This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95
using your PayPal account or major credit card. This is the best time
to become a Newsletter subscriber -- playoff coverage has been where it
shines for 15 years!
--
Postseason 2025: The Sequel
October 28, 2025
Hollywood loves a sequel. Once an idea makes money, boy, they go back to it again and again. There have been nine Star Wars films, six Alien movies, six Terminators, six Rockys. Matt Damon has played Jason Bourne four times and Linus Caldwell three times. I’m starting to think all those missions aren’t impossible, it’s hard to stay that fast and that furious for that long, and maybe Elm Street actually causes those nightmares.
Sometimes, though, the second movie isn’t just a cash grab, an exercise in exploiting IP, but a classic itself. The Godfather Part II was better than the original. Before Sunset is a wonder. The Color of Money is, in my uninformed opinion, Tom Cruise’s best work, and high up on any ranking of Paul Newman’s films. Maybe it’s about time, about letting an idea marinate and not just jumping into a project, that makes a sequel work. Maybe that’s what made Let’s Play 18: Electric Boogaloo, the smash hit of the fall.
Seven years have passed since the Dodgers played an 18-inning World Series game against the Red Sox, long enough for most of the original cast to move on. The ones who returned had small but significant parts, the plot hinging on Clayton Kershaw and Enrique Hernandez and Max Muncy at various times. Mookie Betts reprised his role as a superstar, though for the good guys this time.
Playing Muncy’s old role, a mid-20s journeyman rescued from Oakland and finding himself in Hollywood, was Will Klein. Klein, a right-hander working for his fourth studio in 15 months, was never supposed to be the guy. He wasn’t even on the call sheet in rehearsals, just added as an extra before shooting began. Tall, wide, with a beard like an extra in Witness, Klein ate the camera up in the most demanding role he’s ever played.
Klein, a relief pitcher who had not thrown 40 pitches in a game in the majors, who had never thrown 60 in any pro outing, who had never thrown more than three innings at once, stepped up with a World Series in the balance and tossed 72 pitches over four shutout innings, just because he had to. He was the last man in the bullpen, last man on the roster, last man you’d expect to become a legend.
Entering to start the 15th, Klein was nails for three innings. Reaching deeper than he ever had before in the 18th, though, he was coming up empty. An outing that began with Klein pumping 98 and 99 in the zone saw him down to 96-97 with minimal control as midnight approached over Southern California. Twenty-five pitches removed from his last swinging strike, with two runners on and a 3-2 count, Klein broke off a curve that Tyler Heineman swung at awkwardly, ending the Jays’ threat.
Now it was time for some star power. Pacino. Newman. Freeman.
Freddie Freeman hadn’t been around for the first picture, but he was familiar with the plot. A year ago, Freeman won all the awards with a legend-making walkoff grand slam that turned a World Series the Dodgers’ way. Once again the game was in the balance, once again the game was into extra frames, once again there was an end-of-the-roster lefty on the mound.
Once again it was a slow fastball, a little over 92 mph.
Once again it was thigh-high, a pitch he could drive.
Once again, there was no doubt that the credits would roll.
Like Klein, Brendon Little was his team’s last option, pitching in the game because no one else was available. He escaped his first inning of work, barely, but was out of gas in the second. Not a single pitch to Freeman reached 93 mph, and not one generated a swinging strike. After a strong season in which he led the AL in appearances and posted a 2.92 FIP (3.03 ERA), Little has allowed a game-tying homer to Cal Raleigh and a game-winning homer to Freeman in his last two outings. Two weeks ago he was Andrew Miller, and now he’s Nestor Cortes.
Freeman was the last hero, but he certainly wasn’t the only one. Shohei Ohtani, playing DeNiro to Freeman’s Pacino, showed us what baseball played perfectly looks like. Ohtani doubled in the first, homered in the third, doubled off LOOGY Mason Fluharty in the fifth and scored the tying run, then homered again in the seventh, again tying the game. John Schneider gave up at that point, issuing intentional walks to Ohtani in his next four plate appearances, then ordering a pitch-around walk in the 17th inning. Ohtani batted nine times last night and didn’t make an out, something you’ve never even done in a Wiffle Ball game with your kids. Just four players had ever reached base nine times in a game, none since 1942, none in the playoffs.
That guy throws the first pitch in eight hours.
It’s unclear whether he’ll get to both hit and pitch tonight, now that Schneider has learned he can take the bat out of Ohtani’s hands and not get punished for it. Mookie Betts can put a stop to this at any time, though I think Dave Roberts should turn the task of batting second over to Will Smith. Betts is a skinny guy on his eighth month of playing shortstop, and he looks it. He’s 2-for-15 with no extra-base hits in the Series, and hitting .133/.278/.167 since the start of the NLCS. He’s not getting that unlucky either: .213 expected batting average, .315 expected slugging, 36% hard-hit rate, one barrel.
Betts was one of many reasons this game went to 18. Dave Roberts called on Blake Treinen to relieve a perfectly effective Justin Wrobleski with two outs and nobody on in the seventh. From the Series preview:
Roberts keeps leaning on end-stage Blake Treinen to get big outs. Treinen tried to lose NLDS Game Two and NLCS Game One. He has not cost the Dodgers a game yet, but every time he doesn’t, it makes it a little more likely that he will in the future. Roberts, who was a terrible game manager early in his Dodgers career and a good one in recent seasons, seems like he’s put the big mistake back in his bag.
Treinen threw 15 pitches, got one swing-and-miss, and couldn’t put away Bo Bichette after getting ahead of him 0-2. On the seventh pitch he saw, Bichette poked a ball inside the first-base bag that caught a weird carom, avoided a small tech conference gathered along the right-field wall, and bounded into short right field. Teoscar Hernandez read the play poorly, and with two outs, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. charged around third and tried to score. The throw beat him from me to you, but it was up the first-base line, enabling Guerrero to sneak his hand to the plate just ahead of Smith’s tag for the lead.
The Dodgers’ bullpen problem is mostly a Blake Treinen problem. He has a 9.00 ERA -- and yes, a 2.14 FIP -- in four innings. It’s a .533 BABIP, but it’s also a 23% strikeout rate, which isn’t good for a modern leverage relief pitcher. DIPS theory, the idea that pitchers mostly don’t control the results of balls in play, only applies to major-league-quality pitchers. I simply don’t think Treinen, who has allowed 14 runs on 17 hits in his last 11 2/3 innings back to mid-September, is a major-league pitcher right now.
Outside of Treinen, the Dodgers’ bullpen was incredible last night: 13 shutout innings. Klein, we talked about. Edgardo Henriquez, who has been on and off the playoff rosters, threw two strong innings. Wrobleski got five big outs. Roki Sasaki wasn’t sharp but got away with it. Emmet Sheehan gutted through eight shaky outs. Clayton Kershaw got the last big out of his career, retiring Nathan Lukes with the bases loaded and two outs in the 12th.
The Jays’ bullpen couldn’t match them. Mason Fluharty allowed hits to the two lefties he was tasked with retiring. Seranthony Dominguez decided the thing to do was challenge Ohtani with a fastball so middle-middle that Ezra Klein asked it to run for President. Little came up exactly that. The Jays did get two good innings from Jeff Hoffman and 4 2/3 shutout frames from Eric Lauer, but it wasn’t enough.
It might have been had the Jays played extras with their full complement of hitters. In a series of choices that were individually sensible but collectively a problem, Schneider ran through his bench, eventually ending up with just five starters in his lineup. In the seventh, George Springer seemed to strain his oblique fouling off a pitch. He had to leave, and Ty France replaced him as the DH. Up 5-4 later in the seventh, Schneider made the same move he made in Game One, pinch-running Isiah Kiner-Falefa for Bo Bichette. Bichette is definitely not at 100%, and he’s playing a new position. Again, rational.
In the eighth, with the game tied at five, Addison Barger reached on a sloppy throwing error by Betts leading off the inning. Schneider sent in Myles Straw for Barger, and again, you can’t find fault here. Straw represented the tying run, is a stolen-base threat, and is a defensive upgrade on Barger. It’s a move Schneider has made frequently this season. In the tenth, after a two-out single by Ty France, Schneider had Davis Schneider pinch-run. This is the one that makes you scratch your head, because Schneider isn’t that much faster than France, and Schneider might have been better saved for facing a lefty later in the game. This became relevant when Kershaw was brought in to face Lukes (career .207/.319/.310 against lefties) in the 12th, and Schneider was out of options.
He burned his final bench player, backup catcher Tyler Heineman, pinch-running for Alejandro Kirk in the 12th. I understand this one, as Kirk was the go-ahead run, and if he’s slow when he arrives at the ballpark, he surely wasn’t going to be faster after catching 11 innings.
Each move made sense. Each move, though, chipped away at the Jays’ bench and led to bad matchup after bad matchup, weak hitter after weak hitter, in extra innings. The Jays scored one Treinen-aided run in the final 14 frames.
There was as much baseball in this baseball game as you’ll ever see. There were five homers, two errors, a pickoff and a caught stealing among six baserunning outs, a sac bunt, six intentional walks, any number of close calls at the bases. In the second inning, long forgotten by the time Freeman circled the bases six hours later, Bo Bichette was picked off first base after home-plate umpire Mark Wegner made a delayed strike call on 3-1, fooling both Daulton Varsho at bat and Bichette on first base. Bichette turned his back to the infield and started towards second as if on a walk, and was easily picked off. Wegner’s delayed call started the confusion, but he did make the (bad) strike call, and you have to see that if you’re the baserunner.
That was legitimately a TOOTBLAN by Bichette. He was Thrown Out On The Bases Like A Nincompoop. (Credit Tony Jewell, a Cubs blogger, for the term.) That term, though, gets thrown around a bit too generously now. All TOOTBLANs are baserunning outs, but not all baserunning outs are TOOTBLANs. Sometimes the defense makes a play. Sometimes the benefit of trying for the extra base outweighs the risk of an out, even if an out is more likely.
We had baserunning outs that ran the gamut in this one. Bichette was picked off for no good reason. Teoscar Hernandez was thrown out trying to go to third on an infield single with two outs. This was a great play by Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who saw Hernandez going, came off the first-base bag to catch the ball sooner, and made a strong throw across the diamond. It was also a terrible decision by Hernandez, who became the latest baserunner in these playoffs to make the third out of an inning at third base. The extra base is worth 5/100ths of a run, virtually nothing, while the out destroys nearly half a run of expected value. Mathematically, you need to be safe 90% of the time to make it worth the risk, and I’d argue the number is closer to 600% of the time. That’s a TOOTBLAN.
The four other baserunning outs in this game, though, were just correct decisions, great defensive plays, or both. Freddie Freeman, trying to score from second on a single, was thrown out at the plate in the third by Addison Barger, and it wasn’t close. Barger just about had the ball, a hard-hit single by Will Smith, as Freeman was reaching third. With two outs, though, you make the defense make a play.
The same goes for Davis Schneider, pinch-running for France in the tenth, trying to score on Lukes’s double to right. Two outs, you take the chance. I argued earlier this year that third-base coaches need to be statheads and understand run expectancy and game state. If Schneider is held, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is walked and the game is in the hands of Kiner-Falefa. Making the Dodgers make a play is the better choice. The Dodgers did, as Tommy Edman made his second great throw in two innings for the out at the plate. The other guys get paid, too. Shohei Ohtani was caught stealing in the ninth by falling off the bag after a hard pop-up slide. The slide was bad -- Kirk’s throw was great -- but the decision to go, with Betts up, was good baseball.
All TOOTBLANs are baserunning outs, Not all baserunning outs are TOOTBLANs.
Let’s also acknowledge Vladito, who keeps showing off a complete game. He made the heady play in the sixth to throw out Hernandez. He scored from first on Bichette’s single in the seventh. He’s a big guy and a little rounder than the average 26-year-old, so you don’t expect him to make the plays he does. He has some Albert Pujols in him, though, with excellent hands at first, a strong arm from his days at third, and he takes the extra base a lot for a player without great raw speed. Guerrero is a baseball player.
It wasn’t enough last night. Guerrero played Francois Toulour to Freeman’s Danny Ocean, just as Kirk played Terry Benedict to Ohtani’s Rusty Ryan. Clever foils, worthy opponents, key characters in a blockbuster sequel. Just not the heroes.
