The nice thing about the playoffs is just having meaningful baseball games perpetually on in the background in the family room. We can kinda look in, look out, watch when free, focus on other things when not. I don’t have to lock myself onto the game like I do for the Cubs (because I can’t stop myself), but I can still enjoy big moments when I look over at the TV.
None of that is to say I wouldn’t have greatly preferred the Cubs to be in some of these games …
- The one main newsy bit I was hoping to hear in Jed Hoyer’s presser yesterday was injury-related: are there any surprise surgeries coming, or meaningful injury updates? The answer was disappointing, because it was basically “we’ll find out more soon.” I didn’t get the sense that there were any major surprises on deck – sometimes you get blindsided with announcements in these kinds of end-of-season press conferences – but it’s possible there are some prospect injury bits coming that just weren’t fully known as of yesterday, or weren’t deemed significant enough to drop in that moment. I guess I’ll feel better if/when we get through this month and have heard nothing about anyone.
- The one guy asked about by name was Ben Brown, whose neck issue has limited him for months, and we know almost nothing about what’s actually going on. Hoyer didn’t have much new for us yesterday, either, saying only they expect to know more in a couple weeks and then figure out a plan. It wasn’t clear whether this meant there was going to be a new evaluation and a plan that may or may not involve surgery, or whether it just meant he needed a couple more weeks to be cleared to start throwing again. Normally you assume any non-surgical injury will be cleared up by the following Spring Training, but Brown’s whole thing has been sufficiently shrouded in mystery that I won’t presume anything until he’s actually on the mound in February and March. He just looked so freaking good before the injury that I really, really, really hope he can get back to that next year.
- Old friend Jason Heyward was this close to being a hero yesterday:
- New Giants President Buster Posey is going to have a new GM, with Pete Putila heading to some other role after the departure of Farhan Zaidi. Posey is going to try to hire a GM quite quickly (and I’ll reiterate mild concern about someone like Dan Kantrovitz getting poached, given his geographical connection and extremely strong work with the Cubs in the draft):
- Fun moment in the Brewers-Mets game between former teammates, with Jesse Winker jawing after a triple, and then Willy Adames responding:
- The Cubs didnโt make the playoffs, so this is all I have:
- If you want to look ahead to LDS schedules:
- The worst called strikeouts of the season, with a Seiya Suzuki appearance because obviously:
- Now there are two of them dot gif:
- Looks like a bunch of Amazon devices are on big sales today (here are the tablets, for example), so check it out if you’re in the market. #ad
- Hey, I remember that game:
- Like I need much of an excuse to share the highlights from that comeback: