The Opener

1. We’ve discussed the many managerial ousters and abandonments but now a (semi)newsworthy non-managerial move: In a wide-ranging postmortem press conference, Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said that Rob Thomson will be back for 2026, and they intend to extend him sometime this offseason.

2. That press conference was … rich with beat writer fodder! Including Dombrowski offering a rather unpolitic evaluation of his superstar player (and birthday boy) Bryce Harper: “He’s still a quality player, he’s still an All-Star-caliber player, he didn’t have an elite season like he’s had in the past. And I guess we only find out if he becomes elite or he continues to be good [...] Can he rise to the next level again? I don’t really know that answer.” Calling it like he sees it!

3. Both Carlos Rodón and Anthony Volpe have undergone surgeries that will see them miss Opening Day 2026. Rodón’s procedure was to remove bone spurs from his elbow. Volpe had surgery to repair a partially torn left labrum, which he played through most of the season while the Yankees downplayed the injury and Volpe struggled mightily.

Dodgers lead Brewers 3-0

⚾️ Just a reminder that Mookie Betts never played a major league game at shortstop until 2023, when he was 30 years old. He didn’t play there regularly until this season. He’s a six-time Gold Glove winner — all for the outfield. And here is making the first out of the ninth inning in a save situation:

Wanna see it in slow motion?

–HK

⚾️ Self-plug: I wrote about Mookie Betts’ shortstop transition earlier this year, and yeah, there’s going to be a line on his Hall of Fame plaque about this. —ZC

⚾️ I was talking to a Dodgers fan last night who — after admitting a fondness for the Mariners — seized upon the salary cap chatter and sketched an interesting emotional counterargument about his favorite juggernaut. The Dodgers, he noted, lead with stars who arrived as something approaching castoffs.

Betts was famously traded away from the Red Sox. Freddie Freeman was abandoned by the Braves. Shohei Ohtani, well, everyone wanted him but the beginning of his career was deflated by the Angels’ incompetence; the Dodgers were a safe haven. Max Muncy was a waiver claim. Teoscar Hernandez arrived on a pillow contract after a down season. His narrative capabilities flagged when he got to the pitching staff that has helped LA take a stranglehold on this series, but you know, he had me for a minute.

I do wonder, if the Dodgers place themselves in the lineage of the Core Four Yankees by winning back-to-back World Series, how the baseball public will respond. There will always be fans who line up to rail against the most financially powerful teams, against the perpetual title contenders. But the individual movie villain energy that felt so easily placed upon the heads of those Yankees doesn’t feel as natural on Betts or Freeman or Ohtani, and there’s not a George Steinbrenner lightning rod figure to put a face on any Evil Empire sequel.

The salary cap battle will happen, and the Dodgers would be a key piece of it, but I’m not sure the fans will really turn on this core. Not yet, not like the Yankees. —ZC

⚾️ For all the talk of the differences between the Brewers and Dodgers — most of it spurred on by Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy — the teams’ top baseball executives go way back. Andrew Friedman and Matt Arnold came up together in the Rays front office, and still catch up over dinner each spring training, with an interloper often tagging along. From Adam McCalvy’s story:

And they always invite a third: Brewers manager Pat Murphy.

“Obviously those are two great baseball minds,” Murphy said. “I think they just want me there to laugh at me.”

The more you read reports about this series, the more you catch the connective tissue between the franchises, the more you get the sense Murphy is putting on a bit of a show that serves to remove pressure and add motivation in Milwaukee, all while keeping the onus on himself. It’s 4D chess via self-deprecation.

Here’s a USA Today feature on Murphy that mentions a text he sent to Friedman prior to the series.

It’s so lopsided on paper that Murphy even sent Andrew Friedman, Dodgers president of baseball operations, a text message. He pleaded with him to have his Dodgers players use gloves on their opposite hands during the series to even things out – or he’d have to make up concoction to blackmail him.

“I usually don’t laugh out loud when I get something funny in a text message,” Friedman said. “But with Patty – that’s what I call him – I’d say 80% of the time I do.”

I wonder if he has a heel turn in him, if next year or even today, before the Brewers try to save their season with the second 3-0 rally in baseball history, he will try on the outfit of being baseball’s best team. I doubt it. I think this is exactly where Murphy wants to be, exactly where he wants his team’s headspace to be. It might not work to win this NLCS, but in the much bigger picture, it’s working. —ZC

⚾️ A pet peeve of mine all postseason is people overreacting to whichever team has won most recently to act as if they’ll never lose. Or, perhaps more often, that the team which has most recently lost is intrinsically inept, fatally flawed, donezo. Each win or loss in October matters more, but it doesn’t actually mean more. It’s not extra predictive just cause the stakes are high. Momentum is only as good as the next game’s starting pitcher, after all. Or bulk guy, as it were.

Jacob Misiorowski was great for the Brewers in Game 3, bailing out his opener and going on to record nine strikeouts in 5 innings. His fastball averaged over 100 mph and topped out at 102.5 mph. His team, however, looked like they never really had a chance.

In the regular season, Milwaukee had the second-best batting average in the National League and the difference between them and the first-place Phillies was so small it doesn’t show up in the slash line. Against the Dodgers, they’ve managed just nine hits across three games. They’re batting .101 in the LCS, with a -5 wRC+. Remember: 100 is average. Zero would be 100% worse than average. This is worse than that. Also, now Jackson Chourio is dealing with hamstring cramps.

This team, the Milwaukee Brewers, had the best record in baseball this year. I might look very stupid 12 hours from now because obviously any team can win any game and certainly any team that has 100 so far this year can win one more. But this is the rare instance where it really does feel like recent history — i.e. the Dodgers dominating — is significant for forecasting forward. I can’t see Dodgers being beat by the Brewers. –HK

Mariners and Blue Jays tied 2-2

⚾️ If it seemed like the Blue Jays came ready to attack early and often in Game 3 on Wednesday night, that’s because they did! Toronto batters swung at the first pitch in 19 of 46 plate appearances in the eventual 13-4 victory. That’s 41.3%, in the regular season the MLB average of swinging at first pitches was 32.1% (these numbers via the MLB Network research packet). And it translated to success. All 18 hits they had in the game came on the first three pitches of an at-bat.

“We say if they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive on that,” Vlad Guerrero Jr. said. “And we’re going to continue to be that way.” –HK

⚾️ Max Scherzer made his 500th career start in Game 4 on Thursday for the Blue Jays.

There’s a lot of directions I could take this. Like, for instance, he was really good! Better than Luis Castillo was for the Mariners, despite that being Scherzer’s first start in nearly a month. Also his five strikeouts saw him pass Roger Clemens for the fifth-most Ks all-time in the postseason. Also he had his first pickoff in nine years. Also, do you think Max Scherzer knows why Max Scherzer is still playing baseball? He evidently still can. But by that I mean: does he have a specific, articulated even if only to himself, goal or finish line?

Also, he did this: