When I was a kid, I used to announce games for my dad’s summer slow-pitch softball league. I can’t remember how I started doing this, but somehow I (rather than the usual adult) ended up in the booth above the concession stand on Tuesday nights telling the small-town crowd who was coming up to bat. This was by no means an essential job—the games would be played and the beer sold and consumed regardless—but I suppose it made the weekly tripleheaders feel more like a big league event.
A friend or two might join me in the booth, sometimes coming and going over the course of the night. It was fun for kids to climb up to this forbidden place, survey the field from on high, and just be within proximity of that microphone’s power. Eventually, inspired by Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray, I decided to enhance the ballpark experience by leading the crowd in a rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. Maybe it wasn’t my idea, but those who were still there late at night got a kick out of it, so I kept it up. And soon enough, it wasn’t just me singing, but whoever was sitting next to me in the booth or whoever I might recruit to join me or whatever kid might ask to sing.
One night I was announcing the game and there was another kid sitting next to me and maybe even someone else when three middle-school girls—volunteers, recruits, I can’t remember—made their way up to the booth and began rehearsing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. With kids coming and going, the seventh-inning stretch was becoming a production now, and it was surely getting noisy, especially when I turned the mic on. If you were at the park, you probably thought there was more going on in the booth than on the diamond. I was trying to keep up with the game and coordinate the performance when, in the midst of all this, I suddenly heard a man’s voice behind me call out, “What’s going on up here?” I glanced back and there was the president of the local bank poking his head into the booth. The singing promptly stopped, the girls departed, and anyone else who wasn’t supposed to be there left too, leaving just me and one other mortified kid behind. Every successive batter was announced. There was no singalong during the seventh inning. And I don’t think I ever went back into that booth again; if I did, I probably worked alone and kept what I did there to the straight and narrow.
That memory always comes back to me when I think about American politics these days. If only more Republicans held their party to the same standards that bank president had for a slow-pitch softball beer league in small town Iowa. “What’s going on up here?” indeed.
It has been a particularly disgraceful and dysfunctional week for the Republican Party. Consider:
Donald Trump, a former president of the United States and the frontrunner to win his party’s nomination for president in 2024, floated the idea of executing General Mark Milley, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Milley had taken steps after 1/6 to make sure the United States didn’t end up in a war due to Trump’s instability.) Republican Rep. Paul Gosar (AZ)—whose own family thinks he isn’t fit to serve in Congress—echoed the idea. Trump also called NBC and MSNBC “the enemy of the people” for committing “Country Threatening Treason” and vowed to investigate them and the rest of the “lamestream media” if re-elected president, First Amendment be damned. (Trump likely issued that broadside in response to former Mark Meadows aide and whistleblower Cassidy Hutchinson appearing for an interview on MSNBC.) It is certainly no longer shocking to hear Trump announce his despotic intentions or revel in thoughts of political violence, and it is also understandable why many politicians and journalists might think the responsible thing to do is to ignore Trump’s provocations, yet members of his own party seem completely unconcerned that the anti-democratic despot who incited a major act of political violence as president is seeking that job yet again by doubling-down on despotism and violence.
That goes for the Republicans running against Trump for the GOP nomination as well. Last week, during a cacophonous and cringeworthy debate, they chose to attack each other rather than work together to tear down the absent authoritarian ex-president whose polling share exceeds their numbers combined. (The best they could do was when Chris Christie—who should be using these moments to burn Trump and his minions to the ground—threatened to call the ex-president “Donald Duck” for not appearing on stage to defend his record. Hey Chris: The jerk store called…) As Nicholas Grossman of The Bulwark wrote
A New York state court just found that Trump committed financial fraud, effectively shutting down major components of his business empire, and none of his supposed competitors made it into a political attack. None tried to make a What type of party do we want to be? case against corruption and authoritarianism. It was surreal, how the debate moderators avoided the profound, historical question of nominating a man who will be on trial for federal felonies during the campaign. And it was ridiculous that no candidate mentioned that the man they trail in the polls makes anti-democracy assertions on a regular basis, such as recently insinuating that America’s top general should be executed. Instead, they largely focused on policy topics, such as the border, energy, education, health care, China, and Ukraine. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to hear candidates engage real issues—it’s just that they’re ducking the biggest one.
Yet the main drama this week occurred in Washington, where House Republicans struggled mightily not only to keep the government open but to operate as a responsible legislative majority as well. Yes, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has a super-slim majority to work with, but what went down is still plenty ridiculous. A recap: As part of the plan to avoid default back in May, McCarthy cut a deal with Biden to set spending levels for the upcoming fiscal year budget. The Senate passed a bipartisan plan honoring that agreement. But a group of insurgent right-wingers in the House—whose intransigence last spring weakened McCarthy’s hand during negotiations with the White House—is furious McCarthy made that deal and let the Speaker know they wouldn’t support any budget bill along those lines.
Lacking the votes to pass such a bill with a majority of Republicans on board, McCarthy reneged on his deal with Biden and began offering up bills designed specifically to win the insurgents over. Never mind that those bills would not only be rejected by the Senate but were so unserious that they actually weakened the House’s bargaining position. Never mind that the new bills McCarthy put forward forced his moderate members to cast votes that will be used against them in the 2024 elections. The insurgents still refused to support those bills! After failing numerous times to get funding bills passed through the House (and revealing McCarthy’s weakness as a leader in the process) no one had a clue what it would take to get the insurgents to yes. The insurgents would even vote down stopgap bills to keep the government open while negotiators continued working. By Friday night, it appeared House Republicans were about to allow the government to shut down for no apparent reason.
Finally, Saturday afternoon, and with less than 24 hours until the government would close, McCarthy decided he needed to be the “adult in the room” and brought a stopgap bill Democrats could support to the floor. It passed 331-91, with 90 Republicans and 1 Democrat voting nay. The Senate approved it just hours before midnight. Crisis averted…for at least 45 days.
Now reports are now flying that MAGA members plan to oust McCarthy as Speaker soon after the Sunday deadline. It isn’t clear at all who would replace him or if a new Speaker would have the votes to keep the government open. Furthermore, because the House won’t be able to do anything until it has a Speaker, House Republicans would have to spend part of the next 45 days getting their own legislative house in order rather than figuring out a way to get the government funded.
Yet despite this soap opera, House Republicans still somehow managed to launch an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden this week. (Rep. Jim Jordan (OH) assured the country it would have continued if the government had shut down.) The apparent plan is to prove Biden was bribed despite never receiving a bribe. You read that right: According to a Republican aide, “While the corrupt payment is strong evidence of a bribe payment, the crime can be accomplished with[out] even seeking or agreeing to accept anything of value for the purpose of being influenced.”
If it seems like there isn’t much to the accusations against Biden, well, I couldn’t agree with you more, but don’t take my word for it. Instead, just listen to the testimony of the witnesses Republicans called before their own committee, who freely admitted there isn’t enough evidence to impeach. The whole hearing was a disaster. Yet Republicans carry on, in part because McCarthy hopes a clown car impeachment hearing might endear him to the insurgents who want to take away his gavel but also because Republicans want to do right by Trump, who thinks the standard for impeachment isn’t “treason” or “high crimes and misdemeanors” but “they did it to me” (and for good, valid reasons, I might add.)
Look, Democrats aren’t perfect. Investigators recently found gold bars and envelopes of cash stashed inside the home of Senator Robert Menendez (NJ), who received them in exchange for doing favors for people with business before the Department of Justice. (Numerous Democratic senators have called on Menendez to resign; not only have no Republican senators done so yet, but some are actually insisting he stay in office.) Rep. Jamaal Bowman (NY) was caught pulling a fire alarm in a House office building Saturday in what appeared to be an attempt to delay the House vote on the stopgap funding bill. (Bowman’s actions were too much for many House Republicans, who have called for him to be censured or expelled. McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene compared what he did to the actions of those who raided the Capitol on 1/6. At least we know what the GOP’s red lines are now.) Democrats struggle at times to keep their own house in order or find solutions to public problems that can satisfy the numerous factions within their own party. The legislation they enact is often flawed, doesn’t deliver as promised, or creates a new set of problems that need to be addressed.
But that’s also the nature of national big tent political parties. In any party like that, there will be a few bozos and bad apples. Conflict is bound to arise within parties that build broad-based national coalitions, and the deal-making and compromises that go into keeping that coalition together will appear sordid, messy, and imperfect. The same is true for the laws those coalitions create.
Yet as unwieldy as political parties may be, they also aim to prove to voters that they can govern responsibly. They want to show citizens that they can be trusted with power, that they can manage the affairs of the people well, that they have their act together. If they succeed at that, voters will elect their candidates to public office, or, if they prefer the opposition, at least accept their partymembers’ worthiness to hold public office. Parties want to demonstrate their functionality.
Sadly, today’s Republican Party may be the most dysfunctional party ever in American history. What the Republican Party proved yet again this week—and this has been going on for, what, ten to twenty years now?—is that the GOP cannot be trusted with political power. They cannot manage the basic affairs of government. They cannot responsibly govern themselves. They are controlled by nihilistic insurgents with despotic and violent inclinations who have convinced themselves that government is rotten to the core and worthy only of either neglect or domination, and those who know better (but have long fed their brethren the red meat that radicalized them) lack the courage to either collectively take their party back from them or renounce them, making them complicit in their fellow party members’ political malpractice. We are left then with a party that, when in power, cares little about the responsibilities of governance beyond what it might be able to accomplish with simple, blunt political force. It’s no way to run a major national political institution that seeks to run the national government. Voters should reject the party wholesale.
President Biden delivered a barely-covered speech this week in Arizona defending democracy. He made it a point to note “not every Republican — not even the majority of Republicans — adhere to the extremist MAGA extremist ideology.” This may be true. But judging by the company they keep and those they end up empowering with their votes, I find it hard to believe. I’m tired of the supposedly “good” Republicans who are just waiting for MAGAism to run its course so that they can retake the reins of their party and steer it back to a more sensible path. I’m tired of the supposedly “good” Republicans who think they can influence the direction of their party for the better by maintaining their membership within it. I’m tired of the supposedly “good” Republicans who let Democrats defend democracy and condemn Trump so that they don’t have to fall out of favor with the party faithful. It’s their country, their democracy, too. When it comes to their party, they know “what’s going on up there.” They can put an end to it.
And if they can’t save their party? If they find out they can’t maintain a competitive right-wing political party without the participation of the those they now recognize as a threat to American democracy?
Well, then, maybe that party was never worth saving.
Signals and Noise
Further reading: “Where is the Trump Panic?” by Tim Miller of The Bulwark
Nick Cattagio of The Dispatch makes a good point following Trump’s recently social media tirade: As much as this next election is about two “known quantities” in Biden and Trump, “we actually don’t know how dangerous and destabilizing Trump might prove to be as his mind bends under the strain of an election and four indictments. Or whether it’ll break entirely once he’s back in power and surrounded by the most obsequious fascist toadies he can find.”
A judge ruled in a civil suit brought by the New York Attorney General that Don Trump committed fraud by overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth in official documents in order to deceive banks, insurers, and others.
David Cay Johnston of DC Report claims the civil ruling will effectively put Trump out of business, since the ruling will deprive him of the business licenses needed to operate in New York. Furthermore, any money Trump owes (creditors, fines, taxes) will come from the sale of his property.
Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer of the New York Times write that “By effectively branding him a cheat, the decision in the civil proceeding by Justice Arthur F. Engoron undermined Mr. Trump’s relentlessly promoted narrative of himself as a master of the business world, the persona that he used to enmesh himself in the fabric of popular culture and that eventually gave him the stature and resources to reach the White House.” (Although it’s probably long past the point where any of his supporters will care that he’s a snake oil salesman. If anything, that’s what his followers respect about him.)
Philip Bump of the Washington Post has a calculator you can use to determine the Trump-inflated value of your property.
Trump told the California Republican convention that he has a plan to take overflow water from the northern part of the state and use it to dampen California’s forests to prevent forest fires.
During a campaign stop at a South Carolina gun shop, Trump indicated he wanted to buy a gun. His campaign even claimed he did. But if Trump did that (his campaign later said he didn’t) he would have violated federal law, since it is a crime for someone who is under indictment for a crime punishable for a term of longer than one year in jail to purchase a firearm.
Joe Biden became the first president in American history to join striking workers on a picket line.
Biden joined the picket line of United Autoworkers Local 174, the home of Walter Reuther, who built the UAW into a one of the most progressive unions in the country in the 1930s, cofounded the AFL-CIO in 1955 with George Meany, and helped organize the 1963 March on Washington.
The following day, as counterprogramming to the Republican Presidential Also-Ran Debate, Trump spoke at a non-union factory to tell workers that he, not unions (in other words, workers like them) had their best interests at heart and that their struggle to get better pay didn’t matter. (“It doesn’t matter what the hell you’re getting an hour. Just get your union guys, your leaders, to endorse me and I’ll take care of the rest.”) Trump’s main target was the production of electric vehicles, claiming they would destroy the American automobile industry, despite the fact, as Arpan Lobo and Todd Spangler of the Detroit Free Press wrote, “that sales of U.S. EVs reached 9% of new car sales in the second quarter and billions being invested in dozens of new or planned battery and other EV plants across the country in recent months, in part because of subsidies provided by the Biden administration.”
“Let me be blunt. Donald Trump is coming off as a pompous ass. Coming to Michigan to speak at a nonunion employer and pretending it has anything to do with our fight at the Big Three is just more verbal diarrhea from the former president.”—Mike Booth, lead negotiator for the UAW
Adam Serwer of The Atlantic on Trump’s visit to Michigan: “Telling striking workers that they should give up trying to get a better deal is not supporting workers or supporting unions; it is textbook union-busting rhetoric that anyone who has ever been in a union or tried to organize one would recognize. In other words, Trump did not go to Michigan to support striking workers at all. He did what cheap rich guys do every day: He told people who work for a living to be afraid of losing what little they have instead of trying to get what they deserve. This is not comparable to, nor is it even in the same galaxy as, supporting workers on a picket line. It is a poignant metaphor for the emptiness of right-wing populism when it comes to supporting workers—a cosplay populism of superficial “working class” aesthetics that ends up backing the bosses instead of the workers.”
Craig Mauger of The Detroit News talked to individuals holding “Union Members for Trump” signs at Trump’s rally and found they were not actually union members.
Dan Merica of The Messenger looks at how Trump’s big talk to autoworkers didn’t amount to anything during his presidency.
Democratic Senator Robert Menendez said he kept large amounts of money in envelopes ($480,000 worth, some of it covered in the DNA of those who bribed him) at his home for emergencies, yeah, emergencies. (From Charlie Skykes of The Bulwark: “There’s something almost nostalgic about reading the indictment against New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez. By which I mean clownishly nostalgic, because it’s a throwback to an age when our corrupt politicians were old-school crooks, and frankly, rather stupid. There are no seven-levels of separation influence-peddling, no elaborate shell-companies or conspiracies.”)
Senate Republicans are actually defending Menendez. Of course, they’re also the party that wants to impeach Joe Biden on bribery charges without any evidence, arguing someone can be bribed without receiving anything in return.
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace accused the Biden family without any evidence of running prostitution rings.
She forgot to include the space lasers.
And for the record: I said “Merry Christmas,” not “Happy Holidays”:
Dumb and Racist Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama voted against confirming Air Force Gen. Charles Brown Jr. (a Black man) as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because Tuberville said he’d heard Brown say “some things” about “race and things that he wanted to mix into the military.” Tuberville then added, “Let me tell you something. Our military is not an equal opportunity employer.” (Recall Tuberville spent a good chunk of this summer claiming white supremacists were not racists and should be welcome in the military.)
Speaking of Alabama: The Supreme Court told the state to comply with the Court’s order requiring Alabama to redraw its congressional maps. Alabama had redrawn its maps, but in a way that openly defied the Court’s ruling in a redistricting case decided this summer.
Senate Republicans said they won’t prevent Democrats from replacing the recently deceased Dianne Feinstein on the now evenly-split Judiciary Committee. That will allow Democrats to continue to vote judges out of committee for confirmation.
Two scenes from the Republican debate:
Tim Scott criticized interpersonally-challenged uber-bully Ron DeSantis for Florida’s new history curriculum—which claims slavery could be “beneficial” to the enslaved—only for Scott to then imply it was harder for Black American families to “survive” LBJ’s Great Society program than slavery. I’ll let Isaac Bailey of the Charlotte Observer tear that one apart.
Chris Christie implied Biden had a conflict of interest on education issues because Biden was sleeping with a member of a teachers’ union, leading Mike Pence—who does not leave himself alone in a room with another woman who is not his wife—to respond that he, too, sleeps with a teacher, but one who is not a union member.
In voter fraud news, Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has referred 521 cases of non-citizens voting in Ohio to prosecutors. Of those 521 cases, one (1) turned out to be valid.
As the FTC brings an anti-trust suit against Amazon, Brian Barrett explains in The Atlantic about why shopping on the website sucks now. (“The company spent years sacrificing profit for scale, until it had so many customers that sellers couldn’t ignore it. Now that it extracts billions each month from those sellers, it can afford to ignore those customers—or at least prioritize them less. Amazon gets paid by all of its vendors, no matter which products go in our cart.”)
Menachem Kaiser writes in the New York Times about the (estimated) $100 million collectors market for Nazi memorabilia. (“Turning Nazi artifacts into tradeables, far from fulfilling some sort of preservationist mandate, in fact mutes what’s historically meaningful about them. The purpose of preservation is not merely to ensure artifacts aren’t lost or damaged, but to place them in proper context, to narrativize them. Without that context, Nazi artifacts only represent a fascination with and commodification of Nazism; what’s being traded and promoted is Nazi symbology.”)
In what could turn into a significant development, the United Kingdom has offered to deploy military instructors to Ukraine. This, of course, could put NATO forces in the line of fire in Ukraine’s war with Russia.
Finally, check out these visuals from U2’s show in the new Las Vegas Sphere:
Garbage Time: An MLB Postseason Preview
(Garbage Time theme song here)
It’s been a season of renewal for baseball. Thanks to shift bans, bigger bases, pick-off limits, and pitch clocks, the game is faster, both on the base paths and in terms of duration. The revelation this year is that teams do not need rosters full of designated hitter types who either clobber a home run or strikeout. There are holes all over the field now for contact hitters to take advantage of, and speedy runners can grab extra bases or steal one if need be. The prototypical player for this new era is Ronald Acuña Jr. of the 100-win Atlanta Braves, who hit 40 home runs while stealing 70 bases, which has never happened before in the history of Major League Baseball.
There is one category of player, however, who has suffered under this new regime: The starting pitcher. For years, teams have emphasized the importance of velocity, and pitchers have for the most part obliged, leaning heavily on high-90 mph fastballs to blow away batters. It takes a lot of energy to hit that peak, though, and a bit more recovery time between pitches. Cut down that recovery time by installing a pitch clock, and the game’s best hurlers lose their edge.
One can’t say for certain if the pitch clock is responsible for the collapse this year of pitchers like Sandy Alcantara (2022: 14-9, 2.28 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 207 K, 8.1 WAR, NL Cy Young; 2023: 7-12, 4.14 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 151 K, 3.3 WAR), Dylan Cease (2022: 14-8, 2.20 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, 6.4 WAR, AL Cy Young Runner-Up; 2023: 7-8, 4.66 ERA, 1.42 WHIP, 2.0 WAR) and Alek Manoah (2022: 16-7, 2.24 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, 180 K, 5.9 WAR, AL Cy Young Third Place; 2023: Forget the stats, just know he was sent down to the minors not once but twice) but what can be said is there was a dearth of lockdown starting pitching. Gerrit Cole of the New York Yankees was genuinely great (15-4, 2.63 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 222 K, a league-leading 7.5 WAR) and there were a handful of really good pitchers (Toronto’s Kevin Gausman, Arizona’s Zac Gallen, the Cubs’ Justin Steele, Baltimore’s Kyle Bradish, Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler) but this season, it seemed most teams’ aces were most definitely fallible. Just consider the National League Cy Young race, which is coming down to a contest between San Diego’s Blake Snell, who ranks first in ERA, second in WAR, and third in strikeouts in MLB but also leads the league in walk-rate, and Atlanta’s Spencer Strider, who leads MLB in wins and Ks but only has a 3.3 WAR in part due to his 3.81 ERA.
That lack of dependable starting pitching will make this postseason very intriguing. Pitchers can’t dominate series the way batters can, but what a great postseason starting pitcher can do is practically guarantee his team two wins in a 7-game series and force his team’s opponent to find a way to win four of the remaining five games. The catch this year is teams know they can get at the other team’s ace and they’re not going to be cowed by the rest of the rotation.
If pitching isn’t going to be the difference in the postseason, then you would be a fool to bet against the Atlanta Braves, who not only lead all of the major leagues in runs, home runs (by a lot), RBI, average, and OPS, but have entered the conversation as the greatest offensive team of all-time. According to a September 19 article by Jayson Stark of The Athletic, their weighted runs created plus (wRC+), which can measure teams’ offensive capabilities across eras, ranks them as the equals of the 1927 New York Yankees, the “Murderers’ Row” line-up anchored by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig that is considered the greatest team of all-time. (By this metric, the ‘23 Braves would also top the best National League team ever by that metric, the 1976 Cincinnati Reds “Big Red Machine.”)
But if wRC+ doesn’t mean much to you (I don’t blame you) consider this:
The Braves are the first team to ever hit 300+ home runs and steal 100+ bases in a season.
Led by Matt Olson (53), they have five players with at least 30 home runs, which has only been accomplished by one other team (the 2019 Minnesota Twins).
They’re close to becoming the first team ever with a +.500 slugging percentage. (They’re basically getting a base every other at-bat.)
The Los Angeles Dodgers are only a few games behind Atlanta in the win column and are either second or third to the Braves in most major offensive categories as well (they slip to seventh overall in batting average.) There were a lot of question marks surrounding the Dodgers heading into the season, and the past six months have absolutely decimated their starting rotation, but Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman have kept L.A.’s offensive engine humming all summer. Yet in a potential National League Championship preview, the Braves took three of four from L.A. at Dodger Stadium over Labor Day weekend, so the Braves are still the team to beat in the NL.
Over in the American League, the best offensive team is the Texas Rangers, who lead the AL in every major offensive category save stolen bases (where they’re next to last.) The Rangers appeared on the verge of collapse a month ago, but manager Bruce Bochy has righted the ship. Texas does not possess the American League’s best record, however. That belongs to the upstart Baltimore Orioles, the scrappiest and most entertaining team to watch in MLB this year. The Orioles are young, so their inexperience may catch up to them in the postseason, but they also seem too young to let the pressure unnerve them, as evidenced by their outstanding record in one-run games (29-16). Baltimore has been duking it out atop the AL East with Tampa Bay, who started the season 13-0 and 20-3, but, like the Dodgers, have dealt with injuries to their rotation.
But about that pitching…what if a team was able to rollout a solid 2-3 starters to silence their opponents’ bats in the postseason? All it would take would be for a few starters to get hot at the right time. What playoff teams could potentially do that?
Let’s start in the American League. A lot of people like Houston’s chances in a pitching duel (Justn Verlander and Framber Valdez would be their go-to guys) but the Astros seem gassed. The Blue Jays feature Kevin Gausman and Chris Bassitt, who have had respectable seasons; still, although they’ve been better lately, Toronto’s offense has been middle-of-the-road all year. The Twins are surprisingly deep at SP (Joe Ryan, Sonny Gray, Pablo Lopez). Minnesota’s offense is capable of scoring runs but the Twins also lead the league in strikeouts and have hovered around .500 most of the summer. Tyler Glasnow and Zach Elfin of Tampa Bay maybe have the best potential for a breakout postseason. As a result, the AL feels wide-open.
Over in the National League, there’s a lot of talk about what the Phillies could do with Zack Wheeler leading the rotation into October. Philadelphia made it all the way to the World Series last year and carry a ton of confidence with them onto the field, but while their hitters may believe they can slug with any team they face, it’s hard to see the back end of their rotation (Taijuan Walker, a disappointing Aaron Nola, Ranger Suarez) coming through for them. If you want a dark horse, look instead to Milwaukee, which lead the major leagues in ERA and can roll out Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Freddy Peralta. Combined, that may be the best 1-2-3 starting pitcher combo in the postseason, and Burnes and Woodruff in particular have the potential to go into lockdown mode. Add to that the late-inning combo of set-up man Joel Payamps and closer Devin Williams, and the Brewers are a team that could snuff out an offense and shorten games. Do they have the bats to win a slugfest? I mean, come on, their third baseman is Yankees castoff Josh Donaldson. Still, this is the team that could shut an offense down and put pressure on an opposing team’s pitchers to be perfect.
That has to be a concern for Atlanta right now. SPs Max Fried (blister) and Charlie Morton (out through the NLDS) both landed on the IL within the past week. Spencer Strider has a 5.72 ERA over his past five starts as the long season begins to catch up to his relative youth. The same goes for Bryce Elder, whose second-half ERA is 5.11. Furthermore, the bullpen’s September ERA is over 5.00. Maybe that won’t matter with a Murderer’s Row-esque offense that is averaging around 5.8 runs per game, but all it could take is a couple of aces and an airtight bullpen to end Atlanta’s historic season.