Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today's games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Today's edition is brought to you by Scott Chiusano.
For the better part of this season, the Braves have sat relatively comfortably atop the NL East. Gradually, though, over the past few weeks, that seat has gotten a lot hotter thanks to the Phillies putting up MLB’s best record in August (21-7).
And the temperature will be turned way up over the course of this Labor Day weekend when the two teams meet in Philadelphia for a massive four-game series. By the end of it, that seat might be burning up.
That’s what the Phillies are aiming for, at least, now just four games behind Atlanta entering Friday night’s series opener (6:40 p.m. ET on MLB.TV). They were a high-water mark of 10 1/2 games back on May 22, and nine games back as recently as Aug. 13, which was also when they began a nine-game win streak.
It’s Chris Sale vs. Cristopher Sánchez in Game 1, a showcase of stellar southpaws who are in the running for the NL Cy Young Award (although everyone is just trying to keep up with Jacob Misiorowski right now). Sale is coming in at his peak, most recently dominating the Dodgers with 11 strikeouts in his first shutout since 2019. Sánchez went seven scoreless innings against the Angels his last time out, fanning eight and allowing just two hits.
You’d think runs would be hard to come by, but there are plenty of slugging stars who could ruin an outing with one swing. Kyle Schwarber leads the Majors with 40 homers, his fourth time reaching that mark in the past five seasons. Bryce Harper is playing his best ball of the season, riding a 35-game on-base streak and coming off a month during which he slashed .333/.496/.573.
On the other side, the always-electric Ronald Acuña Jr. hit his 200th career homer yesterday, and Matt Olson is only three behind Schwarber in dingers, on the doorstep of his second career 40-homer season.
If the Phillies hope to be this year’s Guardians, who came back from as many as 15 1/2 games down to top the Tigers in the AL Central last year, this weekend’s series will be the barometer.
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A RECORD SKID CAN'T GET THEM DOWN |
Michael Clair brings us a story of a Pioneer League club that's better than any other pro baseball team in history at one thing -- losing. Despite the ignominy of dropping 39 straight games, the RedPocket Mobiles have found inspiration, camaraderie and even joy.
When the Colorado Springs Rocky Mountain Vibes folded before the 2026 season, the Pioneer League was left with just 11 teams. That would make scheduling a 96-game schedule for the league almost impossible, so, with help from RedPocket, which took on the naming rights, the league created a traveling team. The ballclub would play a series, hop on the bus and head for a new city and a new hotel. They would repeat that all summer long, with cameras coming along to capture it all for a YouTube series.
“We began by getting ourselves a coaching staff with Dmitri Young and started to recruit players. Along the way, we had a couple of guys that balked at the idea of being on a travel team and being on the road for 120 days, which, I mean, you can’t really fault them for that. That’s a big ask,” Mobiles co-GM and Pioneer League director of operations Al Maulding said.
Because the league plays Tuesday through Sunday, the Mobiles have had only one true day off this year when a weekend series in Oakland ended on Sunday before the team drove to Modesto, Calif., on Tuesday. Maulding said that the team has spent 160 hours on the bus alone – the equivalent of four full work weeks.
Despite the difficult nature of the job, this is still an opportunity to play baseball, one with a paycheck attached to it and a Major Leaguer in the dugout.
“We found a big group of guys that really wanted an opportunity to play baseball and prove that they belong and we’ve done that,” Maulding said. “It hasn’t been the easiest thing, but day by day, they keep going out there and playing their hearts out. That’s all we can really ask for.”
With a Kerouacian thirst for the road, the team headed out. The Mobiles finished in last place in the first half with a 12-36 record, but were just three games away from escaping the cellar.
The second half has been a different story: The team has gone 1-43. Injuries, that scourge of all ballclubs, reared its head, but the team also began trading away many of its best players to other teams.
Read the full story of the RedPocket Mobiles here >>
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Brewers @ Cubs (7:15 p.m. ET, FOX)
The Brewers have been in command of this four-game series since the Cubs trounced them in Monday's opener, and Logan Henderson can clinch both this set and the season series for Milwaukee with a win tonight. Hits won't be easy to come by for the Cubs; Henderson allowed just one over seven innings his last time out and has a 2.06 ERA in his last eight starts.
Red Sox @ Orioles (7:15 p.m. ET, FOX)
A month after pulling off one of the most surprising Deadline deals in years, these AL East rivals meet for four in Baltimore, with the centerpiece of that trade, Red Sox catcher Adley Rutschman, set to return tonight from a hyperextended elbow. While Boston is comfortably in Wild Card position, the O's are on the outside looking in -- but not by much -- and now open a crucial 10-game stretch against Boston, Cleveland and Toronto.
Cardinals @ Dodgers (10:10 p.m. ET, MLB.TV)
While the Dodgers debate how long to extend Shohei Ohtani's break from pitching, Tarik Skubal's steady excellence since arriving in L.A. softens the sting a bit. Still, it won't matter who's on the mound if his club keeps slumping at the plate. The Dodgers, who have been outscored by 17 runs since July 1, went just 1-for-18 with runners in scoring position in last night's loss.
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IS HE BOSTON'S MOST UNHERALDED PIECE? (GASP!) |
The Red Sox have resuscitated their season and now look like near-locks for a playoff spot, despite a 29-43 start that included the firing of manager Alex Cora. There have been some unlikely contributors to the bounceback in Beantown, but perhaps none more so than 30-year-old journeyman Mickey Gasper, whose own down-and-up story is perhaps even more extreme than his team’s.
Once a 27th-round Draft pick by the Yankees, the New Hampshire native’s pro baseball odyssey is now on its second stint with the Sox -- following a 2024 cup of coffee -- but only after he was selected off waivers twice in less than a month during the winter. Boston has optioned Gasper to Triple-A Worcester three times this season, but around those setbacks, he’s posted an .882 OPS in 170 plate appearances as a DH/catcher/first baseman. The Sox wouldn’t be here without him.
Read Ian Browne’s story for much more on Gasper’s journey >>
-- Andrew Simon
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250 FOR 250: BEST PLAYER SEASONS |
For our penultimate 250 for 250 list, we're taking a look at the top 10 greatest seasons of all time.
These are all-time performances by all-time greats from every era of baseball history. That means everything from Shohei Ohtani’s 50-50 season, to Ichiro’s debut year, to the Summer of Pedro and so much more.
See all 10 seasons here >>
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