The Opener

1. Welp, there’s yet another managerial opening and it’s an intriguing one. The San Diego Padres need a new skipper after Mike Shildt abruptly retired this week with two seasons remaining on his contract.

“I’m just tired and want to go home, dude,” Shildt said (literally) by way of explanation and I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I can see how the circumstances — Shildt had just finished managing the club to consecutive 90-win seasons and his boss, A.J. Preller, has now overseen the ouster of five full-time managers — is a little suspicious. On the other hand, I do not doubt that he was tired and I frequently just want to go home as well.

Here’s where I net out: I imagine that there is more to the story than we know publicly, but that it’s probably not that interesting, at least not to the level of scandal! Being a manager seems exhausting, often thankless, and indeed very stressful. Most jobs eventually entail some degree of interpersonal tension and no small amount of tedious bullshit. If you can afford to retire at 57, go off.

Sorry to be a scold, but I wish the predominant takeaway from this all would be outrage — not at any of the known names involved, but the rising prevalence of gambling-related threats made toward athletes and coaches, which Shildt cited for taking a toll. –HK

2. The Dodgers and Mariners are halfway to a World Series berth and heading home with the chance to advance. Cue the soundtrack of the newsletter.

If you’re wondering — since this applies to both series — 15 teams have overcome a 2-0 series deficit in a best-of-seven. That admittedly doesn’t sound like much in the grand scheme of baseball history, but two of them have happened since 2020 — the 2020 Dodgers and the 2023 Diamondbacks, both in the NLCS. —ZC

Mariners lead Blue Jays 2-0

⚾️ Behind the scenes here at Bandwagon HQ, there’s a big document where I drop story ideas and, in many cases, leave them as just that: ideas. Usually, these are topics that either lack urgency or in fact were far too urgent — they stopped being relevant before I got around to them. One idea I scribbled down in April was “What the hell has gotten into Jorge Polanco?”

The Mariners second baseman, quietly re-signed after an underwhelming 2024 season in Seattle, charged out of the gates with a .384 batting average and .808 slugging percentage in April. Thus the story idea. But he slumped in May and June, dipping out of idea territory. Sometime in the early summer, I deleted it.

Turns out, it regained relevance! The switch-hitting Polanco regained steam in the second half, swinging for pull power, finishing the regular season with a career best 132 wRC+ and cutting his strikeout rate nearly in half. On 19.4% of his swings, he cracked a ball with a 95+ mph exit velocity, a hard-hit per swing rate that matched Shohei Ohtani’s.

In October, he seems to deliver ringing hits in every significant Mariners rally. His teammates have apparently taken to calling him “George Bonds.”

Looking back now, it seems that Jorge Polanco is what got into Jorge Polanco. He had been a solidly above average hitter in every full season since 2017 when he arrived in Seattle, but he struggled with a left knee injury and had surgery over the winter. Even his strikeout rate improvement stems from an inflated mark in 2024, with this season representing a return to something like the norm.

His play has become urgently relevant not because he became dramatically better, but because the timing is allowing the whole world to ask the question from at once, and to take note of the answer. —ZC

⚾️ The Blue Jays are down 2-0 headed from their raucous home park to Seattle’s World Series-starved raucous home park. It’s not what you want. There’s no guarantee this team will play another game in Toronto.

In staring down an uphill climb toward their goal, the Blue Jays told Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi about how much they want to keep the season going, and they centered that desire on the relationships within the team. Take Daulton Varsho’s quote here, with the rare baseball player using a cultural reference in context:

“There’s not one bad apple in here — it’s like Semi-Pro when they all come together and Jackie Moon’s yelling out of the back. Everybody here pulls for one another. Everybody trusts in one another. It’s one of those rare groups. I’ve been on so many different teams now, year-to-year where guys are coming in, guys are going out, especially in Arizona, we had new teams every year and it was like, all right, how is everybody going to gel? You’re trying to find ways to come together. It’s not like this group, where everybody does love everybody.”

And here’s Jeff Hoffman:

“Yeah, we do everything together, off-nights even, when everybody’s trying to stay away from baseball, we’re all going out and getting dinner together. The teams like this one are the ones where you don’t really want the season to end because these are the guys that you’ve literally spent all your time with for the duration of the season. A lot of guys on this team I’ll keep in touch with for the rest of my life, no matter what goes on from this point on.”

Maybe my eyes have glazed over from too many “just gotta take it one day at a time” quotes, but it feels like the Blue Jays are waxing particularly poetic about their group. I’m also now curious if any chemistry-curious front offices have attempted to track and quantify the dinner together on off nights metric of a club gelling.

Free idea: You could call it BAR (Bonding Above Replacement). —ZC

⚾️ If the Blue Jays are to stage come back, it will start with Shane Bieber, the former Cy Young winner who Toronto acquired as he ramped up from Tommy John surgery. And for whatever it’s worth (not that much), he has a 1.52 ERA in five career starts in Seattle.

As it turns out, his final start for the Guardians came in Seattle. In April 2024, he fired six scoreless innings, striking out nine and walking no one. Before he could make his next start, he was out for the year, and before he could return from that injury, he was a Blue Jay.

Bieber was perfectly good in his return, notching a 120 ERA+ across seven starts with characteristically few walks but more homers than he would like. If there’s going to be a next era of Bieber greatness, it might start Wednesday night. —ZC

Dodgers lead Brewers 2-0

⚾ If you haven’t seen the bases-loaded, 404-foot double play that ended the fourth inning of Game 1 of this series, I can’t explain it to you now.

Watch this:

Read this for the basics. Or this to revel in just how weird it was.

But if you just want the vibe of what happened?

This should do it:

That’s Sal Frelick, the guy who made the play in the first place, having no fucking clue what’s going on.

I will forget who eventually wins this World Series before I ever forget that play. –HK

⚾ I’m assuming that viral moment combined with a retro sense of SEO is what inspired The Sporting News to publish an article about Frelick’s height, or lack thereof. There’s also an intro section, but here’s the bulk of the story: