Miller Misses an Elimination Game for His First Child, Fried Vows to Pitch His Own

October baseball rarely asks a player to choose between the biggest game of his year and the biggest day of his life in the same week, and this week it asked two of them. Mason Miller chose the birth and missed an elimination game his team won without him. Max Fried, facing elimination on Wednesday night, has chosen the start, with his first child due any day.

What happened with Mason Miller before Game 3?

Miller was placed on the postseason paternity list on Tuesday after his wife Jordan went into labour with their first child, Reuters reports, and the Padres announced it less than an hour before first pitch. San Diego trailed Milwaukee 2-0 and had to win to survive. Miller had been clear in advance that he would not miss the birth, beat writer Kevin Acee reported, and the club waited as long as it could before making the final call.

The closer he replaced in the headlines was himself a story. Two nights earlier Miller had taken the Game 2 loss when Jackson Chourio’s final-strike single beat him in the ninth, and the days since had been spent on the Padres dismissing a pitch-tipping theory about his glove. His October turned again before he threw another pitch.

How did the Padres close a must-win game without their closer?

With their Game 2 starter. Michael King, who had started on Sunday, took the final two innings for his first save since 2023, the Associated Press reports, finishing at 40 pitches and surviving a ninth-inning line drive that Xander Bogaerts turned into a game-ending double play. Three relievers covered the outs in between after Nick Pivetta left in the fifth.

The hidden part of the degree of difficulty only came out afterwards. Setup man Adrian Morejon was also unavailable with shoulder discomfort, a fact the club had not announced, the AP reports. San Diego won an elimination game without the top two arms in its bullpen, in a series that had already produced a drive lost to a roof cable in Game 1.

What does the postseason paternity list actually allow?

One to three days away, with a replacement added to the active roster in the meantime, under the move MLB announced on Tuesday, Reuters reports. Wandy Peralta took Miller’s place. The regular-season version of the list is familiar; the postseason version is rarer in practice because the games carry elimination stakes and the rosters are locked series by series.

San Diego has now used it twice in one series. Starter Walker Buehler went on the list on Saturday, was replaced by Randy Vasquez, and returned on Monday, Reuters reports. That spread, a starter early in the series and the closer on elimination night, is why this is a story about the rule working as designed rather than about one player’s choice.

What has Max Fried decided about his own Game 3?

He is pitching. Fried confirmed on Tuesday that his family is expecting, that his partner is due soon, and that none of it changes Wednesday’s start against Tampa Bay at Yankee Stadium, USA Today and the New York Post report. He described a supportive family that understands the start is his job, and kept the rest private.

The contrast is not a criticism of either man, and Fried’s situation differs in the one way that matters: his child has not arrived yet, while Miller’s labour began on game day. It is also not a normal start. New York is down 2-0 after a Game 2 undone by four errors, three of them in the first inning, and Fried knows the leash is short, with almost the whole pitching staff available behind him in a game the Yankees must win to keep playing.

Why do these two stories belong together?

Because they show the same rule from both ends in the same 48 hours. The paternity list exists so that a player in Miller’s position does not have to ask permission to be at a birth in October, and nothing in it obliges a player in Fried’s position to step away before anything has happened. One club planned around an absence and survived; the other is planning around a possibility that may not arrive until after the game.

In a format where how the MLB playoffs work leaves a 2-0 team almost no margin, both clubs still treated the family event as a fact of life to schedule around, not a distraction to complain about. That, more than either result, is the part fans were texting each other about.

What happens next for both pitchers?

Miller is expected back for Game 4 on Wednesday night, pitching coach Ruben Niebla said after Game 3, the Associated Press reports, and Morejon could be available too. Fried starts a few hours later in the Bronx, where a win buys the Yankees a Game 4 and a loss ends their season.

So Wednesday could end with both new and expecting fathers back on mounds, each with his club still alive or done for the year. The baseball will decide the second part. The first part, unusually for October, was never really in doubt for either of them.