Some playoff games flow like beautiful novels. Two ace starters might have a duel – narratively satisfying. Maybe one pitcher is trying to hold off the opposing offense – who doesn’t like a siege story? Or, perhaps a superstar slugger is on an absolute tear – the great man theory of postseason baseball is alive and well. But Monday night, the Brewers and Cubs played a game that doesn’t fit any of those tropes. The Brewers bullpenned it. The Cubs answered with Shota Imanaga, who gave up 15 homers over his final nine regular season starts, on a short leash. The result? A disjointed game, which can best be captured by a disjointed recap.

Justin Turner, Leadoff Hitter

Justin Turner doesn’t hit leadoff. In his lengthy major league career, he’s racked up exactly 69 plate appearances in the leadoff spot, and only one in the past decade. He’s never hit leadoff in the playoffs. He was well below average at the plate this year – a 71 wRC+ and negative WAR. Naturally, he hit leadoff in the most important game of the Cubs season so far.

Why? Because Chicago manager Craig Counsell is no dummy. The Brewers started Aaron Ashby, who astute observers will note pitched in Saturday’s Game 1. Ashby was just in there as an opener, a southpaw option against Kyle Tucker and the rest of the Cubs lefty contingent. Counsell’s counter-move was straightforward. The other guy starts with a lefty reliever? He’ll start with a lefty-killing righty as more or less a pinch-hitter.

The move didn’t pan out right away; Turner flied out softly to open the game. But the rest of the Chicago lineup immediately went to work – single, walk, massive home run from Seiya Suzuki. It was 3-0 in a blink. Brewers manager Pat Murphy tried to stretch Ashby through a second inning even after the setback, but it just wasn’t happening. Ashby needed 43 pitches just to get through 10 hitters. That’s right, 10 – his last batter was Turner a second time, and Turner flared an easy single to left to chase Ashby. Counsell’s gambit worked to perfection; he somehow got two straight good platoon matchups for Turner in a series where high-octane righties abound.

Bombs Away

Imanaga ended the year in poor form. All those homers ballooned his September ERA to a nasty 6.51. His 6.68 FIP was somehow worse. He appeared against San Diego in the opening round of the playoffs, as a bulk innings option behind opener Andrew Kittredge, and gave up another blast en route to an uneven appearance (four innings, three strikeouts, two walks, one homer, two earned runs). But what was Counsell going to do, not start him?

The Brewers aren’t necessarily a home run-hitting team, but they’re open to the idea if invited. Imanaga’s arsenal is nothing if not inviting; after a pair of two-out singles, Andrew Vaughn turned on a belt-high sweeper and tucked it into the left field stands. It was 3-3 before we left the first inning, but it wouldn’t stay that way long. When the top of the order came up again in the third inning, Willson Contreras demolished a 91-mph fastball to put Milwaukee on top 4-3. Christian Yelich followed with a hard-hit single, and Counsell had seen enough. He went to the pen after 46 pitches and eight outs.

The Miz!

Jacob Misiorowski must eat sugary cereal for breakfast. I say that because I know how I act after I’ve had a bowl of Frosted Flakes, and he was exhibiting similar symptoms when Murphy turned to him to start the third inning. Think his fastball is fearsome at its usual 101 miles an hour? It’s downright terrifying when he ramps it up to 104, as he repeatedly did in his first inning of work.

Misiorowski is pretty much unhittable when he’s on. In the third, he tallied two weak groundouts, an overpowering strikeout – and a four-pitch walk. The second of the groundouts ended the inning, but also showed Misiorowski’s mindset. After fielding it cleanly, he ran to first base himself on a full sprint, perhaps a little too amped up to trust himself with an underhand toss. Then he flexed and roared, exulting in the playoff atmosphere.

The next inning brought more of the same – an amped-up Miz, two strikeouts, and a five-pitch walk where he got increasingly wild with each pitch. Oh yeah, the last of those batters was Michael Busch, in the game for Turner now that the leadoff spot came up with a righty on the mound. Again, though, you don’t so much beat Misiorowski when he’s this keyed up as wait him out. Nico Hoerner finally tallied a hit against him in the fifth, an opposite-field line drive, but there’s just no headway to be had when you’re trying to time up 103-mph fastballs and 95-mph sliders. The other three Cubs that inning managed a strikeout and two weak foul pops.

When Misiorowski finally departed at the start of the sixth, the Brewers led comfortably. The Cubs never looked particularly close to stringing anything together against him. I’m not sure how long he’ll be able to go in his next October appearance, or how many days of rest the Brewers will want to give him after 57 adrenaline-pumping pitches. I am confident that it’s going to be electric to watch, and that the Cubs are desperately hoping that they can somehow pull off a reverse sweep in this series without having to face any more 104-mph heaters. What a performance.

Action Jackson

Jackson Chourio missed almost the entirety of August with a hamstring strain. He looked less explosive upon his return, with less power and a less-adventurous approach to baserunning. Then he aggravated the injury in the first game of this series, putting his availability for Monday night in at least a bit of doubt. His first two at-bats produced two outs against the otherwise reeling Imanaga. His third time up? A towering, 419-foot homer to dead center that put the Brewers up 7-3 in the fourth inning.

Is Chourio back? It depends on how you’d define back. He’s still limping around at times, and it’s clear that the hamstring is bothering him. He bumped into Busch while rounding first base on a sixth-inning play and looked meaningfully slower as he continued to second (speed wasn’t an issue; Dansby Swanson had just sailed a throw into foul territory and there was little chance of a play at the base). But on the other hand, he’s blasting huge home runs and making nifty plays in foul territory, where he turned a foul ball into an out with a smooth, wall-scraping grab. I don’t think he’s at full strength, but he’s still a dangerous hitter, and even if his baserunning prowess is down, the Brewers will happily keep running him out there.

We’ve Got Ice

Caleb Durbin’s batting line in this game doesn’t look particularly impressive. He recorded no hits or walks. He hit into a double play. But in that fateful fourth inning, he saw a Daniel Palencia fastball headed in his general direction and heroically tossed his elbow at it. He caught the ball as flush as you can imagine, a direct hit on his arm, one of those “act like you’re getting out of the way but make sure to do the opposite” moves that grind-and-grit hitters have been using to accrue free bases since time immemorial.

It’s no accident that Durbin led the NL with 24 hit-by-pitches this year, only three off the major league lead. It’s more impressive than that, even; Durbin did it in 506 plate appearances, while leader Randy Arozarena needed 709 to get to 27 HBPs. You might not like this skill, but it’s real, and Durbin is the best in the majors at it right now.

Those free bases don’t always matter. This time, they did. Durbin’s spot in the lineup produced a baserunner instead of an out, which means that when Blake Perkins struck out immediately afterwards, there were two outs instead of three. That meant more pitches for Palencia, and also that Joey Ortiz’s line drive single turned the lineup over. You’ve already read what happened next – Chourio hit the ball to Wauwatosa (a wonderful suburb of Milwaukee, I promise) and gave the Brewers an insurmountable lead.

Lockdown

The Cubs offense might have gone quiet against Misiorowski, but there was still time left. They had 12 outs to play with after Milwaukee’s scariest arm departed, but they couldn’t do anything with them, because the guys behind the Miz are pretty good too. Chad Patrick struck out two Cubs in a perfect sixth. Jared Koenig followed with four straight outs, with huge assistance from Vaughn, who made a nifty play in foul territory behind first base to turn a would-be infield single into an out. All of the sudden, there were only five outs to play with, and Milwaukee hadn’t even gone to its late-inning options.

Even a one-run deficit feels almost insurmountable against the Brewers by the time the eighth inning rolls around. Trevor Megill and Abner Uribe were both spectacular this year, with matchingly gaudy ERAs and strikeout rates. Megill’s health was a question heading into Game 2; his first appearance back from a flexor strain was the regular season finale, and he didn’t appear in the first game of this series. His stuff looked slightly diminished – slower fastball, less-biting curve – but stuff has never really been Megill’s problem. The little stuff heatmaps on our player pages? They don’t get darker red than Megill’s. He looked plenty nasty even sitting down a tick, and he pounded the strike zone with plus command. Good luck, hitters.

No one knew how good Megill would be Monday. There was no such doubt about Uribe’s form. He started 2025 strong and got stronger as the year wore on, blowing lineups away with his trademark sinker/slider duo while halving his walk rate. The Cubs were just the latest victims as he struck out the side on 13 pitches, retiring each batter with a scintillating slider below the strike zone. The Brewers didn’t need a lockdown performance from their bullpen, but with a travel day Tuesday, there was no reason to leave anything to chance; Murphy put the hammer down consistently as soon as he had a lead.

Conclusions

Don’t let the early innings fool you; the Brewers absolutely torched the Cubs today. They were constantly on base, threatening to score in nearly every inning, and only let off the gas at the very end. How in the world are you going to score seven runs against their bullpen? This one wasn’t as close as the not-very-close scoreline. Even before Chourio put things away, the Cubs didn’t seem particularly likely to put anything together against Milwaukee’s endless parade of strong relievers.

I don’t know if a bullpen game is helpful to Milwaukee’s long-term chances, but it’s pretty hard to argue with its effectiveness on a single night. Toss an in-form Misiorowski into the mix, and there just isn’t much time to score runs before the door closes. Even with the nifty Turner-leadoff gambit, the Cubs ended up with a lot of tough matchups against a lot of excellent pitchers. I can imagine a seven-game series blunting the effectiveness of the strategy, and the Brewers will probably tinker with their roster ahead of a potential championship series, but this is a really strong run prevention plan. They might be able to make the entire series out of pitching from Freddy Peralta, a to-be-announced starter (Jose Quintana or Quinn Priester), and a dominant bullpen.

On Chicago’s side, there’s not a ton of strategy to discuss; the Cubs just need to score some runs, and also to give up fewer of them. There weren’t a ton of interesting situations where a different decision might have sent us down a different path, no spots where a pivotal play could have gone Chicago’s way. The Cubs seized on their big chance with a three-run first. It just wasn’t enough. That doesn’t mean that the rest of the series will go the same way – as they always say, momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher – but so far, the Brewers have been thoroughly outclassing the Cubs.

The key decision point in Saturday night’s Mariners-Tigers game came in the fifth inning, when manager Dan Wilson left righty George Kirby in the game to face a dangerous lefty, a third time through, with a runner on base. Kerry Carpenter smacked a 400-foot homer, erasing a Seattle lead, and the Tigers won 3-2 in 11 innings. So on Sunday, when righty Luis Castillo found himself in a similar pickle, Wilson found himself in a bind of his own.

The situation: a Gleyber Torres single put runners on first and third with two outs in the fifth inning. The next batter? None other than Carpenter. For the second straight day, the Mariners held a 1-0 lead, and this time, further runs didn’t feel likely, not with Tarik Skubal on the mound. Castillo had bobbed and weaved his way through the Tigers lineup two straight times, but he’d thrown 85 pitches to do so, scattering four walks and that Torres hit through his 4 2/3 innings.

This was no easy decision. Each choice had several points in its favor, but several downsides as well. Why pull Castillo? The situation greatly disfavored him. He’s far better against righties than lefties, and his platoon splits have only increased since he moved to Seattle and started weaning the changeup out of his arsenal. Even worse, Carpenter was up for a third time and had already seen 10 pitches from Castillo, including everything in his arsenal. Carpenter himself has huge platoon splits; in his career, he’s faced righties six times as often as lefties, with a 138 wRC+ against righties and a 69 wRC+ against lefties. Gabe Speier, Seattle’s middle-inning lefty of choice, is outstanding against lefties, and generally just outstanding overall. Finally, Castillo didn’t have his best stuff, and certainly didn’t have his best command. A change would meaningfully improve the matchup for Seattle, in the biggest spot of the game. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday afternoon, I briefly thought that A.J. Hinch had lost his mind. I really don’t know how else to explain it. With runners on the corners and one out in the top of the seventh inning of Game 2 of the Wild Card Series between the Tigers and the Guardians — which Cleveland won, 6-1 — Detroit had Riley Greene, its best hitter, at the plate with a chance to break a 1-1 tie. The Guardians went to the bullpen, bringing in lefty Tim Herrin. Herrin, a 6-foot-6 curveball specialist, figured to be a tough matchup for Greene; he’s been lights out against same-handed batters throughout his career. But then Hinch made a surprising call to the bench. He pulled Greene back and pinch-hit with Jahmai Jones – and now here I am writing this article.

Jones had one key thing going for him here: Like Inigo Montoya, he is not left-handed. He’s also hit lefties much better than righties in his brief major league career, and in his minor league career, too. Greene, on the other hand, is a poor left-on-left hitter. So you can at least see where Hinch’s decision was coming from. I want to give this kind of shocking decision the full consideration it deserves before just laughing it out of the building – after all, what if it was the right call? So let’s do all the math to get an idea of what Hinch was giving up, and what he was getting.

To model pitcher-against-batter outcomes, I first took projections for both players, the granular ones that consider specific outcomes. I also calculated platoon splits for each player by taking their observed career splits and regressing them toward league average based on sample size. I put those two projections – hitter and pitcher – into a modified log5 formula and used it to predict the likelihood of each possible outcome of a plate appearance. Then I applied those outcomes to the game state when Greene’s spot came up in the lineup.

That’s a lot of explanation jammed into one paragraph, so I think an example is in order. Let’s say that the Jones-Herrin confrontation results in a single 25% of the time, a deep fly ball 25% of the time, a strikeout 25% of the time, and a walk 25% of the time. Those are nowhere near reasonable, of course, but just an example. A single would mean runners on first and second (at least) and a 2-1 lead, for a win probability of 73.4%. A deep sacrifice fly? That would get the Tigers to 66.6%. A strikeout? 50.1%. Walk? 65.7%. Average those four probabilities, and the Tigers come out with a 64% chance of winning the game. There are more than four possible outcomes, of course, but this process is how I turn outcomes into win probabilities. Read the rest of this entry »

The noble tiger is a rare beast, but Wednesday night, there was a sighting in Los Angeles. A NOBLETIGER, for those of you who are perhaps less online than I am, is a contrived but delightful acronym: No Outs Bases Loaded Ending in Team Incapable of Getting Easy Run. In other words, it’s a team going from bases loaded and nobody out to a scoreless inning, and Cincinnati’s feline accomplishment felt like the last moment before it was washed away by the crushing tide of Los Angeleno excellence.

The Reds started Game 2 of their Wild Card Series against the Dodgers with a burst of energy. A hit-by-pitch, a fielding error, a slashed groundball single, and suddenly the underdogs were up 2-0 on the indomitable Yoshinobu Yamamoto. They struggled to find much more traction against him for the next three innings, nine up and nine down, but those initial two runs gave them a bulwark against the perpetual Dodger onslaught on the other side of the field.

Zack Littell, Yamamoto’s counterpart, wasn’t quite as sharp, but he held the Dodgers at bay with smoke and mirrors for three innings. In the fourth, the constant pressure became too much; the bottom half of the Dodgers order struck for two runs, putting them up 3-2, and the Reds called in Nick Lodolo from the bullpen to escape the inning. After the teams exchanged scoreless frames in the fifth, the stage was set for our fateful inning.
Read the rest of this entry »

Reds fans, listen up. This isn’t so much a preview as it is a blueprint for how the Reds might upset the Dodgers – and let’s be real, it would be an upset, they’re the Dodgers. As for the Dodgers fans among you, don’t get too worked up. You’re surely reading this preview to figure out whether the Reds are going to upset the Dodgers, so this is just what you’re looking for too. And all you neutral fans? I’m pretty sure that if you’re reading this, it’s because you’re wondering whether the Reds can upset the Dodgers.

They can, obviously. It will just take a few carefully planned steps. Step one: get at least two great starts from your three starters. The Reds line up with Hunter Greene for Game 1, Nick Lodolo for Game 2, and Andrew Abbott for Game 3. Good starts in two of those games – say, two or fewer runs in six or more innings – will go along way towards keeping Cincinnati in range to strike. All three would be preferable, of course, but two feels like an absolute necessity given the uphill battle you’ll be reading about shortly.

Greene, of course, is the best chance for one of those aforementioned great starts. That’s just what he does now. He’s coming off a month of brilliance, and he shut down the Cubs’ sixth-ranked offense (110 aggregate wRC+) in a complete game shutout on September 18. The Dodgers’ second-ranked offense (113 aggregate wRC+) will be tougher to wrangle, but tougher is not the same as impossible or even improbable. If you made me pick one starter in all of baseball to win the next game, I’d pick… well, I’d pick Paul Skenes, and I’d probably go with Tarik Skubal next. But Greene would be in my top five, and so for our upset blueprint, let’s just count on him giving us a great game. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the final Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week of the year. As we prepare to leave the normal cadence of regular season baseball behind, we’re all already mentally preparing for the madcap pace of the playoffs, when the games are fewer but more momentous. This last week is more of a transitional phase; some of the series are monumentally important, while others feature the Royals and Angels (just to pick a random set) playing out the string. Maybe this is the best time for baseball, actually. If you’re looking for it, there’s more drama in the back half of September than in any other regular season month. But if you just want silly baserunning in inconsequential games, or role players making the most of big opportunities, there’s plenty of that too. I love October baseball, but I’ll be sad when September ends.

Of course, no Five Things intro would be complete without me thanking Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the format I’ve shamelessly copied. So Zach, I hope your Mets fandom isn’t too painful this week. To the things!

1. Playoff Races
Obviously. If this isn’t the thing you like most in baseball this week, you’re probably a Mets or Tigers fan, and even then, you’re probably lying to yourself a little. The thrill of a pennant race coming down to the wire is one of the great joys of this sport. Most of the time, I like baseball because no single outcome matters all that much. Lose a game? Play the next day. Strike out in a big spot? Everyone does that sometimes. Give up a walk-off hit? I mean, there are 162 games, you’re going to give up some walk-offs. But every so often, as a treat, it’s fun when the games suddenly transmute from seemingly endless to “must have this next one.”

Has the new playoff format played a role here? It’s hard to argue it hasn’t. This is the fourth year of the 12-team field, and it’s the fourth straight year with an unsettled playoff race in the last week of the season. It’s the third straight year with multiple good races, in fact. That’s not exactly unimpeachable evidence – the final year of the old format saw its own thrilling conclusion to the regular season – but the point is that when the last week of the regular season is filled with drama, it makes for a great playoff appetizer. I’m still unsure what the new format does to the competitive structure of the game, and I haven’t liked the way trade deadlines work when the line between contender and pretender is so hazy. But in late September, it sure seems to be giving me more of what I want. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t tell you why the structure of the big leagues seems to bend towards close races. On August 31, the teams on the right side of the playoff cut line were all at least 2 1/2 games ahead of their nearest competitors. All baseball has done since then is collapse into chaos. The Mets have gone 8-13 to fall into peril, though that’s nothing compared to the Tigers, who have gone 5-15 over the same stretch. The Guardians are an absurd 18-5. Playoff fortunes have ebbed and flowed mightily.

Which players have featured most prominently in those games? There are any number of ways of answering that question. You could look for the highest WAR among contenders, the worst ERA or the most blown saves. You could use fancier statistics like Championship Win Probability Added, which accounts for how much each game mattered to each team. You could use the eye test, honestly – I can tell you from how frustrated Framber Valdez has looked this month that he’s not helping the Astros.

But the closest thing to matching the way I experience baseball, as a fan, is regular ol’ win probability added. My brain doesn’t distinguish between the importance of games when a team is in the pennant race. They’re all important. You can’t lose a random game on September 7 when you’re three back in the standings; you never know when the team you’re chasing will lose five in a row. Championship Win Probability Added distinguishes between whether your team is a long shot or playing from ahead, but when I’m rooting for one of the teams jockeying for a playoff spot, I don’t do that. I don’t think I’m alone in this, either. If every game in the race is equally important to you, Win Probability Added will measure the players who have mattered most in that framework. So I’ve compiled a list of notable players from the past month in each playoff race – and as a little bonus, I threw in a few players who have either stymied contenders or gotten trounced by them. Read the rest of this entry »

He did it! Cal Raleigh launched his 60th home run of the season last night, joining a rare club of elite sluggers. In hitting 60 so quickly, he’s left himself with a chance to match Aaron Judge’s American League record of 62, or perhaps even surpass it. With four games left in the season, how likely is it? I fired up my computer to ask. As a refresher, last week I modeled Raleigh’s home run hitting talent, the parks he’ll play in, and his scheduled opposition to work out which side of the plate he’ll hit from and how likely he is to hit a home run in any given plate appearance the rest of the way. Then I simulated the season a million times to work out the probability of each milestone. Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals will remember 2025 as a gap year, if they’re lucky. The 2023 and 2024 teams, invigorated by many of the prospects acquired in the Juan Soto trade, each won 71 games, dragging Washington out of the bottom-of-table ignominy that it had occupied since winning the World Series in 2019 and then blowing up the roster. This year’s squad is going to finish with a win total in the 60s and some developmental hiccups, a step backward from the recent past. But lost in the broadly disappointing year is one bright shining beacon: Daylen Lile might just be a keeper.

Lile, a high school draftee in 2021, missed all of 2022 rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, then spent the next two years methodically climbing through the minor league ranks. He started 2025 hot, with a .337/.383/.509 line in his first 40 games in the minors, and got his first taste of the majors when Jacob Young briefly hit the IL. Lile struggled during that first stint but landed in the majors for good a few weeks later when the Nats overhauled their bench. By the All-Star break, he’d carved out a role as a rotational right fielder.

That’s the boring part of this article. The exciting part? As Lile settled into big league life, opportunity beckoned. Young scuffled. Alex Call got traded. Dylan Crews was still out with injury. Lile? He just kept hitting. By August, he was locked in as a starter, and why not? Since the break, he’s hitting a sensational .323/.371/.552 for a 153 wRC+, and turning heads with his aggressive approach and hair-on-fire baserunning. Move over, other baby Nats – there’s a new top youngster in town.

Lile’s game is built around a sensational feel to hit. He regularly ran gaudy contact rates in the minor leagues, and his zone contact rate in the majors is above 90%, squarely in the upper echelon of the league. Like many hitters who make a ton of contact, Lile likes to swing. Unlike those peers, though, he’s done a good job of avoiding the over-chase downward spiral that traps so many singles hitters into lunging at sliders off the plate. Read the rest of this entry »

This June 25, the Dodgers and Tigers both played their 81st game of the season. Both teams finished the day 50-31, sharing the best winning percentage in baseball at .617. The Tigers got there with a slightly better run differential, though; their Pythagorean winning percentage was a cool .608, while the Dodgers checked in at .595. Pythagorean record is implied by runs scored and allowed, and broadly regarded as a more stable measure of talent than simple wins and losses. Since that day, though, the Tigers have gone 35-40 (.467 with a .483 Pythag), while the Dodgers have gone 38-37 (.507 with a .556 Pythag).

I’m bringing this up – last data project for a while, incidentally, I just had a bunch of things in my queue and couldn’t resist tackling them all – because “how good is that team, anyway?” has been a hot topic this year given the various surprising teams who have, at times, taken up the mantel of “hottest in baseball.” Versions of this question – “This team is doing well/poorly now, what does that mean for next month?” – have been both interesting and top of mind in 2025. The Tigers and Brewers played so well for so long that they each crashed the best-team-in-baseball debate. The Mets did their hot-and-cold thing. The Dodgers have endured multiple fallow stretches. Sometimes, teams felt like they were getting very lucky or unlucky relative to their run differential. But what does any of that even mean? Read the rest of this entry »