Philadelphia, late in a must-win road game in a tightly contested playoff series, has all but gotten a stop. The team has held serve, against all odds blanking its opponent to force another frame and extend the season. Then, all of a sudden, the ball does something weird. It goes in a direction nobody anticipated, and as the entire Delaware Valley looks on in disbelieving horror, the home team scores to seal a walk-off win and advance to the next round.

I’m sure you’ve deduced from the lack of proper nouns in the previous paragraph that I’m not talking about the recently concluded Phillies-Dodgers NLDS, or the Orion Kerkering throwing error that ended it. No, I’m talking about this.

Oh yeah, Phillies fans, we’re gonna feel even worse than you thought today. Read the rest of this entry »

It could not have started worse. Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s first pitch of NLCS Game 2 was a 97-mph four-seam fastball to Jackson Chourio, the Brewers’ powerful leadoff hitter. Chourio promptly hammered it 389 feet into the Dodgers’ bullpen. It landed like a signal to the relievers milling out on the berm: Be alert, you might be needed sooner than you thought.

They would not be necessary. It’s hard to imagine a better pitching performance than that of Yamamoto’s teammate, Blake Snell, who delivered 10 strikeouts over eight innings the previous night. But Yamamoto managed to one-up him.

Over 111 magnificent pitches, Yamamoto rendered the Brewers’ bats rudderless, holding them to that single run over a three-hit complete game. It was the first in the playoffs in eight years, and it certainly offered one possible solution to the Dodgers’ bullpen woes: What if you just didn’t need those guys? Read the rest of this entry »

Say what you want about Blake Snell. You may not find his Only Use Strike Zone in Case of Emergency pitching style fun to watch, but in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series, the Brewers found it even less pleasant to hit against. Snell carved through a Milwaukee lineup that scored 22 runs in the NLDS like a knife through nothing at all, ending his night by retiring 17 straight. He faced the minimum over eight innings in an absolutely dominant performance as the Dodgers beat the Brewers, 2-1, to take a 1-0 lead in the NLCS.

A prolonged bout of shoulder inflammation limited Snell to just 11 starts and 61 1/3 innings this season, but over those 11 starts, he was excellent, running a 2.35 ERA and 2.69 FIP. He’d been even better in the playoffs, earning wins against the Reds and Phillies and allowing just two runs, five hits, and five walks while striking out 18. On Monday night, he made those performances look like warmup outings. Snell went eight innings for just the second time in his entire career, and finished with 10 strikeouts, no walks, and one hit. That one hit was a weak line drive that third baseman Caleb Durbin dumped into center field in the third inning. Durbin then broke for second way too early, allowing Snell to throw over to first and catch him easily at second. “You gotta disrupt it,” said Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy between innings. “You gotta do something. He looks really sharp.” The Brewers didn’t do anything.

It wasn’t surprising to see Snell dealing, but it was surprising to see him not walking anyone. The game plan for the Brewers was simple, if difficult to execute. They had the lowest chase rate and the sixth-highest walk rate in baseball this season. They needed to be patient and force Snell to throw the ball in the zone. The Dodgers wanted the same thing. “I can’t have him nibble,” said Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts before the game. Snell didn’t nibble. He hit the zone 50% of the time, well above his regular season rate of 44%, and only a hair under the major league average of 51%. It was just the third time in the past two seasons that he’d gone without a base on balls. His changeup was particularly devastating, and he threw it 37% of the time, the second-highest rate of his entire career. Between innings, he sat on the bench and flipped through a half-inch three-ring binder that held either scouting reports or notes for an AP chemistry midterm. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday night in Seattle, Logan Gilbert was on the mound gutting out two scoreless innings of relief a mere two days after he’d won the third game of the American League Division Series. That performance was do or die; hold the Tigers scoreless or head home for winter. The entire Mariners team contributed to that 15-inning win, never mind any knock-on effects for the pitching staff. A few days after that, on Monday in Toronto, Gilbert tried to reprise his heroic, short-rest effort against a relentless Blue Jays offense in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series.

The Mariners couldn’t expect to get a peak Gilbert start, so their bats had to put up enough runs to outrun the ongoing effects of the massive workload its pitching staff shouldered late last week. The offense delivered plenty of scoring, and the pitchers more than held their own despite the circumstances. When it was all settled in a 10-3 Seattle win, the Mariners were just two wins away from their first World Series appearance in franchise history. Read the rest of this entry »

It was really close. On Sunday, in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, in the top of the first inning, with one out and runners on first and third, once and future hero playoff hero Jorge Polanco hit a bouncer to the third baseman. The runner on third was going on contact, but the runner on third was Cal Raleigh, and while relatively quick for a catcher, the Sultan of Squat is not exactly known for his speed. Had the ball been hit anywhere other than directly at a corner infielder, he might have beaten it easily. Instead, Addison Barger’s throw beat Raleigh to the bag by at least three metres (the game was in Canada, after all). But it was still really close.

The throw arrived in plenty of time, and it was by no means off target. To make sure he ran no risk of hitting the runner, Barger wisely threw the ball toward the right side – the first base side – of catcher Alejandro Kirk’s body. The throw wasn’t high either, but it did arrive at shoulder height. Raleigh was running as hard as he could, and in the time it took Kirk to swing his catcher’s mitt from high on his right side to low on his left side, he’d closed the distance to roughly one metre. Then Kirk made an important decision. With Raleigh bearing down on him, he chose not to keep swinging the glove down and toward the plate. He reached out for a high tag and swept the left side of his body out of the way in the same moment. Self-preservation undoubtedly played a role in the decision. It cost him valuable centimetres (God, this feels wrong), and it very nearly allowed Raleigh to sneak his right cleat between Kirk’s legs and onto home plate before his torso crashed into the mitt. For the briefest of moments, the two catchers looked like colliding galaxies, smashing then spinning together as their gravitational fields intertwined:

In real time, the play went from looking like a sure out to an impossibly close call. Maybe Raleigh got his foot in there and maybe he didn’t. The call on the field was out, and unbelievably, the Mariners declined to challenge it. The video never got dissected by the replay room in New York. The chief marketing officer of Zoom Communications, Inc. surely wept. Read the rest of this entry »

The matchup for the National League Championship Series is set, and it will feature the team with the best record in baseball and the team everyone thought would have the best record in baseball. The battle between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Los Angeles Dodgers will be a clash of styles. It’s big market versus small market. Superstars versus Average Joes. But make no mistake, even though Los Angeles has the name recognition (and all the money and resources in the world), Milwaukee’s scrappy roster is one of the most talented in baseball; the Brew Crew’s 6-0 record against the Dodgers during the regular season is evidence of that.

The Brewers’ win over the Chicago Cubs in the NLDS was their first postseason series victory since 2018, when they reached the NLCS only to lose to the Dodgers in seven games. This is their fourth appearance in the Championship Series, and they’re playing for a chance to advance to the World Series for just the second time in franchise history. As for the Dodgers, they’re the defending champions; this will be their eighth NLCS appearance in the last 13 years, making this well-trod ground for them. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — About 45 minutes after the “best team” that Aaron Boone has ever managed was eliminated from the playoffs, several of its members sat in the clubhouse drinking a few small beers. The mood was wistful, the somber finality of it all floating through the very same air that less than a week earlier had reeked of celebratory champagne.

They had just lost the American League Division Series to the Blue Jays in four games, and for the most part, it wasn’t all that close. Despite an all-time great postseason performance from Aaron Judge following yet another all-time great regular season from him, New York was thoroughly outplayed by Toronto. Boasting the most annoying opposing lineup in baseball, the Jays peppered pitchers with their all-fields approach and their refusal to swing and miss. Theirs was a Boomer’s more-than-platonic ideal of an offense – they had the lowest strikeout rate (17.8%) and the highest batting average (.265) in the majors this season — but it wasn’t a true throwback. The Blue Jays weren’t dependent on the long ball, but they were more than capable of hitting home runs, as we all saw during the ALDS. As a team, Toronto slashed .338/.373/.601 for a 168 wRC+ across the four games. Yankees pitchers struck out 23.7% of the hitters they faced during the regular season but just 14.9% of the Blue Jays who batted in the series.

“They beat us this series,” Boone said. “Simple as that.”

Yet even as the Yankees accepted their fate, that they had played their last baseball game of the season, they were still trying to understand how it all went wrong. Hadn’t they addressed their shortcomings from a year ago, when they lost to the Dodgers in the World Series? They lengthened their lineup, improved their baserunning, and enhanced their rotation during the offseason, and then ahead of the trade deadline, they made more moves designed to shore up their defense and bolster their bullpen. Some of those deals didn’t pan out, but many of them did. Read the rest of this entry »

Jorge Polanco played the hero on Friday night, ending the epic Division Series Game 5 with an RBI single in the 15th inning off the Tigers’ Tommy Kahnle. Two nights later, in the American League Championship Series opener in Toronto, Polanco added to his October highlight reel with a pair of late-inning RBI singles against Blue Jays relievers, the first of which gave Seattle the lead. The switch-hitting second baseman wasn’t the only Mariner who came up big, as Bryce Miller tossed six strong innings on three days of rest, Cal Raleigh clubbed a game-tying solo homer, and three relievers turned in perfect innings as the Mariners took Game 1 in Toronto, 3-1.

In marked contrast to the four-hour and 58-minute Division Series finale that allowed Seattle to advance, this was a comparatively concise and fast-paced game, completed in two hours and 48 minutes. After throwing 209 pitches to the Tigers on Friday night, the Mariners mercifully needed just an even 100 pitches to dispatch the Blue Jays while giving up just two hits.

For as compelling a matchup as an ALCS pitting the two 1977 expansion teams — one seeking its first World Series berth in 32 years, the other its first-ever pennant — the pairing of Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman against Miller appeared to be a mismatch based on their respective arcs. Coming off a strong regular season and a stellar Division Series Game 1 start against the Yankees, and with seven days of rest under his belt, Gausman appeared to have quite the advantage on Miller, who scuffled this year due to injuries, took an early exit in his Division Series Game 4 start against the Tigers, and started on Sunday only because ALDS Game 2 starter Luis Castillo and Game 3 starter Logan Gilbert were both called upon in relief during the extra innings of Game 5. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the first lessons we learn about life is that it’s rarely fair. Neither the Seattle Mariners nor the Toronto Blue Jays are historical doormats, but both franchises have been plagued over the last three decades by a lack of postseason success, if they reached the playoffs at all.

After the Jays won the 1993 World Series, it was 22 years until they made another postseason. Toronto has a lot of recent October appearances, but finished last in the AL East in 2024 and came into the 2025 playoffs after being swept out of the wild card round in its last three opportunities, including by Seattle in 2022. Aside from that series three years ago, the Mariners have had it even worse: They’ve never won a World Series — never even played in one — and their 2022 postseason appearance snapped a 21-year playoff drought. So the 2025 ALCS is a pretty big deal for both teams, as someone is going to face the Brewers or Dodgers for baseball’s championship. Read the rest of this entry »

The house always wins. In the National League Divisional Series between the Brewers and the Cubs, the home team won every game. Game 5, in which both teams ran out of trusted starters and turned to their bullpens, ended up being the lowest scoring game of the series. The scoring was limited to four solo home runs, and although the Cubs hit 57 more homers than the Brewers during the regular season and two more during this NLDS, the Brewers powered up when it counted. With home runs from William Contreras, Andrew Vaughn, and Brice Turang, they beat the Cubs, 3-1, and will host the Dodgers in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series on Monday.

Just as they’d done during the regular season, the two teams came as close as they possibly could to splitting the series. The Cubs took the regular season series, 7-6, and the Brewers have now taken the Divisional Series, 3-2, leaving the teams tied at nine. The Cubs will return to Chicago and ponder how to improve a roster that now has a massive, Kyle Tucker-shaped hole in the outfield. The Brewers are headed to the Championship Series for the fourth time in franchise history and the first time since 2018, when they lost to the Dodgers. After seven years, they’ll have the chance for revenge.

Although bullpen games involve plenty of mixing and matching, the early plans seemed pretty well scripted. Milwaukee came out of the gate with the big guns, hoping Trevor Megill could be the first pitcher of the entire series to hold the Cubs scoreless in the first inning, before Pat Murphy looked to Jacob Misiorowski for four. After that, the Brewers had the rest of their bullpen ready to match up, thanks to an off day on Friday. “The pitching guys, myself and Matt Arnold, we just sat in a room and just talked about the possibilities and considered a ton of factors,” said Murphy in the pregame press conference. “But we settled on Megill. He’s going to pitch tonight, regardless.” Read the rest of this entry »