Awards

 

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.)

 --

 

My picks for the major awards:

 

AL MVP: Aaron Judge, Yankees

AL Cy Young: Tarik Skubal, Tigers

AL Rookie of the Year: Nick Kurtz, Athletics

 

NL MVP: Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers

NL Cy Young: Paul Skenes, Pirates

NL Rookie of the Year: Drake Baldwin, Braves

 

I don't pick Managers of the Year. 

 

 

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.)

 --

 

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. 

 

 

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.)

 --

 

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. 

 

 

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.)

 --

 

"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." 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 30, 2025 -- "Postseason 2025: Yes, Shovage"

 

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.)

 --

 

I’m curious whether the marathon game caused these last two Dodger losses. You would expect a nearly seven-hour game to affect older players more than younger ones. The Dodgers have the oldest set of position players in baseball, with a playing-time weighted age of 30.7. The Blue Jays are more than two years younger at 28.1. Of the 19 players with at least ten plate appearances in the Series, seven of the eight youngest play for the Blue Jays, and the eighth, Andy Pages, has been benched.
 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 29, 2025 -- "Postseason 2025: I’m a Belieber"

 

 

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.)

 --

 

The Blue Jays have gotten heroic work from the bottom of their order this month. Last night was about the top of it, though. Vladito hammered a hanging sweeper in the third to flip a 1-0 deficit to a 2-1 lead. In the seventh, Bo Bichette somehow got a hit off Blake Treinen to make it 5-1, and Addison Barger did the same to cap the Jays’ scoring. Just outside the frame Nathan Lukes, moved up to the leadoff spot in the absence of George Springer, had two hits. All in all, the Jays had 11 hits against nine strikeouts. The Dodgers have been getting them to strike out more than they did in the first two rounds, but it’s still just 19% of plate appearances and they have more hits than strikeouts. They are, in fact, the only team in the playoffs that can make that claim -- 159 hits against 101 strikeouts. Everybody else? 709 strikeouts and just 533 hits.