NEW YORK — The ovation that Devin Williams received from the crowd of 47,399 at Yankee Stadium as he departed in the eighth inning on Tuesday night after recording five crucial outs — his longest outing in more than two years — did not go unnoticed. “It’s nice to feel appreciated sometimes. It was definitely a lot better than what I’ve heard for much of the year,” said the 31-year-old righty in the wake of the Yankees’ dramatic 9-6 comeback victory over the Blue Jays in Game 3 of the American League Division Series. Acquired from Milwaukee last December, the two-time All-Star was supposed to serve as the closer of the defending AL champions, but early struggles bumped him out of that role, and he was booed vociferously. Over the past month, he’s tried to salvage his season, and with the Yankees in danger of being swept by their division rivals, he was one of five relievers who held the Blue Jays scoreless over the final 6 2/3 innings while the Bronx Bombers bashed out eight unanswered runs, six of them against Toronto’s bullpen.

When starter Carlos Rodón left Game 3 with one out in the third inning, the Yankees trailed 6-1 and appeared perilously close to being eliminated. They quickly clawed their way back against a wobbly Shane Bieber, however, chasing the Blue Jays’ starter with two outs in the third with the score 6-3. From there, a unit that was torched for 14 runs in 10 1/3 innings in Games 1 and 2 in Toronto won the battle of the bullpens. While Fernando Cruz, Camilo Doval, Tim Hill, Williams, and David Bednar quieted an offense that had been humming on all cylinders, four straight Blue Jays relievers allowed runs, with Louis Varland serving up both Aaron Judge’s game-tying three-run homer in the fourth inning and Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s go-ahead solo shot in the fifth. Now, while the Yankees will call upon Wild Card Series hero Cam Schlittler to start Thursday’s Game 4, the Blue Jays — gulp — counter with a bullpen game started by Varland, a development that could help send this series back to Toronto.

“That’s just what’s on the table,” said Williams of the bullpen’s collective mindset given the situation when Rodón departed. “We really don’t have any other option but to put up zeros and give our guys a chance to take the lead.” Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Aaron Judge didn’t deserve the rumblings. After he struck out with the bases loaded on Saturday in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Blue Jays, Yankee fans started to grumble that maybe he just didn’t have it in the postseason. It’s true that he’d struggled in 2020 and 2022, but Judge had excelled in the playoffs earlier in his career, and he came into Game 3 of the ALDS on Tuesday night with a career postseason wRC+ of 116. He hit three home runs during the Yankees’ World Series run just last year, including a game-tying shot in Game 3 of the ALCS.

On Tuesday night, with a performance that would be eye-opening if it had come from just about any other player in baseball, Judge pushed his batting average in the 2025 postseason to an even .500. He went 3-for-4 with an intentional walk and a couple of great plays in right field, and for the rumblers and grumblers with short memories, he launched a mammoth, game-tying, season-saving, signature home run, pulling the Yankees back from the abyss and into Game 4 with a 9-6 victory over the Blue Jays. Read the rest of this entry »

Water falling from the skies over Comerica Park delayed the start of a pivotal ALDS Game 3 between the Tigers and the Mariners by close to three hours. Once things dried out, Seattle’s batters rained on Detroit’s parade. Eugenio Suárez, J.P. Crawford, and Cal Raleigh all homered, and that was more than enough to support the pitching of Logan Gilbert and four Mariners relievers. When all was said and done, Seattle had an 8-4 win and a 2-1 edge in the best-of-five series.

The game started with a successful challenge. Randy Arozarena was initially ruled safe after Gleyber Torres threw to first to field a comebacker that glanced off of Jack Flaherty’s glove, but replay review reversed the call. Seattle’s leadoff hitter was out by an eyelash. A few swings later, Detroit’s starter had retired the side on just eight pitches. It was to be his only easy inning.

The Mariners made the right-hander work in the second. Josh Naylor had an 11-pitch at-bat, finally grounding out on Flaherty’s first changeup of the evening. Three other batters saw six pitches apiece. Suárez walked, Jorge Polanco and Dominic Canzone fanned, and Flaherty walked off the mound having thrown 29 in the frame, and 37 overall. It was apparent early that the Tigers bullpen would be well-worked by game’s end.

A Dillon Dingler single gave Detroit a runner in the bottom half, but as had happened in the first, Gilbert ended the mini-threat with a strikeout, leaving a Tiger stranded. Never really in trouble over the course of his outing, the tall right-hander nonetheless squelched every semblance of a Detroit rally. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees got absolutely thrashed by the Blue Jays during the first two games of the Division Series, losing Saturday’s opener 10-1 and then again on Sunday, 13-7. To be fair, the first game was tight right up to the seventh-inning stretch, after which the Blue Jays expanded their 2-1 lead with four runs apiece in the seventh and eighth innings, but by the same token, Game 2 wasn’t even as close as that six-run margin suggests. The Yankees not only trailed 12-0 through five innings, but also were no-hit by Trey Yesavage through 5 1/3 innings before breaking through against reliever Justin Bruihl in the sixth. Now, for the second time in less than a week, they’ll turn to Carlos Rodón to face an AL East rival with their season on the line.

The 32-year-old Rodón started Game 2 of the Wild Card Series against the Red Sox, one night after Garrett Crochet and Aroldis Chapman stifled the Yankees in the opener. Rodón held the Red Sox to three runs in six-plus innings, getting by with more than a little help from his friends. He retired the first six batters he faced before running into trouble in the third inning. Jarren Duran, the lone lefty in the lineup, singled, then Ceddanne Rafaela worked a walk, with Rodón exacerbating the situation with a throwing error on switch-hitter Nick Sogard’s sacrifice bunt. Though he recovered to strike out lefty-masher Rob Refsnyder, both runners scored on a sharp single by Trevor Story. Rodón escaped further damage when he induced Alex Bregman to ground into a double play that began with an acrobatic spin move by second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr.

After a clean top of the fifth, Rodón was briefly staked to a 3-2 lead thanks to Aaron Judge’s RBI single, but it proved short-lived. Rodón fell behind Story 2-0 to lead off the fifth, then threw him a meatball, a 95.2-mph four-seamer that ended up in the middle of the strike zone and was hammered 381 feet to left field for a game-tying home run. A four-pitch walk to Bregman put him on the ropes, but he recovered by retiring Romy Gonzalez on a popout, then getting Carlos Narváez to ground into an around-the-horn double play. With his pitch count at a reasonable 82, manager Aaron Boone sent Rodón back out to start the seventh, but he walked Nate Eaton on four pitches, threw a wild pitch that sent him to second, then grazed Duran with a 3-0 pitch. Reliever Fernando Cruz managed to clean up the mess without further damage, aided by a stellar diving stop by Chisholm on a Masataka Yoshida infield single that, had it not been stopped, probably would have plated both Duran and Eaton. The Yankees scored what proved to be the decisive run in the eighth, when Chisholm worked a walk against Garrett Whitlock, then raced home on a long single into the right field corner by Austin Wells. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA – If the lesson to learn from Game 1 of the NLDS is that nobody’s perfect, the lesson to learn from Game 2 is that some pitchers come close. Blake Snell and Jesús Luzardo delivered the kind of pitchers’ duel to warm the hearts of dyspeptic ex-pros who should have to drop a quarter in the swear jar whenever they start a sentence with, “Back in my day…” Snell allowed only a single hit against four walks and nine strikeouts in six innings of work; Luzardo, after a tricky first inning, recorded 17 straight outs.

After watching a blank scoreboard for the first two-thirds of the game, both teams cracked under the strain in the endgame. The two clubs followed this pair of near-perfect pitching performances with a manifestly imperfect bottom of the ninth, as both teams committed blunders in tactics and execution that threw a settled game into chaos.

The final score: Dodgers 4, Phillies 3. In this heavyweight bout, the Dodgers are one win away from a knockout victory. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

The pitching matchup favored the Yankees. With all due respect to one of baseball’s best young arms, Toronto’s Trey Yesavage came into the contest having thrown just 14 big league innings. Conversely, New York starter Max Fried is a three-time All-Star who finished the season 19-5 with a 2.86 ERA. While Yesavage has a bright future — he’s currently the Blue Jays’ top prospect — his mound opponent seemed a better bet to perform under the pressure-packed lights of the postseason.

That didn’t happen. Yesavage, who began the year in Low-A and didn’t make his major league debut until September 15, not only kept the Yankees off the scoreboard, but he did so in spectacular fashion. As for Fried — ditto his teammates who followed him on the bump — it was a veritable horror show. He got rocked. When all was said and done, Toronto had bombarded the Bronx Bombers to the tune of a 13-7 rout that wasn’t as close as the final score suggested. The win gave the Blue Jays a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five Division Series.

That Canada’s team launched four home runs and took a 12-0 lead before the Yankees recorded their first hit — a sixth-inning single after Yesavage had left to a huge ovation — isn’t exactly a footnote to what transpired at Rogers Centre. It was an impressive onslaught. Even so, what the 22-year-old right-hander with the power arsenal did was the story of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

SEATTLE — “We didn’t steal one. We earned it.” Those were the first words spoken by Tigers manager A.J. Hinch following Game 1 of the ALDS at T-Mobile Park on Saturday night. Hinch took umbrage with a reporter’s characterization of a 3-2 victory that spanned 11 innings in a road ballpark as “stealing one.” Managers should bring that type of bravado to the press conference. Especially Hinch, who is tasked with imbuing confidence in a squad that has been dogged by tales of its epic collapse for over a month.

But with all due respect to Hinch, to describe any one-run, extra-inning game as one where either team definitively earned the win, or on the flip side deserved to lose, places all the emphasis on the final result and glosses over exactly how that result came to be. The Tigers got the win, and now they enjoy a 1-0 series lead with Tarik Skubal, the reigning (and presumptive) AL Cy Young award winner, taking the mound for them in Game 2. They get to bask in the glow of that advantage, and they absolutely should. But if Hinch gets to quibble with verbiage, so do I. Read the rest of this entry »

He doesn’t garner much press — at least not outside of Tigers territory — but Will Vest has developed into one of baseball’s better relievers. The 30-year-old right-hander has appeared in 181 games for Detroit over the past three seasons and logged a 2.93 ERA and a 2.71 ERA over 187-and-a-third innings. Moreover, he is currently the team’s closer. Vest’s 2025 ledger includes 23 saves to go with a 3.01 ERA and a 2.71 FIP, and he recorded the final out in both of the club’s Wild Card wins over Cleveland. If the Tigers go on to beat the Mariners in the ALDS, Vest will likely have played a key role.

He could easily be pitching for Seattle. As related by Dan Hubbs in a piece that ran here at FanGraphs two weeks ago, the Mariners took Vest in December 2020’s Rule-5 draft, only to return him to the Tigers the following July. Hubbs had departed as Detroit’s director of pitching development by the time Vest was reacquired, but he was, and remains to this day, bullish on the righty’s raw ability.

Vest was one of three pitchers (Casey Mize and Tarik Skubal were the others) whose development process the now-Athletics’ bullpen coach looked back on in the September 23 article. Spin rates that were “off the charts” was an attribute Hubbs saw in the then-under-the-radar prospect, as were “good movement profiles on everything he threw.” For the young hurler, success at baseball’s highest level “was just a matter of him getting comfortable competing in the strike zone.“

What are Vest’s memories of working with Hubbs, and in which ways has he continued to develop in the years that have followed? Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA – It’s dangerous to draw conclusions from one game of a playoff series, but after Game 1 of the NLDS, you can take this lesson to the bank: Nobody’s perfect.

Cristopher Sánchez was on the verge of completing six imperious innings, until the last three batters he faced — the last pitch he threw, really — sent the Phillies into a spiral. Teoscar Hernández committed a borderline-unforgivable defensive gaffe, then atoned with interest by the end of the night with a game-winning three-run homer.

Shohei Ohtani, making history by leading off a playoff game as a starting pitcher, looked not just like a two-way player but like two different people. Ohtani has seldom looked so hapless at the plate, striking out in each of his first four plate appearances. He made a slightly less glorious brand of history, becoming the sixth player in the pitch tracking era to strike out looking three times in a playoff game.

But on the other hand. Ohtani came out the winning pitcher: nine strikeouts in six innings, with just four baserunners allowed. Hernández’s seventh-inning homer off Matt Strahm made the difference in a 5-3 Dodger win. Read the rest of this entry »