Recaps

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Team news

[SI] D-backs Enter Post Season Playing With House Money - If the D-backs stay true to their identity and don't get too conservative trying to slug it out with Phillies, or press against the Brewers pitching, they can apply pressure with their running game. The D-backs should not be afraid to make mistakes. Torey Lovullo should turn them loose on the bases, utilize the bunting strategy, not just to sacrifice, but also bunting for base hits and try to force the other team into mistakes. That's been the formula for this team all year. Play with abandon. Go catch the baseball. Run wild. It's when they're at their best. It's when they're the most dangerous. Led by Carroll, it's how they need to play on Tuesday.

[Dbacks.com] D-backs to face Brewers in NL Wild Card Series: 'A clean slate' - “We have all of our data points,” Lovullo said. “We have all of our information that we collected, and I expect every coach had been doing the same thing that they've been doing all year long, and they wrote down some of their key points. The Brewers are a different team than they were at that point in time. So we've had our scouts sitting on them, and we're gonna sit down as a group tomorrow and as a staff tomorrow, maybe the next day and be as prepared as we can possibly be.”

[AZ Central] Diamondbacks to play Brewers in wild-card series - The Brewers, who led the majors with a 3.71 ERA, have their top two starters — right-handers Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff — rested and ready to start on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. Lovullo did not name his Game 1 starter, but he did call it “fairly obvious,” saying he had not yet had the conversations he needed to have before announcing it. That would signal that rookie right-hander Brandon Pfaadt will be taking the ball against Burnes on Tuesday, with right-hander Zac Gallen matched up with Woodruff on Wednesday.

And it's now official.

[Arizona Sports] D-backs’ Brandon Pfaadt starting Game 1 of NL Wild Card vs. Brewers - The young hurler had a tough go of it to begin the season and struggled to pick up a win across his first 12 starts of 2023. He finished that stretch with a 6.13 ERA and posted just one outing — a seven-inning showing against the San Diego Padres on Aug. 18 — without giving up an earned run. That all changed in late August, however, with Pfaadt looking much sharper throughout his final seven regular season games. He went 3-4 in that span, watching his ERA dip to 4.98. That includes his most recent outing of 5.2 innings of scoreless work in a win over the Chicago White Sox last Wednesday.

[SI] GM Mike Hazen and Lovullo on the D-backs Making the Playoffs - “I can’t explain how good it feels. I’m remembering a lot of things right along this journey. I remember a lot of people that had my back, believed in me and that means more to me than anything. So they’re hugs of happiness but mostly thanks for the effort and the commitment and the belief that we were going to get this done. You know, in a time of doubt, I watched this group never ever waiver from what they believed in, you know our values of loving, trusting, commitment, and effort. It was there every single day and the commitment never ever stopped."

[12 News] What you need to know about the Diamondbacks' Wild Card Round opponent - The Brewers won the NL Central division with a record of 92-70, finishing nine games ahead of the second-place Chicago Cubs. The Brewers manager, Craig Counsell, is a very familiar face to Arizona baseball fans. Counsell played for the D-backs from 2000-06 and was a part of the 2001 World Series championship team. Counsell finished his playing career with Milwaukee in 2011 and has been Milwaukee's manager since 2015.

And, elsewhere...

[MLB.com] From 100 losses to October in 2 years? 3 historic turnarounds - One of the many reasons baseball is the best is that hope springs eternal. Even after a trying season, you truly never know what the near future will bring. Take the 2021 season, for example. Four teams lost at least 100 games: the Orioles (110), D-backs (110), Rangers (102) and Pirates (101). Those first three teams are all headed to the postseason this year. This is the first time that multiple 100-loss teams from the same season have made the playoffs either one or two years after that ignominious century-mark season. Let alone three, as 2021 has now produced.

[ESPN] Miguel Cabrera, Terry Francona close Hall of Fame careers - The crowd roared, Cabrera's kids came out on the field, and one of the best hitters of all time shed some tears before the Detroit Tigers closed the season with a 5-2 win over the Cleveland Guardians on Sunday. "They give me a chance to say goodbye," Cabrera said. "I'm going to appreciate this moment for the rest of my life." The game also marked the end of Terry Francona's career. Cleveland's manager, who led Boston to a pair of World Series titles, is set to retire this week.

Others who did make or might have made their last appearance yesterday include Joey Votto, Adam Wainwright and Zack Greinke.

[SI] Buck Showalter Announces He Won’t Manage Mets Next Season - Buck Showalter announced Sunday that he will not be back as the Mets’ manager in 2024. Showalter told media members that he was given the option to step aside, saying “the new leadership, they’re going to go in a different direction with the manager next year,” per SNY. Showalter, 67, was set to enter the final season of his three-year contract in 2024 and the announcement comes on the final day of a regular season where New York fell significantly short of expectations.

Since it's October, I'm reviewing a different vampire movie every day. Feel free to follow along. Here's part of my review of the granddaddy of them all...

Nosferatu (1922)

Rating: C

Dir: F. W. Murnau

Star: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach

Full disclosure. I have a problem with silent movies. In fact, it’s an impressive feat if one of them avoids sending me into slumberland. It’s not as if the makers chose to be silent, as some kind of artistic decision. Sound simply wasn’t an option, and due to this, the results typically feel as if they were making a film with one arm tied behind their back. When you can’t have dialogue – or at least are severely limited, to what you can cram into occasional intertitles – story-telling becomes much more difficult. Not so much the broad strokes: after all, this is an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula, so the story’s pretty obvious. It’s the subtleties that are usually lost, and mostly replaced by exaggerated over-acting for emphasis.

I can still respect these early efforts, which often contain striking visual imagery, as good as anything you’ll find nowadays. That’s just not enough for me. I’m a big fan of a well-developed plot, and that’s something almost impossible to do in a silent film. I understand these film-makers laid the foundation for what was to come, and certainly do not deny them their place in the history of the art. However, the same could be said about the cave paintings of Lascaux, and I would not want them hanging on the walls here at FilmBlitz Towers. Silent films are, to me, like having to eat gourmet food while holding your nose. The overall experience is inevitably going to be diminished as a result of the limitations, even if those were not, in any way, a fault of the creators. And it’s the experience I care about.

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