Star-tober Pressure

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Money Time.

The watered-down regular season is nearly over, it ends a week from today, thank goodness. Finally, it is going to be winning baseball season.

That means winning is all that matters. What a concept.

All the hype is out the window come October baseball; it is all about winning. Survive and advance, that is all that matters. This October is particularly intriguing because of the superstar cast of characters about to take the Big Stage.

This is really MLB The Show.

For all the amazing heroics of the regular season, the heat is on the Big Boys in October. Welcome to Star-tober Pressure.

Let’s start with two of the biggest: Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge.

Shohei, who started the season with the bombshell news of that $17 million in debt translator/gambler who was with Ohtani in his Angels years and followed him to the Dodgers, became baseball’s first 50 home run, 50 stolen base superstar.

Never mind that stolen bases are a complete joke now because of limited pickoff attempts, bigger bases and the pitch clock. I am throwing a big fat asterisk on that part of the “record.’’

No player will have the October pressure on him like Ohtani. He has never played in a single postseason game because he labored the first six years of his career with the Angels.

This will be Ohtani’s time to star or fail and I’m ready for the show.

Will pitchers finally knock Ohtani off the plate in October like other superstar sluggers have had to contend with throughout the history of baseball – think Reggie Jackson?

Or will Ohtani’s amazing left-handed swing continue to ride the EZ-Pass Lane to success?

Speaking of E-Z Pass, his ability to steal in this era of gift stolen bases could be a tremendous advantage for the Dodgers this October who will need to score plenty of runs, considering how many starting pitchers the Dodgers have gotten injured during these Sweeper Years.

For all of Ohtani’s 52/52 greatness, I’m just going to throw out one number here and yes, I am spoiling the Ohtani Party a bit.

To me the biggest stage in baseball is Yankee Stadium and it will always be that way.

Throughout his career, a short sample size of 16 games, Ohtani is hitting .136 at Yankee Stadium with four home runs and 18 RBI. Overall, in 26 games against the Yankees, where the spotlight is always brightest, Ohtani is hitting .209 with nine home runs and 18 RBI.

One other quick ballpark point.

The Padres are obsessed with beating the Dodgers, it is their mission in baseball, it is what Padres fans live for, and I am hoping for a Padres-Dodgers Showdown somewhere down the NL line in October. Again, this is a small sample size of only 12 games, but Ohtani is a .133 hitter at Petco Park.

Interesting.

Without a doubt, Ohtani is the story of the postseason. If the DH can be anything close to regular season Ohtani, wow!

If not, that’s another story.

It is always so much harder in the postseason to have success. The opposing pitchers’ attention to detail is much more precise and the pitching that hitters see in the postseason, especially star hitters like Ohtani, is a tremendous challenge every game when so many talented arms are on the line of fire.

It is nothing like the regular season and facing the Marlins staff.

At least Ohtani, in his first October run, has Mookie Betts as his wingman and that will be a tremendous help.

That makes Ohtani and Judge, superstars of superstars, a compelling October Show. Can Judge and Ohtani make it a Star-tober?

To prove my point of how difficult the postseason is for hitters, especially superstar hitters, consider this: Aaron Judge is having a season to remember, going into Saturday’s action with 53 home runs and 136 RBI and a .318 average with a stunning 1.137 OPS, all marks better than Ohtani’s 52 home runs, 122 RBIs, .297 average with a 1.013 OPS, but life in October has been extremely difficult for Judge.

In 44 postseason games, Judge owns a meager .211 batting average, a .310 on base percentage and a .462 slug. In 17 ALCS games he is hitting .200, .190 in 22 ALDS games and .300 in five wild card games. In total, his postseason OPS is .772, a far cry from his current 2024 sky-high 1.137 OPS.

In 171 postseason at-bats, Judge has struck out 66 times.

October is not anything like September or August or any other baseball month.

So that postseason pressure that is on Ohtani, going into his first postseason, is on Judge as well – but even worse because Judge has 44 postseason games under his belt.

That makes Ohtani and Judge, superstars of superstars, a compelling October Show. Can Judge and Ohtani make it a Star-tober?

That is really what October is about.

While we are talking superstars, you can throw all the analytics you want on what makes a successful team, a team bound for the playoffs, but it still comes down to superstars, not iPad Warriors.

The Phillies have Bryce Harper, the Dodgers have Ohtani and Betts, the Yankees have their own superstar tandem in Judge and Juan Soto, which should help Judge more than ever this October. The Astros have Yordan Alvarez and Jose Altuve, who has put up stunning October numbers over his career. The Padres have Manny Machado. If the Mets make it, they have Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso. The Royals, new to the playoff scene have Bobby Witt Jr., and there are other stars as well with the Orioles having Anthony Santander and his 43 home runs, a 2016 Rule 5 pick from Cleveland in the Dan Duquette administration, brought along nicely by Buck Showalter back then, and young Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman.

MLB will always be a star league.

Analytics is a form of camouflage. Star players make for playoff teams. It’s that simple.

The regular season is a marathon and because so many teams make Rob Manfred’s postseason, it is not a particularly interesting marathon. Any halfway decent teams are locked into the postseason and even now as the season comes down to one more week, there are only two real races, both for the final wild card in each league.

Pennant fever is long gone, 12 teams will make it to October, three division winners in each league and three wild card teams. Manfred wanted to create a March Madness situation, and he has done just that. Teams just have to make it to the baseball dance and with possible long layoffs, there is even some question what the best way is to make it to October, a division winner or a wild card.

Here is what I’m most looking forward to in October.

No excuses.

No position players pitching allowing players to pad their statistics.

If mindless base-running mistakes occur in October that is something that will haunt a player for life.

In what must be a record, the Yankees flat out won three games this season when opposing players made the biggest base-running bonehead mistakes in the game’s history.

Just this past week, Victor Robles of the Mariners tried to steal home on a 3-0 count with two outs and the bases loaded. He was out. The next night Julio Rodriguez did something I never thought I would see in a major league game, he simply walked off third base because Randy Arozarena lost the grip in his bat. Players don’t even know the rules.

But don’t forget, earlier in the year in late July, Red Sox rookie Ceddanne Rafaela was doubled off the bag at third by the Yankees in the second inning because he was idly chatting with third base coach Kyle Hudson while the ball was still in play!

Rafaela was off the bag. The Yankees tagged him out and went on to win after that gift double play.

Who knew that some of the Yankees best defense this season would consist of opposing baserunners at third base making mind-numbing plays that you would not see in Little League?

But that is where MLB is as a product.

I don’t expect the Yankees to get such gifts in October, but you never know.

Harper appears driven like never before with the Phillies and over 49 postseason games he is a .276 hitter, with 16 home runs, 31 RBIs and a .996 OPS.

Soto, in 29 postseason games, is hitting .261, with seven home runs and 21 RBI with an .845 OPS – and he is only 25. Other players are fascinating too like Houston’s Yordan Alvarez, a lifetime .297 hitter with a .969 OPS. His postseason resume of 58 games is electric with a .295 average and .949 OPS. He has learned well from Jose Altuve who has played 103 postseason games with a .273 average and .851 OPS with 27 home runs and 55 RBI. Manny Ramirez owns the most postseason home runs with 29 to go along with a .937 OPS. Mickey Mantle, of course, owns the most World Series home runs with 18, long before multiple layers of postseason. Yogi Berra, by the way, hit 12 World Series home runs. Mr. October owns 10 World Series home runs and 18 overall. Reggie’s regular season OPS is .846 his postseason OPS is .885. The former Yankee is now connected to the Astros.

It figures that the Yankees and Astros are on a postseason collision course once again. After not making the postseason in 2023 and having not won a World Series since 2009, this is the Yankees ultimate test during the Judge Era. Three times they have been knocked out by the Astros in the ALCS in 2017, 2019 and 2022. The Yankees and their fans can whine about the Cheatin’ Astros all they want but the bottom line is that the Astros own the Yankees in the postseason.

Over that span the Astros have won 12 of 17 ALCS games against the Yankees, capped by the 4-0 sweep in 2022.

Ohtani and the Dodgers and Judge and the Yankees will have tremendous pressure on them in this 2024 playoff season. Considering the resources both teams possess, that pressure is warranted. They have the superstars, and it is up to them to make it a Star-tober that ends in a World Series where Judge and Soto face off against Ohtani and Betts.

Now that would make a Star-tober to remember.