Adnan Virk

So I looked at the numbers, and I go, well...

I don't know if you're going to trade Machado and that many dollars.

Bogart's contract's untradeable.

So maybe that's a Jackson Merrill, who's a nine-year, $135 million contract.

The other guy, he can't trade you.

Darvish, he's out until 2027, still owed big money.

So you can never count on A.J.

Preller.

He still could have a whopper on his hands.

Dan, it was remarkable because if you go by the numbers, Luis Castillo had a .70 ERA in his last six starts going into this game.

So for the Mariners, you see, all right, Luis Castillo is going to shove.

He's going to be brilliant.

And for Scherzer, as you mentioned, he's been tired for a while.

He had an 8.79 ERA his last four postseason starts going back to 2002.

As far as recent vintage, his last starts in the month of September –

had an ERA over 10, and in the first inning, an ERA of 12.64.

There's no reason Max Scherzer should pitch like he did last night, and yet he was throwing his fastest fastball in a year and a half, and he did so with a curveball, which he basically invented later in his career.

He threw 10 curveballs all for strikes, and four of his five strikeouts came on that very same curveball.

But all that gets obscured by, as you mentioned, that wonderful tête-à-tête with John Schneider.

Now, when Schneider runs to the mound like that, as Buck Martinez and Dan Schulman said, that's him basically going to check on his pitcher just to say, are you good?