ALT Ranking: 51-111-1 (21 points), last in the National League (20 points), 48.0 games behind the Dodgers (16 points). Eliminated from the pennant race with 35 games to play (15 points). Scored 3.09 runs per game, second-fewest in the league (5 points). Allowed 4.78 runs per game, most league (10 points). Negative 1.69 run differential per game (7 points). Record when trailing after six innings 6-88 (0 points). Total 94 points. Signature Game: The Mets started the season on the road, dropping six straight games to the Cardinals and Braves, losing by a collective score of 23-3. On April 15, they seemed headed to a seventh straight loss, as Milwaukee scored on an Eddie Mathews single in the first and a homer by light-hitting shortstop Roy McMillan (the future Met would hit just three more all season) in the fifth. Down 2-0 in the top of the seventh, though, New York converted four singles into two runs. In the top of the eighth they loaded the bases with one out, and first baseman Tim Harkn

ALT The Pirates’ pro forma transaction du jour was their signing of eternal pilgrim Jake Lamb. Going back to his 2017 All-Star turn, Lamb has hit .205/.306/.359 in 279 games and is now a habitué of baseball’s equivalent of the nighttime docklands. That makes him sound more romantic than he really is; Lamb isn’t a film noir character, Humphrey Bogart with a bat. Judging him purely as a baseball asset (which is to say placing his humanity to one side), who he is is context-dependent: Put him on the 2022 Dodgers and he’s a potential power-threat off the bench, and thus somewhat appealing. Put him on the Pirates and he’s filler who might take plate appearances away from the kids who might finally land this endless rebuild. This reflects more on the Pirates than it does on Lamb—it’s pointless, but it’s just what they choose to do. If one perused Reddit’s baseball boards this week, one might have noted a plaint titled, “This is why the MLB is the worst pro league in America.” Yes, anyone using

ALT To dispense with the obvious, there was no Curse of the Bambino in Boston. There was nearly a century of poor management and even worse ownership. The curse that the Los Angeles Angels may be about to face—the Scourge of Shohei—need not last as long, but there’s no reason to believe this ownership will not do its utmost to take longer than it might otherwise have. Shohei Ohtani was a unicorn the Angels lucked into, their second of the century after Joe DiMaggio turned out to have been reincarnated in the body of the 25th-overall pick of the 2009 draft. Their unearned luck has often been remarked upon, but it matters now only insofar as they can put it behind them, to disavow it and find a more reliable path forward. From Albert Pujols 12 years ago to Anthony Rendon four years ago they’ve strained without judgment to assemble the rest of a championship roster. The results speak for themselves: One playoff appearance (2014) in the Mike Trout years, none during the Ohtani years, and only

ALT One of the best seasons compiled by a part-time catcher happened by accident. In the late 1930s, the Cardinals had an outfield prospect named Don Padgett. Padgett had a tremendous hit-tool, if nothing else, but he was blocked—he wasn’t a very good fielder and the Cardinals, with the first and best farm system, had players who could both hit with excellence and run down balls in the gaps. What St. Louis lacked was a catcher who could hit. General manager Branch Rickey had a brainstorm: He would simultaneously unblock Padgett and gift himself an upgrade at catcher by packing the galumphing kid in behind the plate. Overall, the result was a disaster. Padgett didn’t like catching. Manager Frankie Frisch was against the move, choosing not to use Padgett behind the plate because he couldn’t catch popups or block low pitches. Rickey eventually fired Frisch, and no doubt the latter’s resistance to the Padgett plan was part of the reason why. Sometimes an organization just has to get a manage

ALT This week, the first full week of November, Yankees inheritor Hal Steinbrenner and his similarly-inherited general manager of over a quarter of a century, Brian Cashman, finally made themselves available to the media to discuss the “big changes” the team is making in response to missing the playoffs with a record of 82-80 and the team’s worst offense since 2013, if not 1990. That Steinbrenner was unable to articulate what those things are nearly six weeks since the team slunk home from the failed campaign speaks more loudly than any of the words he actually used. It was like he threw a party but never specified the occasion—it could have been a celebration, could have been a wake, and in the absence of a declaration of either it was hard to tell whether the intention was laughter or tears. That odd oversight doesn’t necessarily demand regime change. Demanding that people be fired from their jobs for anything but egregious misconduct is bad karma. This isn’t what this is about. What

ALT article preview: in his memoir Nice Guys Finish Last, the Hall of Fame manager Leo Durocher rehearses his thought process during key moments of in-game decision-making, sometimes reminding himself, “I’m not nailed to the bench.” He meant that at moments when a game threatened to get out of control, he had a choice between being a passive spectator and making a decision that might influence the outcome. This is not only a handy thing for a manager to remember, but also for those of us watching from the stands or the sofa to keep in mind: Sometimes a crisis moves so quickly that even those in authority—coaches, generals, presidents—might get so caught up they forget their agency and freeze. In fact, it happens all the time. The key moment in the Game 7 of the late National League Championship Series between the Diamondbacks and the Phillies, whether by leverage index or plain common sense, came in the bottom of the fourth inning. The Phillies, having just taken a 2-1