MILWAUKEE — Blake Treinen’s first save of the postseason was hardly a memorable performance.
He threw more balls than strikes. He walked the first batter he faced and nearly hit the second. And he got the final out on a pitch that was well out of the strike zone.
But he did get the final out, preserving the Dodgers’ 2-1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers in the opening game of the National League Championship Series on Monday.
And for Treinen and the bullpen he’s supposed to be anchoring, that counts as major progress.
“We’ve been putting in a lot of work to try to get some things in a better place with myself,” Treinen said. “Today, I thought I executed almost every pitch.”
The fixes, he said, were simple mechanical tweaks that helped set up his pitches.
“Sometimes through catch-play and touching the mound a little bit, things start to click. And you’re kind of shocked at how a subtle tweak can change everything,” he said.
In the Dodgers’ World Series run last season, Treinen was as vicious as an ill-tempered Doberman, going 2-0 with three saves, a 2.19 ERA and 18 strikeouts in 12 1/3 innings.
This year, not so much. In his first four playoff appearances more batters got a hit than struck out and five of the 12 men he faced reached base. That followed a disastrous September in which he went 1-5 with a 9.64 ERA.
He wasn’t so much putting out fires as he was starting them. The poor performances began to build on one another.
“At times this year, when it hasn’t gone well, th[ings] can speed up a little bit in your mind,” he said. “That’s the hard part, to carry the thoughts and focus on what you’re good at.”
But manager Dave Roberts, who has had Treinen for the last five seasons, kept giving him chances to turn things around.
“I think the best way to for me to kind of view it is whether you’re a position player slumping or a pitcher maybe not getting the outs at the clip that you want, we all know what our abilities are,” Treinen said. “Dave’s seen me at my best and at my worst, and so when he calls my name, I’m grateful that he has confidence in me.
“And I have confidence that he’s putting me in situations for the team to win. So there’s a lot of peace in that.”
Treinen may have been at peace but he didn’t have much wiggle room when he replaced Roki Sasaki on the mound Monday with two out in the ninth and the Dodgers clinging to a one-run lead.
Sasaki, the team’s surprise playoff closer, had been lights out in the postseason, with just one of the 17 hitters he faced reaching base. Against the Brewers, he gave up two walks, a ground-rule double and a run-scoring sacrifice fly in the span of two outs. When Treinen entered, Milwaukee had the tying run on first and the winning run on third — and the right-hander immediately made things worse by walking William Contreras on six pitches to load the bases.
Treinen quickly got ahead of Brice Turang, the Brewers’ left-handed cleanup hitter, but courted disaster again when he sailed a 1-2 sweeper that nearly hit Turang. That would have forced in the tying run had Turang not instinctively danced out of the way, eliciting a groan from the sold-out crowd.
“It’s a natural reaction,” Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said. “When the ball is coming towards you, it’s a breaking ball, your natural reaction is to do that.
Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki delivers in the ninth inning against the Brewers in NLCS Game 1 on Monday.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“It happens. He’ll learn from that situation. But it’s hard.”
For Treinen, whose only luck lately has been bad luck, the break was one he quickly cashed by getting Turang to chase the next pitch, which was head high, to end the game.
That swing brought equal measures of joy and relief for Treinen, who has supplied little of either for the Dodgers this postseason. This time, he said it felt good to finally be able to contribute.
“Our guys have been playing great baseball,” he said. “Our bats are doing a great job. Our starters have been amazing. So [I’m] just doing my job to finish the game.”
He also did his job in picking up Sasaki, the hero of the NL Division Series win over the Phillies, who stood to be the goat if the Dodgers lost Monday.
“Any time as a professional, when you have the ability to pick up your teammates, there’s a lot of pride in it,” Treinen said. “You just want to do your part because it’s a team game.
“I’ve certainly had guys pick me up this year. To have the opportunity to pick someone else up, it feels good.”
And it’s been a long time since Treinen has felt that.
Walton Goggins seems extremely grateful to learn that, if Pete Davidson is right, he might be the next Pedro Pascal — even if that might not be a good thing.
The Emmy-nominated actor, known for his eccentric characters in shows like “Fallout” and “The White Lotus,” responded Sunday to comments comedian Davidson made last week on Theo Von’s “This Past Week” podcast.
Taking a spin as a fortune teller, the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member predicted that adoring fans would soon turn on Goggins, just as they had with Pascal.
“[Pascal] worked so hard and has been a struggling actor, f—ing blows up so f—ing hard, everyone’s like, ‘Daddy, daddy! Yeah, daddy, daddy,’” Davidson told Von. “And then a year later, he’s like in everything now cause he’s hot and big and everyone’s like, ‘Go the f— away, dude.’”
“It’s like, we build everybody up and now it’s so fast to turn,” he added. “It’s within months.”
Well, Goggins responded to Davidson within days.
“Pete we don’t know each other but I appreciate the heads up,” Goggins said on Instagram, posting an image of an article about the 31-year-old sharing his thoughts on fame. “We agree on one thing … Pedro Pascal isn’t a good man, He’s a great man. A dear friend of mine.
“As a 53 year old,” he continued, “I’m acutely aware that every experience has a shelf life.”
The headline on the attached article? “Pete Davidson Predicts Fans Will ‘Turn’ on Walton Goggins Similar to Pedro Pascal Oversaturation Backlash.”
Goggins took a moment to explain he would be promoting some upcoming projects to “honor all those that worked so hard to bring these stories to fruition,” then encouraged people to simply scroll away if they weren’t interested in reading about it.
“See to me,” he wrote, “being included in this headline isn’t a curse it’s a blessing. How lucky am I that this is even a possibility?!!”
It’s something Goggins said he couldn’t have imagined as a poor kid from Georgia.
“So … if saying yes in life more than saying no is a crime, then I’m guilty as charged,” he said in closing. “And if this headline is a possibility or an inevitability, if this is my fate, well … f— it. I’m going to enjoy the F— OUT OF IT.”
Goggins told The Times last year that he sees his career as a stock he wants to own: “There have been dips, but it’s gradually gone up over time.”
Looks like it’s time to pump that stock before it’s dumped by the masses.
Growing up, Al Roker loved animation. His Saturday mornings were devoted to Bugs Bunny and Road Runner, and he would spend hours studying Preston Blair’s book on how to draw cartoons. He dreamed of becoming an animator for Walt Disney. But when he grew up and became the “Today” weatherman instead, he had the idea to combine his love of weather with his love of animation into a children’s TV series.
“Weather Hunters,” premiering Monday on PBS Kids, follows 8-year-old Lily Hunter (Tandi Fomukong) as she, her younger brother, Benny (Lorenzo Ross) and her older sister, Corky (Kapri Ladd), investigate the weather with the help of their parents, Dot (Holly Robinson Peete) and Al (Roker). The children in the series are based on Roker’s own three children: Courtney, Leila and Nick. And in a case of art fondly imitating life, Roker’s Al Hunter is a local weatherman with a penchant for dad jokes.
“This really is one of those instances where everything that you love in your life comes together,” Roker says. “The show reflects what my childhood was. My parents were very supportive of their children and what their dreams were.”
Roker has been developing the show since his now-adult children were the ages the Hunter kids are in the series. “Good things come to those who wait,” he says with a laugh.
“This is a real passion project for him,” says Sara DeWitt, senior vice president and general manager of PBS Kids. “We love to have a creator who is so excited about getting kids interested in the world.”
For PBS Kids, a series rooted in weather exploration was a natural extension to its current slate of programming. “Weather plays such a big part of kids’ lives,” DeWitt says. “What should I wear today? What if it rains and I can’t do the thing I was planning to do? Where does that thunder come from? It just immediately opened up so many ideas and possibilities for us about ways we could really connect with families and get them more excited about the scientific topic.”
“Weather Hunters” centers on Lily Hunter and her family, which includes her father, Al, who, like Roker, is a weatherman.
(Weather Hunters Inc.)
Over the course of the first 10 episodes, all of which will premiere digitally on PBS Kids at launch, Lily and her family will investigate things like fog, clouds, leaves changing colors, thunderstorms, snow and the moving rocks of the desert. Sara Sweetman, an associate professor at University of Rhode Island, is an educational advisor for the series. “Weather is such fantastic content because it is very relevant to the kids’ lives,” she says. “They understand why it’s important and how it impacts them.”
But weather science, like all science, can get complex pretty quickly. “I was really adamant that there’d be one takeaway message [in each episode],” Sweetman says. “What we really want is [for] kids to watch the show and then run into the kitchen to find their dad or their mom and say, ‘Guess what?’ and be able to state that one idea really clearly.”
Sweetman was involved in each 22-minute episode from the very first pitch. “The ideal situation for educational media is that we hit the learning moment at the same moment as the emotional arc of the story,” she says. “We know from research when we can do that, that kids take that meaning away and hold on to it.”
Peete, the voice of Dot, has been friends with Roker for years. She starred in Hallmark’s “Morning Show Mysteries,” which Roker produced and was based on Roker’s novels. For Peete, whose father, Matthew Robinson Jr., was the original Gordon on “Sesame Street,” starring in the series is a “full-circle moment.” “PBS just meant so much to me,” she says. “It’s one thing for your dad to be on TV. It’s nothing for your dad to be on like the best TV children’s TV show ever. I wish my dad could see that I was actually on PBS doing this type of show with Al. He would be very, very proud that I would continue this legacy of children’s entertainment and education.”
Executive producer and showrunner Dete Meserve says animation allows the series, which is aimed at children ages 5 to 8, to have flights of fancy like the flying mobile weather station known as the Vansformer that the family explores in combined with “reality-based scientific explanations for what’s happening.” The episode on clouds explains how even though Benny can no longer see the sun behind the clouds, the sun is still there.
All kids are scientists, says Meserve, and it’s particularly nice that the character at the center of this series is a young girl interested in science. “There’s research that shows that if she can see it, she can be it,” Meserve says. “And Lily is surrounded by her siblings who have an equal interest, but the way they interact with it is different. Corky wants to film and document it. And then you have Benny, who’s more the artistic part of it. He wants to draw.”
The show also seeks to make some weather phenomena like hurricanes or thunderstorms less scary by helping the young audience understand the science behind what is happening. “We’re explaining what it is and how it works,” Roker says. “Kids can feel some sense of empowerment. In the show we talk about, how do we, as a family, prepare? How do we protect ourselves? How do we keep ourselves safe?”
Throughout the series Lily will form hypotheses and test them to see if the facts fit what she originally thought. “Those are all things that I think the show excels at — helping create those skills for critical thinking that kids can take forward as they get older,” Roker says.
He also hopes children walk away with a sense of the true beauty of weather. “There’s really this magic that happens around us,” he says. “And it’s based in science.”
Of all the pop hits vying to become the song of the summer, Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” might be the most improbable: A stark and brooding ballad full of lurid Christian imagery — “Shatter me with your touch / Oh Lord, return me to dust,” goes one line — it’s about a guy seeking the kind of sexual-spiritual fulfillment not typically found on the beach or at a barbecue.
Yet the song, which has more than 720 million streams on Spotify, just logged its sixth week since early June atop Billboard’s Hot 100 — more than a month longer at No. 1 than Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild,” to name one of the sunnier tunes soundtracking the season. (Among Warren’s other competitors: Drake, who posted an image of the current chart on Instagram on Monday showing his song “What Did I Miss?” at No. 2 behind Warren’s hit. “I’m taking that soon don’t worry,” the rapper wrote.)
“Ordinary’s” somber tone is all the more striking given that Warren — whose father died when he was 9 and who grew up in Carlsbad with a single mother he’s described as an abusive alcoholic — first made a name for himself as a founding member of Hype House, the early-2020s conclave of TikTokers known for beaming out goofy bite-size content from a rented mansion in Los Angeles. Half a decade later, Warren is still a faithful user of his TikTok account (with its 18.8 million followers), though these days he’s mostly driving attention — often with the help of his wife, fellow influencer Kouvr Annon — to his music, which combines the moody theatrics of early Sam Smith with the highly buffed textures of Imagine Dragons.
On Friday, Warren will release his debut LP, “You’ll Be Alright, Kid,” featuring guest appearances by Blackpink’s Rosé and by Jelly Roll, who brought Warren to the stage at April’s Stagecoach festival to sing “Ordinary” and to premiere their duet “Bloodline.” Warren, 24, discussed his journey during a recent trip to L.A. from his new home in Nashville, where he lives not far from Jelly Roll and Teddy Swims. “I was just texting Teddy,” Warren says as we sit down. “I got off tour and immediately was like, ‘Oh, I want to buy a go-kart.’ Teddy FaceTimes me, he goes, ‘You a—hole. I’m trying to buy a go-kart right now too.’ Apparently, I bought the last go-kart in Tennessee.” These are excerpts from our conversation.
“Ordinary” is clearly drawing on your identity as a Christian. Yet there’s something almost sacrilegious about the song. I get that criticism a lot.
To me it’s what makes the song interesting — the erotic energy in a line like “You got me kissing the ground of your sanctuary.” I’m worshiping my wife in a way — she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You can’t just write a song like that and be like, “Oh, baby, you’re my everything.” Everyone’s already done “You’re my world,” you know? I wanted to do something different — almost Hozier-esque. I wrote into it being like, I really love my wife, and I have a relationship with God — that’s something I can compare it to.
As the song has gone out, I’ve heard a lot of Christians’ opinions on it, and some people are like, “F— this guy.” There’s also so many people who think it’s a super die-hard Christian song and don’t like it either. I have to be OK with both sides hating me.
You’ve led a peculiar life, which obviously lends context to your music for anyone who knows the details. Yet “Ordinary” is big enough now that many listeners — maybe most listeners — are hearing it without knowing anything about you. This new song I’ve been teasing [“Eternity”] is about grief, and people are like, “I can’t wait to play it at my wedding.” It’s cool that people are making it their own. It reminds me of Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved,” where people were like, “Oh my God, this is a breakup record.” No, he wrote it about his grandma.
Are you a Capaldi fan? I love Lewis. I don’t look like a Justin Bieber/Shawn Mendes traditional pop star, but it’s cool because Lewis kind of made it popular to not give a f—. Lewis and Ed [Sheeran], I would say — I mean, I’ve seen Ed’s closet, and it’s just nine white Prada T-shirts.
You have an unusual voice. Thank you — I think?
It’s deeper than most pop voices right now. Does it seem unusual to you? No. I asked my wife, “Do I have a basic voice?” She was like, “What are you talking about?” I was like, “I live with this voice, and I think it just sounds like every other bitch.” But I’m my No. 1 hater.
I went back and looked at the series Netflix made about Hype House. I’m so sorry.
There’s some significant fluctuations in your weight, and I was wondering how working in a visual field from a pretty young age shaped your ideas about eating and exercise. When I started making money, I didn’t know what to do with it and I just used DoorDash every second I could. As time went on, especially in Hype House, you have so many people’s opinions and everyone’s pointing out your flaws, and the weight was definitely one of them. After that I was like, “OK, how do I fix this?” I’m 24 now — I was 22, 21 at the time, and I was like, “I should be in the best shape of my life.”
But it definitely does take a toll on you. Even now, if you go look at my TikTok comments, thousands of people are loving me. You go on Twitter, the first 400 comments are like, “He’s so ugly,” “His nose is crooked,” all these things. It hits a point where you have a thousand people loving you, but those two people not — you’re like, “Wait, are they the ones telling me the truth? Is everyone else just gassing me up?”
Kind of bleak. It’s such a strange career. I have the Kids’ Choice Awards on Saturday, and I’m like, “Should I be eating this the next few days?”
Would you say you’re in a good place in terms of how you think about your physical appearance? Looking in the mirror, probably not. But when it comes to having to approve a photo, I don’t give a s—. I’ll approve whatever, double chin and all.
Is that true? Truly, I don’t mind, because I don’t think people are watching my videos for my attractiveness. That being said, if I was lighter, I think I’d be happier looking at myself. But at the same time, I don’t care because these songs to me are more about what they’re about and less about how I look. Also, it gives me some leeway if someone catches me lacking at In-N-Out.
Warren’s song “Ordinary” now has more than 720 million streams on Spotify and has just logged its sixth week since early June atop Billboard’s Hot 100.
(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)
You’ve said you don’t really drink or do drugs but that you get drunk once a year. What would be the occasion? I just got drunk with Ed Sheeran — I drank two Modelos and I got put on my ass. This was at Santa’s Pub [in Nashville] — me, Noah Kahan and Ed Sheeran. They had just played something, and Ed was like, “Do you want a drink?” I was like, “If I’m getting drunk this year, it’s getting drunk with Ed Sheeran.” So he gave me a Modelo, and I was like, “Whoa, I’m feeling this.” He’s like, “OK, dude, I’m on my 11th.” He hands me a second one, and my wife had to drive me home.
So I’ve been getting a little loose with it. But it’s always beer — I don’t really drink any hard stuff. Nothing against it, I’ve just always preferred Diet Coke. I wish I liked alcohol.
I mean, you can cultivate this. It’s easy to do. I’ve been trying. I had a sip of my friend’s old fashioned. I thought it was interesting — sugary, but I liked it.
Your song “The Outside” on this new record talks about the illusory nature of happiness and success. I went into it wanting to write about the things that people go through to turn to God or another power or something to get out of their own heads. I wanted to depict people finding a sense of purpose.
“Hollywood wasn’t all that she thought / City of Angels but her wings got caught / She got high enough to think she met God.” You move to L.A. to pursue a dream and you see God after doing a hallucinogenic — that’s referencing a friend of mine who’s now a Christian buff who did ayahuasca. The other [verse] is about health care — watching my friends who don’t have it because it’s so expensive.
“‘It’s just stress,’ so the doctor says / His young heart’s beating out of his chest / Student loans and medical debt.” The Luigi Mangione case happened around the time we wrote that record.
Luigi was in your head as you were writing? That second verse is literally about Luigi Mangione. Not to get political, but the things that I feel are necessary in life — you have to pay for it, and it causes people to turn to something like God. The song ends with me being like, “I talk to my dad in the sky, hoping he talks to me back.” That song means a lot to me.
Your music is extremely tidy, which stands in contrast to the singer-songwriter mode of the Zach Bryans — And the Noah Kahans, where they’re flat in some parts and it doesn’t matter because the emotion’s there.
Why is your instinct as a musician to go for something neater? Because I don’t have the luxury of being able to make what some people view as mistakes. Coming from TikTok to music, I feel like it needs to be neat — it needs to be, “Oh my God, this guy can do this.” The next album I’m working on, it’s more rugged. I’m finding different parts of my voice. I’ve been listening to a lot of older music too, which has been really good.
Such as? Hall & Oates — dude, “Rich Girl”? Billy Joel too.
Is there still a Hype House group chat? I have a group chat with not all of them but the ones that — I’m not gonna name-drop them, but the ones getting popular with music. It was formative years in my life — my college experience, I guess. We’re able to look back on it and have a moment of, like, “That sucked, but it was also awesome.”
Would people in the house have called that you and Addison Rae would be the ones to break out as musicians? No, I don’t think so — especially not me. Maybe Addison — Addison has always been cool. Everyone loved Addison, even in the house, and she’s always been so kind. Even to this day, she’s a good friend of mine. But no one would have guessed me. I don’t think anyone liked me.
In the house? Just in general. The Netflix show — a lot of it was fake, but looking at that, I feel like I’m such a better person now.
“The next album I’m working on, it’s more rugged,” says Warren, whose debut LP “You’ll Be Alright, Kid” comes out Friday. “I’m finding different parts of my voice.”
(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)
Are you glad that “Ordinary” happened after the influencer moment in your life — that there’s a bit of separation? I started this in 2020, 2021 — I put out my first song then, and I was still an influencer, vlogging, doing all those things. Everyone’s like, “He came out of nowhere,” and I’m like, I’ve been doing this for five years.
But nobody cared until well after your time as an influencer — which might be a good thing, right? I’m not sure the overlap served Lil Huddy. In a weird way, you might’ve gotten lucky. I think about that often. I made videos with my wife — I never really made videos with the content house — and those videos were successful in their own right. I think a lot of my fans today were watching me at that time, but not for the Hype House. Actually, no, that’s not true.
It’s hard to generalize about the audience for a song this big. All I do is put my head down and promote the records. I’m not paying attention to the scope of things.
Of course you’re checking the numbers. I’m not understanding the scope besides the numbers. My monthly listeners [on Spotify], someone told me it was 50-something million — that’s sick. But I can’t contextualize that. If I’m walking down the street, how many people have heard the song and how many people know who I am? I know the song is big, but I’m under the assumption that the record’s bigger than I am.
That seems true. OK, so what does that mean? I can compare it to a Lola Young, or is it a Benson Boone? I think that’s two separate things right now. Also, I don’t know the age demographic. If I walk into a bingo night, are they gonna know who I am?
A bingo night? You know what I’m saying. The song is No. 1 on Hot AC — that’s adult contemporary. Is it someone’s mom? I don’t know who’s listening to the record. But I write songs about people passing away, and most people — no matter rich, poor, whatever — it’s typically gonna be your 40-and-up who are gonna relate to that record. Kids don’t necessarily deal with loss the same way.
Is it weird to think that a significant portion of your audience is people twice your age? No, that’s f—ing rad to me — the older audience is the hardest to grab. I think it’s safe to say that most people judge notoriety on whether their mom knows who they are, right? If that’s where I start, that’s cool.
