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 »

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 »

Willie MacIver has caught a lot of power arms since entering pro ball in 2018. Some were in Sacramento this season — the 28-year-old University of Washington product spent a chunk of the summer with the Athletics, backing up Shea Langeliers — but none of those hurlers stand out as having the best raw stuff he’s been behind the dish for. That distinction belongs to a former Colorado Rockies farmhand whose brief major-league ledger includes a 22.09 ERA and a 22.7% walk rate over five appearances comprising three-and-a-third innings.

“I caught a guy named Riley Pint,” said MacIver, citing the right-handed flamethrower whom the Rockies drafted fourth overall in 2016 out of an Overland, Kansas high school. “To this day, he has the best stuff I’ve ever seen. I caught him from Low-A all the way through Triple-A, so I was on the ride with him the whole time.”

That ride isn’t necessarily over. Pint is just 27 years old, and while he missed the 2025 season with an injury, the arm is indeed special. MacIver caught him as recently as 2024, and it’s being Pint, and not recent teammate Mason Miller, who he cited speaks volumes.

“When we were in Low-A, it was 102 [mph] all over the place,” MacIver told me. “Then he started throwing a sinker. We were at Driveline together and he was throwing sinkers that were registering as left-handed curveballs on the TrackMan. He could make the ball move like nothing else. His sinker would be like negative-eight, and then he would throw a true sweeper that was Morales-like with the horizontal, but at 87 [mph]. 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 »

SEATTLE — On a per-game basis during the regular season, the Mariners and Tigers both scored and allowed roughly the same number of runs — 4.70 and 4.28, respectively. Through the first four games of the best-of-five ALDS, each team eked out a one-run win and each team triumphed in something of a laugher. Both teams won one game at home and one game on the road, and both teams relied extensively on their bullpens. Heading into Game 5 on Friday night in Seattle, it was clear one team was going to need to do something to distinguish itself. These teams entered the night locked in a dead heat, having played matching hands for much of the series and needing a new strategy, something different to get an edge and break the stalemate, and even then, it required 15 innings and four hours and 58 minutes to do that. When it was all over, the Mariners had outlasted the Tigers, 3-2, on a walk-off single by Jorge Polanco to advance to the American League Championship Series for the first time in 24 years.

“I don’t even know where to begin to try to recap all the heroic efforts that went into today,” manager Dan Wilson said. “And 15 innings? I’ve got to say, I don’t know how the fans kept their energy going. It was unbelievably loud, even in the 15th inning. And this is a special place. T-Mobile Park is a special place, and they showed us that tonight. And just an incredible ballgame from top to bottom.”

Both starting pitchers were taking the mound for a second time in the series, and both brought a slightly different approach to Game 5 than what they put on tape in their prior starts. In Game 1, Seattle starter George Kirby threw his slider 31% of the time; it was the first pitch he threw to eight of the 22 batters he faced. In Game 5, Kirby went to his slider 50% of the time and threw it as the first pitch to 10 of the 18 batters he faced. After the game, he confirmed this was a conscious shift in strategy to show Detroit’s lineup something different from what it’d seen from him six days prior. “All those guys from top to bottom are probably looking for a heater to start,” Kirby said, “and just starting off with a slider, curveball, whatever it may be, just — if I kept them off balance a little bit, I was able to attack the zone a little bit more with my fastball.” By mixing in more sliders early in the count, he was able to maintain the effectiveness of his four-seamer despite the recent exposure. Though the slider-heavy approach meant Kirby racked up fewer strikeouts than usual, he finished his outing allowing just three hits and one earned run over five innings with six punchouts. Read the rest of this entry »

Even the best pitchers in baseball lose a game once in a while. Just ask Tarik Skubal. I’m sure you’ve read about it a hundred times by now, but the Mariners have won all three of their games this year where Skubal was the opposing starter. Seattle was the only team to hand him multiple losses during the regular season, and the Tigers dropped Game 2 of the ALDS — technically a no-decision for Skubal — less than a week ago. Now, thanks to his team’s roaring come-from-behind victory in Game 4, Skubal is lined up to start tonight’s decisive Game 5, giving him an opportunity to finally beat the Mariners this year.

I’ll give a warning upfront: This article is going to lean pretty heavily on batter-pitcher matchup stats; we’ll be examining some extremely small samples. But I think it’s an interesting investigation into the strategy that unfolds between familiar foes during a short postseason series.

What I really wanted to know is whether the Mariners had a specific approach that made them so successful against Skubal this year. As I mentioned, Skubal faced the Mariners twice during the regular season. On April 2, in Seattle, he allowed three runs in 5.2 innings; he gave up six hits and three walks while striking out eight. On July 11, he faced them again, this time in Detroit, and allowed four runs in five innings; he gave up just four hits and two walks while striking out five. His Game 2 start this past Sunday was his best yet: He surrendered two runs on five hits and one walk in seven innings while notching nine strikeouts. The two home runs off the bat of Jorge Polanco were his undoing. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeez, I thought the Cubs were dead. These guys got torched both games in Milwaukee, then nearly contrived to blow Game 3 after jumping out to a 4-1 first-inning lead.

Game 4 started much the same way for Chicago, with a three-run first-inning homer by Ian Happ, only this time they didn’t let up. Matthew Boyd slung breaking balls around Milwaukee bats for 4 2/3 scoreless innings, and rather than rest on their first-inning output, as they did in Game 3, the Cubs put up a late-inning picket fence to stretch the final score to a serene 6-0. A decisive Game 5 in Milwaukee awaits. Read the rest of this entry »

Man, am I tired of writing about the Dodgers and Phillies. I mean some of that narrowly – this is my second recap of these two financial juggernauts facing off in the past 24 hours, which means I’ve spent more time pondering these two teams than sleeping lately. I mostly mean it broadly, though. We get it, the Dodgers and Phillies are the best two teams in the NL every year. I hear you, they each have a slugging lefty DH who hit 50 homers and has a rabid following. It’s true, they have a former MVP lefty first baseman who departed his longtime NL East team and got a big sack of money for it. Oh, how original, a slight-of-stature righty shortstop who is a dynamic offensive player anyway. A slugging right-handed right fielder who honestly shouldn’t be playing defense? Yup. Endless stacks of pitchers? Sure thing, buddy, nothing but the best for these two.

Maybe it’s my lack of attachment to either team that makes me so tired of seeing them in October. Philadelphia’s “Oh, we’re a bunch of plucky underdogs” act? Exhausting. The Phillies have a $300 million payroll. Dodgers Baseball And Capital Appreciation Corporation employees executing carefully workshopped “dances” to simulate “fun” after base hits? No one’s buying it. But I don’t think it’s just the neutrals. My guess is that even fans of these clubs are sick of it at this point. Everything that annoys you about your opponent in this series is exactly what annoys the rest of us about your team. They even have obnoxious fanbases – not every fan, obviously, but come on, even Dodgers and Phillies partisans will agree with me on this one. Can’t we have someone else?

We can’t, of course. These teams have all the stars! Of course they’re always in the playoffs! And even more confusingly for me, you’re presumably here because you find this series interesting. If you just wanted to know the score, well, they publish those right away. So bear with me. The teams might be overexposed and easy to root against, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a good recap. Just follow Emperor Palpatine’s advice and let the hate flow through you. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Ernie Clement simply wore out Yankees pitchers during the Division Series. After collecting three hits in Game 2 — including a two-run homer off Max Fried that opened the scoring — in a Blue Jays win, then four more hits in their Game 3 defeat, the 29-year-old infielder sparked rallies in Game 4 with a pair of singles that led to the go-ahead run in the fifth inning and then two more runs in the seventh, helping Toronto break the game open. Backed by opener Louis Varland and seven other relievers who combined to hold the Yankees to six hits and two runs, the Blue Jays bounced their AL East rivals with a 5-2 victory in Game 4.

While Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (.529/.550/1.059) and Daulton Varsho (.438/.471/1.000) were the Blue Jays’ heaviest hitters in the series, combining for five homers and 13 RBI, Clement — who spent time at all four infield positions this year and started games at both second and third base in this series — hit .643/.625/.929 himself while scoring and driving in five runs apiece. Though he showed a wide platoon split during the regular season, producing a 146 wRC+ (.326/.351/.549) against lefties and 75 wRC+ (.254/.295/.327) against righties, both of his Game 4 singles were off fireballing righty Cam Schlittler, who was very good if not nearly as dominant as he had been against the Red Sox in the Wild Card Series finale.

“I think Ernie Clement has made everyone aware of how good he is,” said manager John Schneider after the game. “It’s been like that the whole year for the bottom part of our lineup. You try to navigate it to where guys can put the ball in play, guys can get on base for guys at the top. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cubs stayed alive in the National League Division Series on Wednesday, narrowly beating the Brewers in a 4-3 Game 3 squeaker. Neither starting pitcher went long, with both teams needing to go relatively deep into their bullpens to finish out the contest; a combined 10 relievers were used.

Carlos Zambrano threw out the ceremonial first pitch, 13 years after his final game in the majors — Big Z’s former teammate, Rich Hill, appeared for the Royals in 2025 and is older than him — but things got off to an inauspicious start for the Cubs after that, as a lazy curve from starter Jameson Taillon was far less lazily lashed down the first base line into right field for a Christian Yelich double. After a Jackson Chourio groundout, Taillon lost the strike zone a bit, walking Brice Turang to put runners on first and second for William Contreras. Contreras hit an infield single to load the bases. Of course, that’s burying the lede a bit, but you couldn’t see that I was making the air quotes gesture with my fingers while I was writing that sentence. The “infield single” was anything but; it was a popup on the infield that Michael Busch lost in the sun while his sunglasses remained unused on his cap. Both Carson Kelly and Nico Hoerner ran over, but they weren’t in time to salvage the play. Dansby Swanson ran over as well, which became a problem when Kelly picked up the ball but had nobody to actually throw to for an attempted forceout of Turang. Read the rest of this entry »