Tuesday, November 4, 2025

Newsletter Excerpt, November 4, 2025 -- "Postseason 2025: Coda"

 

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. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)

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By the end of the World Series, I am usually done. (I did, in fact, sleep for the better part of the last two days.) On Sunday, though, I wanted Game Eight. I did not want to let this Series go. I wanted more Shohei, more Mookie, more Vladito. I wanted more of that catcher shaped like a mailbox and that right-handed pitcher who looks like a movie star. I wanted more of that 22-year-old in his first pro season shoving on a $150 million lineup, and the 37-year-old on his way into retirement getting one last big out with the bases loaded in the 12th inning. More Daulton Varsho diving, more Ernie Clement raking, more Justin Wrobleski dealing. More people learning who those three guys even are. 

 
 

Sunday, November 2, 2025

Newsletter Excerpt, November 2, 2025 -- "Postseason 2025: One Inch"

 

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. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)

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IKF was out by an inch. If he gets a bigger lead, if he gets a better jump, if he runs through the plate instead of sliding, the Blue Jays are World Champions today. (An inning later, Mookie Betts would repeat the last mistake.) For all the energy we spent on Addison Barger’s choices Friday night, and for all the Blue Jays’ baserunning errors in this Series, Kiner-Falefa’s awful path from third to home was the most costly of all. 
 
 

Saturday, November 1, 2025

Newsletter Excerpt, November 1, 2025 -- "Postseason 2025: A Play"

 

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. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)

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"Dave Roberts flailed a bit as well. It may just be that Roberts and I have such wildly divergent opinions of his pitchers that I’m going to disagree with everything he does. I thought he left Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who wasn’t as sharp as he’d been in Game Two, in a batter too long. Yamamoto retired Daulton Varsho in the sixth with two on and two out to escape the inning. Turning to Justin Wrobleski, who is probably his best reliever, Roberts got a shutout inning with two strikeouts on 16 pitches. Rather than leave Wrobleski in for the eighth, he went to Roki Sasaki."