Clippings Tuesday, September 29, 2020 Braves.com

Ramírez, Freeman are Players of the Month

By David Adler

After slugging their teams into the postseason, the Indians' José Ramírez and the Braves' were named MLB's Players of the Month for September on Monday.

Ramírez led the Majors with a 1.294 OPS during the month, batting .366/.453/.841 with an -best 10 home runs as well as 24 RBIs. He led the way for the Cleveland offense as the Tribe clinched the No. 4 seed in the AL playoff bracket.

Ramírez finished the regular season with 17 home runs and 10 stolen bases, plus an AL-best 45 runs scored.

Freeman emerged as a MVP frontrunner alongside Padres phenom Fernando Tatis Jr. as the Braves won their third straight NL East title and earned the No. 2 seed in the NL. The veteran led the NL with a 1.246 OPS in September -- just ahead of teammate Marcell Ozuna -- batting .375/.496/.750 with eight home runs and 32 RBIs.

Freeman's red-hot final month gave him a season slash line of .341/.462/.640 with a 1.102 OPS and he led the Majors in runs scored (51) and doubles (23).

This is Ramírez's second career AL Player of the Month Award -- he also won in July 2018. It's also the second NL Player of the Month Award for Freeman, who previously won in September ‘16.

Who has the edge? Reds-Braves pos.-by-pos.

By Richard Justice

The Braves had the second-highest scoring offense in the Major Leagues, one teensy run behind the Dodgers. Meanwhile, the Reds rotation had the third-best ERA (3.50) in the NL. To cut to the chase, there’s the matchup to watch in this NL Wild Card Series.

The Reds have a potential NL winner in right-hander . The Braves have the probable NL Most Valuable Player in Freddie Freeman and two others -- Marcell Ozuna and Ronald Acuña Jr. -- who are likely to receive votes as well.

As for the history, there’s plenty. The Reds are back in the postseason for the first time since 2013, having not won a series since 1995.

The Braves are always in the playoffs, or so it seems, with 19 appearances in the last 30 seasons. However, while the Braves just won the NL East for a third straight year, they haven’t won a postseason series since 2001.

Here’s the two teams stack up, position by position:

Catcher This position could hardly be more evenly matched. Reds may have a defensive edge, with leading MLB catchers in Defensive Runs Saved with nine. Otherwise, it’s close. Reds catchers (Barnhart and Curt Casali) were second in the NL in homers and fourth in OPS while Braves catchers (Travis d’Arnaud and Tyler Flowers) were second in OPS and tied for third in homers. d’Arnaud had a 1.026 OPS against right- handed pitching and could start every game against a right-handed rotation. Casali had a 1.067 OPS against lefties and figures to start Game 1 against Max Fried.

Advantage: Braves

First base Freddie Freeman and are two of the best players of their generation, but in very different places in their careers. Let’s begin with Wins Above Replacement: Freeman’s 2.9 was the second highest in the NL (behind ) while Votto’s -0.2 was a career low. Freeman is the NL MVP frontrunner after a season that produced a career-high 1.102 OPS and .462 OBP. He led the NL in doubles (23) and runs (51).

Votto’s 14th season included a career-low .354 OBP as well as an .800 OPS (137 points below his career average).

Advantage: Braves

Second base finished strong after returning in September from more than a month on the with a bruised wrist. He hit .338 in the Braves’ final 18 games with five home runs and a .953 OPS. If he’s completely healthy again, the Braves believe he can be the guy who hit 43 doubles and 23 homers in 2019. hit seven home runs, tied for second among NL second basemen, and had a nice offensive finish, hitting .323 in the final eight games.

Advantage: Braves

Shortstop led Major League with 10 DRS, and his 2.6 WAR was fourth highest among all NL position players, trailing only Betts, Freeman and . His .809 OPS was a career high. Reds manager went back to veteran Freddy Galvis, who responded with a solid closing week after losing the job to 22-year-old Jose Garcia. Both figure to play, Garcia possibly as a defensive replacement at short or second.

Advantage: Braves

Third base Eugenio Suarez’s 15 home runs was second to Machado among NL third basemen and was the bright spot in a season in which he batted .202 with a 29-percent rate. The Braves will stick with despite the signing of veteran . Riley struggled offensively down the stretch, hitting .239 in September.

Advantage: Reds

Left field ’s 16 home runs were tied for third most in the NL, and his .833 OPS was reflective of a solid overall season. Per Statcast, his .660 slugging percentage on was eighth highest in MLB. was exactly what the Reds hoped he’d be in becoming the everyday left fielder. He had a .456 OBP in September as the Reds won 16 of 25 to nail down a postseason berth.

Advantage: Reds

Center field Acuña’s sore left wrist is a concern for the Braves after a regular season in which he was ninth in WAR in the NL (2.1) and fifth in OPS (.987) along with 14 home runs and eight stolen bases. and shared center for the Reds in September, and neither took off, leaving Bell with an interesting Game 1 decision.

Advantage: Braves

Right field Nick Castellanos hit .185 with four home runs in September for a disappointing finish to a season that began with him batting .340 on Aug. 7. The Braves have a similar storyline at this position as , who was hitting .368 at the end of August, batted .164 with no home runs in September.

Advantage: Reds

Designated hitter Marcell Ozuna was one of the best free-agent signings of the offseason. He led the NL with 18 home runs and 56 RBIs and was third with a 1.067 OPS. had an excellent season despite a .104 batting average in September. He still finished with a solid .932 OPS and 12 home runs.

Advantage: Braves

Rotation Bauer is the NL Cy Young frontrunner after leading the league with a 1.73 ERA, 0.795 WHIP and 276 ERA+. He allowed five earned runs over five September starts and averaged seven innings a start. The Reds have two excellent veteran starters behind him in and . The Braves are plenty confident in their No. 1 starter, lefty Max Fried, whose 3.3 percent barrel rate was the second lowest in the NL (to Hyun Jin Ryu’s 3.2 percent; Gray was tied for third at 3.7 percent). Fried departed his last start after one inning with a sore ankle, but is said to be fine for the postseason. After that, the Braves will go with a pair of 22-year-olds -- and -- who have 18 career starts between them. Both have shown flashes of dominance in September, and there’s no way of knowing how they’ll react to the moment.

Advantage: Reds Bullpen The Braves' bullpen has been one of the deepest and best all season, although ’s injury could take a quality arm out of the equation. They’re second to the Brewers with a 2.74 ERA and fifth in WHIP (1.28). The Reds’ ‘pen’s 4.38 ERA doesn’t reflect how they finished the season with , and all pitching well. But Atlanta lines up Darren O’Day, AJ Minter, Chad Greene and perhaps Martin in front of Mark Melancon. That depth is especially important due to the youth of the Atlanta rotation.

Advantage: Braves

Ozuna, Mondesi are final '20 Players of Week

By David Adler

Braves slugger Marcell Ozuna and Royals speedster Adalberto Mondesi were named MLB's Players of the Week presented by Chevrolet for the final week of the 2020 regular season on Monday.

Ozuna's surge to the National League crown netted him NL Player of the Week honors, and Mondesi's race to the MLB stolen-base title made him American League Player of the Week.

Ozuna hit .500 and slugged .923 over the final week with three home runs and eight RBIs for the NL East champs. His homer on the last day of the season won him both the NL home run title (18) and RBI titles (56).

Mondesi led MLB for the week in batting average (.615), on-base percentage (.655) and slugging percentage (1.154), as well as runs scored (10) and stolen bases (five). He finished the season with 24 steals to lead the Majors.

This is Ozuna's fifth career Player of the Week Award and second this month -- he also won for the week of Sept. 6 -- while it's the first career Player of the Week Award for Mondesi.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Freddie Freeman wins NL player of the month for September

By Gabriel Burns, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Braves first baseman made his MVP case in September, assembling a productive stretch that earned him National League player of the month, MLB announced Monday.

Freeman hit .375/.496/.750 with eight homers and 32 RBIs in September. He drew 20 walks and struck out only 14 times.

It capped a tremendous season for Freeman, who might be the NL MVP favorite. He hit .341/.462/.640 with 13 homers, 53 RBIs and 51 runs scored while playing in all 60 games. Most important to Freeman, his team won the NL East for the third consecutive season.

As Freeman has reiterated on numerous occasions, his individual accomplishments mean little if the Braves are an early postseason exit again. The Braves begin their pennant bid Wednesday, when they host the Reds in a best-of-three wild card round at Truist Park.

Reds bring strong rotation, momentum into playoffs vs. Braves

By Tim Tucker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For the first time since the start of divisional play in 1969, the Braves will open the postseason against a team they didn’t play in the regular season.

So who are these guys the Braves will meet in a best-of-three opening-round playoff series at Truist Park beginning Wednesday?

The finished in third place in the National League Central, three games behind the division-winning and a fraction of a percentage point behind the second-place St. Louis Cardinals. The Reds finished with a 31-29 record by winning 11 of their final 14 games and each of their final five series.

As recently as Sept. 13, they were 20-26 and seemingly a longshot to make the playoffs. But they arrive at the postseason as a daunting opponent, because of the momentum of a strong finish and a starting pitching rotation led by apparent NL Cy Young Award frontrunner Trevor Bauer. “In the postseason, it has been proven many times that pitching is what carries teams - dominant pitching, guys that can miss bats, guys that can limit damage, guys that throw hard and have good stuff,” Bauer said Monday via Zoom before the Reds worked out at Truist Park. "We believe in our pitching staff.

“Also, our offense has been one of the most unlucky offenses in who-knows-how-long. You can’t stay that unlucky forever," Bauer said. “We’re playing a lot better as a team defensively, putting together good at-bats. The bullpen is pitching great. We’re very confident with where our team is. We feel like we’re peaking at the right time.”

The Reds are in the playoffs – albeit as the No. 7 seed in a field expanded to eight teams – for the first time since 2013, which also was the last time they finished with a winning record.

The Braves haven’t seen the Reds since Aug. 1-4, 2019, when the teams split a four-game series. They didn’t meet during the shortened 2020 regular season because teams played only opponents in their own division and the corresponding division in the other league. Seven of the eight MLB playoff series match teams that didn’t meet in the regular season, the exception being the series between AL East teams Tampa Bay and Toronto.

Any scouting report on the Reds must start with their starting pitching.

They rank fourth among the 30 major league teams in starters' ERA at 3.50, trailing only the (3.17), (3.29) and (3.46). The Braves, by comparison, rank 28th in the majors and last in the NL in starters' ERA at 5.51.

The Reds will start Bauer (5-4, NL-leading 1.73 ERA) in Game 1 at noon Wednesday. In 73 innings this season, the 29-year-old right-hander allowed just 41 hits and held opponents to an MLB-low .159 batting average. His 100 were the third-most in the majors. He allowed nine home runs, but eight of them with the bases empty.

The Reds' scheduled starter for Game 2 on Thursday is 27-year-old right-hander Luis Castillo (4-6, 3.21 ERA). Their starter for Game 3, if necessary, on Friday will be 30-year-old right-hander Sonny Gray (5-3, 3.70.)

“From day one, we’ve always known our starters are the real strength of our team," Reds manager David Bell said Monday. “This is an opportunity to put that on the field.”

One might logically ask, given the Reds' starting pitching, why they finished only two games above .500 this season. The answer, of course, rests in other facets of the team.

Cincinnati’s offense ranks 27th in the majors in runs scored, last in batting average and 19th in OPS. (The Braves are in the top two in all of those categories.) When the Reds score, it often is accomplished with home runs: They’ve hit 90 homers, the seventh-most in the majors. (The Braves have hit 103, second-most.)

The Reds have three players with double-digit homers – Eugenio Suarez (15), right fielder Nick Castellanos (14), Jesse Winker (12) and first baseman Joey Votto (11) – but only one of the four has a batting average above .226 (Winker at .255).

Cincinnati’s bullpen ranks 17th in the majors in ERA, but has been very good of late. (The Braves' bullpen ranks fourth.) Reds closer Raisel Iglesias, who has allowed only one run in his last eight appearances, has a 2.74 ERA. Amir Garrett and former Brave Lucas Sims both have 2.45 ERAs out of the Cincinnati bullpen.

Mainly, though, the Reds' postseason hopes hinge on starting pitching and momentum.

“When we’re playing the way we’re capable of, we believe we’re a good team," Bell said. "We believe we can be a great team. We believe we can be a championship team.”

3 keys to Braves defeating Reds in wild card series

By Gabriel Burns, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Braves and Reds begin their best-of-three wild card series Wednesday at Truist Park. And something will have to give.

Both teams are enduring postseason droughts. The Braves, as readers are probably well aware, haven’t won a postseason series since 2001. They’ve lost 10 consecutive postseason series, including losing in the NLDS in the past two seasons.

The Reds, meanwhile, haven’t won a postseason series since 1995, when the Braves ended their run with a sweep in the NLDS. Cincinnati has lost four straight postseason series, including three since 2010. This is their first postseason berth since 2013, when they lost the wild card game against the Pirates.

Here are three keys to the Braves being the team that ends its misery: 1. Braves offense vs. Reds starters

This will be the central storyline. The Reds were a sexy preseason pick largely because Trevor Bauer, Luis Castillo and Sonny Gray headline their rotation. Bauer and Castillo, at least, will face a Braves offense that scored 348 runs and slugged 103 homers, both second most in the majors.

Bauer, specifically, has been sensational. He led the NL with a 1.73 ERA in 11 games, striking out 100 in 73 innings. He’s the likely NL Cy Young winner and will start Game 1 against Braves southpaw Max Fried.

It’s worth noting the Braves' offense will be the best group Bauer has faced. He opposed only one top-19 offense in the White Sox (he allowed two runs in seven innings). The Cubs, who were 20th in runs scored, were shut out against him in 7-2/3 innings. Bauer’s other nine starts came against the Tigers, Brewers, Royals and Pirates, all of whom were bottom seven offenses.

Castillo had a 3.21 ERA in 12 starts, striking out 89 in 70 innings. He broke out in 2019 when he struck out 226 hitters in 190-2/3 frames, earning his first All-Star appearance. Gray has a 3.70 ERA in 56 innings (11 starts) and has been revitalized during his two seasons in Cincinnati.

Bauer, Castillo, and potentially Gray will face a lineup that’s struck out 573 times, third most in the majors.

The Braves offense is at least well-tested against elite pitching. It’s faced , Jacob deGrom, Tyler Glasnow, Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler, Sixto Sanchez, and Patrick Corbin, among others.

In fact, the Braves were responsible for Cole’s worst outing, tagging him for five runs in five innings. They did the same to Scherzer, scoring six runs in 5-1/3 innings. They once scored five runs off Corbin, four off Nola in 2-2/3 and four off Sanchez in three innings. That might not mean much this week, but it’s evidence they’ve hit top-tier pitching.

If the Braves can get to the Reds bullpen, they should fare well. Cincinnati relievers have a 4.53 ERA – 17th in the majors – and notably give up 1.54 homers per nine innings, MLB’s sixth-worst rate.

Bottom line: The Reds boast an All-Star rotation, but the Braves' offense presents quite the challenge, too. How quickly the Braves can get into the Reds' bullpen might determine the series.

2. Braves starters vs. Reds offense

The Reds are not a good offensive club, and it’s fair to say their lineup has underachieved. They’re 27th in runs scored (243), 24th in on-base percentage (.312) and 30th in average (.212). They’ve overcome those deficiencies with their starting pitching and homers, where they rank seventh with 90 long balls and have scored over 61% of their runs via homers.

Fried has been a power neutralizer this season. Before giving up two homers in his last start – when he left after one inning with an ankle injury – Fried went 55-2/3 innings this season without allowing a home run, the longest streak in the majors.

The southpaw will be making his first postseason start against Bauer, though he impressed in a bullpen role last season. If Fried is fully healthy after enduring back and ankle issues this month, he should be up for the challenge against Bauer.

Ian Anderson and Kyle Wright are different stories. Anderson is expected to start Game 2, which will not only be his first postseason start but only his seventh MLB outing overall. He’s been a godsend since arriving in late August, earning a 1.95 ERA with 41 strikeouts against 14 walks.

He’s given up only one home run, which came to Luke Voit in his first start against the Yankees. He’s pitched 27 consecutive frames without surrendering a homer. It’s important that trend continues here.

It’s seemingly clicked for Wright, who’s rebounded from a poor start to finally look like the many believed he’d become. He allowed two runs, striking out 10 and walking four, over his final two outings (13 innings) against the Mets and Red Sox.

Wright has been more homer-prone than Fried and Anderson. He’s given up seven in 38 innings, including five in his past four outings since returning from a stint at the alternate training site. Wright would likely be the Braves' starter in a winner-take-all Game 3, where he could match up against fellow Vanderbilt product Gray.

The Braves' rotation is currently better than its collective 5.51 ERA. The Reds have the advantage here, but if Anderson and Wright can continue their recent work, it would give the Braves' offense a chance.

3. Timely hitting

Last October’s Game 5 shellacking overshadowed the rest of the series, but the Braves were a clutch hit away from avoiding that winner-take-all against the Cardinals. Be it a best of three, five or seven, one hit can make the difference.

The Braves went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position in Game 4, when they lost a late lead and fell in extras. They went 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position in Game 1, which they also lost by one run. In the first four games, the Braves went a horrific 4-for-38 with runners at second and/or third. First baseman Freddie Freeman is healthy this time around. Marcell Ozuna hasn’t cooled off, homering in Sunday’s finale and finishing with the NL lead in home runs and RBIs. Ozzie Albies has been outstanding since returning from a wrist injury. Travis d’Arnaud has been one of baseball’s best offensive catchers.

Dansby Swanson and Adam Duvall, a former Red, showed they can perform on the postseason stage last year. The Braves don’t sound concerned about the wrist irritation Ronald Acuna experienced Sunday, and he should be good for Game 1.

Offensively, the Braves seem to be in good shape. Without the benefit of foresight, if they’re held below their averages, the Reds starters should deserve the bulk of credit. But timely hitting is a key in any close series, and whatever the result of this set, those will be the moments teams look back on.

World Series title diminished this year? Not if Braves win, right?

By Steve Hummer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Begin with the premise that everything about baseball this year is screwy. The shortest-ever season is about to be followed by the longest-ever postseason. Certainly nothing to suggest 2020′s champion can stand with the great teams of yore without showing at least two forms of ID and a letter of recommendation from John McGraw.

Nevertheless, a trophy will be sanitized and presented sometime late October, barring any testing outbreak of positivity. One more month to hold our breaths.

The trophy and the title that comes with it can never be taken away from you, they say. Which is a great comfort now to both the Astros and whoever wins the thing in 2020.

Maybe the winner doesn’t get a traditional victory parade this year, unless they find a way to put an entire city center in a bubble. Maybe it would be more appropriate for the champions to shower each other with Lysol rather than champagne. Who knows just how different winning will look? How different it will feel, that is yet to be determined.

Inevitably the legitimacy of the next month will be called into question, simply because this path to the is so unlike the 115 that were blazed before it.

Will the champions of the Pandemic Playoffs be recognized as the proper heirs to all those other teams that survived the trial by duration that is a normal baseball season? And then bounced between the home park and various hostile venues to claim first a pennant and then a World Series, rather than play in the sanctuary of a neutral site?

Or will they be slighted as the mutant spawn of a disfigured year, mere placeholders until a real season can be staged? Are they champions or just contingencies?

Depends on who wins.

If it’s the Braves - not a likelihood, mind you - a championship would be greeted rather enthusiastically hereabouts, I’d guess. It’s not exactly like we can get all snobby and selective, not when the wine cellar of titles would hold only two bottles. A title in 2020 would not have the heft of 1995, but the banner over Truist Park – or whatever it’s called next year – would not be reduced to scale.

Now, if it’s one of the other 15 applicants, then we here are free to dismiss the World Series winner as a fraud. Those are the rules this year for all who don’t win.

One problem here is that we have no comparative measure to judge how good any of 2020′s teams really are. And baseball people are as lost without numbers as accountants or agents.

The Braves won 90 games in order to win a division and earn their postseason place in ’95. They won 35 games to get to that point this year (that would project out to 94 wins over 162 games, although such projections are folly). They’d need to win 13 more – 37% of their regular-season win total – to claim a World Series.

Freddie Freeman has had a MVP-quality season by scoring fewer runs than Jeff Blauser did in 1995 (51 to 60), hitting less than half the number of home runs as Fred McGriff (13 to 27), driving in fewer runs than Ryan Klesko (53 to 70) and compiling considerably fewer hits than Mark Lemke (73 to 101). None of that exactly computes.

And the sheer number of teams involved in this postseason dulls the senses. No scarcity here. The Braves play in one of eight playoff games Wednesday. You may need an air traffic controller to sort out the schedule.

And still, no matter how much they expand the playoffs they can’t seem to figure a way to get into them.

This first level is a best 2-out-of-3, such a blip of a sample size as to almost assure one or more upsets. The Braves are high on that alert list. To be fair, if you insist upon putting an asterisk next to the eventual winner, you better have plenty of room down there where the footnotes hide. Because the champion, despite playing an abbreviated season, will have overcome such unique challenges as playing within the confines of a pandemic, testing, clubhouse distancing, uncertainties at every turn, seven-inning doubleheaders and the gnawing wonder over whether it’s even safe to play. There is something to be said for being able to celebrate anything in 2020.

And as for the postseason, the format that largely eliminates days off will more than ever test the whole of a team’s pitching staff and its bench strength. It is in one way a more complete test.

In their empty house, the Braves begin their postseason quest Wednesday at noon. Yes, even the game time is as peculiar as anything in a Dali painting.

They will be running just as much in the red as they would be when any other season gives way to the playoffs, when each game’s importance is measured by the ton rather than the pound.

They will not ponder questions of what it all means in baseball’s bigger, grand picture. That is left to those with more idle time on their hands. They just want to figure out how to hit Trevor Bauer.

The Braves get the Reds in Round 1. That’s not great news

By Mark Bradley, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Cincinnati Reds finished above .500, though only just. They were 20-26 on the morning of Sept. 13. They won 11 of their final 14 games to climb to 31-29. Had they lost to Minnesota in extra innings on Sunday, they’d have met the standard for mediocrity.

They’re the National League’s No. 7 seed, which means they wouldn’t have made the postseason had MLB not expanded its playoffs in this irregular season. Their run differential over 60 games was minus-2. They finished 27th among the 30 big-league clubs in runs, and they play home games in a bandbox. Their OPS+, which accounts for ballpark conditions, was 87. The MLB average is 100. The Braves' OPS+ was 116.

If you’re just at lineups, this series is a mismatch. The Reds have one non-pitcher whose WAR value, as calculated by Baseball-Reference, topped 0.9. That’s Jesse Winkler, who’s mostly a DH. The Braves had four non- above 2.0. The Braves finished 35-25, and that was after mailing in the final weekend. Even after being outscored 17-3 by Boston on Saturday and Sunday, their run differential was plus-60. Only the Dodgers and Padres trumped that.

The Reds aren’t an especially good team. They are, however, an especially troublesome matchup. They can’t much hit, but they can really pitch. They’re strongest where the Braves are weakest.

The Reds finished fourth in starters' ERA; the Braves were 28th. The Reds' starters finished first in WAR as calculated by FanGraphs; the Braves' starters were 25th. If we go by f-WAR, Max Fried would have been the Reds' fourth-best starter. (If we go by b-WAR, Fried ranks first among NL pitchers. WAR can get confusing, I know.)

Fried figures to start Game 1. The Braves are 10-1 when he works. There’s a chance he’ll finish second or third in the NL Cy Young voting. Trouble is, the Reds' Game 1 starter is Trevor Bauer, who figures to finish first. Something you already know: You don’t want to lose Game 1 in a best-of-three. This format beats the silly wild-card play-in game, but two-and-out isn’t far off.

Say the Braves do take Game 1, Bauer notwithstanding. Game 2 will match Ian Anderson, who has made six big-league starts, against Luis Castillo, who was an All-Star in 2019. Game 3, if necessary, would pair Kyle Wright, whose career b-WAR is minus-0.3, and Sonny Gray, whose is 18.9.

When the Reds were still thrashing around under .500, the worst possible Round 1 matchup figured to be Philadelphia – Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler in Games 1 and 2, or 2 and 1. The Phillies having again spit the bit, the Reds became an even bigger booby prize.

After the Reds clinched a playoff berth, the venerable first baseman Joey Votto – what Freddie Freeman is, Votto was – said of his team: “I think we’re a nightmare, and I think everybody knows that. … We’re as much of a threat as anyone.”

This isn’t to suggest that the Braves forfeit. Fried is great. Anderson has been very good. Wright seems to have sorted himself out. The Braves finished second in scoring to the 43-win Dodgers – by one run. Their bullpen had MLB’s fourth-lowest ERA; the Reds' relievers were 17th-best. If the game’s close after six innings, the Braves should prevail. But starting pitching, always the most important commodity in baseball, assumes even greater importance come the playoffs. It’s tough to win from behind. (It’s impossible when it’s10-nil after a half-inning, not to conjure up the latest October indignity.)

The Braves rebuilt – something else you already know – around young pitching. Their three presumptive starters in this series were acquired by John Coppolella, Fried in trade, Anderson and Wright with the No. 3 and No. 5 picks in the 2016 and 2017 drafts. They’re talented enough to win such games. (A better October memory: the 21-year-old Steve Avery and the 24-year-old John Smoltz in 1991.) Still, this seems worth noting: The total of postseason starts for Fried, Anderson and Wright is zero. Bauer and Gray have 11 playoff starts between them. This being baseball in the strangest of all baseball seasons, it seems silly to make a pick. (Cue, yet again, John Sterling: “There’s no predicting baseball.”) I will say I’d have felt better about the Braves' chances were they facing the nothing-special Marlins or the sub-.500 Brewers, or even the accursed Cardinals. The Reds are the team nobody wanted to see in Round 1. Here they are.

5 things Braves: Pandemic playoffs

By AJC Sports, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Braves finished the 2020 truncated season at 35-25, winning their third-straight division title under manager .

The NL East champion Braves are now the No. 2 seed and will face No. 7 Cincinnati in a best-of-three playoff series starting Wednesday. (The Braves were the No. 2 seed last year when they lost in the NLDS to St. Louis.) Max Fried — nursing an ankle injury — is expected to make the Game 1 start.

Here are five things to know about these playoffs:

The road to 60. MLB’s 60-game season is the shortest of the modern era. Atlanta’s 35-25 finish is not their best in a 60-game span. The club’s best 60-game stretch last season was 40-20, done several times and last from game No. 91 to game No. 150.

The fewest games the club has played in a season in the modern era (since 1900) is 114 in 1994 when a players’ strike ended that season early.

The last time the franchise played a 60-game season was 1878, when the Boston Red Stockings went 41-19 to win the NL pennant.

First-round games. All of the Braves’ first-round, best-of-three series games will be played at Truist Park in Atlanta.

Game 1: Noon, Wednesday (ESPN)

Game 2: TBD, Thursday

Game 3*: TBD, Friday

* — if necessary

The winner meets the winner of the Cubs-Marlins series in the Division Series, which will be played in Houston.

Series history. The Braves and Reds last met in the playoffs in 1995 when Atlanta swept Cincinnati on their way to a World Series title.

The playoff field. Baseball expanded the 2020 postseason to 16 teams.

The NL’s (29-31) and AL’s (29-31) enter the playoffs with a record below .500. The only other team in major league history to reach the playoffs with a losing record was the 1981 — at 50-53 overall, they made it by winning the second half in a strike-split season.

Who gets “home field?” The higher seeded team reaching the World Series will have last at-bats in Games 1 and 2 and if needed Games 6 and 7, not necessarily the team with the best record.

Seeding was determined as such:

The top three seeds (Nos. 1-3) go to the three division winners (East, Central, West) in order of record.

The next three seeds (Nos. 4-6) go to the three teams that finish in second place in their division, in order of record.

The final two seeds (Nos. 7-8) go to the two teams with the next best records, regardless of division and division standing.

The specification was contained in the July 23, 2020, agreement between and the players’ association to expand the playoffs following a regular season shortened due to the coronavirus.

The World Series will be played Oct. 20-28 at the Texas Rangers’ ballpark in Arlington, Texas.

This article contains information from the Associated Press.

The Athletic

‘A special bond’: High school coach of Flaherty, Fried and Giolito reflects

By Andy McCullough

A job interview requires references, and so one day last offseason Giants manager Gabe Kapler asked if he could contact three of Ethan Katz’s former pupils. Kapler was interested in bringing Katz, who had been San Francisco’s assistant minor-league pitching coordinator in 2019, onto the big-league staff. Katz, 37, had started his coaching career at a high school in Studio City, Calif. His tenure overlapped with a trio of future first-round picks: Lucas Giolito, Max Fried and Jack Flaherty.

The three pitchers should figure prominently in baseball this coming decade. Giolito, 26, made his first All-Star team with the White Sox in 2019 and authored the first no-hitter of the 2020 season. The budding ace of the Cardinals, the 24-year-old Flaherty finished fourth in the National League Cy Young Award voting last season. Fried, 26, served as the pillar holding up Atlanta’s pitching staff as the rotation crumbled this year.

There are worse names to have on a resume. Kapler made the calls. Katz got the job as San Francisco’s assistant pitching coach. All three of his former players joined a chorus welcoming their former coach to the majors.

“There is a special bond,” Katz said. “It’s really special. Everywhere I coach, everyone asks me questions about them.”

The ties remain strong. Giolito attended Katz’s wedding a couple of years ago. In October 2018, Flaherty went to dinner with Katz to develop an offseason program to improve after a sterling rookie season. Fried credited Katz with “opening my eyes into preparation and ‘what it takes.'”

This week could be a showcase for the former teammates. Flaherty, Fried and Giolito are all lined up to start in either Game 1 or 2 of their respective wild-card series. Katz came close to joining them in the postseason; San Francisco was eliminated on the season’s final day. Instead, he will be following along with the rest of the alumni network at the Harvard-Westlake School when the three pitchers take the mound.

“In a year that’s been really crappy, all the way around,” said former baseball coach and current athletic director Matt LaCour, “that’s a highlight that everybody at our school is going to get a kick out of, to watch all three of them in the postseason in one year.”

It was the sort of scenario LaCour and Katz envisioned for their own team heading into the 2012 baseball season, when Fried arrived on campus for his senior year. He had transferred after his high school, Montclair Prep, cut its athletics program. He joined a rotation that already included Giolito, a fellow senior and one of the top prospects in the country, plus Flaherty, an intriguing, agile sophomore.

Katz had come aboard as a pitching coach in 2010, when Giolito was a gangly sophomore. “He had a big ,” Katz said. “But he didn’t know where it was going. It was all over the place.” LaCour recommended Giolito retire from hitting and focus solely on pitching. He joked that he worried about Giolito spraining his ankle while rounding the bases. So Giolito spent his time huddled with Katz, sharpening his arsenal and building the muscle memory required to repeat his delivery.

As he developed, Giolito could overwhelm hitters with his fastball and a 12-to-6 . He kept a in his pocket, because “when you throw upper-90s in high school, all that does is give hitters a chance,” LaCour said. When his senior season began, Giolito looked like he might get drafted first overall.

Fried figured he might not go far behind his new teammate. He still needed time to adjust to his new school. He considered the diamond his sanctuary. He did not want his habits disturbed or his tendencies altered. “I felt like coming in, I was pretty close-minded as far as what I thought I could do,” Fried said. “I didn’t want to change.”

Katz aimed to break down that barrier. He had spent four seasons in Colorado’s minor-league system after attending Sacramento State. Along the way, he crossed paths with future big-leaguers like Jhoulys Chacín and Pedro Strop. Fried realized he could benefit from that experience. Katz offered suggestions, rather than mandates, which Fried appreciated. “He had a really good grasp of the fundamentals that you need to be able to have in pitching, to succeed on your own,” Fried said.

The dream rotation fizzled when Giolito damaged his ulnar collateral ligament and missed most of the season. Watching Giolito go through that process “might have been the worst thing that I’ve ever had to deal with” in his coaching career, LaCour said. But he saw a silver lining. Giolito grew as a teammate. Flaherty welcomed his promotion in the rotation, competing with Fried in bullpens and pushing himself despite his underclassman status. He developed a wipeout after Katz showed him a new grip. “He literally picked it up in 15 minutes, and the rest is history,” Katz told The Athletic last fall.

“Now that we’re pretty far away from it,” LaCour said, “it all turned out the way it was supposed to turn out.”

San Diego chose Fried seventh overall in the draft that June; Giolito went nine picks later, to the Nationals. Flaherty led Harvard-Westlake to a state title in 2013. St. Louis selected him with the 34th pick a year later. Of the three pitchers, Flaherty took the smoothest route to the majors. He debuted at age 21 in 2017 and merited consideration for the Rookie of the Year award in 2018. At that point, his pals were still searching for their footing. Giolito underwent Tommy John surgery soon after getting drafted. The Nationals shipped him to Chicago as part of a package for Adam Eaton after the 2016 season. Giolito reshaped his repertoire after a season-long clobbering in 2018, ditching his curveball in exchange for heavier usage of the changeup he never needed to throw in high school. Giolito has undergone “the biggest transformation of all of them from high school,” LaCour said.

Fried hit similar bumps: an elbow reconstruction in 2014, a trade in exchange for a well-known vet () later that year. Fried arrived in the majors about a month before Flaherty did, but he did not establish himself as a Cy Young candidate until 2020. Katz credited Fried for trusting the brute force of his 93 mph fastball and challenging hitters this season. “He’s definitely changed a lot, he’s definitely grown significantly,” Katz said.

The Giants were hosting the Dodgers when Giolito toed the rubber for the White Sox against Pittsburgh on Aug. 25. Caught up in his work, Katz missed his former ace’s no-hitter. He didn’t realize what Giolito had accomplished until San Francisco first-base coach Antoan Richardson alerted him. Katz checked his phone and saw about 50 messages. He called Giolito later that night to congratulate him and reminisce.

LaCour received a similar number of messages that night. He was watching at home in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. He let out an “Oh no!” when the final out whistled into right field, only expressing relief when the ball arrived in the glove of White Sox Adam Engel. “It was pretty nuts,” LaCour said.

The performance of Giolito, Fried and Flaherty offers a distraction for a school still stifled by the realities and restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The mood on the Harvard-Westlake campus is “pretty down,” LaCour admitted during a conversation last week. Classes are being held online. The baseball team has recently begun workouts. The weight room was moved outdoors. During practice, the social distancing mandates are so severe the players can’t practice turning double plays.

Like the rest of the country, the school is waiting for a return to normalcy. So it will be nice to turn on the television and watch the three alums get a chance to dominate.

“We’re looking for rays of sunshine anywhere,” LaCour said. “And this is obviously going to be one.”

Playoff Prognostication: The Athletic MLB staff picks for the 2020 postseason

By The Athletic MLB Staff

To some, it’s a piece of metal. To others, the ultimate goal. Will the new format lead to more randomness and upsets? Will the Commissioner’s Trophy have the same meaning for a World Series champion crowned at a neutral site during this strangest of seasons? It’s at least clear that whichever team wins this year will have dealt with challenges no previous winner has.

Like everyone else, we have no idea what’s going to happen. But that’s never stopped us before. Here are The Athletic MLB staff’s predictions for an unpredictable year.

Ken Rosenthal, Senior Writer

I picked the Dodgers because well, I’m gutless. They’re the favorite, the deepest team, and I don’t have the courage to make a bolder selection (the Rays?) or a really crazy selection (the Marlins?) The good news is, I’m always wrong with my picks, wrong for my 30-plus years covering baseball. So, some surprise team is going to win, and fans of that team can submit this to Old Takes Exposed, which is like my second home.

Playoff MVP: A.J. Pollock, Dodgers Playoff Cy Young: , Indians Breakout star: , Dodgers

Jim Bowden, Senior Writer

If the Dodgers win their first World Series since 1988, in November we’ll all be talking about rookie right-handed pitchers and Tony Gonsolin, because they’re going to have to be dominant for the Dodgers to run the table. It’s ’s time, on the way to the Hall of Fame, to get his first World Championship, and the deep roster and depth of position players will be the difference-maker when the champagne is finally popped. Playoff MVP: , Dodgers Playoff Cy Young: Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers Breakout star: Dustin May, Dodgers

Marc Carig, Senior Writer

First off, I’m a total sucker for revisiting history. So a rematch of the 1988 World Series — the last won by the Dodgers — is just too much to resist. Like the Astros last year, the Dodgers look untouchable. They’re the safe pick. But in the weirdest season ever, I can’t see it ending with the most predictable outcome. Also, the A’s are actually good. I predicted them to win the whole thing two months ago. I can’t bail on it now, even though losing really, really hurts.

Playoff MVP: Mark Canha, A’s Playoff Cy Young: Jesús Luzardo, A’s Breakout star: Dustin May, Dodgers

Keith Law, Senior Writer

I rolled a bunch of dice of varying sizes and this is what came out. It didn’t seem likely to be any less accurate than any other method.

Playoff MVP: , Dodgers Playoff Cy Young: Tyler Glasnow, Rays Breakout star: Willy Adames, Rays

Andy McCullough, Senior Writer

Look, it is fairly bonkers to try to predict this October. The variance has never been higher. There is a decent chance that all of the top seeds could lose in the first round. So let’s just default to betting on talent. The Dodgers have more of it than anyone else: Mookie Betts, Corey Seager, , Cody Bellinger and plenty of others. The team played at a 116-win pace in the shortened season. The worries about the bullpen might be valid. But the depth of this group’s talent could be enough to capture Los Angeles’ first World Series since 1988. Playoff MVP: Corey Seager, Dodgers Playoff Cy Young: Gerrit Cole, Yankees Breakout star: Tony Gonsolin, Dodgers

Joe Posnanski, Senior Writer

Because this is 2020, I simply picked the exact opposite of what I want to happen.

Playoff MVP: Luke Voit, Yankees Playoff Cy Young: Gerrit Cole, Yankees Breakout star: Eloy Jiménez, White Sox

Eno Sarris, Senior Writer

The favorites seem gettable, or more than usual. The bottom of the table seems hot, or they wouldn’t be here. Anybody has a chance in any postseason, and now way more teams than usual have a chance. Maybe we should look at how much each team strikes out or how much power they have — things that matter, supposedly, things that favor the Dodgers, Yankees, Twins and Padres — or maybe it’s even more of a crapshoot this year and those old playoffs don’t have much to say about these. Seems like a good time to bet on depth and youth being served.

Playoff MVP: , Twins Playoff Cy Young: José Berríos, Twins Breakout star: , Padres

Emma Span, Managing Editor

Almost every year since roughly 2013, I have picked the Dodgers to win the World Series. Every time, I have been wrong. But I am a sucker for the Sunk Cost Fallacy, so I refuse to learn from my mistakes and am picking them one more time. These playoffs make a crapshoot look predictable, but 2020 is so weird that maybe, just maybe, the best team in the league will actually go the distance. Stranger things have happened.

Playoff MVP: Mookie Betts, Dodgers Playoff Cy Young: , Rays Breakout star: Tony Gonsolin, Dodgers

Kaci Borowski, Staff Editor

Well, here we are once again at everyone’s favorite annual exercise in futility. My typical approach to these each year is an earnest and careful examination of each matchup, but I’ve got to be honest, guys. This year is the worst. And the only thing that’s going to bring me any joy is a lot of postseason chaos.

So it may seem counterintuitive when I say that I think the Dodgers can pull it off — but stick with me here. What could be more chaotic than the Dodgers, a team built for the long haul every single year, finally getting their first title since ’88 in this, our shortest and dumbest season? Let’s get newly minted Twitter star Vin Scully on the call via live stream and call it a year.

Playoff MVP: Mookie Betts, Dodgers Playoff Cy Young: Blake Snell, Rays Breakout star: Dustin May, Dodgers

Tracy Greer, Staff Editor

I’m going straight back to 1988 and picking the Dodgers to beat the A’s in five games. Maybe I’ve been influenced by Joe Posnanski’s recent piece on ’s impossible home run, but I’m looking more at the fact the Dodgers have topped our TA30 Power Rankings the entire season. I also think this would be a bittersweet end to the Dodgers’ championship futility: win it all, but do so in a shortened season that will always draw questions.

Playoff MVP: Mookie Betts, Dodgers Playoff Cy Young: Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers Breakout star: Jesús Luzardo, A’s

ESPN A case for Ronald Acuña Jr. as the MLB Latino Face of the 2020s

In three seasons, the Braves' Roland Acuna Jr. has NL Rookie of the Year and Silver Slugger awards to go with an All-Star Game appearance.

With the MLB postseason here and Hispanic Heritage Month underway, ESPN found the timing ideal to tackle one of the bigger debates among one section of baseball's fandom: With so many superstar candidates, which one is most worthy of being labeled the current Face of Latino Baseball?

Our friends at ESPN Deportes and FiveThirtyEight devised a formula using on-field performance, social media popularity, feedback from 30 ESPN analysts and fan votes to get to the answer. The results produced a ballot that stands at four candidates: the Atlanta Braves' Ronald Acuña Jr., from Venezuela; Dominican players of the and Fernando Tatis Jr. of the San Diego Padres; and Puerto Rico's of the Cleveland Indians. All are young, charismatic and popular and have enough accomplishments in their short careers to be considered for the honor.

Monday through Thursday this week, we will present the case for one of the four superstars, with our winner to be revealed Friday. We start with Acuña, the Braves' sensational outfielder.

Stats

At 22, Acuña already has three major league seasons under his belt and has put together a .281 batting average, 81 homers, 194 RBIs and 61 stolen bases. The 2018 National League Rookie of the Year also appeared in last year's All-Star Game.

He earned a in 2019, a season in which he joined , Alex Rodriguez, Jose Canseco and as the only players in history to tally 40 homers and 35 stolen bases.

Acuña, from La Guaira, Venezuela, draws frequent comparisons to Ken Griffey Jr. However, arguments can be made that Acuna is already ahead of the Hall of Famer Griffey's pace with a WAR of 11.9 -- the second-highest among our four candidates. Equally impressive are his career .909 OPS and .538 slugging percentage.

Social media popularity

Acuña is the fifth-most popular Latino player on Instagram, with 549,000 followers, trailing established stars such as Javier Baez, Lindor and Carlos Correa, as well as Jr.

What hurts Acuña's case: He has shared just four Instagram posts in 2020, but those have nevertheless averaged more than 90,000 interactions for each.

Web searches

Even though he has a low Instagram profile, Acuña has been one of the most searched Latino players since the beginning of the 2019 season. His average Google Trends search index for the period of Apr. 1, 2019 to Sep. 1, 2020, trails only and Guerrero Jr. among all Latino players, and leads our finalists for the Latino Face of Baseball.

Error! Filename not specified.ESPN.com

Experts

Acuña, who debuted in April 2018, received only three first-place votes from our panel of experts, but he appeared on 27 of the 30 ballots, the most of any player.

"Acuña is already one of the best players in the major leagues," ESPN Deportes' Enrique Rojas said. "He's more or less like a Venezuelan Mike Trout. Both can hit for power, run, play defense and throw hard at the bases -- a complete package of tools that belongs only to the best in the business." Special category: Fan vote

Latino Face of Baseball fan vote

Vote conducted Aug. 26-28 among ESPN's Béisbol, Deportes, México and SC Español sites (in percent):

PLAYER BEI DEP MX ESP

Tatis 44.0 43.7 46.3 33.2

Acuna 29.0 26.3 21.9 39.9

Soto 15.0 19.3 16.3 14.3

Lindor 12.0 10.7 15.6 12.6

Between Aug. 26 and Aug. 28, you, the fans, had a hand in deciding who should be the Latino Face of Baseball through four tightly contested polls.

Acuña dominated the SC Español poll with 39.9% of the vote. He was second among voters in the other three web polls: ESPN Béisbol (29%), ESPN Deportes (26.3%), and ESPN México (21.9).

Jeff Passan's 20 questions as the MLB playoffs begin

By Jeff Passan

Someone asked about the best thing I saw in the 2020 Major League Baseball regular season, and my answer was baseball. Not a titanic Ronald Acuna Jr. home run or a dazzling Mookie Betts throw or an obscene splitter or Trevor Bauer doing his Conor McGregor walk or Fernando Tatis Jr.'s drip or a Jose Ramirez walk-off or Adalberto Mondesi stealing second or Juan Soto swinging or Tim Anderson flipping or Mike Trout Mike Trouting, though admittedly I enjoyed all of those things.

Honestly, it was great to just see a groundout.

Months without baseball -- with labor issues that were every bit as much to blame for the lack thereof as the coronavirus pandemic -- were brutal. Then, when the game returned, and COVID-19 outbreaks sidelined two teams, and people across front offices and even the commissioner worried about pulling off a full season, it felt dire.

I took solace in the simple things. A center-cut, 90 mph fastball, about the worst pitch there is? Beautiful. A dropped popup? It happens. That rollover 6-3? Poetry. Because when compared to the alternative -- a summer without the summer game, a fall without the Fall Classic -- the mundane became magnificent.

Now here baseball is, still, with the first pitch of the postseason set to be thrown by at 2 p.m. ET today on ABC. Three more games follow, and then Wednesday's cornucopia blossoms to eight, with playoff games at noon, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 10. Again: That's one day, eight postseason games. This super-sized postseason doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a regular-sized regular season, but it feels quite strong in the moment.

With something that came together so on-the-fly -- 10 of the 16 teams' seeds were determined Sunday, the last day of the season -- there are bound to be questions. You're in luck.

Who's going to win the World Series?

First question, huh?

Isn't it what people want to know?

Fine. The Los Angeles Dodgers. I was picking them when the season was 162 games. I picked them when the season was announced at 60. I'm picking them now. Nothing I've seen has dissuaded me.

They aren't just deep. They ooze top-end talent. Betts reminded everyone this year that he's a top-five player in baseball. Corey Seager fulfilled the promise of his rookie season. might be the best offensive in the game. Outfielder A.J. Pollock, thought to be a free-agent bust, whacked 16 home runs. Third baseman Justin Turner was his rock-solid self. Utilityman defies the mediocrity implied by his position. Oh, and the Dodgers have last year's National League MVP, Cody Bellinger, ready to turn October into his playground.

Their best pitcher has the worst ERA in the rotation: at 3.44. Two rookies, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin, have sub-3.00 ERAs. Clayton Kershaw looks like Clayton Kershaw of old. The Dodgers' relievers aren't big names. They just had the lowest walk and home run rate of any bullpen in baseball. This is a superteam. The Dodgers outscored their opponents by 2.27 runs per game, the fourth-highest difference ever, according to ESPN Stats & Information. The two previous teams to top that, the 1927 and 1939 , swept the World Series. The other, the 1902 Pirates, played the year before the first World Series. They finished 103-36.

The 43-17 Dodgers weren't quite at that level, though their .717 winning percentage is the best in baseball since Cleveland went 111-43 in 1954. After losing in the 2017 and 2018 World Series to a pair of teams later investigated by Major League Baseball for cheating, this is the Dodgers' year to add their first ring since 1988.

You sure?

Of course not. Baseball is not basketball. It isn't football. It isn't any other major sport. It's a game in which the worst team can beat the best team, and it isn't some kind of monumental upset. With the wild-card round this year made up of three-game series and the division series running five before the seven-game league championship and World Series, the 2020 playoffs are ripe for upsets -- even with the best teams.

Sweet hedge, bro. Whom are the Dodgers going to face in the World Series?

The .

Hold on. You're talking about how baseball is a sport of massive variance, of potential upsets, of a mad October just waiting to happen ... and you picked a World Series between the No. 1 seeds?

Uhhhhhh ...

You're the worst. Why the Rays?

There is not a superteam in the American League. There are a bunch of good-to-great teams that beat up on one another all season. The Rays are like the Dodgers without the glitz and glamour. They are fundamentally exquisite. They walk about as much as anyone. They run with intelligence and purpose. They catch the ball with aplomb. Their starting pitchers -- especially Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and , their dynamic trio -- rate with just about every other three-man offering in baseball. Their bullpen had the second-lowest walk and home run rates.

There are two criticisms of the Rays. The first is that they strike out too much. That is a real vulnerability this October. The second is that they don't have any stars. That is nonsensical and needs to be launched into a black hole so it can vanish forever. If people don't know who plays for the Rays, they're the problem because they're the ones missing out.

Oh, and one more thing: Against teams .500 or better this season, Tampa Bay was 21-9. That was the best such record in the big leagues. The Rays know how to beat good teams. And that's what October is about.

Who are the greatest threats to the Dodgers and Rays?

Atlanta and Minnesota.

The Braves can really, really, really hit. In 26 September games, they scored 173 runs -- nearly 6.7 per game. Take out the 29 runs they dropped on the , and it's still 5.8 runs per game, a huge number. Outfielder Marcell Ozuna led the NL in home runs and RBIs and finished 14 batting average points shy of an outright Triple Crown ... and he wasn't the best hitter on his team. Freddie Freeman is the NL MVP favorite -- with good reason. Here's the list of first basemen in history with a triple-slash of at least .341/.462/.640, which Freeman put up this season: Lou Gehrig seven times, Jimmie Foxx twice and Albert Pujols, , Carlos Delgado and Norm Cash once apiece. That's some company.

We haven't even talked about Acuña or the phenomenal Travis d'Arnaud or Dansby Swanson or Ozzie Albies or Adam Duvall. Not to mention a severely underrated bullpen. All anyone wants to talk about with the Braves is their paucity of starting pitching. Yeah, it's real, and with league series this October featuring no off days, that might prove to be a problem. Compared to others' issues, though, it isn't necessarily a killer.

The Twins are different. They aren't quite the Bomba Squad of last year. They aren't sure if they're going to have third baseman Josh Donaldson or center fielder Byron Buxton for the wild-card series. But nobody pitched better in September than the Twins, who lead off with Kenta Maeda (the presumptive AL Cy Young runner-up), follow with Jose Berrios (who looks dialed in) and chase him with Michael Pineda (who hasn't allowed a homer in 26⅔ innings this year). The Twins have big arms with swing-and-miss stuff throughout their bullpen, and manager Rocco Baldelli comes from the Tampa Bay tree and is plenty versed in mixing and matching.

It's not like the Twins are some scrub-ridden offense, either. The ageless Nelson Cruz is a marvel. Donaldson is a delight when he plays. Max Kepler, Eddie Rosario and Buxton are pure excitement, though each could stand to get on base more.

Put it this way: If the Twins don't snap their 16-game postseason losing streak -- that's not a misprint -- against the 29-31 Astros, something will have gone very wrong.

Did you say 29-31? Sure did. The Brewers finished with that record, too. Welcome to the consequence of expanded playoffs: Houston and Milwaukee's .483 winning percentage is the worst ever for a postseason baseball team, just behind that of the 1981 Kansas City Royals, who went 50-53 (.485) and made the playoffs in that year's split, strike-shortened season.

Those aren't the only ugly numbers this postseason. According to ESPN Stats & Info, the five worst team batting averages ever for playoff teams came in 2020:

2020 Reds: .212 2020 Cubs: .220 2020 Brewers: .223 2020 A's: .225 2020 Cleveland: .228 1906 White Sox: .230

What's the best wild-card series?

Give me Braves-Reds. In baseball's one-year, 16-team experiment, the 2-7 series looks a lot like a 5-12 in the NCAA Tournament -- ripe for upset.

Yes, a few hundred words ago, I was singing the Braves' praise. Yes, a few dozen words ago I was pointing out that over 60 games, the Reds batted .212. Here's the thing: Cincinnati will start the deserved NL Cy Young winner, Trevor Bauer, in Game 1, follow with Luis Castillo (September: 32⅔ IP, 22 H, 9 BB, 37 K's, 2.20 ERA) and, if necessary, close with Sonny Gray.

Even though the Reds can't hit, they walked more than any other team in the National League and finished behind only the Dodgers, Braves and Padres, three swatalicious teams, with 90 home runs. In fact, 59.7% of the Reds' runs came via the long ball -- by far the highest in baseball history, according to ESPN Stats & Info. (The previous best: Toronto in 2019, with 53.2%.)

How about in the American League?

It would be so ESPN of me to say Yankees and whomever the Yankees are playing, right?

It would.

Well, tough. Yankees-Cleveland really is that interesting. It's not just the matchup between Shane Bieber (who made $230,815 this year and is going to win the Cy Young unanimously) and Gerrit Cole (who made $810,000 per start this year and was very good, especially in September). Greatness abounds. Ramirez should win the AL MVP -- and he might be the second-most talented player on the left side of the infield, with Francisco Lindor manning shortstop. The right side of the Yankees' infield balances the ledger rather nicely, with DJ LeMahieu, the AL batting champ, and Luke Voit, the league's home run king.

Both bullpens are deep. The Cleveland rotation, with Bieber, Carlos Carrasco and Zach Plesac, is a nice counterbalance to a Yankees lineup that is clearly stronger, especially in the outfield. Four Yankees numbers are of concern: 11-18 and 10-17. The first is their record on the road. The Yankees were dreadful away from the Bronx this year. The second is their record against teams .500 or better. Against Boston and Baltimore, the dregs of the AL East, New York went 16-4. Against all other teams: 17-23.

Why aren't they starting Gary Sanchez?

Marly Rivera explains it really well in a piece everyone ought to read, but the tl;dr version is: Sanchez has been awful this year, and Cole is more comfortable throwing to Kyle Higashioka.

OK, smart guy. Who are going to be the breakout players this October?

A few names to consider:

Garrett Crochet, , Chicago White Sox: Drafted 11th overall in June, the left-hander out of has pitched six scoreless innings, struck out eight and averaged 100.2 mph on his fastball.

Sean Murphy, C, : Nobody was better for Oakland in September than the rookie catcher.

Randy Arozarena, OF, Tampa Bay Rays: He destroys left-handed pitching, and with the Blue Jays featuring a number of lefty options (including Hyun-Jin Ryu), he'll have ample opportunity.

Trent Grisham, CF, San Diego Padres: Last you saw him in the playoffs, Grisham was in a Milwaukee uniform overrunning a bad hop that allowed Washington to win the wild-card game -- and eventually the World Series. He'll acquit himself better this time around.

Tony Gonsolin, , Los Angeles Dodgers: The latest product of the Dodgers' player development machine doesn't have the same raw stuff as May but has incredible pitchability. Tyler Duffey, reliever, : Presuming, of course, the Twins are ahead in a postseason game for once and need to call upon their best high-leverage reliever.

Nick Anderson, reliever, Rays: He's the best reliever in the game. Now it's time for the whole baseball world to see it.

Will Smith, C, Dodgers: He has been the best hitter on the best team in baseball, and he calls a delightful game, too. The rich get richer.

Austin Adams, reliever, Padres: Back from knee surgery and throwing vicious sliders, the right-hander was a secondary player in the Austin Nola deal before the trade deadline and could pitch his way into primary status.

James Karinchak, reliever, Cleveland: He struck out 53 in 27 innings and should be deployed as an old-school fireman.

Nate Pearson, reliever, : Typically a starter, he has slotted into a bullpen role and will throw 102 mph fastballs regularly.

What's the most seemingly lopsided matchup in Game 1?

The White Sox are 14-0 against left-handed starters this year. Against all lefties, they're hitting .285/.364/.523. The A's will start rookie Jesus Luzardo. He is left-handed.

The response from White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson: "I guess they haven't done their homework."

Perhaps not, though the White Sox have a fair bit of Yankees vibes to them. Their record against the two worst teams in the AL Central, Kansas City and Detroit: 18-2. Their record against everyone else: 17-23. Their record against .500-or-better teams: 12-20.

The Athletics' just won AL Pitcher of the Month for September. Why aren't teams' best starters going in Game 1?

It's not just Oakland. Ryu will get plenty of down-ballot Cy Young support, and he's starting Game 2 for Toronto behind Matt Shoemaker, even though that pushes Taijuan Walker, Toronto's second-best starter, to Game 3, which might not be needed. The Cubs might go with Kyle Hendricks ahead of Yu Darvish, a strong Cy Young candidate in the NL. Even though Marlins rookie Sixto Sanchez is the most talented arm on the team with the highest upside, Sandy Alcantara is likely to get the nod.

One decision-maker suggested that the difference between Game 1 and Game 2 simply isn't that big. Another person said some teams think Game 2 is more important and will their best pitcher for it -- and give an extra day's rest by doing so. That said, the Elias Sports Bureau passed along an awfully interesting statistic about three-game series. In the past 10 regular seasons, teams that won the first game of a three-game set went on to win the series 75.5% of the time.

What's the Cardinals' excuse for not pitching Jack Flaherty in Game 1 or Game 2?

No idea.

Flaherty is the Cardinals' best pitcher. He doesn't have the best ERA; that belongs to Kwang-Hyun Kim, the 32-year-old left-hander in his first season who has posted a 1.62 ERA. Flaherty doesn't have the most experience; that's Adam Wainwright, the 39-year-old who has been very good this year, too.

Between Kim and Wainwright, though, the Cardinals are trying to pull off some kind of a trick. This season, 126 starters threw at least 30 innings. Only 17 of them averaged below 90 mph on their fastballs. Kim and Wainwright are two of them.

On fastballs between 88 and 92 mph this year, according to Statcast, the Padres hit .329 and slugged a major league-best .658.

One more time: Flaherty, even with his 4.91 ERA, is the Cardinals' best pitcher. He has the best stuff. He has the right attitude. In fact, Cardinals manager Mike Shildt said on MLB Network that Flaherty would go in Game 2. Then, suddenly, the Cardinals decided he wouldn't. If they win one of the first two games, it will look very smart. If they don't, they'll have lost a postseason series without using their ace.

What other pitchers aren't we seeing?

Right-handers and Mike Clevinger, on whom a deep Padres playoff run almost certainly depends, are both questions after exiting their last starts. 's Tommy John surgery leaves a gaping hole in an Astros rotation that is middle of the pack without him. The Braves with a healthy and would be an even greater threat to the Dodgers than they are already. Had Corbin Burnes not caught an oblique in his final start of the season, the specter of Milwaukee ousting Los Angeles would loom far more realistically than it does.

How can the Brewers beat the Dodgers?

Let Craig Counsell do his managerial wizardry and leverage his bullpen to the hilt over three days.

An important thing to note for these next four days of wild-card action: The AL Division Series don't begin until Oct. 5, four days after the scheduled Game 3 of the wild card. The NL layoff is the same. As teams go into playoff bubbles, they'll get ample rest. Counsell is almost certain to go bullpen game in the opener. For Game 2, he has Brandon Woodruff, who is fantastic and has the sort of stuff that can handcuff the Dodgers. Game 3, if it gets there, will probably be all hands on deck again.

Those hands, though, they're pretty good. The best reliever in the NL this year wasn't Josh Hader, the Brewers' closer who has held that title in recent seasons. It was Brewers right-hander Devin Williams, a 26-year-old rookie who, like Karinchak, struck out 53 in 27 innings, allowed just eight hits, posted a 0.33 ERA and regularly used the single best pitch in baseball this season, his changeup.

There's Hader and Williams. Right-hander Freddy Peralta is a strikeout monster, too. Lefty Brent Suter, who has started and could serve as an opener, is a ground ball machine. Same with Adrian Houser. They're still not the best on the Brewers at inducing grounders: That's side-arming right-hander Eric Yardley, who is the perfect countermeasure with a 61.2% ground ball rate. There's also Drew Rasmussen and Justin Topa, two rookies with fastball velocity that sits at 98 mph.

This takes a lot of squinting and some dreaming. But again: This is baseball. Anything can happen.

Like a positive COVID-19 test?

Holy Debbie Downer.

It's worth asking about.

That's fair. Considering how the coronavirus nearly waylaid the Marlins' and Cardinals' seasons, it's reasonable to ask how a positive test would affect the postseason, especially when MLB is endeavoring to create a bubble around teams.

The protocol after individual positive tests as the season progressed was typically to miss a few games. Baseball's playoffs are crammed into such a short time period that postponements aren't an option. The league's postseason operations manual calls for all of the usual steps: contact tracing, follow-up testing (even though players and staff are being tested every day) and trying to ensure the virus doesn't spread.

If there is an outbreak, teams are traveling with a dozen replacement players who can fill in. The idea of that -- participating in a postseason with lower-tier players -- does not sit well with some officials but is a reality with which they're learning to live.

Too much is at stake for MLB to lose the playoffs. Owners are counting on the billion or so dollars in postseason TV revenue. It's the league's greatest source of income this year, and MLB will do everything it can to secure that bag -- including forcing teams to play with lesser talent.

Are there going to be fans?

"That's the hope," one official familiar with the situation said Monday. Whether they will appear at the NLCS in Arlington, Texas, or the World Series at Globe Life Field is unclear.

Owners, one person in contact with them said recently, "are desperate to get fans back this year. They want to show that it's possible so they can have fans on next year."

Don't expect a packed house. At most, the stadium might be filled to a quarter of capacity. That would still be 10,000 more fans per game than there were at any of the 898 played during the regular season.

What are you most excited for this October?

Baseball.

But not just the simple stuff. The finest teams in the world are vying for a championship. This is the moment for greatness. For the best players playing the best. For Acuña and Betts and Darvish and Bauer and Tatis and Ramirez and Anderson and everyone else showing out.

MLB's October sizzle reel is full of bright colors and big swings and premium flow and dancing and bubble blowing. It's DJ Khaled talking over BTS and trying to sell this as the same game for a new generation. "If you don't know," Khaled says, "now you know."

Here's what those of us in the know know: October is when the best baseball is played, when the best moments are forged, when history, which the game holds so dear, is made. It starts with four games today, doubles on Wednesday and moves forward from there -- the biggest playoff field ever, the most games ever, the greatest number of opportunities for those moments.

It's time to crown a champion. Baseball certainly earned it.

Wall Street Journal

MLB Finished Its Pandemic Season—but 2021 Would Be ‘Devastating’ Without Fans, Commissioner Says

As the playoffs begin, Rob Manfred discusses the pandemic-shortened season, what next year might look like, and plans for an expanded postseason going forward

By Jared Diamond

To stage something resembling a season in 2020, Major League Baseball endured an ugly labor dispute and withstood a pair of significant coronavirus outbreaks that threatened to bring everything down. As a reward, the industry will lose $3 billion this year.

Now baseball heads toward the playoffs, bruised and battered from a string of crises but still standing. Rob Manfred, the commissioner tasked with overseeing this unprecedented campaign, believes the struggle served an important purpose beyond supplying a distraction and entertainment for an ailing country in difficult times.

“We felt if we could demonstrate that if you can operate in a reasonably normal way, you can do it without jeopardizing the public health, you can do it without presenting undue risk to your employees, then it would provide an example for people,” Manfred said in an interview last week.

Baseball managed to survive to this point without any fans in attendance. But it came at a cost: The sport usually derives about 40% of its annual revenue from the in-stadium experience, like ticket sales, concessions and parking fees.

So while conquering 2020 is an achievement, repeating it with a full schedule in 2021 will be just as challenging. The thought of teams opening their ballparks to 40,000 fans as early as April seems aspirational at best, raising questions about the financial landscape moving forward.

Manfred described the idea of playing 162 games next year without fans as “economically devastating,” adding that the losses “would be a multiple” of the $3 billion from this season. So the moment the World Series ends late next month, baseball’s primary mission is to figure out what 2021 might look like, no matter the circumstances.

“If we’re going to play next year, and if we don’t have a vaccine and we aren’t past the pandemic, I think we need to think hard about what measures we can take to get people back into the ballpark,” Manfred said.

Just making it this far hasn’t been easy. Baseball has taken a more challenging route through its season than other North American professional sports. The NBA, WNBA and NHL all returned from their pandemic-induced hiatuses with the advantage of self-contained bubbles—effective but impractical constructs few other organizations can replicate.

Baseball’s approach was more like the path most other businesses will have to take. It played on with relative normalcy. Fans were absent, but teams traveled between cities on airplanes, stayed in hotels and went home to their families at night. It required commitment and sacrifice from hundreds of players devoted to their typical lifestyles and routines.

MLB learned the hard way how difficult that is to do. After just one weekend of action, Covid-19 stormed through the Miami Marlins’ clubhouse, leaving 18 players and a couple of coaches infected. Days later, the St. Louis Cardinals reported two positive tests, which quickly metastasized into 13, as officials scrambled to keep the season afloat. More than 100 pages of rules and protocols designed to avoid this exact scenario couldn’t stop the surge of cases.

“We were very, very concerned about where we were,” Manfred said. “There was not a focus on shutting down the season. It was more of a frenetic effort to figure out what we could do better.”

At first, MLB believed that a robust testing program—one that to this day is more rigorous than virtually any other corporate environment—would allow teams to quickly isolate sick personnel and stop the virus from spreading. Players would submit a saliva sample no less than every other day, with results coming back within 24 hours from a lab in Utah or New Jersey.

That proved insufficient to combat Covid-19, failing to address issues that increased testing frequency wouldn’t solve. MLB learned something that other companies navigating the pandemic may soon face: Testing alone cannot create a safe office environment.

“I think there was some sense that if you tested enough, the rest of the preventive measures were maybe not as important,” Manfred said. “Those situations emphasized, particularly in closed areas like airplanes, that the preventive measures—distancing, masks on at all times—really, really make a huge difference.”

So baseball and its players’ union went back to the negotiating table and hashed out on-the-fly changes to the operations manual. The league then mandated that everybody besides players on the field would wear face coverings at all times, including in the dugout and bullpen. The new regulations prohibited players from visiting bars, malls and other places where large groups gather and put greater restrictions on behavior on the road. Compliance never reached 100%. The Cleveland Indians temporarily banished two pitchers, Mike Clevinger and Zach Plesac, to their minor-league complex because they sneaked out of the team hotel without permission days after baseball unveiled the updated policies. Anybody watching a game on television will still see some players and coaches not wearing masks correctly, or not at all.

But it did enough to shore up a foundation that appeared to be teetering on the edge of collapse. Three other clubs—the Cincinnati Reds, and Oakland Athletics—wound up with one or two positive tests as the season progressed. In each of those cases, the virus stopped at that, and the teams resumed their schedule after a few days off. Just two months after the season appeared in danger, no player has tested positive in more than four weeks.

All of this suggests that under the right circumstances, other workplaces can potentially use baseball’s model—to an extent, at least.

“You can have as safe a workplace as you want, but if you have high community risk and you’re out there in the community, that’s a problem,” Manfred said. “Those sorts of behaviors are really, really important in terms of keeping people in a position where they continue to work.”

For the postseason, which begins Tuesday, baseball has simplified the equation. Teams will move to one of four neutral sites—Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston and Arlington, Texas—and stay sequestered, similar to other leagues’ bubbles. Baseball considered it a necessary step in order to dodge the virus-related postponements that checkered the regular season.

These playoffs will look different than any other in history, even if MLB executes its plan to welcome fans into the stadium in the later rounds for the first time all season. Sixteen teams will participate, up from 10 in an ordinary year, though Manfred insisted this exact format almost certainly won’t continue into the future.

While Manfred wants some sort of an expanded postseason on a permanent basis, he said it would involve fewer teams—14, perhaps. It also would include mechanisms to place a premium on regular-season performance and provide more advantages to the best teams, something for which the 2020 version has faced criticism.

“It’s crucial for us as an everyday game to maintain the competitive incentives throughout that 162-game season,” Manfred said.

The additional postseason inventory this October will help MLB mitigate some of its economic losses, acting as a make-good for TV partners for the games that didn’t happen when the pandemic erased nearly two-thirds of the season.

Moving forward from here will be complicated. Many franchises have already undergone substantial layoffs, with more still expected this winter. The offseason promises another collision between the game’s economic needs and the pandemic. After the experience of the 2020 season, Manfred knows that the latter can’t be underestimated.

“It’s a huge mistake to think you can let your guard down with respect to this issue,” Manfred said. “We need to continue to be vigilant.”