Chaos week! Mets & Tigers crumble, Guardians & Reds surge, Mariners sweep Astros | Fair Territory

Chaos week! Mets & Tigers crumble, Guardians & Reds surge, Mariners sweep Astros | Fair Territory

Welcome everyone to the Monday edition of Fair Territory. I’m Ken Rosenthal here with you for the next 26 minutes or so. And it was just a few weeks back I was lamenting I don’t know if it was on foul territory in print maybe just a friends lamenting that the races were all but decided that the playoff field was all but set. Ha, so much for that. We are looking at one of the wilder weeks potentially in recent MLB history. Both wild cards are still in play. The AL Central is big time in play. And the AL West seemingly closer to being decided, but not over just yet. And actually, the NL West is in that category as well. So, there’s a lot to discuss, but I want to start with the NL wild card. And the question I posed in my column today, which would be more embarrassing, the Tigers blowing a 15 and a half game lead to a division opponent, that would be the Cleveland Guardians, or the Mets missing the playoffs entirely with a $340 million payroll. Now, the column is an exploration of which is more embarrassing and kind of discusses each team’s predicament, but the Mets thing is stunning to say the least. They were 45 and 24 on June 12th. They had a 2.79 rotation RA on June 12th. That was the best in the majors. The record was the best in the majors. Since then, the Mets are 35 and 30 and 53. 35 and 53. That is tied with the Chicago White Socks for the fourth worst record in the majors. Their rotation RA also ranks in the bottom five. They have essentially collapsed and not like they did in 2007 when they lost seven when they blew a seven-game lead with 17 to play. This has been a slow burn. It’s really been three months now of inadequate play. So the Reds are not exactly a team sprinting to the finish, though they’ve won 10 of their last 15. It’s a team that’s basically a sub 500 club since early August. But they’ve won 10 of their last 15. The Mets have gone 4 and1, including losing two of three to the Nationals this week. And you see where the wild card standings are right now. Diamondbacks just one game back. The Reds hold the tiebreaker over the Mets. So, as we say at this time of year, the Reds effectively control their own destiny. Of course, these things can change. And we might as well look at the remaining schedules as well because they will be telling for, of course, all of these teams. The Reds are in a decent spot, as I wrote today. three versus Pittsburgh at home and then three at Milwaukee in a time when Milwaukee probably will be really close to clinching the best overall record in the number one seed if they haven’t done it already by then. They’ve got a three-game lead over the Phillies in that race. The Mets, three at the Cubs, three at the Marlins, who they only lead by four games right now, by the way. And the Diamondbacks, who have had a trying schedule, the most trying schedule of all these teams from the beginning. They host the Dodgers for three and then they’re at San Diego for three. San Diego by that point should have clinched and we’ll see what the Dodgers come up with this week as well. So, the NL Wild Card race, as I’ve written, it is brought to you by the New York Mets. The only reason all of this has happened is because the Mets have stumbled in a way that no one anticipated. And it’s a stumble that will be one of the more embarrassing episodes in franchise history if it indeed ends up with this team obviously missing the playoffs. If it ends up with this team getting knocked out early. The Mets are not simply in a good place. Now the AL Central, this is the other question I had or the part of the question that I had. The Tigers, where are the Tigers on the embarrassment scale? Pretty high I would suggest. Now, they still are in a position where they have a one-ame lead over the Cleveland Guardians, but they’re coming off an 0 and6 home stand against Cleveland and Atlanta. They’re 26 and 37 since July 8th. These three games against Cleveland at Progressive Field will obviously be critical. And you just wonder if the Tigers are going to be able to snap out of it. Their pitching, their rotation and bullpen has essentially fallen apart in September. And their offense has not been very good in this long stretch as well. And here are the Guardians. One of the worst offensive contenders you’ll ever see. What I mean by that is they’ve got one of the worst offenses for a contender you’ll ever see. They are tied for 27th in the majors in runs per game. 27th. And as I wrote, there are only three teams in major league history, and actually this goes to the start of the divisional play era, that have made the playoffs with an offense that bad. And two of those teams, two of the three did it in the 2020 season when there were 16 playoff teams, shortened 60 game season, and all of that. So, it’s almost like that doesn’t even count. So, it’s pretty hard to do what the Guardians are doing with an offense of the nature that they have. But, they’re doing it. the Tigers are letting them back in. So, as I wrote, if the Tigers miss the playoffs after being up on July 8th, they were up 14 games on both the Royals and Twins at that time and 15 and a half on the Guardians. If they miss the playoffs after holding a 14game lead, it will be the largest blown lead by a team that did not win its division or league in modern ALNL history. An all-time collapse. So again, which is more embarrassing? I’m not sure which is more embarrassing, but neither one of them is too good. So we’re looking at a crazy AL Central race. We’re looking at a crazy NL wild card race. And in the AL West, quite interesting development over the weekend. The Mariners and Astros go into the season or the the weekend series tied tied for the AL West lead. And you’re thinking this series is in Houston. Maybe in this particular case, the Astros will rise up again and figure out a way to hold down the Mariners. The Astros, and we’re going to talk about them more in the inside dish, have been a dominant team really since 2016. From 2017 on, and yes, I know there was the scandal in there, but they’ve dominated even after that. So, you always have to assume, and we’ve been talking about this all year, that the Astros are going to figure it out, that you’ve got to knock them out and all of this stuff, that they have the pedigree. Well, the Mariners led for 26 of 27 innings in this series. They swept this series. They are a team that right now leads the AL West by three games with six to play. They are in an absolutely commanding position. Now, is it possible things go a miss? Yeah, it’s surely possible. Things can always change, but the Mariners are really looking good. Cal Raleigh number 58 last night. His MVP candidacy grows by the day, grows more legitimate by the day, more real by the day. And what we’re seeing here is a team that did some good things at the deadline and are benefiting from it even though Suarez really hasn’t been the guy that he was with Arizona. So the AL West, the Astros have another path to get to the playoffs. Of course, the path would be through the wild card. And let’s look at the AL wild card standings. So I can explain exactly where we are. The Red Sox are in this mix, too. This jumbled mess of a wild card race. Now, the Red Sox have a game lead over the Guardians and Astros. It is possible the Astros don’t get a wild card either if both the Guardians and Tigers qualify. And that’s possible. Let’s say the Guardians win the AL Central or the Tigers win the AL Central. The other team could be the wild card and the Red Sox, their situation is not exactly precarious, but they have to keep going too because those two teams are right behind them. So again, it’s going to be a wacky, crazy end to the season. It’s the kind of season or the kind of conclusion we all kind of hope for at the start of the year. Now, if you’re a Mets fan, if you’re a Tigers fan, you’re not happy right now. I totally get it. But from a broader baseball perspective, you want excitement. And as I said a couple of weeks ago, it did not look like we were going to be anywhere near this kind of excitement. The Mets looked like they were a lock. The Tigers looked like they were a lock. The Astros were in a much better position. And all of these things that have happened, it didn’t seem like they were going to happen. So, let’s look now at the AL remaining schedules. We’ll close it out with this. Cleveland three versus Detroit at home. We’ve talked about that. Three versus Texas at home. Also, Detroit, not such an easy go here. They’re on the road for six games at Cleveland and Boston. And then the Astros, they’re on the road, too, in Sacramento, which is not an easy place to play against an offense that is not easy to deal with, the Athletics. And then three at the Los Angeles Angels. So, there you have it. That’s the final week. It’s going to be a wild one. And I would expect that most fans are pretty excited about what might end up going down. When you think fair harbor, you should think soft. You should think buttery liner. But it’s not just the bathing suits are the shorts. It’s also sweatshirts like the one that I’m wearing right now. It is stupid soft. It’s ridiculous that a shirt that can one keep you warm, two be so soft, and three, so lightweight, like the collar, everything. You don’t even feel like you actually have a hoodie on, but you do. It is a lightweight hoodie and it feels incredible. So, you should go get one yourself. Also, for bathing suits, for shorts, for whatever clothes that you’re interested in where you want to basically feel like you’re not wearing them, but you are. That’s what Fair Harbor can bring to the table. So head to fairh harborclo.com/fall2020 and use code fuel20 for 20% off your order. That’s fair harbor h a rb o rclo.com/foul2020 for 20% off your order. And make sure you use that promo code foul20. [Music] Time now for the inside dish. the part of the show where I talk maybe about a story I’ve written, about a trend in the game, something going on. And today I want to talk about the Astros, but I want to start off by talking about the Milwaukee Brewers. And I’ll explain and try to weave it all together. So, back in spring training, I wrote a column basically saying that if the Brewers stumble this season, it would be the responsibility of owner Mark Atanasio because he had not spent hardly anything during the offseason. Now after that they signed Joseé Canana 1 year 4.25 million but my premise in that column was hey at some point it’s going to catch up with Atanazio if people could leaving and you don’t replace them with quality people in return. Well obviously the Brewers and Mark Atanasio are sitting pretty right now and I approached Atanasio in Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago and I said listen man I’m never writing anything like that again. I’m done. I’ve given up. You win. And yeah, he does win. They’ve got the best record in the majors and he’s done it his way. No question about it. So, I was thinking as I prepare for this segment, maybe I should have written that column about Astros owner Jim Crane because look at what has happened to the Astros over the last five years. Springer gone to free agency. Kareah gone to free agency. Tucker traded, Bregman gone to free agency. Those are four significant players, parts of the Astros core. part of the reason they were so successful in the late 2010s and early 2020s and now those players were essentially gone. So I thought about that and I thought about Crane and some of the signings that they’ve made under him in this time. Jose Abrao was not a good signing. Raphael Montero not a good signing. Both were free agents. And you wonder, okay, as the Astros sit here today in this precarious spot, seemingly facing an uphill fight for sure in the AL West and even threatening to fall out of the playoff picture entirely because their wild card chances are looking bad, too. They don’t hold any of the tiebreers in these scenarios. And when you consider it all and wonder and ponder the Astros situation, it almost seems amazing that it went on for this long and what happened to the Astros this season. It took like this incredible cavalcade of injuries, an amazing run of injuries that really no team can withstand and they’ve withstood it actually pretty well. Now, as I wrote or as I said in the first segment, they went into that weekend series with Seattle tied. Now, they are no longer tied. They are three games back and they appear to be ready to be dethroned as AOS champions in a full season for the first time since 2016. Think about that. They’ve won every ALO title in a 160 game se twoame season since 2017. That’s really hard to do. And yes, I’ll say it again. We can talk all we want about the trash cans and we have and we will but not all of this was accomplished in that fashion. So you wonder and you think about this team and where they are right now with a weakened farm system and with kind of an aging injured core Altuve and certainly Yordon Alvarez. How do they get back and how did this all happen? Well, according to baseball perspectus, and this was in Chandler Rome story today, no team has lost more value to injuries this season than the Houston Astros. It’s not even close. And the Astros at one point had 18 players on the injured list. This was in late July. At that time, eight starting pitchers were on the injured list. They lost Yordon Alvarez for almost three months. Jeremy Pñena out for significant time. Isak Paredes the same. And Jeremy Meyer, a pretty good I’m not Jeremy Meyer, Jake Meyers, a pretty good center fielder, a guy who emerged this year. He too was out for a long period of time. Josh Hater’s been out since August 8th. On and on it has gone. I believe it was last week when I talked about Joe Espatada being the favorite for AL manager of the year. Well, he still might win it, but it’s not going to look as pretty now if he does. And frankly right now Steven vote in Cleveland, John Schneider in Toronto, there are other candidates who are looking better. AJ Hinch was the popular choice for a while too. That’s how topsyturvy this whole thing has become. So the Astros, they acquired at the deadline Carlos Koreah, they reacquired him. They brought in Jesus Sanchez who has not been much of a contributor at all and Raone Erdrias the same. He has not done much at all. the biggest issue for this team and it has to do somewhat with the Alvarez injury and with the loss of Pñena for a month but not completely the offense is the biggest issue and this has been a perplexing thing with the Astros. Now Paradus was brought in as was Christian Walker to improve their plate discipline to make them less of a free swinging operation. Parades is a guy who sees a ton of pitches. Walker had that reputation as well, but it hasn’t happened for the Astros. And for whatever reason, their offense all season long with Alvarez without has not really clicked. They are 27th in the majors in runs per game since the deadline. 27th since adding Carlos Koreah and Jesus Sanchez. That’s not what they intended when they made those moves. They were trying to bolster their offense and it just hasn’t happened. So, the Astros, is this the end? Well, we’re going to find out over the next, I don’t know, a week or so. But it’s been an amazing run. And even this year, it’s been amazing what they’ve accomplished considering what they’ve been up against. And all teams go through this. You guys know this. All teams have years that are off years. It’s just been such a long time since the Astros had one of these seasons, and it looks like this is turning out to be one of them. Even if they get in, how far are they going to go? Frer Valdez has struggled in the last, I don’t know, month or so. Hunter Brown legitimate ace, but they don’t have much out there beyond those guys. So, it’s been a tough season for the Astros, no doubt. It’s been the kind of season with the Astros that we just haven’t seen from them in a long, long time. All right, back with Grill and Ken right after this. Todd, father, you and me grew up in Jersey. We liked to collect cards, but the way the process got was ridiculous. You open up a pack, there’s a bunch of cards you don’t care about, then you want to get certain ones graded. Takes forever, right? Then you want to maybe sell one. It’s such a to-do. Arena Club has been the solution for us. Arena Club has been a solution for everybody. You go online, go to Arena Club, and you check out what they have, put a little cash down, and you might get one of the best cards that you’ve ever seen in your life. an autograph card. And guess what? If you don’t like the card, easily you could sell it back and make a little cash. You never know what to expect. It’s a cool way of doing it. You’re going to get a surprise every time. And if you’re in the cards, this is something you really need to get into. Right now, you can get 20% off your first slab pack or card purchase by going to arena.com/foul and use code foul like Todd Father’s talking about with those slap packs. Every pack has a grail. That’s at least 20x the price of the pack. Check it out. Bet MGM players will receive an MLB parlay boost token. To use the token, add a parlay wager made up of entirely MLB bets to your bet slip and activate the token. Score extra winnings if your wager that was made with the Parlay boost token wins. Gambling problem or concern? There is help. Call 1800 gambler. Time now for Grilling Ken. The part of the show where I answer your questions. Let’s get right to them. First question from JS, big one. Will Ben Sherington be back with the Pittsburgh Pirates? I do not know the answer to that, Jay, but after six seasons and six essentially disappointing seasons, the Pirates certainly would be justified if they made a change. Now, that said, they have built a collection of young arms that is really the envy of the sport. They also have played better under Don Kelly than they did under Derek Shelton. They’ve had their moments since the change in managers. I don’t know that it’s enough to save Ben Sherington’s job, and I don’t know that it should be. Ben Sherington is one of the most respected people in the game. He’s a guy everyone will tell you is of extremely high character. At the same time, the performance is what the performance is, and they have not done enough with limited resources to maybe justify him staying on as GM. You look at Cleveland, you look at Milwaukee, you look at Tampa Bay in most years. You look at Cincinnati right now, these are all teams in similar markets and they’re doing better than the Pirates have. So obviously this is question number one for the Pittsburgh Pirates when the season ends. I would not be a s I would not be surprised by a change and I would also not be surprised if Bob Nutting stayed the course. He’s not exactly the most predictable owner in the sport. Actually, I should correct that. Pirates fans would say he is the most predictable owner in the sport in terms of spending money. I don’t know that he’s that predictable with regard to what he might do in the GM spot. All right, the next question. This one is from Armand who asks, “If the Mets and Tigers don’t make it, do you see coaching staff firings with Hinch and Mendoza staying?” That would probably be Arman the way that these teams would go and certainly with the Mets. I don’t know where the dysfunction or the problem is exactly and I talked last week about maybe a chemistry issue being there and that’s not on the coaches but in a situation like this if the two teams do indeed miss the playoffs or end in the playoffs in a disappointing fashion I would expect certainly that there would be changes. David Sterns has been pretty public about backing Carlos Mendoza. Joel Sherman had a note today in the New York Post in which Stern said again that Mendoza has done a very good job. Doesn’t mean that others below him will not be held responsible for this. Hench 2 would seemingly be one of the more secure managers in the game, but they too could look for coaching changes. I would not expect if these two teams end the season in disappointment that things are just going to remain status quo. That is rarely the way it works in baseball. All right, next question from RPG Man45. If you had to pick who’s out in the Astros, Tigers, Red Sox, or Guardians? Wow. Now, this is an AJ Preszinski type question, the kind where you just put me on the spot. If I had to guess right now, I’d say the Tigers because they’re playing the worst of these teams. Now, you could say the Astros are as well. Yeah, that would be a fair point to make. But my hunch is the Tigers just because they’re going to go into Cleveland and I don’t know how that’s going to go for them. And then they’re going to go into Boston needing to win, I would presume, at that point. And I don’t know how that’s going to go for them because the Red Sox also will be playing for a playoff birth in that scenario at Fenway Park where they are very good. That’s my guess. Watch, I’ll be wrong. I’m usually wrong when I make predictions of this nature. All right, let’s go to the next one now. This one comes from foul territory which asks will the Orioles keep Tony Manscolino. I don’t know the answer to this question and certainly the Orioles have played better under Manscolino than they did under Brandon Hyde since late May they are above 500 and that’s pretty good. Now you can say the young players have stagnated, the young hitters have stagnated, but he stabilized that team. And in addition to that, we’ve seen in the second half Trevor Rogers emerge as one of the best pitchers in the entire sport and Kyle Bradish come back from Tommy John surgery along with Tyler Wells. Not all of that, of course, is Manelino is doing, but it’s the stuff that he inherited. Now, what I like about Manscolino is what he told us in our Fox interview with him last Thursday night when we were at Camden Yards. I asked him about being an interim and he said my approach was this. I was going to do the job not to save my job or not to help myself get an extension. I was going to do the right thing. So, what he means by that is do the right thing by players. make the right decisions for players and for the team and not necessarily make decisions that might help enhance his chances of returning. I love that. And to me, that is the sign of someone who is secure in himself and someone who has a feel and someone who seemingly has the respect of that clubhouse. Now, I expect Michael Elias will at least conduct some kind of search, but he might have the guy that he wants right in the dugout at this moment. All right. All right, we’ll take one more question and then we’ll say bye-bye for the day. Let’s see what we got here. This one comes from John who says, “Which do baseball fans love more? Seeing their team win or laughing at other teams or other fan bases upset with their team losing?” Fans should want their teams to win more than other teams to suffer. But back in my days as a fan, I knew that I enjoyed a great deal when other teams, other rivals of the team I was rooting for suffered. So, I can see both sides of it. But yeah, let’s be positive here. Let’s root for the teams that we want to win. And let’s not just take extreme joy at others expense, even though sometimes that’s a lot of fun. All right, that’s it for today’s show. We’ll be back Thursday, our usual live show, 12:30 Eastern. Myself and Alana Rizzo. Have a great week, everyone, and let’s see what the heck baseball has in store for us the rest of the way. [Music]

Ken Rosenthal gets primed for the final week of the regular season, with plenty still on the table. Could the New York Mets and Detroit Tigers complete their collapses, and will the Cleveland Guardians and Cincinnati Reds surge into the playoffs?

Inside Dish explores how the Houston Astros hold on the AL West withered this past weekend.

Grillin’ Ken answers your questions – join the conversation in the chat!

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