On the flight to Houston when Kevin Gausman learned of his trade to his Chicago Cubs, the veteran right-hander was playing cards with fellow Toronto Blue Jays pitchers Max Scherzer, Shane Bieber and Jeff Hoffman.
“I had the worst three hands you can imagine,” Gausman said. “I should have known in that moment something good wasn’t going to come.”
Gausman said he lost “a lot of money.” Scherzer recalled, “we got him good.” And then, about an hour after Gausman left the card game, a Blue Jays staffer came to the back of the plane and summoned him to speak with manager John Schneider.
It was Aug. 2, the day before the trade deadline.
“I kind of knew at that point. I’ve never been called up to the front of the plane before,” said Gausman, a 14-year veteran.
Gausman said as Schneider informed him of his trade to the Cubs, both he and the manager grew emotional.
Together, they had been through so much.
Gausman signed a five-year, $110 million free-agent contract with the Blue Jays in December 2021. During his tenure, Schneider progressed from bench coach to interim manager to manager. And last season, the Jays came within two outs of winning the World Series, drawing the pitcher and manager even closer.
“It wasn’t necessarily pretty early on, but he’s gotten better and better, the more he’s done it,” Gausman said.
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Upon learning of the trade, Gausman said his thoughts immediately turned to his wife, Taylor, and young daughters, Sadie and Sutton. The family had grown to love Toronto. Leaving, he knew, would not be easy.
From a playing perspective, Gausman said his first series with the Cubs — a sweep of the two-time defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers at Wrigley Field — helped make the transition easier.
“Every single game was absolutely electric,” Gausman said. “It took me like two days to kind of flip it from being sad to being excited, to be like, ‘I have an opportunity to be part of something special here.’”
When Gausman makes his next start Wednesday in Milwaukee, he will be coming off a brilliant seven-inning performance, also against the Brewers, in which he struck out nine and walked one while allowing only one run. His ERA with the Cubs is 4.37, but his strikeout-to-walk ratio is 38-to-8 and the team has won five of his six starts.
The card game was a disaster. The trade is working out all right.
LSU recruiting before Kiffin!
Almost 15 years ago, Gausman hosted a high school infielder named Alex Bregman at LSU. Gausman chuckled at the memory, describing Bregman as, “young and pretty reckless, as most high school kids are on their visit.”
Former major leaguer Joey Gallo also was among the high schoolers sampling campus life, though he ultimately signed with the Texas Rangers as the 39th pick overall in 2012.
Bregman, when asked about the visit, smiled and said he didn’t remember it.
“We showed them a good time, that’s for sure,” Gausman said.
Bregman and Gausman actually never played together at LSU. Gausman left as a draft-eligible sophomore in 2012, going fourth overall to Baltimore. Bregman went second overall to Houston in 2015.
A three-peat in Milwaukee?
That’s right, an unprecedented third straight National League Manager of the Year award is not out of the question for the Milwaukee Brewers’ Pat Murphy.
The Brewers need only to finish 9-8 to reach 98 wins and set a franchise record for the second straight year. They’ve produced the best record in the NL with the youngest pitching staff in the majors, getting only nine starts combined from two righties who projected to be stalwarts in their rotation, Brandon Woodruff and Quinn Priester.
Murphy will face competition for NL Manager of the Year from the Atlanta Braves’ Walt Weiss, who has needed to patch together his rotation behind Chris Sale while also losing right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr. twice to the injured list; and the Philadelphia Phillies’ Don Mattingly, who has guided the team to a 72-44 record since taking over from Rob Thomson, second-best in the majors only to the Brewers in that span.
Pat Murphy was named NL Manager of the year in 2024 and 2025. (Norm Hall / Getty Images)
It’s not inconceivable Mattingly could win Manager of the Year and still get replaced by Alex Cora if the Phillies stumble in the playoffs. Cora was president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski’s first choice to replace Thomson. Stranger things have happened: Davey Johnson resigned from the Baltimore Orioles in 1997 on the day he was named AL Manager of the Year.
Murphy is one of only four to win the managerial award back-to-back — the Cleveland Guardians’ Stephen Vogt also has won two straight, and the Tampa Bay Rays’ Kevin Cash and Atlanta Braves’ Bobby Cox did it previously. Vogt this season probably is a longshot in the AL, where Cash, the Chicago White Sox’s Will Venable and Chad Tracy, interim manager of the Boston Red Sox, are all strong contenders.
Max Muncy’s incredible journey
Near the end of June, former Athletics general manager David Forst approached the Dodgers’ Max Muncy before a game in Sacramento, congratulated him on his career and told him, “We really blew that decision.”
Forst was referring, of course, to the A’s release of Muncy at the end of spring training in 2017. Muncy went on to become a three-time World Series champion and three-time All-Star. But he doesn’t hold a grudge against the A’s, who selected him in the fifth round out of Baylor in 2012.
Recalling their conversation earlier this summer, Forst said he was struck by how gracious Muncy was about the A’s dumping him, saying in effect, “I didn’t give you guys any reason at that point to believe in me.”
Muncy, now 36, explained: “It always means a lot to hear someone think they messed up with you. But ultimately, the fault is more on me than it is on them. I didn’t show them I could be a good player.”
The one thing Muncy said is “a little bit on” the A’s was their belief that he didn’t have a position.
“To be fair, I didn’t. But they also didn’t give me a chance to grow into a position,” Muncy said. “I had to learn third base and then learn second base basically at the major-league level, when all I had played was first base.
“Then I had to learn left field, had to learn right field. I never had any experience with those, not even in the minor leagues. So, I was trying to learn positions at the major-league level. And ultimately, I played terribly.”
Max Muncy has won three World Series championships with the Dodgers. (Brad Penner / Imagn Images)
In parts of two seasons with the A’s, Muncy batted .195 with five home runs and a .611 OPS. He has been far more productive in nine years with the Dodgers, and also has evolved into an above-average defender at third base.
Muncy’s 26 homers entering Monday, second on the club only to Shohei Ohtani’s 30, have moved him into second place on the all-time list for the Los Angeles version of the Dodgers. He is just 35 homers behind Eric Karros, who holds the Los Angeles franchise record at 270.
Lest anyone forget, Muncy also has hit 16 homers in the postseason, including an 18th-inning walkoff in Game 3 of the 2018 World Series and an eighth-inning solo shot that pulled the Dodgers within one run in Game 7 of the 2025 Fall Classic, which they won in 11 innings.
He has more plate appearances in the postseason (328) than he did in total with the A’s (245).
The roots of Mickey Gasper’s breakout
Shortly before spring training, Mickey Gasper was claimed on waivers twice within a span of 16 days. It didn’t faze him. Gasper spent the offseason preparing for the opportunity he’s seized with the Boston Red Sox, hitting all eight of his homers in his last 52 at-bats.
Gasper, who turns 31 next month, played for a month in the tense environment of the Dominican Winter League, then was summoned by Team Italy for the World Baseball Classic after former Red Sox catcher Kyle Teel suffered a strained right hamstring.
While Gasper didn’t appear in the WBC quarterfinal or semifinal, he said he practiced his breathing in the dugout, trying to feel the stadium, slowing down his heartbeat, talking to the batter as if he would be talking to himself in the box.
The commitment he showed even while not playing helped him become one of the Red Sox’s many unsung heroes of 2026.
“I was really in the moment in all of those games,” Gasper said. “It most definitely helped me between the ears.”
Around the horn
• Even after a poor outing against the New York Yankees on Saturday, Robbie Ray’s combined 3.39 ERA with the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres ranked 20th in the majors at the start of the week — not bad for a pitcher who turns 35 in October.
Ray credits his success this season to the further development of his changeup, an offering he added in 2025 after consulting with the pitch’s leading practitioner, Tarik Skubal.
Matthew Boyd, a fellow lefty and former teammate of both pitchers, connected Ray with Skubal, who shared his grip on his changeup. Ray threw the pitch 13 percent of the time last season, but has upped that usage to 19 percent this year. His delivery and arm action are different than Skubal’s, so he had to tinker with his grip and mechanics until he found a greater comfort level with the pitch.
• The Brewers are headed for their eight postseason appearance in the past nine years, so October baseball is hardly unfamiliar to their longest-tenured players. Still, this is a team that at times starts three position players 22 or younger — Jackson Chourio, Cooper Pratt and Luis Lara.
Per Stats Perform, the only team to start three position players 22 or younger in a World Series game was the 1914 Boston Braves — Les Mann (21, RF), Rabbit Maranville (22, SS) and Charlie Deal (22, 3B) in Game 2 against the Philadelphia Athletics.
That team, known as the “Miracle Braves” after rallying from last place in mid-July to win the National League pennant, won that World Series.
• How good has Pittsburgh Pirates closer Mason Montgomery been since the All-Star break? Nearly as good as the Houston Astros’ Josh Hader, a fellow left-hander who is one of the top closers in the sport.
Hader since the break is 13-for-13 in save chances with a 0.38 ERA, .270 opponents’ OPS and 28-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Montgomery is 9-for-9 with a 0.79 ERA, .355 opponents’ OPS and 37-to-6 strikeout-to-walk ratio.