What the Brewers, Astros, Orioles, and Braves Can Do to Save their Seasons Today

Plus our new book club selection and a Jomboy shoutout

Jose Altuve homering today like he did on August 18th would help. (Photo by Maria Lysaker/Getty Images)

Hi friends-

Some quick housekeeping before we dive in:

Our book club selection for October/November is “The Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game” by Dan Berry. It was the winner of the 2012 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting.

Here’s how the back of the book describes it: “On April 18, 1981, a ball game sprang eternal. For eight hours, the night seemed to suspend a town and two teams between their collective pasts and futures, between their collective sorrows and joys—the shivering fans; their wives at home; the umpires; the batboys approaching manhood; the ejected manager, peering through a hole in the backstop; the sportswriters and broadcasters; and the players themselves—two destined for the Hall of Fame (Cal Ripken and Wade Boggs), the few to play only briefly or forgettably in the big leagues, and the many stuck in minor-league purgatory, duty bound and loyal forever to the game.

Deb suggested it at our Long Game meet-up in LA on Saturday, and so we’re doing it. We will discuss the book over zoom on Monday, December 2nd from 5:30 PM PT - 6:30 PM PT. As always our book club is open to all paid subscribers. Hope to see you then!

---

OK. Whew. We had four awesome playoff games yesterday and now four teams are on the brink of elimination today.

It’s an endless bummer to me that ever since this cursed wild card format began during the 2022 season, we have not seen ONE best-of-three wild card series actually make it to the third game. There have been eight (!) 2-0 sweeps. Let’s change that this year! Let’s root for four winner-take-all games on Wednesday because we are greedy! (And also: if you’re a fan of the Guardians, Yankees, Dodgers, or Phillies you want whoever emerges to play you to be as tired as possible).

So without further ado, here’s what the four teams facing elimination today need to do to make It to Thursday:

The Astros

(Photo by Alex Slitz/Getty Images)

I didn’t like this match-up for the Astros at all when it was announced. Why? Because the Tigers have the juice. But more importantly, they also have the manager who was scapegoated by MLB and Astros’ owner Jim Crane over the team’s cheating scandal of 2017.

Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely believe AJ Hinch deserved to be punished for failing to stop his team from running their little video sign stealing racket, even if he did use a bat to smash the monitor at the center of the crime.

But come on. We all know that Hinch and his bench coach Alex Cora were sacrificed so that the league could say “See????? We did something!!” while failing to suspend any single player involved for even one game. It appeared that Crane and Manfred hatched this little plan to fire Hinch and Cora and ban them for a year, as if that would somehow make up for George Springer and Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve and the rest getting to keep their rings. (Little fish taking the fall to protect bigger fish is a fact of life, but we don’t have to like it).

Anyway, Hinch landed on his feet managing the Tigers, and has them in contention way sooner than anyone expected. Not only is he probably motivated to dropkick the Astros into the sun tonight, but he’s also the most prepared and experienced manager in the building.

He knows where all the entrances are at Minute Maid Park and where to pee and grab the best snacks. He knows the security guards names (and probably their spouses names, too). Oh, and he knows the strengths and weaknesses of Altuve, Bregman, Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez and the rest of the Astros lineup perhaps better than anyone alive. Houston is in danger of not making the ALCS for the first time since Obama was still in office. (Really).

So what can the Astros do to win?

First of all, they’ve got to get out to an early lead. With the roof closed, Minute Maid Park is the loudest in baseball. Home crowds get nervous during elimination games and the vibes can turn funereal in a hurry. Houston will have the advantage starting a (relatively) hot Hunter Brown while the Tigers will counter with what Hinch yesterday called “pitching chaos.” Tyler Holton—who was brought in to retire Kyle Tucker in Game 1—will open. Rookie Reese Olson is expected to pitch bulk innings. But who knows when and how many.

It will be all arms on deck for the Astros, who also have Spencer Arighetti (mom’s spaghetti) and Ronel Blanco (my favorite player of the year) available out of the bullpen if Brown stinks out of the gate. I’m assuming they’re saving Yusie Kikuchi for game 3, if it happens. Houston has the advantage in Game 2 after Detroit played their ace in Tarik Skubal yesterday, but I’d take Hinch over Joe Espada if I had to pick one of them to chart a path to 27 outs.

Note: this might be Bregman’s last game ever as an Astro as free agency looms. We’ll see if that pressure motivates or crushes him.

The Astros are only inevitable until they’re not anymore.

---

The Orioles