In 2026, the fraternity of big leaguers with diabetes remains small. Yet this postseason has served as a showcase, linking a few players on different teams to a common cause. Mitchell might be the only one still competing, but until last week, he was joined by fellow Type 1 diabetics in Padres closer Mason Miller and Chicago White Sox reliever Jordan Hicks.

“I think we kind of take it on as a responsibility we have to be a role model,” Miller said in an interview with The Athletic before the NLDS. “Just to give kids an opportunity to meet you and see that you’re a real person and hear it from you that the things that we’re achieving are possible, and that Type 1’s not something that holds you back.”

“When I get the chance to meet kids, I just always tell them that you’re never going to have it all figured out. I certainly don’t,” Miller said. “It’s an imperfect science, and it’s things like your monitors or pumps or whatever you’re using to help you. Just the technology and resources we have these days really allow you to kind of shrink your ‘miss’ window.”

SAN DIEGO — Five years ago, in the weeks between the end of the World Series and the beginning of a 99-day lockout, the San Diego Padres poached manager Bob Melvin from the Athletics and agreed to re-sign right-hander Nick Martinez to a four-year, $25.5 million deal. Otherwise, they did relatively little.

They exercised club options on relievers Pierce Johnson and Craig Stammen. They signed relievers Robert Suarez and Luis Garcia to modest free-agent contracts. They jettisoned second baseman Adam Frazier to the Seattle Mariners, receiving reliever Ray Kerr in return.

It wasn’t until business resumed the following March that Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller and then-owner Peter Seidler took their biggest swings.

They poked around on first baseman Freddie Freeman before he signed a six-year, $162 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers. They thought they came close to signing Seiya Suzuki before the Chicago Cubs threw the outfielder a five-year, $85 million offer. And, in a previously unreported gambit, Preller planned to meet with one of the sport’s top sluggers before the Philadelphia Phillies secured the same target with a four-year, $79 million agreement.

“I was getting on a plane to go talk to Kyle Schwarber and got told to get off the plane because he was going to finish up a deal with the Phillies,” Preller said. “That one hurt a little bit or a lot of bit because he’s a phenomenal player. It seems like he hits a homer every time we play him.”

That was the most interesting revelation from a video call Preller and Stammen, now the Padres’ manager, conducted Wednesday, a week after their team was ousted from the postseason.

Seven weeks from now, Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement will expire, and another lockout is expected to commence. No one knows how long it will last — or how much Preller will try to accomplish next month, between the end of the World Series and the beginning of potential labor Armageddon.

“It’s hard to predict,” Preller said. “I think we’ll look back on that ’21-22 offseason … and my guess is that there’s a chance that it follows some kind of pattern there. I think we’ll get a way better feeling coming out of the GM Meetings (in November).

I still miss the Franimal