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For good reason, much attention was devoted to the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on Monday, over government pressure on social media companies to suppress speech that officialdom doesn’t like. The same day, though, justices heard arguments in another important case involving free speech principles violated when New York officials leaned on financial institutions to deny services to the National Rifle Association. Importantly, both cases involved “jawboning,” the use by government of threats to improperly coerce compliance.

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Δ When Communication Becomes Coercion

As Reason’s Jacob Sullum ably summarizes, arguments in Murthy v. Missouri involve “dueling interpretations of the Biden administration’s interactions with social media platforms regarding content it viewed as dangerous to public health, democracy, or national security,” with plaintiffs arguing that “those private contacts, combined with public statements condemning the platforms’ failure to suppress ‘misinformation,’ amounted to government-directed censorship.”

At stake is the point at which efforts to persuade private companies they ought not offer platforms to certain speakers morph into “nice business you got there; it’d be a shame if something happened to it.” Did officials cross the line when they badgered tech firms to muzzle voices skeptical of lockdowns, COVID vaccinations, and election integrity? If you’ve followed the Twitter and Facebook Files, you know there’s significant evidence they did, though it remains to be seen if Supreme Court justices agree.

Remarkably, the evidence of improper strong-arming appears even clearer in National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo. In that case, the NRA, joined by the ACLU, alleges that Maria Vullo, former Superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, abused the power of her position to punish the gun rights organization for its political positions.

“Vullo met with executives at Lloyd’s of London to discuss her views on gun control and to tell them she believed the company’s underwriting of NRA-endorsed insurance policies raised regulatory issues,” according to Abby Smith of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). “She told them Lloyd’s could ‘avoid liability’but only if the company told its syndicates to stop underwriting their insurance policies, and joined her agency’s ‘campaign against gun groups.'”

There was nothing subtle about the arm-twisting. In 2018 I wrote about guidance letters New York regulators sent to banks and insurance companies, at the behest of then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, cautioning “regulated institutions to review any relationships they have with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations, and to take prompt actions to managing these risks and promote public health and safety.” Given that insurance companies and banks are tightly regulated and operate largely at the pleasure of state officials, this would logically be interpreted as a threat. Subsequently, banks and insurance companies alike cut ties with the NRA.

“New York, if these facts are true, tried to circumvent the First Amendment’s ban on censorship by relying on this informal pressure campaign,” noted FIRE’s Smith. “But informal censorship violates the First Amendment, too.” Extra-Legal Threats Violate Individual Rights Protections, Say the Courts

Such informal censorship is known as “jawboning” since, as the Cato Institute’s Will Duffield wrote in 2022, it involves “bullying, threatening, and cajoling” in the place of formal legal action.

“Jawboning occurs when a government official threatens to use his or her powerbe it the power to prosecute, regulate, or legislateto compel someone to take actions that the state official cannot,” observed Duffield. “Jawboning is dangerous because it allows government officials to assume powers not granted to them by law.”

Despite formal protections for individual liberties, such as the First Amendment, the vast regulatory power wielded by government agencies in the United States is easily weaponized against people who don’t do the government’s bidding. Such abuses aren’t hypothetical but are a matter of public record already addressed by the courts.

“People do not lightly disregard public officers’ thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings against them if they do not come around,” the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963). That case involved Rhode Island officials hassling booksellers to refrain from stocking allegedly obscene publications. The implied threats and constant nagging of booksellers by state officials “was in fact a scheme of state censorship effectuated by extra-legal sanctions,” ruled the court.

Does “a scheme of state censorship effectuated by extra-legal sanctions” better describe the situation in the Murthy case or in the NRA case? Well, Monday was a twofer day, so why not both? A Strong Case Against New York’s Jawboning

In truth, New York regulators’ threats to insurance companies and banks that do business with the NRA and other gun groups were so overt that even commenters hostile to the NRA and self-defense rights concede that state officials went way over the line.

“Every now and then, the Supreme Court takes up a case involving a public official who acted so foolishly…that you wish the justices could each take turns smacking them upside the head,” Vox’s Ian Millhiser, no fan of the NRA, conceded last November. “National Rifle Association v. Vullo, which the Court announced that it would hear last Friday, is such a case.”

And so far, while it’s uncertain which way the justices will jump in Murthy, the court seems inclined to agree that it’s impermissible for government officials to use regulatory threats to coerce financial firms into cutting ties with disfavored political organizations.

“The Supreme Court on Monday appeared sympathetic to the National Rifle Association’s claim that a New York official violated the group’s right to freedom of speech when she urged banks and insurance companies that worked with the NRA to cut ties with the group,” SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe concluded. ACLU Legal Director David Cole “closed by telling the justices that ‘the notion that this is business as usual, for a government official to speak with a private party and say we’ll go easy on you if you aid my campaign to weaken the NRA. That is not business as usual. That is not ordinary plea negotiation.’ Although it was not entirely clear, a majority of the justices seemed to agree with him.”

With government reaching ever further into American life, it’s time the court reminds officials, once again, that their intrusive powers aren’t supposed to be used to bypass protections for individual rights.

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White House responds to report Trump is considering commuting Diddy’s prison sentence

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White House responds to report Trump is considering commuting Diddy's prison sentence

A White House official has said there is “zero truth” to a report that Donald Trump is considering commuting Sean “Diddy” Combs’s prison sentence as early as this week.

On Monday, US entertainment site TMZ reported the US president was “vacillating” on whether or not to reduce the music mogul’s sentence, citing a “high-ranking White House official”.

Combs was sentenced to 50 months in prison and given a $500,000 fine at a hearing on 3 October, after being found guilty of prostitution charges relating to his former girlfriends and male sex workers at the end of his high-profile trial in the summer.

Earlier this week, the 55-year-old’s legal team filed a legal document officially signalling their intention to appeal.

Combs was in tears during his sentencing hearing. Pic: AP/ Elizabeth Williams
Image:
Combs was in tears during his sentencing hearing. Pic: AP/ Elizabeth Williams

Now, a White House official has pushed back on TMZ’s report about a possible commutation.

There is “zero truth to the TMZ report, which we would’ve gladly explained had they reached out before running their fake news”, the official told NBC, Sky News’ US partner.

Mr Trump, “not anonymous sources, is the final decider on pardons and commutations”, the official added.

Casey Carver, a spokesperson for TMZ, said in a brief statement: “We stand by our story.”

In an update to the story on the outlet’s website, the news site said: “The White House Communications Office is saying our story is not true. We stand by our story. Our story is accurate.”

Lawyers for Combs did not immediately return a request for comment about the disparity between the White House statement and TMZ’s reporting. However, they previously told NBC News they had been pursuing a pardon.

Pardons and commuting – what is the difference?

In the US federal system, commutation of sentence and pardons are different forms of executive clemency, “which is a broad term that applies to the president’s constitutional power to give leniency to persons who have committed federal crimes”, according to the justice department.

Neither signifies innocence, but a pardon is an expression of a president’s forgiveness and can be granted in recognition of acceptance of responsibility and good conduct, reinstating rights such as the right to vote.

A commutation reduces a sentence either totally or partially but does not remove civil disabilities that apply as a result of criminal conviction.

What has Donald Trump said?

In August, before Combs’s sentencing, Mr Trump said in an interview that he had been approached about a possible pardon but implied he would not be granting one.

“You know, I was very friendly with him. I got along with him great and he seemed like a nice guy. I didn’t know him well,” the president said. “But when I ran for office, he was very hostile.”

When asked if he was suggesting he would not pardon Combs, he replied: “I would say so.”

“When you knew someone and you were fine, and then you run for office, and he made some terrible statements. So, I don’t know, it’s more difficult,” Mr Trump said. “Makes it more – I’m being honest, it makes it more difficult to do.”

The president has issued several pardons and commutations in his second term – including to around 1,500 criminal defendants in connection with the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021.

Last week, he commuted the sentence of disgraced former Republican congressman George Santos.

Read more:
The rise and fall of Diddy
Diddy sentencing: As it happened

Combs was found guilty of two counts of transportation for prostitution in July, but was cleared of more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking, which carried potential life sentences.

Ahead of his sentencing, he told the court he admitted his past behaviour was “disgusting, shameful and sick”, and apologised personally to Cassie Ventura and “Jane”, another former girlfriend who testified anonymously during the trial.

He told the court he got “lost in my excess and lost in my ego”, but since his time in prison he has been “humbled and broken to my core”, adding: “I hate myself right now… I am truly sorry for it all.”

The rapper is serving his sentence at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where his team has said conditions are “inhumane”.

He has asked to be moved to a low-security federal prison in New Jersey, but the Bureau of Prisons has yet to approve the request.

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Which NHL teams have the most to prove in 2025-26? Placing 13 teams into tiers

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Which NHL teams have the most to prove in 2025-26? Placing 13 teams into tiers

Few teams in NHL history have proved themselves in the face of their doubters more than the Florida Panthers of the past few seasons.

After getting humiliated as a Presidents’ Trophy winner in 2022 — swept by the Tampa Bay Lightning as their historic offense was mostly silenced — Florida rebuilt its identity under Bill Zito and Paul Maurice, traded for toughness with Matthew Tkachuk, leaned into defense and the goaltending of Sergei Bobrovsky, and turned those lessons into a championship blueprint: three straight Stanley Cup Final appearances, back-to-back titles and a bona fide dynasty.

But when one team proves so much, it doesn’t leave much room for others to do the same. So in many ways, this NHL season will be defined by the teams outside of South Florida that need to do a lot of proving of their own.

To help sort out which clubs have the most on the line in this prove-it 2025-26 season, we grouped 13 of them into five categories of teams with work to do and boxes to check. These range from longtime contenders still knocking on the door to hyped up-and-comers, possibly-past-their-prime powers and franchises whose fans would simply love them to prove they can make the playoffs every so often.

The common thread for all is that they have to change the story around their team, just like Florida had to do a few years ago. Let’s unpack each — and see who’s under the most pressure to get the job done this season.


The now-or-nevers

We’ve written about it here before, but the primary victims of Florida’s success in recent seasons have been the teams that repeatedly came close to a title but couldn’t break through. So this group is all about those that are seeking to prove they can finally make the championship leap — and especially those with a ticking clock on how long they can keep trying, and failing, to turn their potential into a parade.

Chief among this type of team? Clearly the Edmonton Oilers, who finally skated for the Cup for the first time in the Connor McDavidLeon Draisaitl era in 2024 after never previously advancing further than being swept in the conference finals. But back-to-back losses to Florida have raised the question of whether they can ever truly get over the hump.

The main things to prove might be whether the returning tandem of Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard can provide better goaltending than the .866 SV% they collectively posted in last season’s Final — and if this season’s offense, bolstered by the additions of Jack Roslovic and Andrew Mangiapane, can score enough for it not to matter.

Though McDavid recently inked a contract extension, it only runs through 2027-28, so the Oilers’ window to compete still has a short shelf life.

And then there are the Carolina Hurricanes and Dallas Stars, who are well past the point where they need to at least break through to the Final, if not win the Cup. The two teams have combined to win an incredible 62 playoff games (32 for Dallas, 30 for Carolina) since 2022 without a single Stanley Cup Final appearance to show for it. No other team in the league had more such wins than the New York Rangers‘ 23.

For Carolina, the team must demonstrate that its strategy of dominating possession — the Hurricanes have led the NHL’s offensive zone time-tracking metric every year it has existed — isn’t destined to forever be stonewalled by an elite goalie when the team runs up against one in the playoffs.

Dallas needs to prove that all the offseason moves it made (including moving on from coach Peter DeBoer to Glen Gulutzan) were necessary to get this team to the next level.

Dallas is younger, whereas Carolina has more of its core locked up longer, but both teams can feel the weight of time, and expectations, demanding a Finals run … maybe even against one another.


The snakebit histories

Now we get to the teams that haven’t even made it far enough to qualify as a now-or-never breakthrough candidate. These teams have had plenty of regular-season success, but they perpetually lose in Round 1 of the playoffs — or, on the odd occasion, win a series before a big letdown in the next round.

And over the past handful of seasons, nobody fits this mold more than the Toronto Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Jets.

Since 2018-19, Toronto and Winnipeg rank third and seventh in total standings points, respectively, and yet they are the only members of the top eight on that list to fail to win 40 playoff games in that span — and neither is even close to that mark. (Neither has 30 wins, much less 40.)

The Leafs‘ history of choking in the playoffs is extensive and well-documented. Before 2023, this team hadn’t so much as won a single postseason series since 2004, and the Leafs still haven’t reached the conference finals since 2002 — to go with zero Cups since 1967, the final year of the NHL’s Original Six era.

As part of that, they own an eight-game losing streak in winner-take-all playoff games, the second-longest such skid in hockey history. There are micro-level things Toronto also needs to convince us about, such as offensive life after Mitch Marner (so far, so good) and if it can ever get the playoff goaltending it needs. But the main thing to prove is that the Leafs can overcome the ghosts of this franchise’s many past failures.

Winnipeg‘s playoff struggles feel less biblical but are no better in the aggregate. After winning two total series in its first go-round — before the franchise relocated to Arizona — the version that rose from the ashes of the Atlanta Thrashers made a conference finals run in 2018 but has advanced to the second round only twice since then.

Last season was supposed to change all that, but the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Jets barely beat the Blues in Round 1 and were then knocked off by the Stars as league MVP Connor Hellebuyck was outplayed by Jake Oettinger in net. Now the Jets have to show that their ascendance last season was no fluke, that they can be a playoff team in addition to a regular-season one, and that Hellebuyck can handle the pressure after three straight terrible postseason performances.


The hype trains

This is the place for those teams with young, exciting talent that haven’t exactly proved what they can do yet. They’re fun, marketable and full of promise — but as so many of the league’s up-and-coming squads of the past can tell you, promise alone lasts only so long.

Within this group, the New Jersey Devils stand out a bit because they have been riding the hype train a little longer than the other two teams. The 2022-23 Devils appeared to announce themselves early as the league’s next big thing behind a roster that ranked fourth on offense, eighth on defense … and third youngest in average age.

But electric center Jack Hughes missed parts of the next two seasons, the team regressed and fired its coach, and the Devils only slightly reclaimed their prior potential last season. The 2025-26 version is off to a good start, but New Jersey needs to win some playoff series to get back to where we assumed it would be by now.

As for the Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks, both have started the season fairly strong with rosters that rank 1-2 in the NHL in youngest average age.

Along with the Devils, the Canadiens were anticipated to be one of the league’s most improved teams this season, building on their playoff return a season ago with a young core that is now pretty well locked in after defenseman Lane Hutson‘s recent contract extension.

Now the job for Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Noah Dobson, Hutson & Co. is to see how much better they can continue to get this season — and whether they’ll belong in the Cup-contending conversation by the spring.

The Blackhawks are further from that goal than the Canadiens, but new coach Jeff Blashill has them playing much better than they did a season ago. Connor Bedard continues to make progress, and Frank Nazar has been an early-season star, while the Blackhawks appear to be a bit better on the goal-prevention side as well.

Chicago must prove that last season was simply a disappointing speed bump along its road to rebuilding a new winner with Bedard as the centerpiece.


The do-overs

Last season, the hype machine broke down for a number of teams that were expected to be Cup contenders, and perhaps no teams were bigger offenders than this trio. Each is out to show that 2024-25 was a fluke and it deserves another shot in 2025-26.

The New York Rangers‘ collapse might have been the most jarring. A team that had finished top seven in fewest goals allowed per game for three straight seasons suddenly ranked 19th, allowed the sixth-most shots per game and got a combined .896 SV% from Jonathan Quick and Igor Shesterkin, who couldn’t paper over their issues anymore. The Jacob Trouba trade fractured the locker room, the power play cratered and a team that had made the Eastern Conference finals in 2024 unraveled far faster than anyone expected.

After making even more offseason changes — out were Peter Laviolette, Chris Kreider and K’Andre Miller; in were Mike Sullivan and Vladislav Gavrikov — the remade Rangers must get back to their previous business.

The Boston Bruins‘ fall was even steeper by the numbers. In fact, the Bruins saw the largest year-over-year drop in goal differential of any team (minus-1.13 goals per game) after transitioning from what was once a record-breaking veteran core to the league’s eighth-youngest lineup. What was supposed to be a smooth handoff turned into a full-scale identity crisis when Boston’s seven-year streak of top-five scoring finishes snapped to the tune of a No. 26 ranking on that side of the ice in 2024-25.

Now the remaining nucleus of David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy and Jeremy Swayman has to prove that it, too, can carry an era of Bruins hockey the same way Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, David Krejčí, Zdeno Chara, Tuukka Rask, Torey Krug and others did in the past.

And then there were the Nashville Predators, whose 68-point season represented a staggering 31.5-point shortfall versus their preseason Vegas projection — the biggest miss in the NHL. What once looked like a loaded Preds roster with scoring, depth and Juuse Saros in net instead seemed disjointed from the start and never found success at either end.

Most of the group that was supposed to win last season is back now, and some are bouncing back nicely. Others, however, are like Steven Stamkos, Brady Skjei and Filip Forsberg — from whom Nashville still needs more bang for the salary-cap bucks being spent.


The drought-enders

When the Ottawa Senators finally made the playoffs last season, for the first time since going to the 2017 Eastern Conference finals, they ended what was tied for the NHL’s seventh-longest postseason drought of all time.

However, Ottawa was not the only franchise with a playoff-less streak that long — or even longer — and its achievement just turned up the pressure on the other two teams in that category to make their own postseason returns.

First, the Buffalo Sabres: Their playoff drought is now an NHL-record 14 seasons long — four more than the second-longest in league history — and the organization is well past the territory where incremental improvements suffice anymore. The youngest current Sabre, Zach Benson, was still in kindergarten the last time Buffalo played a postseason game, and zero players on this season’s roster were in the NHL when the drought began.

After a modestly positive goal differential in 2023-24, Buffalo backslid to minus-22 last season, and that regression has seemed to carry over to 2025-26 thus far. The Sabres’ low playoff odds already don’t paint a pretty picture, but they have to prove they can end this streak one of these years.

Finally, there are the Detroit Red Wings, whose own nine-season drought is not too far off from Buffalo’s — and completely uncharacteristic for one of hockey’s most storied franchises. The “Yzer-plan” was designed to restore the glory years, but Detroit has ranked better than 24th in goal differential just once during the skid (2023-24) and gave back all of those gains last season.

The good news in Hockeytown is that the 2025-26 team has started strong, bringing its playoff odds up above a coin flip. But Detroit has been down this early-season path before, only to collapse down the stretch, so the Wings hanging on to their playoff position might be the biggest prove-it on our list.

Both clubs have stockpiled young talent and patience in equal measure, but the next step remains to end their droughts and prove the long rebuilds were worth the wait.

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Ohtani, Vlad … and then who? Player rankings and superlatives for the 2025 World Series

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Ohtani, Vlad ... and then who? Player rankings and superlatives for the 2025 World Series

The Los Angeles Dodgers are the overwhelming favorites to win the 2025 World Series and become the first repeat champion in a quarter century.

That doesn’t mean they’ve cornered all the talent in this year’s Fall Classic.

In fact, the American League champion Toronto Blue Jays feature two of the top three players heading into the series and nearly half of our top 20.

Let’s dig into the stars — ranking the best of the series participants on how good I think they’ll be in this series and predicting who will take home some superlatives by the time the dust settles.

Top 20 players in the World Series

1. Shohei Ohtani, SP/DH, Dodgers

Ohtani put up a combined 9.4 WAR in the regular season and is a huge favorite to win the National League MVP again. Then, he one-upped himself with one of the greatest athletic performances of all time: six scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts and three home runs in the clinching game of the NL Championship Series.

2. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., 1B, Blue Jays

Guerrero had a big regular season — 3.9 WAR despite the sixth-worst ball-in-play luck in the league — but has been white hot in the playoffs, leading postseason players in most major offensive categories.

3. George Springer, DH, Blue Jays

Springer led the Jays in WAR in the regular season, has been very good this postseason and his iconic ALCS Game 7 homer will live on.

4. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, SP, Dodgers

All four of the Dodgers’ starting pitchers are on a heater, but Yamamoto was the best of the group in the regular season by a lot and one of the top five pitchers in baseball.

5. Blake Snell, SP, Dodgers

Snell missed the first two-thirds of the season with shoulder inflammation but came back looking as good as ever. He might be on the best run of his career right now, with a 0.86 ERA in three playoff starts and the second-best underlying numbers (xFIP and xERA) in the playoffs among starters, behind Detroit’s Tarik Skubal.

6. Mookie Betts, SS, Dodgers

Betts, a clear future Hall of Famer, is 33 years old and has lost the standout power from his peak years but is still an impact player.

7. Freddie Freeman, 1B, Dodgers

One of the most consistently elite hitters of this era, Freeman just keeps performing — and he has a history of coming up large in the playoffs.

8. Alejandro Kirk, C, Blue Jays

Kirk was quietly the second-best all-around catcher in the league this year behind Seattle’s Cal Raleigh, but isn’t a huge star since his value is largely driven by on-base skills and pitch framing.

9. Max Muncy, 3B, Dodgers

Muncy is surprisingly solid as a baserunner and a defensive third baseman, and he’s always been a dangerous hitter.

10. Tyler Glasnow, SP, Dodgers

Glasnow’s walks crept up during the regular season and the playoffs, but he’s been missing bats as always and is inducing weak contact during his current hot streak.

11. Will Smith, C, Dodgers

Smith hasn’t been very good offensively in the playoffs but had the third-best WAR amongst catchers in the majors this season, behind only Raleigh and Kirk.

12. Ernie Clement, 2B/3B, Blue Jays

Clement posted a quietly solid 3.2 WAR this season, driven mostly by contact and defense, but has gone to another level in the postseason, hitting .429 with almost no ball-in-play luck, due to his 4% strikeout rate. He’s on a heater, but the Dodgers’ staff is the type to possibly end that streak.

13. Daulton Varsho, CF, Blue Jays

Varsho is above average at basically everything on the baseball field but isn’t truly elite at much. He missed time with shoulder and hamstring issues this year but was on track for a career-best 4-ish WAR season.

14. Kevin Gausman, SP, Blue Jays

Gausman posted the 10th-best pitcher WAR in baseball this season but has one of the lowest fastball velocities of pitchers in that range and has been hit around in the playoffs, though his career playoff performances are close to his regular season quality.

15. Tommy Edman, 2B, Dodgers

Edman is a good defender at almost any position but had the 12th-least lucky ball-in-play outcomes this regular season. That luck has turned around in the playoffs.

16. Trey Yesavage, SP, Blue Jays

Like Gausman, Yesavage’s splitter is his best secondary pitch, and he doesn’t have standout fastball velocity or breaking ball quality. That said, Yesavage’s splitter has been confounding hitters in his six career big league appearances, half of which have been in the playoffs.

17. Bo Bichette, SS, Blue Jays

It sounds like Bichette will be able to return to the Jays’ lineup for the World Series, but he’s been out the past six weeks with a knee injury and it’s hard to know what he’ll look like in the short term.

18. Addison Barger, RF, Blue Jays

Barger is usable defensively at a number of positions and broke out this year to be an above-average hitter, mostly due to his power.

19. Andy Pages, CF, Dodgers

Pages hasn’t been terrible at the plate this postseason, but he was a standout hitter (.272 average, 24 homers) and defender (plus-7 runs in 117 starts in center field) in the regular season, en route to 4.0 WAR.

20. Teoscar Hernandez, RF, Dodgers

Hernandez hit for power in the regular season (25 homers) but didn’t draw many walks or stand out defensively. This postseason, he’s been hitting for even more power on a rate basis, so he sneaks on this list.

Superlatives

Fastest pitch of the World Series will be thrown by: Roki Sasaki

Sasaki narrowly wins this matchup with the hardest-thrown pitch among these teams in the playoffs at 100.8 mph, and he’s fresher than Louis Varland (100.7 mph) and can go more max effort than Ohtani (100.3 mph).

Others in the mix: Ohtani


Best breaking pitch will be: Emmet Sheehan‘s slider

Sheehan’s slider was, per pitch thrown, the best pitch on the Dodgers’ staff this season. It doesn’t have a gaudy spin rate or crazy movement but he throws it hard and hitters can’t seem to track it.

Others in the mix: Yariel Rodriguez‘s slider, Braydon Fisher‘s slider, Brendon Little‘s curveball, Jack Dreyer‘s slider, Glasnow’s curveball, Shane Bieber‘s curveball


Best changeup/splitter will be: Yesavage’s splitter

Yesavage offers a unique combination of movement profile (his slider moves to his arm side), a very high arm slot, and short extension which brings his release even higher. Hitters haven’t seen something like this before, then add in a killer splitter (which he barely threw at East Carolina, where he was last season) and hitters don’t know what to do.

Others in the mix: Yamamoto’s splitter, Gausman’s splitter, Snell’s changeup


Most whiffs will be thrown by: Snell

Snell has been red-hot in the postseason (I explain why here) and should get two starts, but there’s a number of strong candidates for this.

Others in the mix: Yamamoto, Yesavage, Glasnow


Hardest hit ball in play will be hit by: Guerrero

The odds for this are as close to 50/50 as you can get. Guerrero (120.4) and Ohtani (120.0 mph) were second and third in max exit velo during the regular season behind Cincinnati’s Oneil Cruz (122.9). Ohtani has a slight edge in playoff max EV at 117.7 to Vlad’s 116.0. I’ll lean to Vlad because he’s been running hotter at the plate and thus will get a few more chances to smoke one at a gaudy number, but Ohtani will be facing a weaker pitching staff, so this is still a coin flip.

Also in the mix: Ohtani


Highest sprint speed will be recorded by: Clement

The other main candidates are part-time players who might get only some chances to open it up on the bases, but I expect Clement to be on base often in the series.

Others in the mix: Hyeseong Kim, Edman, Myles Straw


The batter who will record the most hits: Guerrero

Clement (second in postseason hits with 18) might be held back a bit by the quality of the Dodgers’ pitchers while Guerrero (first in postseason hits with 19) also makes a ton of contact but gets the margin for error of having huge power, too.

Others in the mix: Clement, Nathan Lukes, Betts, Freeman, Springer


Best defender will be: Kirk

If you consider framing to be a part of defensive value (you definitely should) and also factor in positional difficulty (I think you should), then Kirk is the answer. He’ll be impacting roughly half of the pitches in the series and he was the second-best framer in the league behind San Francisco’s Patrick Bailey this regular season.

Others in the mix: Clement, Edman, Betts

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