The Giants are reportedly working to hire University of Tennessee baseball coach Tony Vitello as their new manager, which would make him “the first manager in major league history to jump directly from a college program to the big leagues without experience in a professional organization.” It would be a bold move from Buster Posey to pull from the increasingly sophisticated college game, and one with interesting connections. Vitello coached young Giants outfielder Drew Gilbert in college and is apparently close friends with Max Scherzer.
Jesus Montero, the former catcher and top prospect who played for the Mariners and Yankees, died from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident earlier this month. He was 35.
The Mariners and Blue Jays are headed to Game 7 tonight in the ALCS. Suffice to say, we will be back to preview the World Series once that is settled.
by Zach Crizer
In NLCS Game 4, Shohei Ohtani put on probably the best individual game performance in baseball history, and it sent the Dodgers to the World Series. He hit 3 homers. He pitched 6 scoreless innings and struck out 10. His second homer soared all the way over the right field stands, leaving his accomplished professional athlete teammates dumbfounded.
It was a marvel that somehow encapsulated the Ohtani experience more succinctly, and in more widespread distribution, than he had previously managed. With three MVPs secured and another on the way, the exhilarating process of becoming the consensus most talented player in the history of baseball was still not quite as impactful as demonstrating his most visually arresting talents all in one game, on national TV, in a game that sent the Dodgers to their second straight World Series. (When I put it like that, I guess I get it.)
Friends texted about Ohtani having not seen the game. Non-baseball fans sought comparisons and context for what Ohtani did, and the only reasonable answers ventured, by their very nature, into the realm of the absurd. (Friend of the newsletter Scott told a group chat it was like an NFL quarterback throwing five touchdowns and also collecting three interceptions as a defender. Totally impossible seeming! Which is the point!)
When Ohtani is re-explained and re-contextualized to newcomers or in the B-roll of history, there is now a go-to highlight reel, one that makes the Ohtani proposition crystal clear: No, no, he didn’t just pitch and hit. He did it all simultaneously, at a level that left the jaws of pitchers and hitters on the dugout floor.
Of course, he might top this sometime next week. And maybe that is really the Ohtani experience.
by Hannah Keyser
Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who will play his entire career for the only extant team in the country where he was born while his Hall-of-Fame father was playing for a beloved but now defunct former team, is slugging 1.000 in the postseason. When his team left Toronto, they were down 2-0 in the American League Championship Series. They retuned having clawed their way back into it but still on the brink of elimination.
The Blue Jays’ Game 6 victory was a team effort, but along the way Guerrero hit his sixth home run of the postseason.
It tied a franchise record for career postseason home runs. Now, Toronto will play Game 7 with a chance to secure their first pennant since 1993, six years before Vladdy was born, ready for this moment.
Vlad Guerrero Jr. is very very good. He’s been an All-Star every season since 2021, when he was 22 years old. Over that that span, he’s the ninth-best offensive player. He’s still only 26. Depending on how tonight’s game goes, this October will make him a hometown hero — or a household name. Either way, he’s in the midst of his career high-point so far, a main character on a triumphant narrative arc in a very good season of this never-ending series we call “Major League Baseball”.
Naturally, Ken Rosenthal — effectively the lead baseball writer at The Athletic — wrote about Guerrero after Game 6. Here’s how that column started: