Cruds alert!*

 (*Last of the season. Promise.)

The baseball season wrapped up Sunday, and now it's on to the playoffs this week, where the Yankees open against the Red Sox because it's like a national law that the Yankees and Red Sox have to play each other at least three times every two weeks.

Also, the Cubs open against the Padres. Also the Tigers, who blew a 10-game lead in the last month and lost the AL Central title to Cleveland, open at ... Cleveland.

First, however, the aforementioned last Cruds Alert of the season, in which both the Colorado Rockheads and Chicago What Sox managed to finish as winners of a fashion, and the Blob has decided it needs to make a fashion statement.

Let's begin with the Rockheads.

Who lost their last six games to easily secure the not-coveted title of Worst Team In The Majors (And Maybe The Minors, Too). The 'Heads finished the season with a 43-119 record, which is demonstrably awful but NOT historically awful. This is because they won two more games than the 2024 Chicago What Sox, who WERE historically awful.

So crack open a magnum of Cold Duck for them. When you only finish 50 games out of first in your division and 37 out of next-to-last, it seems the thing to do.

Speaking of the What Sox, those hardy souls finished 60-102, dead last again in the AL Central by 10 games (and 28 out of first). However, the 60 wins represented a 19-win improvement over last year's catastrophe. So crack open, I don't know, a warm Old Style or something for them.

Meanwhile ...

Meanwhile, my very own Pittsburgh Cruds were practically a rousing success by comparison. They finished 

Yeah, they finished dead last in the NL Central again, but only by seven games (26 out of first). At 71-91, they were a staggering 28 games better than the Rockheads, and five games better than the last-place team in the NL East, the Washington Nationals.

So not only were the Cruds not the worst team in the National League, they weren't even the second-worst team.  So they had that going for 'em.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, I can't decide) they finished last again even with the most remarkable pitcher in baseball taking the hill for them every four or five days. That would be Paul Skenes, who became the first pitcher ever to have back-to-back seasons with an ERA below 2.00 and 10 strikeouts per nine innings in at least 100 innings.

This time around, Skenes had 1.97 ERA and 214 punch-outs. But because he played for the Cruds, his won-loss record was just 10-10.

That makes Paul Skenes not just a diamond in the rough, but a diamond in a steaming pile of chronically awful awfulness. And it's prompted the Blob to start thinking about having a T-shirt made in his honor.

FREE PAUL SKENES, it will say.