October 21st, 2025: World Series, Tucker, Skubal, Free Agency, Warren, Center Field

Terrible news: Jesus Montero died this past weekend. He was only 35. Reports out of Venezuela say he was hit by a drunk driver while riding his motorcycle. Just awful. If you’re reading this, you know Montero was a very big deal back in the day. I remember thinking he would pepper the short porch for a decade after his two-homer game against the Orioles. What a shame. Let’s get into today’s quick hit style post, starting with some World Series thoughts.

1. I know I’m supposed to hate the Dodgers because they beat the Yankees in the World Series last year, but I have a hard time doing it, and it feels hypocritical to complain about the Dodgers winning all the time when I’m a Yankees fan who spent his formative years watching a dynasty. Last year the Dodgers won the World Series with 2.5 starting pitchers (the 0.5 being Jack Flaherty on extra rest because he was unusable on normal rest) and made it work with offense and a great bullpen. This year their bullpen stinks and they’re making it work with starters. I mean, their worst postseason starter is Tyler Glasnow. The Dodgers brought in all these high-end starters with the hope enough of them would be healthy to lead the way in October, and they’re all healthy. On some level, that’s just luck. But also, you lessen your dependence on luck when you build a roster with this much talent, and give yourself that much margin of error. I’m not upset the Dodgers are ruining baseball (if you want to put it that way). I’m upset the Yankees aren’t the team ruining it. The lesson to take from the Dodgers is to spend your money and trade your prospects for stars, and don’t overextend yourself for complementary players. Pay what it takes to get the Shoheis and Mookies and Freemans and Yamamotos, because those kinda players don’t become available often. There are Bs and Cs available to round out the roster every winter and every trade deadline. The As are the most stable performers year after year. They get you to the promised land. The Yankees have to get back in the business of buying As. They were a little too proud of how well Plan B worked this year.

2. Don Mattingly is, finally, going to the World Series. He is the Blue Jays’ bench coach, not the manager, but still, he finally got there 43 years after breaking into the big leagues. Mattingly went to the postseason just the one time as a player (1995 ALDS), and he got to the Championship Series three times as a coach (2004 Yankees and 2008-09 Dodgers) and once as a manager (2013 Dodgers). This is his first World Series trip. I can't say I'm rooting for the Blue Jays to win the World Series (quite the opposite, in fact), but if they win, I’ll be happy Donnie Baseball finally got a ring. The Blue Jays have a Team of Destiny vibe going right now and maybe they’ll make good on it and win a title. Much will be made about their MLB low 17.8 K% this season and not enough about them slugging .523 as a team this postseason. Their pitching is not great, particularly the middle of that bullpen, but they’ve made it work long enough to get to the pennant. Vlad Guerrero Jr. is the best hitter on the planet right now, and if stupid shit like Ernie Clement hitting .429/.444/.619 and Andrés Giménez hitting home runs in back-to-back games for the first time since 2022 continues, the Blue Jays will win the World Series. The Dodgers have an air of invincibility about them right now because they so thoroughly dominated the Brewers, but you know how it goes in this game. You're unbeatable one week and 1-for-33 with RISP the next. Part of me is happy Mattingly is finally going to the World Series and the rest of me hopes he remains ringless. Sorry, Donnie, but the game is the game.

3. Jeff Passan is a made man, but the idea that the Brewers beating the Dodgers in the NLCS might have staved off a lockout is laughable. A salary cap has nothing to do with competitive balance. MLB and the owners have done a great job making everyone think it is, but it is and always will be about keeping player salaries down. That’s why the league pushed for a salary cap in 1994 even though the Expos had the best record in the game, the Reds were great, and Jerry Reinsdorf’s White Sox were in the middle of the good year in their “good once every 10 years” cycle. But sure, the Brewers winning the NLCS a year before the lockout might’ve prevented it. Alrighty. As for those Brewers, they had a great season, but a lot of folks went overboard with the praise for their roster construction and style of play. They were the same old Brewers. They just ran into 3-4 more wins than usual. Here’s what I wrote about them on Opening Day:

Brewers: They’re the NL Rays. Smartest team in the league, every move gets praised, they win more games than projected every year, then they immediately lose in the postseason to a team that operates similarly, only with more money. What a frustrating existence that must be.

The Brewers did beat the Cubs (baseball’s smallest big market team) in the NLDS, otherwise I think that holds up. They got to the NLCS and got waxed by a Dodgers team that operates similarly, only with more money. Imagine what we’d say about the Yankees if they finished with the best record in baseball, then hit .194/.270/.326 (68 wRC+) in nine postseason games like the Brewers did? I doubt we’d hear much about their brilliant roster construction. The Mariners, meanwhile, oof, what a missed opportunity. Consider:

• Cal Raleigh hit 60 home runs and had a historically great season overall. He won’t do that again because almost no one does that again.

• Their tightwad ownership okayed a payroll increase to add two quality rentals (Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez) at the trade deadline.

• They had two chances to win one game to clinch their first ever pennant, and they had a two-run lead in the seventh inning of one of those games.

• The AL kinda stinks. Unless you run into the 2024 Royals and Guardians, you’re not gonna get a much easier path to the World Series.

The Mariners always find a way to let their fans down, don’t they? That’s not fair. They fought hard for seven games and lost a close Game 7 to a great team, but their vaunted rotation was not good in the ALCS, the bullpen was overworked, and the 7-8-9 hitters completely no-showed no matter who they put there. It was three innings worth of easy outs every game. Considering the Mariners had never won more than two games in an ALCS previously, this was the most successful season in their history. That ending was rough though. Not much else to say about the Mariners. I wonder how the ALCS would have played out had Luis Castillo and Logan Gilbert not had to come out of the bullpen in that 15-inning  ALDS Game 5 against the Tigers, and thrown their rotation so out of whack.

4. Let’s get to the Yankees now. I’m not as gung-ho about him as I was Juan Soto last winter, but I am very much in favor of the Yankees signing Kyle Tucker. He would have to play left field, something he hasn’t done since 2020 (when he played there full-time), but there’s no reason to think he can’t do it. It’s not like he lacks the athleticism or instincts for it. Besides, Tucker in left field wouldn’t be a forever move. How long until Aaron Judge plays more games at DH than in right field? Two years? Maybe three? (What happens with Jasson Domínguez if the Yankees sign Tucker is a question for another time.) I’ve seen it parroted that Tucker had a down year in 2025, but did he really? 

2024 is the outlier. 2025 is right in line with his other full seasons (2021-23). Tucker was limited to 78 games in 2024 because he fouled a ball into his shin and suffered a hairline fracture, an injury the Astros mismanaged. Between Tucker’s shin last year and Yordan Alvarez’s hand this year, plus some pitcher stuff over the years, Houston’s injury management has come under fire. Excluding 2024, Tucker has been a metronomic 136-ish wRC+ hitter and +4.5-ish WAR player. He did that this year even though he played a month with a broken bone in his hand (suffered on a slide into second base). I mean:

• Kyle Tucker: .266/.377/.464 (136 wRC+)

• Mystery Player: .272/.334/.480 (125 wRC+)

Mystery Player’s slash line may look familiar. It’s Cody Bellinger’s. Bellinger was awesome! His 29 home runs were his most since his NL MVP season in 2019, and it was his best all-around season since 2019 too. But he still lagged behind Tucker, who played a month with a broken hand and I’m being led to believe had a down year. I don’t mean to knock Cody. He was great. I’m just pointing out how good Tucker, who is 18 months younger than Bellinger, is even if he doesn’t provide the same outfield versatility. Since the end of the ALDS, I’ve been thinking about the post-Judge Yankees. Not the “after Judge retires” Yankees, I mean the Yankees after Judge ages out as an elite hitter. Who takes over as the centerpiece on offense? We don’t have to worry about this just yet, Judge isn’t slowing down, but it is a question the Yankees will have to answer sooner rather than later. This is why losing Soto hurt so much. He was going to pair with peak Judge in the present and be the offensive centerpiece when Judge is no longer that guy in the future. Tucker is not Soto. He’s more like the next best thing, and just as importantly, he’s what’s available right now. I have no idea what it’ll take to sign Tucker. It won’t be Soto money because he’s not as good or as young (or as durable), but it will be a lot. He’s a $30M+ a year player and you probably have to sign him deep into his 30s. Whatever it is, it’ll be too many years and too many dollars, because that’s what it takes to sign top tier players. For me, Tucker is Plan A this offseason, and I’m exhausting that possibility before pivoting back to Bellinger, who’s making a habit of being my Plan B.

5. Last week it was reported that the Tigers offered Tarik Skubal a four-year extension worth less than $100M last offseason, and that there was a $250M gap (!) in talks. That indicates Skubal and Scott Boras are looking to break Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s pitcher record $325M contract. On one hand, I understand where the Tigers were coming from. Skubal was two years away from free agency at the time and the two most recent long-term extensions given to starting pitchers at that service time level were Mitch Keller (four years and $71.6M) and Pablo López (four years and $73.5M). There was precedent there. On the other hand, come on. Mitch Keller and Pablo López are not contract benchmarks for the guy who had just won the Cy Young. Garrett Crochet signed a six-year deal worth $170M when he was at the same service time level as Skubal last offseason, and he had one season as a starter under his belt. That four-year, sub-$100M offer was made last year and a lot can and has changed since then. The fact there was such an enormous gap in talks suggests someone, very likely the Tigers given the numbers that are out there, will have to budge in a big way to get a deal done. All that is to say I think the chances Skubal gets traded this offseason are higher than I thought they were a week ago. That doesn’t mean the Tigers are more likely to trade him now. It means it’s more likely to happen than I realized, if that makes sense. Instead of, say, a 5% chance of a trade, it might be closer to 20%. I dunno. I would still bet against it but the winds are definitely blowing in the direction of a trade. It goes without saying the Yankees should be all over Skubal even though it is only one year of him. It sucks the Yankees were unable to keep Juan Soto long-term, but we all saw how impactful one year of a star player can be. I would’ve said the Yankees should be all over Skubal even if Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón were perfectly healthy, which they are not. Cole won’t return until midseason and Rodón just had some loose bodies taken out of his elbow. Skubal is, at worst, the second best pitcher in baseball behind Paul Skenes. There is never a bad time to get a guy like that, and the Cole/Rodón injuries make the need for a starter even greater.

6. There’s a lockout coming next offseason, Rob Manfred is all but shouting it from the rooftops, so I went back and looked at the 2020-21 offseason to see whether it might tell us anything about what to expect in free agency the year before a lockout. That was coming out of the pandemic season though, which was an unusual situation, plus it wasn’t widely known there would be a lockout like there is now (though the owners might’ve known). Also, that was a weak free agent class. Looking at MLBTR’s top 50 free agents, most of those guys received contracts in line with projections. I’m not sure the 2020-21 offseason tells us anything useful about what to expect this winter. I do wonder if the looming work stoppage and a generally underwhelming free agent class will lead to a lot of short-term contracts like Pete Alonso and Alex Bregman last year, Cody Bellinger and Blake Snell the year before, and so on. Those are the kinda deals – short-term and big money – where the Yankees should make hay, but they’ve ignored them. Snell and Matt Chapman would’ve been perfect for the 2024 Yankees. Carlos Correa would have fit wonderfully in 2022, when he signed his original short-term deal with the Twins before getting the long-term deal the following offseason. Would the Yankees pounce if, say, Bo Bichette is still sitting out there in February because teams are concerned about his defense and the knee injury that’s sidelined this postseason? What if no one jumps on Dylan Cease because his performance is so volatile and because they don’t want to give up a draft pick? Is Alonso really going to get a long-term contract this time around? Other than being a year older, what’s changed since last year? I don’t think you can sit back in November and December (and January) and just wait around to see who is still sitting out there in February, and then get to work. To me, the late offseason short-term deal market is a time to be opportunistic, and the Yankees can do that with their resources. Build out your roster like you normally do in the offseason, then see what makes sense as a “we didn’t expect this guy to still be available but we can make it work” pickup as Spring Training approaches. History says the Yankees will sit that market out and it’s unfortunate. There are some great deals to be had there. Maybe even that one last piece who puts them over the top in October.

7. Aaron Boone had a mostly blunder-free postseason, which is probably the best we can hope for. His biggest mistake, in my opinion, was bringing Will Warren into the fourth inning of ALDS Game 2 with men on first and second (and no outs), and the top of the order coming up. That situation calls for an actual reliever (Camilo Doval was the best option assuming David Bednar and Devin Williams weren’t going to be used that early in the game). Warren let things get away, and that was that. Otherwise, Warren had a solid enough year: 4.44 ERA (4.07 FIP and 4.54 xERA) in 162.1 innings. Not great, obviously, but not terrible either, especially for a rookie who didn’t miss a start and went from what, No. 8 (?) on the depth chart to No. 4. What surprises me about Warren’s season is the performance of his individual pitches, specifically that his breaking balls stunk. Here are Statcast’s pitch values (min. 100 thrown per pitch type):

• Four-seamer: +11 runs (20th out of 496)

• Sinker: +6 runs (31st out of 295)

• Changeup: -5 runs (212th of 226)

• Curveball: -7 runs (187th out of 196)

• Sweeper: -10 runs (161st out of 161) (!!!)

Two very good (dare I say great?) fastballs and three junky secondaries. Warren had the least effective sweeper in baseball, which is shocking because that’s his bread and butter pitch. Before the season, Baseball Prospectus (subs. req’d) called it a “plus-plus airbender that rates among the best (sweepers) in baseball.” FanGraphs said it was “easily his nastiest pitch” and Baseball America (subs. req’d) had it as a “potential plus pitch.” Instead, opponents hit .336 with a .569 SLG (.368 xwOBA) against Warren’s sweeper, albeit with a strong 33.0% whiff rate. Look at his sweeper location heat maps:

Because Warren spun so many sweepers down the middle to lefties, they had a .409 xwOBA against the pitch (righties had a still too high .342 xwOBA). Sweepers have a big platoon split and it showed with Warren. It’s easy to say he should shelve it against lefties, but what is he supposed to throw them? His changeup and curveball performed poorly too. The solution is to locate better (easier said than done), not take away weapons. Spotty command has always been an issue with Warren, and because he lacks premium velocity, he doesn’t have a big margin of error. He doesn’t get away with many mistakes. They tend to get hit hard. Warren’s prospect stock was always tied to him being a plug-and-play back-end starter more than someone with big ceiling, and that’s exactly what he was for the Yankees in 2025. A back-end starter who was out there every five days. Maybe he could offer more as a reliever, but the Yankees are short on starters at the moment, and teams need guys who can give them 150-ish capable innings and help them get to the finish line of the regular season. I was just surprised to see Warren’s fastballs performed so well and his secondaries performed so poorly. That is pretty much the exact opposite of what I expected coming into the season.

8. While on the subject of pitch run values, any guesses on the best pitch in baseball this year? It was Tarik Skubal’s changeup at +25 runs. Only seven other pitches were at +20 runs or better: Chris Sale’s slider and the four-seamers belonging to Jacob deGrom, Kevin Gausman, Hunter Greene, Ryne Nelson, Paul Skenes, and Bryan Woo. The best Yankees’ pitch? Max Fried’s cutter and Carlos Rodón’s slider tied at +12 runs. Anyway, I was poking around the pitch run value leaderboards and noticed the worst pitches in baseball are all Rockies’ fastballs:

Not good pitchers, though I have to think Coors Field is messing with the pitch run value algorithm. The Rockies haven’t figured out how to win in Coors Field yet and public analysts haven’t figured out the park factor yet. Anyway, I bring this up to note that the Rockies are hiring a new GM, and they say they will hire someone from outside the organization. They need it. Promoting from within is admirable, but it's been two decades and it isn't working. Given their situation (three straight 100 loss seasons, including 119 in 2025), I assume the next GM will come in and tear the roster down to the studs, in which case center fielder Brenton Doyle could become available. He’s a demon in center field and on the bases …

… and he showed some offensive promise in 2024 (.260/.317/.446 and 97 wRC+) before backsliding in 2025 (.233/.274/.376 and 65 wRC+). Center field is a weak position league-wide and, let’s be real here, if the Yankees re-sign Cody Bellinger, there’s a chance they’re looking for a center fielder again in a year or two because he’s aged out of the position defensively (kinda like Johnny Damon back in the day). Doyle can play the hell out of center field and perhaps the Yankees can get more out of him offensively than the incompetent Rockies. Jacob Young could be in a similar situation with the Nationals. They just hired a new POBO from outside the organization and have several young outfielders to build around (Dylan Crews, Robert Hassell, James Wood), so maybe Young becomes available too. He’s another elite defender who can’t hit (.231/.296/.287 and 66 wRC+ in 2025), but depending what the Yankees do elsewhere with their roster, maybe they have room for a glove-only center fielder. Will the Brewers non-tender Garrett Mitchell? He’s had so many injuries, mostly major shoulder stuff (including multiple surgeries), but he can play center very well and has shown some hard-hit ability in the past. Milwaukee’s set in the outfield and may not want to sink a projected $1M into a player who’s played 130 games the last three years (that’s MLB and minors). I dunno. The Yankees need a center fielder and I’m just looking around at some less obvious candidates, like Doyle and Mitchell and Young. Those new GMs and POBOs have no attachment to the players they inherent and tend to be more open to trading them than their predecessors, hence the Doyle and Young mentions.

9. If you subscribe to Lance Brozdowski’s pitching newsletter (there’s a free version), then you know an under-the-radar storyline this postseason is pitchers changing their approach. For example, Cam Schlittler threw more sinkers than four-seamers to the Red Sox’s righty bats in Wild Card Series Game 3, the first time he’s done that all year. Blake Snell doubled his changeup usage to righties in NLCS Game 1 against the Brewers. Pitchers who zigged during the regular season are zagging hard in the postseason, which only ups the difficulty level. Hitting in the postseason is already hard enough because you only see the other team’s best/most trusted arms and the matchups are optimized to the nth degree (also, doesn't it seem like every defender is perfectly positioned?), and now your scouting report might be obsolete. Both the analytically driven scouting report the team provides and the hitter’s own internal scouting report. I have 30 at-bats against this guy and he likes to show me first pitch sliders and sinkers in when he’s behind in the count, that kinda thing. Did you watch ALDS Game 5 between the Mariners and Tigers? Seven Mariners pitchers threw 209 pitches in 15 innings and only 78 of the 209 were fastballs, or 37%. It was a breaking ball or a changeup/splitter almost two-thirds of the time. Also, teams are more comfortable throwing rookies in the postseason nowadays, so also might face a guy you’ve never seen before (the Red Sox had never faced Schlittler, the Yankees had never faced Trey Yesavage, etc.). I’m not sure why I’m bringing this up. I guess just to point out how absurdly hard it is to hit in October. How do you combat all that? I guess you just need as many good hitters as possible and an offense that is good at everything (contact, power, plate discipline, etc), and also hope everyone is locked in at the same time. Having good players isn’t enough. You need good players, they need to be healthy, and they all need to be playing well at the same time. Hard sport, man.

10. And finally, I’ve reached the point where I think there needs to be a penalty for repeated PitchCom issues. A year or two ago I had someone tell me 99% of PitchCom issues are human error, meaning the volume was down or someone forgot to charge it, and it feels like there have been more issues with each passing year, not fewer. You’d think they’d learn to charge the thing and turn the volume up, right? There is no chance – zero – all these PitchCom issues (especially in the postseason) are legitimate. Guys are doing it to buy more time for the reliever warming up, to give themselves a breather during a long inning, whatever. It’s a way around the pitch clock without burning a disengagement. My proposal: You get one PitchCom issue per inning. After that, you have to use regular signs the rest of the inning. My concern is you’re writing one non-disengagement/mound visit break per inning into the rules, which teams will undoubtedly use. You might even end up with more PitchCom breaks than before because I could easily be overestimating just how often they happen now. They happen a lot though. More than seems reasonable. It’s been a few years now. Teams and players should know to check the volume and the charge level. It’s time to figure out a way to cut down on the number of PitchCom issues. They’re a drag on the game, especially when you’re in the middle of an exciting rally and the pitching team needs more time to get a reliever hot or figure out how they want to approach the inning.

(Send your questions for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com. The random Yankee series is on hiatus, but feel free to send in requests for when it returns.)