I declare that the week between Christmas and New Year’s shall henceforth be known as the Lobe of the Year.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025)

there is no way the Colorado Rockies are a serious franchise archive.is/Hv7ab

The most vigorous expression of a resolution does not always coincide with the greatest vigour of the resolution itself. It is often flung out as a sort of prop to support a decaying conviction which, while strong, required no enunciation to prove it so. – Thomas Hardy

RIP Michael Ray Richardson, a troubled and gentle soul who provided two of the most memorable quotes in NBA history. Asked during the 1981-82 season about the state of his Knicks, he said, "The ship be sinkin'." Asked how far it could sink, Sugar added: "The sky's the limit." You can't make that up.

In what world is EIGHT MEN OUT “more like” CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA???

Updated my Clase/Ortiz column with the statement from Clase's lawyer

Source confirms: Lucas Giolito did not receive the qualifying offer from the Red Sox. He is a free agent without the QO weighing him down. The Red Sox won't get a bonus draft pick if he signs with another club.

Mamdani: "We can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him."

Have any questions about free agency and the start of the offseason that you'd like to ask our staff? If so, send us an email at [email protected], and we may answer it in an upcoming edition of our Weekly Mailbag!

Surprised John Smoltz isn't calling for the safety squeeze here

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are warming up in the bullpen right now.

peak baseball is indistinguishable from the feeling of hitting your head against a cement wall

LET'S PLAY 19

Yes, my slack avatar is Eric Adams in the Mets/Yankees hat from last postseason.

I called it. @baumann.bsky.social has receipts.

I love a slash bunt play

That was the best Smoltz statement to be immediately proven wrong of the World Series

Oh my Vlad! That was the coolest, smoothest 3-6-3 double play I've seen in a long time.

It would be really, deeply funny if Glasnow hit Giménez right now

Shohei Ohtani, who can barely stand up and keep his eyes open, is somehow 2-for-3 tonight

Has this World Series consistently featured the highest quality of baseball? No. Has it featured the widest array possible of beautiful, weird, specific baseball delights? Yes.

“It’s an important piece of the process—complete with its own politics and plenty of space for idiosyncrasy—and relievers agree: It’s a trip they have to make.” — @emmabaccellieri.bsky.social on relievers when the benches clear, from 2022

How much can you ask of one person, even someone as seemingly superhuman as Shohei Ohtani? Ohtani gave the Dodgers two scoreless innings. He looked exhausted, clearly wasn't at his best. They have Glasnow and Snell available in the bullpen. One man, not even Ohtani, can win you a World Series.

Kash Patel was angry about his publicly-available jet logs indicating he’d flown to see his musician girlfriend perform so he forced out a senior FBI official overseeing aviation, Bloomberg reports news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/...

This has to be what it was — didn’t look like what happened with Bichette in Game 3. He didn’t look like he thought it was Ball 4.

deadspin.com/the-writer-w... "Frey was at the Philadelphia Daily News by then. The two crossed paths while she covered the Minnesota vs. Toronto series in the ALCS. She told friends that the Twins’ Kirby Puckett had to keep Morris from physically attacking her."

I didn't see replays, and I don't know if I'm way off here, but I think Barger could have gone three-quarters of the way and still had to hold at third had that ball dropped.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

To anyone not into baseball I’m sorry but also get into baseball

BASEBALL WEDGIE!

Man, I feel for the fans at Rogers Centre who didn’t know that was a dead ball

You know who had a great at-bat against Roki the other night? Isiah Kiner-Falefa

Rooting not just for a Game 7 of the World Series, but another 18 inning game that goes so long on Saturday night that the clocks fall back at 2am before it’s ended and everyone gets tremendously confused about what time it is.

This is awful, and it should be illegal, but also … it’s funny that this is what the Cuomo campaign thinks will resonate with voters? Like, this feels like an SNL parody of the Cuomo campaign. Yet it’s an earnest ad and not satire! (Also, the SNL sketch would be so much funnier.)

Double that one-hopped the wall.

How? With that swing? How did he do that?

OK, now that Ernie Clement has a double, can the official scorer please change that groundball to Mookie Betts from a hit to an error?

God it’s like the Jays are up at bat every single fucking inning

Bold move to invite the star of Kevin Can Fuck Himself to attend a Gausman start

Yamamoto is going to throw another complete game and then pitch tomorrow, right?

the fan was just confused because last time there was a concert around now. hard to blame em.

Sorry, Joe, but "a quick word from Capital One" is not a "glass half full" thing

LOL?

Like what are you doing here? What are you watching that you need to confirm the call?

Saw a good number of kids with what I can only describe as "suburb-grade" candy hauls out there. Big ol' trash bags full of stuff. New York City is back. (Also a kid on a skateboard who seemed to be dressed as Luigi, but that might just be how Gen Alpha dresses.)

The @fangraphs.com Weekly Mailbag is open for World Series submissions! If you have a question related to the World Series that you'd like our staff to answer, send us an email at [email protected].

Lol at Penn State getting indirectly wrapped up in this. Been a rough fall in Happy Valley

The Dodgers are going to need to trade Teoscar Hernández this offseason to a team that can use him as a DH only. He cannot play the outfield.