocate for a shorter regular season, September baseball in 2025 was very dramatic.  Cleveland set a MLB record when its starting pitchers gave up less than 2 runs in 19 straight games.  Even when the collapsing Tigers temporarily broke its slide by winning against the Guardians, 4-2 in the last game of a road series on Th Sep 25, Cleveland pitching stayed competitive.  Kudos to the veteran pitching coach Carl Willis.

It's been a remarkable turnaround for a team that trailed Detroit by 11 1/2 games on Sep 4 and over 15 in July.  In late May, they lost two key pitchers, starter Luis Leandro Ortiz and acclaimed closer Emmanuel Clase, to indefinite suspension for their gambling activities. Before the trade deadline of July 31, rumors were also flying that Steven Kwan, the leadoff engine of their offense and a wonderful left fielder, might be traded.  Fortunately, the astute Guardian front office held on to Kwan but they did trade star pitcher Shane Bieber to the Blue Jays where, recovered from Tommy John surgery, he should help Toronto in the playoffs.  Switch-hitting third baseman Jose Ramirez remains the Guardians' anchor and leader.  A couple of years ago, the team was wise enough to sign Jose to a long-term contract knowing that he was comfortable with the only organization he has known since signing as a youngster in the Dominican Republic.

Despite its shocking decline, Detroit managed to limp into a rematch with Cleveland in the best-of-3 wild card round: Tu Sept 30, W Oct 1, and if necessary Th Oct 2 - all on ESPN game time 1:08P EDT. The national networks always give the Midwest the short stick in game times which is why yours truly, a perpetual rooter for underdogs and grinders, hopes the winner of this matchup goes deep into October and even November. They met last October in a memorable 5-game series won by Cleveland.  How Tarik Skubal, Detroit's ace southpaw, fares in Game 1 will be a big factor but ass I noted, Cleveland has a deep and largely home-grown pitching staff. 

The winner will face the AL West champ Seattle Mariners who dethroned perpetual playoff participant Houston, starting on Sa Oct 4 in a Best-of-5 series.  The Mariners, established in 1977 along with the Blue Jays, are the only MLB team that has never been to a World Series and fans and players are hungry for a better outcome. With the trade deadline additions of corner infielders Eugenio Suarez and Josh Naylor, the Mariners now have a deep lineup and solid, mainly youthful starting pitching. The enhanced offense has taken some pressure off the wunderkind center fielder Julio Rodriguez who might be ready to explode into the national baseball consciousness.

The Yankees and Red Sox will resume their intense rivalry in the other ALWC series, also on ESPN, with games starting on Tu Sept 30 at 608P.  The winner will face the Blue Jays starting on Sat Oct 5 in a best-of-five.  The Yankees finished the season with 8 wins in a row and looked impressive against the truly woeful White Sox and the disappointing Orioles - (I'm restraining myself on my adjectives to describe what happened to my team this year.) The Birds played like Woerioles in the first two games of the Yankee series - then fought nobly in the Sunday game, losing 3-2 as Yankees first baseman-catcher Ben Rice, a 12th round draft pick from Dartmouth, hit a first inning and decisive eighth solo home runs.  

The Red Sox have an ace in southpaw Garrett Crochet and a lot of feisty speedy young players even without rookies Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer.  Former Yankee Aroldis Chapman is the closer who had a record-setting regular season for consistency. But can he erase the memory of some of his post-season failures in pinstripes?    

Toronto will be a formidabale opponent in the ALDS.  Hard not to root for George Springer, 36, who has oodles of post-season experience with Houston and healthy again sparks the lineup.  Will never forget many seasons ago George's father accepting the Herb Stein Future Star award at the NY Pro Scouts annual January dinner. A lawyer who spoke like a preacher, George's dad assured us that his son will always put out 120% effort on the field.  In another nice touch.you can often see Springer, a Connecticut native, use batting gloves in the color of the dearly departed Hartford Whalers NHL team. 

The NLWC series look equally intriguing.  At 3:08P EDT on ABC, the Padres, runner up to the Dodgers in the NL West, meet the Cubs who finished second to the Milwaukee Brewers, lhe team with the best overall record this year so have earned home field advantage in every post-season series. But they carry the burden of a poor 2-10 record in recent post-seasons.  The Cubs seem to have a nice mix of veterans and youngsters - eg. shortstop Dansby Swanson is coming off a so-so year and might be ready to shine in playoffs, and center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, a former Met farmhand who was traded for Javy Baez who BTW is now bringing his erratic magic act to the Tigers, will look to erase his late season slump.  Alas, San Diego will miss outfiielder Ramon Laureano who during an at-bat suffered a broken finger on a foul ball.  A matchup with Brewers looms starting on Oct 4.  If Chicago advances, the NLDS will pit Cubs manager Craig Counsell against Brewers skipper Pat Murphy, who coached Craig at Notre Dame and then served as Counsell's bench coach in Milwaukee. 

The final series, starting tonight Sep 30 at 908P on ESPN, pits the upstart Cincinnati Reds against the powerhouse Dodgers who like the Yankees finished the season on a roll.

Talented Reds RHP Hunter Greene has to come up big against one of the Dodgers' many big free agent acquisitions LHP Blake Snell. I have faith that veteran Reds manager Terry "Tito" Francona in his first year in Cincinnati will have Greene and his young team primsed to compete and not overcome by the moment.  Waiting in the wings are the Phillies with an older team that might be looking at these playoffs as a last hurrah.  

There is no substitute for experience under October's bright lights. I am not surprised that Francona led the young Reds to the playoffs.  They won two out of three from Brewers on last week of season while Mets lost 2 of 3 at Miami, completing a three-month slide from 21 games over .500 ln June to 18 under .500 for the rest of season. In Scott Miller's wonderful new book SKIPPER: WHY BASEBALL MANAGERS MATTER (AND ALWAYS WILL), he might have provided a clue to Mets' issues when he quoted Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor about what he learned from Francona on his first day as a Cleveland rookie:  "Just understand that somebody lost a job today by you getting called up. Respect your peers and show them that you are here to help us win."  The Mets' stars statistically all had successful seasons, but the essence of team was obviously missing.

I will write more in future posts about Scott Miller's achievement in SKIPPER but with a sad heart because though Miller lived to see the book published, he died of cancer in June at the age of 62.  How poignant that one of the best chroniclers of the managerial profession left us just a few weeks before managerial greats Davey Johnson, Bobby Cox, and hockey's Ken Dryden (who loved baseball as much as hockey) left us.  

That's all for now.  Stay Positive Test Negative and Take It Easy But Take It.    

Once it became clear that the 2025 Orioles lacked the pitching and any consistency in other aspects of the game, it became inevitable that 31-year-old center fielder

Cedric Mullins would be traded by the July 31 deadline.  After all, he is a free agent after the season and his salaries have gone up through salary arbitration for the past

four seasons and he was likely to want a bigger (but not extravagant) longer free agent contract.  I guess it didn't help when it became known that Mullins recently was voted to the Players Association executive board. The storm clouds for another owners' lockout before the 2027 season are definitely forming.       

It is still a sad day for Oriole fandom because the 13th-round draft pick from Campbell University had emerged as a versatile player, quiet team leader, and fan favorite.. In 2021, he hit 30 homers and stole 30 bases on a bad Oriole team. He had the courage earlier to abandon switch-hitting and even accepted demotion to the minors to get his act together as solely a left-handed hitter. In a personal note, he did make a public admission that he was dealing with Crohn's disease but he kept it low key at a time when teammate Trey Mancini was dealing with a life-threatening cancer.  (Mancini played Triple-A ball this year but has no clear route back to majors.) 

Mullins used his great speed to become a stolen base threat and an often-spectacular fielder.  The analytics geniuses - who have an algorithm for everything and a limited feel for baseball itself - downgraded Mullins' arm and maybe criticized some of his routes to fly balls, but he sure went out with a bang this past weekend with timely hitting and two spectacular catches as the Orioles narrowly missed a 4-game sweep of the first-place Blue Jays.  

Word came just after my ode to Cedric that two more Oriole mainstays, first baseman/outfielder/DH Ryan O'Hearn and first-year-Oriole outfielder Ramon Laureano. had been traded to San Diego.  O'Hearn is a free agent after the season who revived his career in Oriole orange and black and was the team's only representative in the 2025 All-Star Game.  Laureano had a two-year contract and had so many big hits and outfield assists this year that his trade even surprised many analysts.

Last night (Wed July 30), we also said goodbye to infielder Ramon Urias, one of GM's Mike Elias' earliest and best pickups as a Cardinal farmhand. He was a Gold Glove winner at third base and could acquit himself well at any infield position.  He had surprising power, too. And at the Thursday deadline, the Tigers picked up RHP Charlie Morton, the 41-year-old curve ball master who rebounded from a terrible start to 2025 to become a reliable starter again.    

I haven't even mentioned most of the bullpen has been traded and perhaps the saddest news of all came in late July when closer Felix "The Mountain" Bautista suffered a serious shoulder injury, still not fully diagnosed, that could well keep him out for the rest of the season. The only somewhat good news is that starter Kyle Bradish is pitching in minor league games after missing over a year. (I'm happy to report, too, that Isaac Mattson who came from the Angels in the same trade for the now-retired Dylan Bundy has been working well in the Pittsburgh bullpen and with their closer Dave Bednar now traded to Yankees Mattson might get a shot of that role.)  

What shocks the system of this Oriole loyalist for over a half-century is that the Orioles have received no major league ready players but only "prospects," most of whom will likely become "suspects" before too long.  Many of the pitchers seem to be 6' 5" up to 6 8" which likely means they'll take extra time to develop if they ever develop. Attendance was way down in Baltimore for the Toronto series which featured some of the best baseball played by the Orioles all season with O'Hearn and Laureano as well as Mullins contributing mightily.  But the decisions to break up the team and save money were obviously made earlier.     

The only two people that mattered in the decision were "President of Baseball Operations" Mike Elias and new owner David Rubenstein who is finding out in his second full year at the helm that it is not easy being held accountable in an industry that operates in the fishbowl of public passion. Maybe Elias and Rubenstein felt lucky that Arizona outbid them for Corbin Burnes last winter and Burnes now is out through next year with Tommy John surgery. Maybe they felt glad that Toronto outbid them for former Oriole Anthony Santander who has been unproductive and now injured for his new team. I'd like to see him contribute in Toronto before too long. Team is doing fine without him

but another big bat never hurts.

The trick in baseball management is to keep on trying and be willing to spend if you know the makeup of the player and not just what the new-fangled algorithms tell you.

The 2025 Orioles were obviously a flawed team inundated with injuries - even announcer Ben McDonald fell 35 feet out of a tree while deer hunting! - and hampered by underperforming younger players.  I have always understood that evaluating players is the hardest job in baseball but you always need some veteran stability in a successful organization. 

I have no idea where such leadership will be coming from on the Baltimore current roster.  For the rest of the season, as someone who needs to root for someone not simply against a certain historically arrogant team in pinstripes, I'll have a lot of players to root for in different unis: Cedric in Queens, Urias in Houston, venerable Charlie Morton now in the Motor City, and O'Hearn and Laureano in SD where the Padres start August only 3 games behind the EEW (Evil Empire West) Dodgers who were relatively quiet at the trade deadline. 

And here's a shout-out to a couple of new baseball names that have entered the MLB universe: WARMING BERNABEL corner infielder for the Rockies who arrived in Colorado when Ryan McMahon was traded to the Yankees and already has two homers, and RYAN GUSTO, pitcher for the Houston Astros.

Happy August to all and stay positive, test negative & take it easy but take it.