NLDS Game Two: Wheeling and Dealing
And, a look at the National League East's best prospects.
Pregame Pepper
. . . Sticks and Stones Dept.—The Dodgers may have a 2-0 lead in the National League division series, but they didn’t exactly get it with their bats: they’re hitting .194 overall and .167 against Phillies starters Cristopher Sánchez and Jesús Luzardo. Sanchez took a one-hitter into the sixth in Game One; Luzardo took one into the seventh in Game Two.
Unfortunately for the Phillies, the Dodgers’ first two NLDS starters pitched a little bit better. Sure, the Phillies ambushed Shohei Ohtani for three runs in the Game One second, but then he allowed just a single hit to his last seventeen hitters. Then Blake Snell pitched six one-hit innings in Game Two.
. . . Skinflint and Steel Dept.—The Athletic’s Jayson Stark reminds us Dodger starting pitchers made nine starts over the past month of at least five innings each and gave up two, one, or no hits.
The Dodgers’ Achilles heel: their bullpen. Its 2025 fielding-independent pitching rate (FIP): 4.11. Their best reliever by ERA (2.95) and FIP (2.82), lefthander Jack Dreyer, hasn’t been seen since Game One of the wild card series the Dodgers swept from the Reds.
. . . October Surprise Dept.—Three of the Phillies’ biggest October guns have gone quiet uncharacteristically in this division series: Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, and Trea Turner combined are 2-for-21/11 strikeouts/four walks/no hits with men in scoring position before Turner sent a run home with a single in the Game Two eighth.
Not that the Dodgers’ biggest boppers are bopping that much more powerfully. Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Ohtani are 4-for-25 together, and Ohtani suffered the extremely rare affliciton of four strikeouts at the plate in Game One.
. . . Home Cooked Dept.—At 55-26, the Phillies had baseball’s best home record this year. Now, the Phillies must win two straight at Dodger Stadium to have a prayer of bringing this division series back to Citizens Bank Park. They did win the season series against the Dodgers, including two of three in Los Angeles down the stretch, but taking two now might be an uphill climb. Might.
In Case You Missed It . . .
. . . Rays of Hope Dept.—The Rays have new owners, a group led by Florida real estate developer Patrick Zalupski having bought the team from Stu Sternberg for $1.67 billion last week. The group promises to finish fixing Tropicana Field but also to hunt a site for a new ballpark they hope to open in time to play the 2029 season.
Leading Off
NLDS Game Two: Wheeling and Dealing
Bunt thwarted. Eleventh-hour Phillies uprising tamped down.
By Jeff Kallman
Eight years ago, Keith Law—then with ESPN, with The Athletic since 2020—wrote Smart Baseball, which included an analysis of the sacrifice bunt and whether it leaves a team with better or lesser scoring chances after it’s executed. Law examined “six common situations” where a manager would go to the bunt.
According to Law’s analysis (he examined 2015, but the results seem to hold just about any full season), only one such “bunt situation” gave the bunting team a better chances of scoring after the bunt than before it: men on first and second and nobody out. (65 percent chance before the bunt; 70 percent chance after it.)
One other situation, Law determined, left the team with a 50/50 post-bunt scoring chance at best: a man on second and nobody out. (66 percent before the bunt; 67 percent after it.)
Writing before the designated hitter became universal (at last, and thank God and His servant William Chase Temple for it!), Law said, “If we’re in a high-offense environment, like Coors Field or minor league parks like those in Albuquerque or Lancaster, California, the bunt makes no sense for non-pitchers because . . . merely putting the ball in play is usually favorable for the hitter.”
Come the bottom of the ninth of National League Division Series Game Two, the Phillies began the frame against beleaguered Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen (isn’t most of the Dodger bullpen classifiable as beleaguered this year?) with three hits including a pair of doubles into left field from J.T. Realmuto and Nick Castellanos to close a 4-1 deficit to 4-3 . . . with Castellanos on second and still nobody out.
That’s when Phillies manager Rob Thomson decided it was time to get cute, not time to go for the Dodgers’ throat.
He decided it was time to ask Bryson Stott—a late-game pinch hitter, kept aboard to play second base—to do what he’d done exactly twice on the regular season. He asked Stott, a lefthanded hitter, to bunt against Treinen’s relief, lefthander Alex Vesia.
As the Dodger infield milled around the mound during the pitching change, manager Dave Roberts handed the ball to Vesia and told his infielders, “You guys figure it out.” The optimist would call that phenomenal trust. The cynic would probably call it things that can’t be repeated in polite company.
But what was to figure? The Dodgers expected a bunt attempt or two. Mookie Betts, the six-time Gold Glove-winning right fielder who’s transitioned to the middle infield almost seamlessly, and who led the National League’s shortstops with twelve defensive zone runs above the league average this year, piped up accordingly with a grand idea.
The Mookie Monster suggested the Dodgers spin the wheel.
As in, the wheel play. Also known as the rotation play. Stott was most likely to bunt the ball toward the third base side against the lefthanded pitcher. The Dodgers’s right-side fielders weren’t really going to be needed in the first base line choke. But the Dodgers bought in. And cashed in.
Third baseman Max Muncy was five-sixths of the way down the third base line to grab the bunted ball. He threw a perfect strike to Betts arriving at third so far ahead of Castellanos a Guernsey cow could have walked between the pair without touching either before Betts dropped the tag on the Phillies’s right fielder.
The Phillies weren’t quite dead yet, but you might as well have begun writing their game obituary.
“They ran it as perfectly as you can,” said Stott postgame. “They just did it exactly how they drew it up.” They did it so exactly that neither Stott nor any other Phillie, all of whom are trained to look for it, even noticed the Dodgers spinning the wheel.
Betts had a lot to do with that, too, Thomson said postgame. “Mookie did a great job of disguising the wheel play,” he said. “We teach our guys that if you see wheel, just pull it back and slash because you’ve got all kinds of room in the middle. But Mookie broke so late that it was tough for Stotty to pick it up.”
Muncy credited the Mookie Monster’s brains. “It speaks to his baseball IQ and his intuition in that situation,” he said of the mound conference that led to the wheel suggestion. “We were all thinking it, but Mookie was definitely the one that brought it up and said we need to do this.”
Harrison Bader pinch hit for Brandon Marsh and sent a single into left for first and second. (Yes, I too suspect that if Thomson let Stott hit away there’s a chance the Bader single might have meant bases loaded and one out.) Pinch hitter Max Kepler grounded one to first that forced Bader at second but set up first and third for the Phillies.
Suddenly the Dodger wheeling and dealing on the Stott bunt looked even more significant.
It’s a shame the nebulous save rule hands saves to pitchers who sometimes make their own disasters to save themselves from. If ever a save should have been awarded Monday night, it should have been to the Dodger defense. And they still had one more stunt yet to have to pull.
The Phillies’ pinprickings of Vesia compelled Roberts to take no chances. He brought in Roki Sasaki, his platinum-gilded pitching signing, who struggled during the season thanks to shoulder trouble, but who now worked out of the bullpen to get back on the proverbial horse. He’d looked doing it in a couple of gigs prior to the division series, including one in the wild card series.
He got Trea Turner to whack one on the ground toward second baseman Tommy Edman. Edman picked the ball clean but threw on an offline hop, the ball heading behind the base, where Freddie Freeman fell to his knees leaning forward to snatch the ball while managing somehow to keep a foot on the pad for the game-ending out.
All of a sudden, that magnificent pitching duel between Phillies starter Jesus Lúzardo and Dodgers starter Blake Snell seemed like a supporting act.
All of a sudden, the Dodgers prying four runs out of three Phillies relievers in the seventh—including a two-run single by Will Smith and an RBI single to follow by Shohei Ohtani—seemed like foreplay to the main events.
All of a sudden, it was close to simple to forget Turner singling Kepler home with the first Phillie run in the eighth.
Now the set goes to Dodger Stadium, with the Phillies one loss from winter vacation, and hoping the wheels haven’t come off entirely.
Jeff Kallman edits the Wednesday and Thursday editions of Here’s the Pitch. He lives in Las Vegas. You can reach him at easyace1955@gmail.com/easyace1955@outlook.com.
Cleaning Up
The Prospects of the NL East
The finest on the farms of one of MLB’s tougher divisions
By Allen Settle
The National League East’s future looks bright, anchored by a strong blend of elite prospects and impressive organizational depth. The Braves, the Marlins, the Mets, the Phillies, and the Nationals each boast multiple rising talents poised to reshape the division’s landscape in the coming years.
Here are my top twenty NL East prospects:
20. Aroon Escobar (2B, Phillies, AA)—Escobar features a 50+ grade in hit tool, power, run, arm, and fielding. He hit 15 homers and stole 24 bases in 2025.
19. Justin Crawford (OF, Phillies, AAA)—Crawford’s 75-grade speed is his carrying tool. The 6’ 3” outfielder stole 47 bases in 2023, 42 in 2024, and 46 in 2025.
18. Starlyn Caba (SS, Marlins, A)—The centerpiece in the trade that sent former Fish Jesus Luzardo to the Phillies, Caba is known for his elite defense (70-grade). While his contact abilities at the plate are a work in progress, Caba’s top-tier defense compares to four-time Gold Glove winner Andrelton Simmons.
17. JR Ritchie (SP, Braves, AAA)—A recently emerged top-100 prospect, Ritchie features a fastball in the high-90s, a plus breaking ball, and solid control. He appears fully recovered from his 2023 Tommy John surgery.
16. Jacob Reimer (3B, Mets, AA)—The 6’2” Reimer is a prototypical third baseman. He has solid power, a strong arm, and solid defense. Unfortunately, the rising prospect is blocked by a major-league logjam of Mark Vientos, Brett Baty, Ronny Mauricio, and (soon) Jett Williams in a crowded Mets infield.
15. Cam Caminiti* (SP, Braves, A)—The former two-way player is currently the top prospect in Atlanta’s system. His 60-grade fastball, which tops out at 98 MPH, complements his four-pitch mix. He is positioned to be the next beneficiary of the Braves’ pitching development factory.
14. Aiva Arquette (SS, Marlins, A+)—Standing at 6’5”, 220lbs, the 21-year-old seventh overall pick of 2025 has a similar profile to super-prospect Leo De Vries.
13. Jarlin Susana (SP, Nationals, AA)—Few (perhaps no) other prospects have stuff that can contend with Susana’s 70-grade fastball and changeup. While his control is a major issue, he could transition into an amazing bullpen weapon.
12. Brandon Sproat (SP, Mets, MLB)—Once a riser and faller in the Mets’ farm system, Sproat recaptured his form and excelled in AAA and at the major league level. He profiles as a solid number three or four starter, with the upside to become a number two option.
11. Eli Willits (SS, Nationals, CPX)—The 17-year-old Willits already has the hit tool and speed to compete in MLB. If his power develops with age, he could easily emerge as a top-10 prospect.
10. Travis Sykora (SP, Nationals, AA)—Though the injured Sykora won’t pitch until late 2026 (at the earliest) due to Tommy John surgery, he was recently a Jonah-Tong-level pitching prospect.
9. Robby Snelling (SP, Marlins, AAA)—Robby Snelling is a high-upside left-handed pitcher known for his mid-90s fastball, a high-spin curveball regarded as one of the best in the 2022 draft class, and a developing changeup. He has a real chance to break camp in the Marlins’ rotation in 2026.
8. Jett Williams (UTIL, Mets, AA)—The 5’7” Williams is refreshingly well-rounded. He has experience at second base, shortstop, and in the outfield. He has a solid combination of power (seventeen homers in 2025) and speed (34 steals), making him the perfect super utility option.
It is worth noting that a potential logjam in the Mets infield could make Jett a trade chip this offseason.
7. Jonah Tong (SP, Mets, MLB)—Tong’s 70-grade fastball features elite vertical break. His velocity, unique mechanics, and arm slot, and overall skill give him a sky-high ceiling. However, Tong may need to develop one more secondary pitch to reach full potential.
6. Aidan Miller (SS, Phillies, AA)—Aidan Miller profiles as a five-tool prospect with advanced hit/bat-speed, growing power, improving baserunning instincts, and defensive potential at shortstop or third base.
5. Joe Mack (C, Marlins, AAA)—Mack already has Gold-Glove level defense. His improved hitting (.258 BA in 2025), solid OPS, and strong arm behind the plate make him one of the more intriguing catching prospects in the Marlins’ system.
4. Andrew Painter (SP, Phillies, AAA)—Once the #1 consensus pitching prospect in baseball, Painter seems to have overcome his Tommy John surgery and regained his top-tier form.
3. Carson Benge (OF, Mets, AA)—Benge is already a polished hitter with gap-to-gap power. He is clearly New York’s centerfielder of the future and has a chance to make a major impact as early as 2026.
2. Nolan McLean (SP, Mets, MLB)—McLean has already shown ace potential at the highest level: a 2.06 ERA/2.97 FIP in eight MLB starts during late-season 2025. Elite spin rates on his curveball and changeup, combined with a 70-grade splitter, combine for a truly special profile.
1. Thomas White (SP, Marlins, AAA)—White profiles as Blake Snell 2.0. His 60-grade fastball and 65-grade slider give him unquestionable ace potential. Like Snell, his lack of control will be his only Achilles heel.
(* Cam Caminiti is a cousin of the late former National League Most Valuable Player Award winner Ken Caminiti, who blew the whistle on himself and baseball’s issues with actual/alleged performance-enhancing substances to Sports Illustrated in 2002, the year after he retired as a major league third baseman.—Ed.)
Allen Settle is an MLB writer who has never given up on his passion for the beautiful game of baseball! He has worked as a contributor for the FanSided network, covering both the New York Mets and the Miami Marlins. Currently, Allen covers baseball prospects at prospects1500.com and is a general MLB writer at YardBarker. You can connect with him on X at @AllenSettleMLB.
Extra Innings: Wheel Down . . .
Game Seven, 1986 World Series, bottom of the eighth. Darryl Strawberry led off for the Mets with a mammoth home run providing needed insurance. A single, a ground out, and an intentional walk later, Mets relief pitcher Jesse Orosco—in the extremely unlikely position of batting. All Shea Stadium expecting bunt, including the Red Sox. (The call: Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola, NBC.)
Last Licks
Casey would stand in the dugout and say real loud, “If I was a lefthanded pitcher, here’s what I would do right now.” That’s when I knew he was talking to me. There were men on first and second, and you knew the other team wanted to bunt them over. Casey would say, “Here’s what I would do. I would let him bunt. I would throw him a little slider, and I would break toward the third base side, and I would throw his ass out at third.” Casey had the guts to tell you what he’d do in a certain situation when it cam up on the ball field.
—Al Jackson, lefthanded pitcher, who played for Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel on the 1962-64 Mets, to Robert W. Creamer, in Stengel: His Life and Times. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.)
Know Your Editors
Here’s the Pitch is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [biggentleben@hotmail.com] handles the Monday issue with Dan Freedman [dfreedman@lionsgate.com] editing Tuesday and Jeff Kallman [easyace1955@outlook.com] at the helm Wednesday and Thursday. Original editor Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com], does the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Former editor Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] is now co-director [with Benjamin Chase and Jonathan Becker] of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, which publishes this newsletter and the annual ACTA book of the same name. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HtP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.