2025 LCS Wrap & World Series preview Ep. 633 - 10.23.25

The LCS is finished and we have our World Series matchup. The Toronto Blue Jays will be meeting the Los Angeles Dodgers. We also have some baseball news as managers are hired and managers step away. It's this week in baseball. Now I have to say, I knew we were getting a little bit bigger and a little bit more popular, but I never imagined we would get to such a stage where we would have a group like the Los Angeles Dodgers listening to us.

because I'm pretty sure they used my words as bulletin board material last week as they went out and thwomped the Brewers after I the Brewers to win. yeah, I regret I had a feeling right before, right? I said that on the last week's episode. I got a feeling I think it's going to be the Brewers. I had the wrong feeling there. Well, let's let's let's let's get to that stuff in a minute, but let's just talk about because we'll bury like the stuff that happened in the it's been 10 days since we.

least a podcast, is really unusual. Right, right. It's really weird not to. And despite it being 10 days, not a lot has happened in the world of baseball. That wasn't the game. Right. Exactly. Other than a few managers, like you said, coming and going. Right, right. I think the biggest surprising one was Mike Schilt abruptly resigning in San Diego, leaving a team wide open for a good team wide open. Right. You got to imagine that's got to be an attractive place to go, especially when that was a team that

found a way to lose a lot of games this year. wasn't it we were talking about Mike Schilt a little bit and he kind of got run out of St. Louis and in some sort of whispers in the back that he kind of lost the team. And that's sort of the same thing as I'm hearing a little bit in San Diego. Interestingly, not necessarily the team as much as the coaching staff. His other coaches, there was stuff about his time there about his coaches in St. Louis not getting along with him.

Apparently he was very difficult to get along with in San Diego. Not that he's a bad guy or a bad coach, but it's not a great work environment. And so look, they're going to go in a different direction. Now I have no idea where they're going to go. mean, and Shota is only 57. So when I first heard that he had stepped down, I thought, is it health related when a, when a guy leaves a good job? It's not like he's leaving, you know, the Rockies or something like that. But I don't know what it is and I don't want to cast any, uh,

Almost Cooperstown (02:44.684)
you thoughts in that particular way but yes the former Padre catcher and I think he's a current broadcast Carlos Hernandez has I guess thrown his hat into the ring I don't think anybody in San Diego was talking about Carlos Hernandez as I and I don't think they're gonna go in that direction but I mean who knows they could the Giants are they're making some noise as well and Buster Posey has already proven in a short time as general manager there to be a guy to go against the grain because the guy is talking about bringing in is the Vanderbilt coach

Tony Vitello, who is a very outspoken guy and very self-confident, think would be the word that I use, but he's not in Major League Baseball and it would be almost not unprecedented, but almost unprecedented for a college coach to come in and be given the reins of a Major League Baseball team. would be very interesting to see how he was able to manage that because it's a very different. I can't imagine a bigger jump in terms of managing a bulk like a professional team going from college to pros and maybe in baseball because it's such

You're using different bats just the entire way the season goes about is different. What your expectations are from your players are just so much different. It would be wild to see somebody make that kind of jump, especially when he's got as far as I'm aware, no other real pro experience. as of this recording here, he hasn't yet been named the manager, just sort of been.

The the the know, the top of the news there. So that'll be very interesting. Two new managers in that division. and though it's over in the American League staying in the West, we do have an announced new manager as the Angels hired their new manager today. And it is not Albert Hulos. It is Kurt Suzuki, their their former catcher, who I think is very highly regarded. The catchers like make good managers. It's a thing. Well, it's just like there are already kind of managers on the field. So it makes sense. They look at the game differently.

And you get a rare guy that understands both the position players and the grind of being an everyday position player and the guy that can talk to your pitchers and not no other position player or pitcher usually has that. did read something that that Pujos is maybe being considered or considering the Orioles job and I and the Royals need a manager. I don't know what connection Albert Pujos and the Orioles might have. Why they would go in that direction. their former manager, Brandon Hyde, who I think was a was a

Almost Cooperstown (05:01.048)
did a pretty good job. He's due for another job. I'm sort of surprised that his name hasn't come up as of yet. That's a guy that'll probably take a year off from coaching and then he'll go, you know, come back with some team that, you know, that would be a good hire for the Rockies to make or something like, okay, here we go. We'll bring in Brandon Hyde. was able to do nobody wants that job. Nobody wants that job. We had a passing of a major leaguer who even I didn't really get to see play as Sandy Alomar, senior.

I saw his son, Jr. Play for obviously Cleveland and obviously Roberto's a Hall of Famer. Right. So those two guys and they lost their dad at age 81, but was a fine defensive ball player and not a great offensive ball player, but sorry that we lost him. There are, they announced the gold gloves today or at least the nominees. We will not be going over them. we're going to talk about three guys from each at each position in each league. We're not going to talk about them.

when they award the stupid awards, we'll talk. We'll give everybody their shout out. We don't think much of the Cold Glove Awards here on this particular. Yeah. And the Yankees lost the former catcher Jesus Montero, who came up and he was like the key guy, I think, in the Pimmie deal came from Seattle and he was the lynchpin of the catcher of the future. And he had like one kind of OK year for the Yankees. And unfortunately, he sadly passed away in a car crash. Sad, sad, sad news. So but let's get to

to the juice here and I guess we'll cover the LCS and the National League. We'll cover finished first. And frankly, there's just less to talk about because it's pretty much. Wow. The Los Angeles Dodgers kicked the ever living hell out of the Milwaukee Brewers. So 15 to four, they outscored them and the Brewers got exactly one run in every game. That was only four of them. So, you know, I don't know much about baseball. like to say other than if you score four runs in four games, you're probably not winning.

Maybe any of them. think that was really the problem with that series is that like it's really hard to get a read on that because I'm not sure if it was a combination of I think the Dodgers might have played their best four game stretch of the season right there and the Brewers might have played their worst four game stretch of the season because it's like it's hard to talk about that series because it was just so thoroughly dominated by the Dodgers. It never felt close. Well, and the Dodgers and I had been saying the Dodgers are peaking. I kept saying this. Like the pitches are kind of getting it together.

Almost Cooperstown (07:20.662)
and they kind of all did obviously. mean getting, know, it's, yeah, yeah, we'll talk about Blake Snell's amazing start, right, where he goes, he gives up no runs. Only to be outdone the next night by Yamamoto. Yamamoto, which is a complete game and gives up one run. Okay, well anything you can do, I can do better, you know, and then, you know.

After Yamamoto, Glasnow goes out and pitched six innings. Gave him a good solid. That gave up one run. That probably felt like the closest. yeah. You didn't really measure up, dude. Yeah. Well, only because the next night Otani goes out in game four, not to be outdone, goes out and puts possibly the single greatest performance in a baseball game that we have ever seen. I think that hyperbole is not so much hyperbole. No, is. He went out and threw six innings of scoreless baseball and strikeouts struck out 10.

went three for three at the plate with a walk and three home runs. think it's the first time that a guy had more. He had almost as many strikeouts as he had total bases in the game. It's a ludicrous. When we talk about how like that is what you look at when you say he's the greatest baseball player of all time. You can look at that performance and go no one in the history of baseball has ever done what he did and he just did that in a playoff.

You know, they sort of came up with a bunch of guys that had done some extraordinary things. And I remember when I was a kid, Rick Wise had a no hitter in a game in which he hit two home runs. OK, that's pretty good. That's pretty right. OK, you had a no hitter. You hit two home runs and all that. That's not as good as doing it in a playoff. Right. So that was that was season. And when was that? That was 1971 or something like that. Well, it doesn't matter.

a long time ago. It was just a regular season game. Right. In a season which the Cardinals didn't do anything. three home runs apparently and threw a complete game. OK, that's very nice. My one of my favorite writers on Substack, Paul White, wrote a piece and talked about that the guy that always gets forgotten. And this is because Negro League players get forgotten all the time. Bullet Joe Rogan. What a great name, by the way, had a crazy stretch in the 1920s where if you extended his stats over 162 games, remember.

Almost Cooperstown (09:24.811)
They didn't play that many games in the Negro League. So you always have to sort of add to the stats, which is right, which makes it hard. Really hard to do that. But the guy had like an 18 war year. mean, he pitched he hit, you know, he won 26 games and lost 10 and pitched to a two ERA for like seven or eight years. And he also played the field defensively. So so bullet Joe Rogan is it sort of in his own category. But it's it's hard to measure him against something that we can really look at and see where.

The whole show, Hey, Otani has done something that nobody has ever done before in baseball. Yeah, and it was an unbelievable performance. And I don't think when you watch him, you really have to appreciate that you're seeing something that has never been done before in Major League Baseball. And I think one of the most interesting about watching the Dodger Brewer series, which seems like it was like 100 years ago now, it feels like it was Dave Roberts in the talk, looking like the most relaxed man in America. Last year, he was making bullpen moves and he was moving guys around.

gonna put my stars at the whole damn game and then show you to hit bunch of home runs. And I really love Dave Roberts being like, huh, I kinda got a crappy bullpen going into this postseason. It's really not working for me. How am gonna get around this? I know what I'm gonna do. Roki Sasaki, get at the bullpen. You're my new closer. That might be the single thing that he did that was the most impactful.

right as a manager for his team. And we've seen him struggle a little bit in game one. He had to get up and down for the first time and he didn't look comfortable. Remember that we were watching that together and I said he looks annoyed like Suzuki staring in like is the inning over? Am I coming in? I've never done this before. Right. Am I ready? Am I not ready? that's something that think Smoltz has talked about on the broadcast a couple of times and that just like really starting pitchers. He was talking about this in context of the Blue Jays and the Mariners having their starters come in the middle of game seven.

starters are such creatures of habit, but suddenly to throw them off of that suddenly, you don't get your little pre-prepared routine that you, he's like relievers learn, you learn how to develop that in a short burst. You learn how to make your routine something that's only five, 10 minutes long as a starter. He's like, look, you're, kind of used to having like an eight hour routine before you go out there and pitch and, manager Dave Roberts, who I wrote about a while ago as having the most significant stolen base in major league history, he stole that base in 2004.

Almost Cooperstown (11:39.022)
that made the Red Sox come back and go all the way. He is a Hall of Fame manager now. I don't even think he has to win the World Series to be a Hall of Fame manager. He's a Hall of Fame manager now, which is wild to think about. Like that is, know, and, know, how can he be a Hall of Fame manager? I could manage that team. he's always pushed the right buttons. And you might say that, you know, Pat Murphy kind of with the openers and trying to do stuff.

to beat the Dodgers. I feel like it's hard to say he over managed his team when they scored four runs. He just tried everything he could possibly do. He tried denigrating his own team. We're not very good. We wouldn't start on any team in the major leagues. Anything I can do. Anything I can do. He can't fix this having like a sub 200 batting average on balls in play. You know, and I thought that, you know, the Dodgers when they had the crazy Max Muncie play, you know, and they talked about that for days. OK, the ball goes to center field.

the center fielder tries to make the catch, Frelick, it bounces off his glove, bounces off the wall, and the moment it bounces off the wall, it's a dead ball, which all of us kinda know, but it's really far away, and so Teasca is at third base, he can't really see, did he catch it clean, did he let, so he ends up being thrown out on a wicked relay throw into home plate, and with, that's gonna be the big play of the series, no, it was not. Again, everything in that.

back to the Brewers inability to hit at all, which is something I think we talked about on this podcast. Right. Right. Like, look, look, look. That is the fear that you have with the team that is built that way offensively. And we thought after the way they hit the Cubs pitching, they won, hit all those home runs in that one game. They were hitting up and down the lineup, like, okay.

This Brewers lineup is locked in. ready to play in October. I think that was more on the Cubs pitching than the Brewers lineup. And the Brewers just happened to get some home runs. Let's say they were all solo shots, I think, in one of those games when they won four to three. And you can't count on that for a team that's not known for doing that in the first place. Exactly. And when we get over and now if we go over to the ALCS to kind of talk about it, I feel like that's sort of what happened to the Mariners is that they fooled themselves into being like, yeah, Victor Robles is good.

Almost Cooperstown (13:51.116)
He's a great guy to have in the lineup. And he played very well for them before he got injured. And then even after he came back. in this postseason, he and in this series, he was dreadful. The Mariners seven, eight, nine hitters were basically an automatic out in this. And you felt pretty good, right? If you're the Mariners when they won the first two games in Toronto. Right. You had to think you had it. first two games, we get four out of the next five at home.

And you're like, Game three, okay, Kirby got hit by the Blue Jays. They got a good lineup. It's going to happen when you lost a game for you lost four out of five. Right. Okay. And so that that is that is being kind of whipped after that. Right. You know, for losing losing four to one. Yeah, you won the first couple of games almost as if the Blue Jays spotted, you know, the Mariners a couple of games and then beat him. But but the Mariners, you know, to their credit, man, they had a three one lead in game seven and they had their big players, right? Julio Rodriguez.

doubles and scores in the first inning. hits a home run in the third inning to give him a 2-1 lead. Cal Raleigh hits a home run. He's Mr. Wonderful, you know, it's 3-1 and they're nursing that lead through the game. then. as we sat there and watched and I think I said, how many runs do you think the Mariners need to score in this game to feel comfortable? Because they can't, right. They can't feel good at 3-1. More than three. And they didn't score more. So, and the whole sequence, right? That the way that it was managed and

came about, know, they come out in the seventh inning and they bring in Bizzardo who had pitched the two days, he pitched two innings the day before. And I think that's really significant because this guy wasn't even a major leaguer before this year. I think this was the year he pitched the most in the major leagues. He's been a minor leaguer for eight years. So he's new to all this and he's had a fantastic year. Dominant pitcher, doing everything right. And so the manager, Dan Wilson, believes in this guy, right, such that he kept his best reliever.

on the bench, hoping he pitched the eighth and the ninth inning and get six out save from him, except that the big hitters were coming up in the seventh inning. Right then. And he left Bizzardo in there. So he brought Bizzardo in. He brought Bizzardo in there because the guy before him, Brian Wu, had hit Springer the day before in the knee, sending Springer, you know, limping off the field, had to leave the game. OK, sure enough. You know, Brian Wu's in the game and who's due up Springer. They replace. Right. Because with.

Almost Cooperstown (16:09.377)
Bizarro because they bring in Wu to start that ending. He comes in. He get like two guys get in bottom of the lineup, gets on base. And now you've got two guys on and you got you got springer coming up here like, OK, who clearly doesn't have it. Let's move on quickly. He already hit Springer the other day. Let's go get let's go bring in Bizzardo first and second pitch. Second pitch is the one pitch. So no one pitch on the inside half and Springer. And I knew it was gone as soon as he hit it. It felt like such a predictable home run. Yeah, you had said that. But I think

You know, the real question for them Wilson is why wasn't Munoz in the game against the top of their lineup? It's not so much that, as we know today, the most important outs aren't always in the eighth and the ninth inning. Right. Sometimes it's right then. The nose were the most important outs and credit to the Blue Jays. That whole lineup just hit after they struggled those first two games. They just pounded the ball against the man. That's a really good point because you know, you think when I think about the series that Andre Jimenez had batting in the nine hole.

Good series. Ernie Clement, a guy that pretty much nobody had heard of before the playoffs, who's had a brilliant playoffs and he's a gold glove candidate. I mentioned one, my mistake this year. You these are guys you're not you're thinking of. Beau Bichette didn't play. Right. have a vlog, Jr. OK. He was here. Springer had a series. But you have guys like Alejandro Kirk.

Who were watching like, why do we have him batting behind Vlad E Jr? And then you look at the series he put together like, oh, that's, that's why I think watching Alejandro Kirk run the bases is my second favorite thing to watch. You Peter Lantz will run the bases. Watching Josh Naylor run the base. the refrigerator run around second base. That was like watching Josh Naylor where he had the inexplicable decision yesterday where he jumps up.

as he's running from first base. around and jumps into the air, gets conked in the helmet with the thrown ball as they try to double him up. And of course, the umpires get together and they're like, yeah, you can't do that. That's the first thing we both said going, you can't do that. Right. That's illegal. And you know how you know everybody involved knew he can't do that is Dan Wilson didn't fight about it. Josh Naylor didn't fight about it. And Shane Bieber, who started the game for the Blue Jays, was Naylor's teammate the past few years in Cleveland, is screaming at him.

Almost Cooperstown (18:20.045)
Right, so confused. What are you doing? You can't do that. So that was a bad omen. That was like bad juju, you know, for the Mariners that that happened in the first inning, you know, in the game. And then he ran into some issues, you know, a team that was known for their pitching and defense made three errors in game six. I said that before the series, the defense is going to and I thought Toronto was a better defensive team and they did play better defensively, you know, and they got a series at a

Barger, Addison Barger in right field. you know, they lose sent on there. Yeah. Right. And who's not a great defensive player, by the way, I think, as much better defensive player. And so the ball keeps finding him out there. And he's making the play. And you got a series out of Isaiah kind of a lefa that you don't expect and giving him a boy. We really nailed this guy on this. Right. But they give him credit. He had a great series and him and Jimenez playing defense up the middle gives you a very strong.

defense. No, they did activate Bo Bichette for the world series. So I don't know if he's going to play. mean, why would you mess? Right. You might not mess with them. You only might do that. I play the Dodgers, right. You might need to mess a little bit. I think if we get into the, we might as well get into that. game one will be in Toronto on Friday. Yeah. And I mean, I think.

You know, people have described a lot of people are calling this David versus Goliath. A-Rod got a little bit confused about the story and called it Goliath versus Goliath. Yeah, I don't understand what A-Rod means by that. The Dodgers, because they're maybe because the Blue Jays are a hitting team and they're playing a hitting team in the Dodgers. if you're purely talking about the teams on the field, line up the lineup, it is kind of Goliath versus Goliath. But if we're talking about organizationally, you're looking at the Dodgers who have become a machine.

And they're going for their back to back world series titles. They look poised to do it. They've got the pitching, they've got the hitting, they've got the best player in baseball. And will Toronto be able to knock them off and really what would be a shocking upset? I think that the, the Dodgers are so far and away better than everybody else and playing at their best at this most important time that

Almost Cooperstown (20:28.269)
I'm not somebody that says, I want someone to knock them off their pedestal. I hate these guys because they're so good and let them lose. Cause there's a lot of, there's a lot of Dodger negatives, Jaden Freud out there, you know, Oh, they're the best team money can buy and all that kind of We need to have, my opinion, we need to have great teams that are hard to beat to have that pinnacle of when you do it all right, this is what it looks like. Right. And you turn into just a team up and down.

Where you don't have questions like the the Tarnary Blue Jays are like, are we going to start Max Scherzer again in the World Series? You got a start where he turned back the clock in one of the best moments in the season this year, where he goes out to try and pull it. Then Max Scherzer goes psycho. Are you willing to try that again against the Dodgers? I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure. He looked like vintage Scherzer in that start, but that might be magic you can get once. don't know. Asking for it twice might be too much, though. Max will take the ball.

And the know, the big thing, you know, for the the Blue Jays, because they pitched Bassett and that was a nice move, by the way, by John Schneider to put Bassett in the eighth inning of Game seven. He's not a relief pitcher. didn't make him go up and down. At least he just said, ready. You're to pitch the eighth. And he took out Gaussman, who pitched the seventh because Gaussman didn't look great. But you know, was a sketchy seven. They didn't let him go another inning because he's warm now and all that stuff. But credit to Schneider.

He actually brought a different pitcher in who's not used to pitching in that situation. And he pitched a one, two, three inning, allowing the ninth inning to be a pretty boring inning for Jeff Hoffman, who all of a sudden is not the guy that used to pitch in Philadelphia. He's been letter perfect in the playoffs, basically. And so he'll need to be letter perfect in the playoffs against the Dodgers if the Blue Jays have any chance of winning.

I wonder how curious because we have Canada versus the USA here and I am sure the Toronto Blue Jays would love to stick it to the Americans and beat them at Americans national pass. You know, the Canadians aren't too happy with a lot of the things that are going on the US with the tariffs and all that kind of stuff. So I could see Blue Jays fans there, Canada's national team and going, know, yeah, this is a chance for us to beat the, this is not Canada versus the USA. This is Toronto versus the Dodgers.

Almost Cooperstown (22:37.289)
Toronto has won two World Series. The Dodgers have won the last World Series. Let's just let those guys play as teams on the field and see who the better team is. And right now, I mean, looking at the series as we go into game one, I think you got to give it to the Dodgers. I think if I was predicting, you know, but just based off of what I saw, it's hard to pick against the Dodgers, especially with extra rest, even though I think extra rest is actually worse for winning the series a lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Neil Payne wrote about that. He gave some statistics on, know,

the amount of rest they've had. so it helps, it hurts. There's no real conclusive evidence that it hurts or helps a team in a way that you can predict that you have a big enough statistical sample. All we'll know is we'll decide whether it helped them or hurt them after they either win or lose the series. But the Dodgers will no doubt run out the Fab Four, I guess, in the World Series. And I think it's really hard to look at trying to beat Yamamoto and

You're going to have to get on one of those. And all that these guys haven't pitched in a while. Right. But that's a you know what? If you can get on one of those guys and force the Dodgers to actually have to go into that bullpen and use guys, you might be able to, you know, even just driving up pitch counts, I think is going to be valuable in these games. And I think if you could turn those seven, eight inning starts into five inning starts, that's going to be important. And I think it's going to be hard for the Blue Jays because.

They're not going to have their pitchers pitch six, seven innings in these games. I haven't seen it happen so far in the playoffs. Right. now you got to go against these Dodger. So now you've got all your blue J lefties. Right. You've got three of them. We got Eric Lauer, who was a starter, now a relief pitcher. We've got Varlin Little and Louis Varland and Varland. So you've got three guys and how they match those guys up with with Otani and Freeman is going to be key. He's going to have to sort of.

play his chess pieces so that he always has one of those guys ready to bring in for one of those guys. In these late game situations, you're going to need them. So, yeah, I think, you know, the Dodgers are the prohibitive favorite, I think, at this point in the World Series, even not having the home game. Although Shohei is finally going to get on a plane and go to Toronto, which he didn't do when people thought, he's going to sign with the Blue Jays, which I thought was the weirdest thing because there was a plane that was chartered. wasn't like

Almost Cooperstown (24:53.869)
Kevin O'Leary. It was like some crazy story. And he was going to be on the plane. He's going to Toronto. Like he didn't go to Toronto. He went to the Dodgers. And is anybody really surprised now? So at that point, so yeah, they, you know, they have the real advantage at this point going into it, even without the extra home game. I think based upon what I think we both were the games are played are probably not too important. We're both picking the Dodgers. It's more a matter of how many games. Yeah. So it's five or six. Yeah.

I think so too. think that, you know, I don't think the series will go back to Toronto if I had to guess right now. think it's a fair guess. So we're dropping here Thursday and we're not going to drop another episode until after the World Series is over. But we really don't know exactly when that's going to be because if it's a short series, we will have a sooner episode. It could be quick. it's a long... it'll be would be Monday, I guess the third of November. We'll drop it then.

But we get an epic seven game series. think we'd all be happy The hardest thing is is that you know, there's no baseball to watch for a few days that we've been so accustomed to watching baseball every darn night You know for a while that and then it slows down when you get to the world right? It throws slows down and all of a sudden, you know, what comes after that, right? Right. get one more and then the winter. Yes But anyway a great season then enjoy the world series everybody