This October, the biggest-spending, best-run franchises in baseball have been flexing their muscles. Case in point: The team with the largest TV audience in the game, one with a monopoly on an entire country’s fandom and a huge payroll to match, a team that takes over opposing stadiums on “road trips” — that team is headlining the World Series. There, on the biggest stage in the sport, they’ll take on the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Oh, you thought the Toronto Blue Jays were David facing the Dodgers’ Goliath? Get out of here. The Jays are a Goliath, too. They have a top five payroll, just like the Dodgers. Of the nine hitters, four starters, and three relievers I expect to play the biggest roles for Toronto this series, just four are homegrown. They’ve filled in the gaps with canny additions in free agency and made excellent trades to bolster their roster even further. Their ace and their leadoff hitter were both high-profile free agents. They have literally Max Scherzer, the embodiment of a well-paid veteran.

That’s not to say that Los Angeles is punching up here. The Dodgers’ best players need little introduction. Shohei Ohtani. Mookie Betts. Freddie Freeman. Blake Snell. I could keep writing one-name sentences for quite a while before I ran out of stars to highlight. Sure, all of Canada roots for the Jays, but all of Japan roots for the Dodgers, and Japan is three times as big by population. California is the size of Canada, for that matter, and there are a few Dodgers fans there, too. In fact, the Dodgers are an even bigger Goliath than the Jays, but that doesn’t make Toronto any less of a big-market club. Read the rest of this entry »

At last, we’ve got a World Series matchup to wrap our heads around. Representing the American League are the Blue Jays, who are back in the Fall Classic — making it a truly international World Series — for the first time since 1993. They’ll face the Dodgers, who are vying to become the first back-to-back champions since the 1999–2000 Yankees. They’re the first defending champions to repeat as pennant winners since the 2009 Phillies, who lost that World Series to the Yankees. If that matchup feels like a long time ago, consider that it’s been twice as long since the Blue Jays were here.

Though the core of the lineup is largely unchanged, this year’s Dodgers team differs from last year’s in that it has reached the World Series on the strength of its starting pitching rather than in spite of it. Due to a slew of injuries in the rotation last year, manager Dave Roberts resorted to using bullpen games four times to augment a rickety three-man staff consisting of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Jack Flaherty, and Walker Buehler. Even as those starters (or “starters,” in some cases) put up a 5.25 ERA while averaging just 3.75 innings per turn, the bullpen and offense more than picked up the slack, and the Dodgers took home their second championship of the Roberts era.

This time around, with Flaherty and Buehler elsewhere and Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, and Shohei Ohtani joining Yamamoto, Dodgers starters have been absolutely dominant, posting a microscopic 1.40 ERA while averaging 6.43 innings per turn through the first three rounds, helping the team to paper over a shaky bullpen. After Snell utterly dominated the Brewers, holding them to just one hit over eight innings while facing the minimum number of batters in Game 1 of the NLCS, Yamamoto followed with a three-hit, one-run masterpiece — the first complete game in the postseason since the Astros’ Justin Verlander went the distance against the Yankees in Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS. Glasnow, who began the postseason in the bullpen, allowed one run across 5 2/3 innings in Game 3 of the NLCS, while Ohtani backed his 10 strikeouts over six shutout innings in Game 4 with a three-homer game in what for my money stands as the greatest single-game postseason performance in baseball history. Read the rest of this entry »

The year of the splitter has come and gone. Actually, those of us who follow these things closely know that both 2023 and 2024 were considered the years of the splitter, and then we established back in March that 2025 would be the year of the kick change. While major league pitchers ran a 3.3% splitter rate in 2025, the highest mark since the pitch tracking era started in 2008, that represented a jump of just 0.21 percentage points from 2024. It’s a difference of less than one splitter per team every three games. While the number is still going up, the big increases came in 2023 and 2024, and the pace fell off this year.

That graph makes it official. This isn’t the year of the splitter. But now let me add another line to that graph. That was the regular season. We’re in the thick of the playoffs, so let’s throw the postseason in the mix, too. If you saw that first graph and wondered why I left all that empty space at the top, well, now you know.

That’s more like it. October 2025 has seen a splitter explosion. The red line is always going to be more volatile than the blue line because the postseason is such a small sample, but even so, the playoffs have seen a 6.6% splitter rate. That’s not just the highest we’ve ever seen. It’s twice the rate for any regular season or postseason in the past 23 years. Maybe 2025 was the year of the kick change, but October 2025 is very definitely shaping up to be the month of the splitter. The playoffs aren’t even over, and we’ve already seen more splitters this October than in the postseasons of 2023 and 2024 combined. Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani had quite a night, didn’t he?

Let’s be more direct: Ohtani just had the greatest individual game in postseason history. On the mound, he threw six scoreless innings, allowing two hits and three walks while striking out 10. He got pulled after giving up two straight baserunners to start the seventh, which kind of mucked up his line, which is ironic, because that’s what the Dodgers offense has been doing to other starting pitchers over the past two weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers beat the Brewers by a final score of 5-1 on Friday night, securing a sweep of the NLCS and advancing to the World Series for the second consecutive year. If you just look at the scoreline and the sweep, you might think that this game was devoid of interest. I won’t lie to you – it was definitely not as dramatic as the wild Mariners-Blue Jays game from earlier in the night, and that series has had far more twists and turns than this one. But forget the lopsided final score, and forget the lopsided series. Friday night was a show – or, I should say, a Sho.

Shohei Ohtani made his second start on the mound of the playoffs, and after a leadoff walk to Brice Turang, he looked every bit the impossible, ace-plus-slugger hybrid we’ve come to expect. His stuff was sharp tonight, with his fastball scraping triple digits and his vicious sweeper up several ticks but maintaining its ludicrous movement. That leadoff walk didn’t even phase him; he took a deep breath, a few paces on the mound, and then turned Jackson Chourio into a cardboard cutout. Biting sweeper, two increasingly diving sliders, with Chourio taking an emergency hack to stay alive, and then a 100.3 mph fastball, pumped right through the zone, to remind everyone that, yeah, this Ohtani guy can spin it.

The next batter, Christian Yelich, got ahead in the count 2-0; Ohtani regrouped with an outrageous flotilla of sliders (90 mph), cutters (95), and fastballs (100) on the low-and-away corner that eventually flummoxed Yelich into a called strikeout. William Contreras? Thanks for entering the batter’s box, sir, better luck next time. Ohtani struck him out on three pitches, the last two of which were demonically breaking sweepers that weren’t even in the same zip code as Contreras’ bat. Then Ohtani sprinted off the mound and disappeared into the dugout. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, that was fun while it lasted.

Home-field advantage has been a bit of a booby prize this postseason, with the home team losing all five LCS games heading into Thursday evening’s action. The Dodgers’ Game 3 starter, Tyler Glasnow, is arguably the closest thing this rotation has to a weak link. So maybe the Brewers weren’t as dead as the series standings made it seem. Win one and you’re back in it.

Unfortunately for the Brewers, and for neutrals hoping for this series to go six or seven exciting games, that wasn’t in the cards. The Dodgers put a run on the board within their first two batters of the game, and while Milwaukee tied it the next inning, Glasnow shut the door afterward. A couple singles, a walk, and a throwing error in the sixth inning were all the Dodgers needed to win the game, 3-1, and take a 3-0 lead in the series. You already know what the odds are at this point. Read the rest of this entry »

Unhittable starting pitching has carried the Dodgers through the Wild Card and Division Series and staked them to a 2-0 lead over the Brewers in the National League Championship Series. But as Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto have made the the biggest headlines, some of their elite hitters such as Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, and Will Smith have scuffled. Meanwhile Enrique Hernández and Teoscar Hernández (no relation) have picked up the slack, recalling their contributions during last year’s championship run; their efforts even bookended the fateful game-tying five-run rally in the World Series clincher against the Yankees. After subpar regular seasons married by injuries, both have rediscovered their groove in October.

At American Family Field on Tuesday night, the dynamic duo shone once again during the Dodgers’ 5-1 victory in Game 2. With the team trailing 1-0 in the second inning following Jackson Chourio’s leadoff homer off Yamamoto, Teoscar got ahead 3-0 against Freddy Peralta, then pounced on the next pitch thrown in the zone, a 3-2 hanging curveball, and demolished it for a towering solo home run — 105.9 mph off the bat, with a 39-degree launch angle — to left field.

That was Teoscar’s fourth homer of the playoffs, tying Michael Busch for the postseason lead (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. joined them on Wednesday). Two batters and one out later, Enrique worked the count to 2-2, then ripped a middle-middle four-seamer for a 98-mph groundball single into center field. He scored the go-ahead run when Andy Pages doubled into the right field corner. 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 »

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 »