The Opener

1. The Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto took a no-hitter through 8 ⅔ innings against the Orioles on Saturday, and then the Dodgers lost anyway. Leading 3-0 when Jackson Holliday broke up the no-no with a homer, Los Angeles went to the bullpen and proceeded to surrender the game for the would-be juggernauts’ fifth straight loss. In a stratified National League, every Dodgers rake-stomping comes with an echo of “they’ll be fine.” But even after breaking the losing streak Sunday, they’re at least exploring some dangerous waters. Their 21-24 second half record (a .466 winning percentage) would be worse than any team that went on to win the World Series, and second-worst of any pennant winner ahead of only the 2023 Diamondbacks.
2. Phillies star Trea Turner — who has been creeping way up high on the WAR leaderboards — exited Sunday’s game with a hamstring injury. He’s slated to have an MRI Monday that could have serious implications for the balance of power in the NL.
3. Davey Johnson, the baseball renaissance man and esteemed manager who won a World Series at the helm of the 1986 Mets, died over the weekend at 82. Johnson later skippered the Reds, Orioles, Dodgers and Nationals, which means he oversaw the teenage debuts of both Doc Gooden and Bryce Harper.

Getting married: Fan

As you may have heard, I got married last weekend.

My wife, Amy (normal to say, weirder to write!), and I wanted to throw a big, memorable party for our friends and family. It’s an endeavor that can create a stressful, exhausting planning process, and even temporarily distract from the real reason for celebrating: That you’re so happy to be together, to be committing to one another, that you want to share that joy with everyone.

I’m happy to report that I’d fully endorse doing it all. We had an unforgettable, if head-spinning, weekend that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

When we eventually found time to deliver our vows, I promised to watch the Mets every night she wants to (which is most of them), so know that’s where one eye will be, and that I have more screens for everything else.

Thanks for the well wishes, and to Hannah for flying solo last week. Let’s get back to some baseball.

The Freddy Galvis of the stolen base surge

By Zach Crizer

When the ball changed and homers spiked in the late 2010s, the overall league numbers rose sharply, but the top individual power records remained unthreatened until the ball returned to equilibrium. It was the democratization of dingers, as Michael Baumann memorably put it. Nobody was crushing 70 homers, but everybody could crack 20, even nothing-special middle infield bats such as Freddy Galvis.

Rule changes ahead of 2023 have spawned an all-around uptick in stolen bases that might be trending in the same dispersed direction. MLB’s stolen base rate jumped from 0.51 per team game in 2022 to 0.72 in 2023 and has remained steady (it’s 0.71 per team game in 2025). The individual player patterns haven’t been quite as stable.

After the initial burst of Ronald Acuña Jr.’s 73-steal MVP campaign, Elly De La Cruz purloined 67 last year, and nobody is going to do anything of the like in 2025. Instead, the groundswell is coming from runners who might have been limited to five or 10 steals taking more chances. It takes a little more looking to find where the increases are interesting. So here are five of the most intriguing, most telling stolen base stat lines to watch in September.

1. Juan Soto, 38 homers, 29 steals

Apparently Soto’s spectacular, selective eye can also be applied to picking his spots to run. In his first season with the Mets, and under the tutelage of first-base coach Antoan Richardson, Soto has obliterated his previous career high in steals (12).

Deploying walking leads, reading pitchers and choosing opportune counts, Soto leads MLB with 18 steals since the All-Star break even as his lack of foot speed contributes to defensive decline. He’s threatening to go 40/40 season in the eighth season of a historic career that seemingly had a well-defined shape — which did not include running.

“A lot of people laugh, to be quite frank,” Richardson said in a new story by Will Sammon. “But I get an inside seat to the work and the details, which gives me the confidence that it’s a really, really high likelihood that he’s able to get to that number.”

Maybe that’s not quite Shohei Ohtani’s 50/50 explosion in 2024, but Soto’s thievery is different for defying expectations and understanding of his abilities, where Ohtani leaned hard into his speed while away from pitching.

Even if Soto only gets to 40/30, he would be joining a club with just 12 members and 15 total seasons. With his whole Mets tenure ahead, it’s tempting to see Soto cutting the shape of Barry Bonds’ or Jeff Bagwell’s early 30s seasons, in which they both rolled off multiple 40/30 campaigns.

2. Josh Naylor, 24 steals

If you want to count Naylor first in your head, I wouldn’t quibble. The rotund 28-year-old’s next steal will bring his 2025 total even with the rest of his 598-game major-league career. Working with pattern recognition and baseball instinct, Naylor has unleashed a new element of his game.

Especially since joining the Mariners in a deadline deal, Naylor has been running wild, ripping off 13 stolen bases in his 37 games with Seattle.

“I think it’s about not being afraid to fail,” Naylor told The Athletic. “Not being afraid to take a chance. That’s big for me. I try not to think about failure. Try not to think about, ‘What if I do this?’ I just like to play baseball, play hard.”

Fail, he has not. He hasn’t been caught since April.

3. Trevor Story, 27 steals, 0 caught stealing