SI:AM | Taking Stock of the MLB Playoff Races

And, Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett prepares for his encore.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m going to the Yankees’ game Saturday, and last night’s win made me much more optimistic about it.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏈 Stetson Bennett tries to run it back

🎥 Reviewing Netflix’s Manti Te’o documentary

📺 The Big Ten’s new TV deal

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It’s about to get real

As the second half of August rolls on, I think it’s worthwhile—for my benefit as much as the reader’s—to take a look at what’s going on around baseball. The final day of the season (Oct. 5, a Wednesday, oddly) is only seven weeks away, and the division and wild-card races are starting to shape up.

I already wrote about the Yankees and Mets last week, but I’ll start with them because they had very interesting days yesterday.

After losing 11 of their last 13 and failing to score more than three runs in eight days, the Yankees tried to provide a spark by calling up infield prospect Oswaldo Cabrera, who was in the middle of a torrid streak at the plate in Triple A, and center fielder Estevan Florial, who can take some at bats away from the struggling Aaron Hicks. The moves didn’t pay off immediately (neither Cabrera nor Florial reached base in last night’s game against the Rays), but they’re an indication the Yankees knew something had to change. And the Yankees’ offense did break out of its slump last night. They won 8–7 on Josh Donaldson’s walk-off grand slam in the 10th. The Yankees’ spot in the playoffs is all but assured (they’re 10 games ahead of Tampa Bay in the division), but they still need to turn things around and look more like a championship-caliber team by October.

The Mets also made a major call-up yesterday, promoting their No. 2 prospect, third baseman Brett Baty, after Luis Guillorme and Eduardo Escobar went on the injured list. And last night’s game against the Braves was a big one. After taking four of five against Atlanta two weeks ago, the Mets grew their lead in the division to seven games. But the Braves took the first two games this week in Atlanta to cut the lead to 3½ games. The Mets won 9–7 last night to avoid a sweep, though.

The only worry for the Mets at this point is injuries. In addition to Escobar and the versatile Guillorme, they also lost starter Carlos Carrasco this week. Carrasco could be out for a month and another member of the rotation, Taijuan Walker, might miss his next start after leaving Tuesday’s start with an injury. Catcher Tomás Nido is on the injured list with an illness, leaving Mets fans to clamor for another high-profile call-up. The catcher position has been an offensive black hole for the Mets this season, and their top prospect (one of the very best in all of baseball) is catcher Francisco Álvarez, who has 23 homers in the minors this year. If the Mets are looking for a boost down the stretch, Álvarez could provide a major lift to the offense.

The Braves are in fine shape, too. They’ve got a solid hold on the top NL wild-card spot with a record of 72–49, 6½ games ahead of the Padres, who currently hold the third and final wild-card spot. San Diego’s season has gotten very interesting in the past week with the suspension of Fernando Tatis Jr., who had been expected to provide a jolt to the team when he was ready to return from injury. The Brewers are just two games behind the Padres for that last wild-card position, with the Giants not dead yet at 5½ games back.

The most interesting team in the wild-card race might be the Phillies, who are currently just a half game ahead of the Padres and are poised to get a big boost soon when Bryce Harper returns from a long injury absence. Harper broke his thumb on June 25 and began taking batting practice this week. He could begin a minor league rehab assignment as soon as this weekend.

The two most compelling races are in the American League. The AL Central has three teams—the Guardians, Twins and White Sox, in that order—separated by two games and whoever doesn’t win the division is in serious danger of missing the postseason. The three wild-card spots are currently occupied by the Mariners (65–54), Rays (62–54) and Blue Jays (62–54). There are four teams within four games of the last wild-card spot: the Twins, Orioles, White Sox and Red Sox, in that order. That’s eight teams with a reasonable shot at claiming four postseason spots. Let the madness begin.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Kevin D. Liles/Sports Illustrated

Like yesterday, today’s Daily Cover is a story featured on the front of the magazine’s football preview issue. This time, it’s Pat Forde on Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett, the former walk-on who led the Bulldogs to the national championship:

Stet is a star quarterback now, evolving into the position and the persona, a disorienting reality after years of being doubted and considered disposable. In the annals of underdog athletic triumphs, Bennett’s 2021 season ranks right up there. Once the small-fry walk-on who walked off after one season went to junior college and returned only to be serially demoted, he became the Offensive MVP of the College Football Playoff championship game after earning the same honor in the Orange Bowl semifinal blowout against Michigan. He also was fourth in the nation in pass efficiency.

Conor Orr tells you what to watch out for in Week 2 of the NFL preseason. … Quarterbacks usually get all the headlines, but Forde has a list of the 25 most interesting non-QBs in college football this season. … Jon Wertheim discussed Serena Williams’s retirement announcement in his latest mailbag. … Jimmy Traina and I are on the same page with his review of Netflix’s new Manti Te’o documentary.

Around the sports world

The Big Ten has officially announced its new media rights deal. … The Lakers reportedly agreed to a contract extension with LeBron James. … The Texas Rangers fired team president Jon Daniels after 17 years with the club. … Chargers safety Derwin James reportedly signed a record-setting contract. … Dick Vitale announced he is cancer free after being diagnosed last year. … Tiger Woods will be on the cover of PGA Tour 2K23.

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Harold Ramírez’s line-drive home run with a bonkers 18-degree launch angle.

4. Brett Baty’s home run on his first MLB swing.

3. This bizarre fair ball in a Triple A game.

2. Dodgers broadcaster David Vassegh’s response to his partners laughing at him hurting himself going down the slide in the Brewers’ ballpark. (He broke his wrist, hand and six ribs.)

1. Marine Johannes’s pass during the Liberty’s big game-sealing run at the end of their upset win over the Sky. (Their 13–0 run to close the game was the third largest in WNBA playoff history.)

SIQ

When the infamous “Pine Tar Game” between the Royals and Yankees resumed on this day in 1983, how long did it take to complete?

• 12 minutes
• 18 minutes
• 24 minutes
• 36 minutes

Yesterday’s SIQ: Who did Willie Mays pass on Aug. 17, 1966, to move into second place on the all-time home run leaderboard behind only Babe Ruth?

• Jimmie Foxx
• Ted Williams
• Lou Gehrig
• Mel Ott

Answer: Jimmie Foxx. The homer was Mays’s 535th, surpassing Foxx’s total of 534.

Earlier in the year, Mays passed another Giants great, Mel Ott, with his 512th home run to become the National League’s all-time leader. Then he passed Ted Williams (521) to take third place on the leaderboard, leaving only Foxx between him and Ruth.

The pursuit of Ott’s mark weighed on Mays, but he had an easier time passing Foxx.

“I tied Ott’s record in Houston and then came home and no one let me forget that my next homer would be a record,” Mays told the United Press International after passing Foxx. “The pressure began building up, and I couldn’t help but feel it. The harder I tried, the worse off I was. This time, though, I got to 533 on Sunday, 534 two days later and 535 the next day. There wasn’t time for the pressure to build up.”

Coincidentally, the date of May’s 535th homer, Aug. 17, was the same as the date of his final home run, his 660th in 1973 off the Reds’ Don Gullett.

From the Vault: Aug. 18, 2008

Simon Bruty/Sports Illustrated

One thing in particular stuck out to me when reading Susan Casey’s 2008 story about Michael Phelps’s pursuit of a record eighth career Olympic gold medal at the Beijing Games.

In one section, Casey writes about why the mental approach to swimming is so crucial for athletes on Phelps’s level:

Yet for all the emphasis on an athlete’s body, a large part of Olympic success lies between the ears. By the time an Olympic swimmer emerges from the ready room and walks out on deck to stand behind his block, the equation is far more than physical. He’s spelunking deep into his psyche, emptying his mind of all the clutter. He is singularly focused. “I try to go into my own little world,” Phelps says. And though, like Phelps, a swimmer may be momentarily accompanied in that world by Young Jeezy or Jay Z, when the headphones come off, the only voice he’s left with is the one inside his head. And that voice can be friend or enemy.

[...]

If Phelps entertains any self-doubt during races, it isn’t apparent. “This is the thing I love the most,” he says. “I love to race.” But when Phelps talks about competing, his entire energy field changes. He morphs from laid-back dude into quietly ferocious predator. There is no braggadocio in this. It’s simply the knowledge that his talk is firmly backed up by results, the same kind of certainty one would expect when hearing, for instance, Tiger Woods holding forth on chip shots.

“That’s why I’d never let him go to a sports psychologist,” [Phelps’s longtime coach Bob] Bowman says. “You don’t want anybody messing with that.”

It’s that last quote that made me raise an eyebrow. Since retiring from swimming after the 2016 Olympics, Phelps has become a mental health advocate. He said in ’18 that after the ’12 Olympics he “didn’t want to be alive.” But attitudes toward mental health support for athletes are changing, as Phelps said when Pat Forde caught up with him for a Daily Cover story last year.

“I really just feel like there’s hope that this stigma is going away, the wall is being broken down, we’re finally accepting it,” Phelps told Forde. “We should be able to. What Naomi [Osaka] did on that stage was very powerful and very vulnerable. It’s always going to be such a battle.”

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.

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