A lot of different types of players get sent to the Arizona Fall League by their parent clubs: prospects who have lost time due to injury, org arms there to soak up enough innings for the league to function, guys eligible for the Rule 5 Draft whose teams aren’t yet sold on putting them on the 40-man roster, and, quite often, the most talented and exciting players in minor league baseball. It’s a rich and robust tapestry.

Now that the league’s action has commenced, one use of the AFL is to provide a sort of decontextualized look at some of the players whose strong performance in 2025 was already cause for some re-evaluation. Here’s one player from each AFL roster who arrived with some helium, prompting us to ask if they’ve changed their scouting report, or are just progressively improving into the player we expected.

Glendale Desert Dogs
Sam Antonacci, 2B, White Sox
2025 FV: Honorable Mention

Not only did the White Sox trade for Chase Meidroth months after giving Antonacci a slightly over-slot bonus in the fifth round of the 2024 draft, their Double-A Birmingham affiliate won the Southern League while slotting Antonacci in as the third straight feisty little bat-to-ball maven at the top of their lineup behind Rikuu Nishida and William Bergolla. At six feet, he’s a bit taller, but similar to Meidroth, below-average thump and a dearth of the athleticism necessary to drive a shortstop projection cooled early scouting reads for Antonacci, and he was an honorable mention for us on the White Sox list in April. Despite only playing his junior season there after two years of Division II ball, Antonacci is so Coastal Carolina-pilled that 35 hit by pitches form a substantial part of the .433 OBP he held over his first full pro season. (That he has yet to be plunked in his first three AFL games has to be, one would imagine, a source of deep personal disappointment.) Read the rest of this entry »

You may think you’ve already heard enough about Aaron Judge’s heroics during this postseason, especially considering that he wasn’t able to keep his team from getting knocked out barely a week into October. Heroes usually do a more thorough job when saving the day. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about Judge’s 2025 playoff excellence. But I’d argue that you haven’t heard enough, because there’s a bit of context I’d like you to consider. That context? The entirety of postseason history.

Over the course of the American League Divisional Series against the Blue Jays, Judge batted .600. If you factor in his .354 batting average against the Red Sox in the Wild Card round, he batted an even .500 over 31 plate appearances this postseason. Now let’s head over to our handy-dandy postseason leaderboard. If you set a minimum of 30 PAs, you’ll find that Judge just ran the third-highest batting average ever over a single postseason; his .581 on-base percentage is the second highest. His 253 wRC+ is the 14th highest in postseason history (just behind the 255 mark that teammate Giancarlo Stanton put up in 2020). By that standard, Judge just produced one of the greatest postseason performances ever.

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.

“Ernie had an unbelievable first postseason series for a guy that has been through it a little bit,” he continued. “I think he kind of epitomizes what we are in terms of how we play. So I’m thrilled for him, but the bottom part of our lineup has been relentless the entire season.”

Schneider was alluding to the path Clement took to the Blue Jays. Drafted out of the University of Virginia in the fourth round by Cleveland in 2017, he reached the majors in ’21, but hit just .214/.273/.274 in 103 games in that season and the next before being released in September 2022. He caught on with the A’s but played just six games for them late in the season, then drew his release in the middle of spring training in 2023. He signed with the Blue Jays but spent most of that season at Triple-A Buffalo, then went from battling for the 26th roster spot in the spring of 2024 to playing 139 games in the majors, mainly at third base and shortstop. This year, he spent substantial stretches at third and second, the latter while Andrés Giménez was sidelined due to an ankle sprain, and late in the season dabbled at shortstop after Bo Bichette went down with a left knee sprain. With combined totals of 21 DRS and 9 FRV, Clement was a key cog in one of the majors’ best defenses.

On the offensive side, Clement is something of a study in extremes. In addition to his wide platoon split — which followed up a large reverse split last year (104 wRC+ in 307 PA against righties, 72 wRC+ in 145 PA against lefties) — he ranked in just the eighth percentile in average exit velocity (86.6 mph) and sixth percentile in barrel rate (2.4%), but in the 97th percentile in squared-up rate (36.9%). Among qualifiers, both his 4.6% walk rate and 10.4% strikeout rate ranked among the majors’ seven-lowest marks.

“Ernie has elite bat-to-ball skills, and I’ve seen him cover a foot above the zone and a foot below the zone. With that comes a little bit of volatility with the results,” said Schneider prior to Game 4. “Ernie is not scared of any situation. I think his play kind of shows that, the way he plays the game, whether it’s on the bases, on defense, or at the plate.”

Despite losing the battle of the bullpens on Tuesday night, Schneider and the Blue Jays projected no shortage of confidence, starting with choice of Varland to serve as an opener for a bullpen game after said bullpen had finished the job of coughing up a 6-1 lead by allowing six runs in 5 1/3 innings. Varland himself served up Aaron Judge’s game-tying three-run homer in Game 3, and Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s go-ahead solo shot the best hitter on the planet needed the cooperation of the wind and the Yankee Stadium ghosts to turn a 99.7-mph four-seamer 1.2 feet off the center of the plate into some timely runs. With Max Scherzer having struggled down the stretch and both Chris Bassitt and José Berríos ending the regular season sidelined due to injuries, the Blue Jays brought only three starters into the series, hence the choice to go with an all-reliever approach for Game 4. Though Schneider mentioned that Game 2 starter Trey Yesavage, who no-hit the Yankees for 5 1/3 innings in just his fourth major league start, was available for certain scenarios, he never had to call his number.

One other reason for confidence, or at least optimism on the Blue Jays’ part, was their previous success against Schlittler, who himself was making just his 16th major league start since getting called up on July 9. On August 30 in New York, the Jays chased him after he’d allowed five hits, two walks and four runs in 1 2/3 innings — the worst start of his stellar half-season.

The Blue Jays quickly did what the Red Sox could not in his eight-inning start last week: score a run on Schlittler. Leadoff hitter George Springer scalded his first second pitch, a 97.2-mph four-seam fastball, into the left field corner for a 107.5-mph double. After Nathan Lukes flied out, Guerrero sliced a cutter down the right field line for an RBI single; six pitches in, the Blue Jays led 1-0. Addison Barger singled to right to send Guerrero to third, but Alejandro Kirk popped out foul to catcher Austin Wells, and then Cody Bellinger slid into foul territory to catch Varsho’s fly ball down the left field line.

Varland, making his fourth appearance in the series, allowed a loud single to Judge in the first inning and hit Paul Goldschmidt in the back with a 98-mph sinker with one out in the second before yielding to lefty Mason Fluharty, who struck out both Wells and Anthony Volpe. Fluharty served up a solo homer to Ryan McMahon, just the third he hit off a lefty all season and his first such homer since being acquired from the Rockies on July 25. But the Yankees couldn’t do any other damage against the next five relievers Schneider called upon, namely Seranthony Domínguez, Eric Lauer, Yariel Rodríguez, Brendon Little and Braydon Fisher, who combined to hold the Yankees to two hits and five walks over the next 5 1/3 innings. Not until the sixth did the Yankees even put two men on base at the same time; they did so in that inning when Lauer intentionally walked Judge with one out and then Yariel Rodríguez entered and walked Giancarlo Stanton before retiring Chisholm on a groundball.

Schlittler did not have the same kind of swing-and-miss stuff on Wednesday night as he did against the Red Sox, but his four-seam fastball still averaged a sizzling 98 mph and reached as high as 99.7 mph, and what he lacked in dominance, he made up for in efficiency. Through four innings, he threw just 47 pitches, generating five whiffs and seven called strikes, and from the second through the fourth gave up just one hit, a leadoff double to Barger in the fourth. He retired Clement, the eighth hitter in the lineup, in the second inning, but it required a great over-the-shoulder grab on a dying quail by Volpe in shallow left field to do so.

Clement led off the fifth by taking a 97.6-mph four-seamer for a strike, then flaring a 94.6-mph cutter in the lower third of the zone into left field for a single. He sped to third when Giménez followed with a single to center field, and scored on a sacrifice fly when Springer flied out to center.

The score was still 2-1, and Schlittler still on the mound, when Clement batted again with one out in the seventh, after Anthony Santander had fouled out to McMahon. On the first pitch, Schlittler left a 98.4-mph fastball in the middle of the zone, and Clement drilled it into right field for a single. Giménez followed with a hot grounder up the middle that deflected off the glove of Chisholm, who was clearly thinking double play; the ball caromed into center field as Clement took third.

That ended Schlittler’s night at 88 pitches, 69 of which were strikes. In 6 2/3 innings, he surrendered eight hits and struck out two, and for the second start in a row didn’t walk anybody. Devin Williams, who threw 26 pitches in Game 3, came in and threw Springer seven straight changeups at the bottom of the zone or just below it, finally striking him out, but Giménez stole second on the last of those. Two pitches later, Lukes singled to center, bringing both runners home (the runs were unearned), extending the Blue Jays lead to 4-1.

The Blue Jays added another in the eighth against Camilo Doval thanks to a leadoff double by Kirk and then, one out later, a bloop into right field by Myles Straw; Doval then hit Clement in the back with a 95.7-mph cutter, but he was soon erased on a forceout.

Now trailing 5-1, the Yankees had their chance to tie the game in the eighth. With two outs, Stanton singled off Fisher, and both Chisholm and pinch-hitter Ben Rice drew walks, the latter against closer Jeff Hoffman, who nonetheless got Wells to hit a routine flyball to left field on the first pitch of his plate appearance. Though the Yankees tacked on a run in the ninth on to a pinch-double by Jasson Domínguez and a long single off the left field wall by Judge, he was the last baserunner of their season; Bellinger struck out chasing a low-and-away splitter, and that was that. The Blue Jays won their first playoff series since 2016, when they beat the Orioles in the AL Wild Card Game and then swept the Rangers in the Division Series before falling to Cleveland in a five-game ALCS.

Clement, who hit ninth against righty Luis Gil in Game 1 and sixth against lefties Fried and Carlos Rodón in Games 2 and 3, wasn’t alone in stirring up trouble at the bottom of the lineup. For the series, the Blue Jays’ six through nine hitters — a cast that at times included Varsho, Barger, Straw, and Giménez — combined to bat .322/.390/.424 with 10 RBI, leaving Yankees pitchers fewer places to turn for outs and the Blue Jays to 8.5 runs per game for the series. What they lacked in power (Clement was the only one to homer from one of those spots), they made up for with their extreme penchant for contact, striking out just eight times in 68 plate appearances (11.7%), which in this case forced a wobbly Yankees defense to make play — and sometimes they didn’t. During the regular season, the Blue Jays’ six through nine hitters combined to bat .253/.320/.388 for a 99 wRC+, fourth in the majors from those spots; their 18.7% strikeout rate was the majors’ lowest, just as the team’s overall rate of 17.8% was the lowest as well. Clement himself didn’t strike out once in 16 plate appearances.

“I got a lot of responsibility down at the bottom of that lineup trying to get on for our big guns,” Clement said. “Giménez [who went 4-for-15 with a double] has also done a tremendous job getting on base. It feels like the bottom of our order does something to help us win literally every game. So I think it’s been huge.”

Amid the postgame celebration in the visitors’ clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, where players made beer angels on the floor, Clement was lost the revelry. “I don’t know where I am right now!” he exclaimed. Soon enough, he and the Blue Jays — the AL’s number one seed for the postseason — will find themselves back at the Rogers Centre, waiting to play the winner of the Mariners-Tigers Division Series.

Davy Andrews contributed to this report.

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 »

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 »

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 »

At this time last year, the Blue Jays faced some serious uncertainty. They’d just finished last in the AL East, and they had only one more season guaranteed with both Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette on their roster. The future became even murkier during the winter, when the Yankees and Red Sox were both beefing up, the Orioles were still expected to be good, and the Rays were, well, the Rays. Both Guerrero and Bichette became the subject of trade rumors; really, there were questions about whether or not Toronto would just blow it all up.

Oh, how things have changed. In early April, the Jays extended Vladito through the end of the next decade, and then they caught fire. And now, one year after coming in last, they finished tied with the Yankees for the best record in the American League and took the division because they won the season series between the two teams. For that reason, Toronto hosted Game 1 of the Division Series against the New York on Saturday, and after the Jays bludgeoned the Yankees, 10-1, maybe it’s the boys from the Bronx who should be feeling a bit of self doubt.

As a franchise, the Yankees have played 441 postseason games; this loss ranks as one of their worst playoff humiliations ever:

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On Thursday, the New York Yankees became the first team to win a Wild Card Series after losing the first game of the best-of-three since the new playoff format was introduced in 2022. After dispatching the Boston Red Sox in the Wild Card, the Yanks have a matchup against another AL East foe lined up for the ALDS. For their part, the Toronto Blue Jays desperately needed their first-round bye to get their roster healthy after a breakneck final month of the season. These two teams finished 2025 with identical 94-68 records. The division race came down to the regular season’s final day, and the Jays only took the AL East crown thanks to a 8-5 head-to-head record against New York.

These division rivals are well acquainted with each other, though this will be the first time the two teams have met in the playoffs. (That’s pretty wild considering the Yankees’ long postseason history. There are now just three teams they haven’t faced in the playoffs: the White Sox, Nationals, and Rockies.) Their identical win totals during the regular season provide the primary storyline in this series: These are two evenly matched clubs battling for a spot in the ALCS.

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NEW YORK — In just the second winner-take-all postseason matchup started by two rookies — in one of the sport’s most storied rivalries, no less — 24-year-old Yankees righty Cam Schlittler utterly dominated the Red Sox lineup on Thursday, striking out 12 without a walk while scattering just five hits over eight scoreless innings. His opposite number, 23-year-old lefty Connelly Early, matched Schlittler zero for zero through the first three frames, making up with deception what he lacked in velocity, at least relative to the New York starter. Alas, a mistake by the Red Sox defense opened the door to trouble in the fourth inning, as five of the first six Yankees reached base en route to a 4-0 lead. Boston manager Alex Cora, who pulled starter Brayan Bello after 28 pitches in Game 2, left Early to throw 33 pitches in the fourth inning alone. That outburst was more than enough, as the Yankees eliminated the Red Sox from the postseason for the first time since 2003, when current manager Aaron Boone hit a walk-off home run off Tim Wakefield.

This was the sixth time the two AL East rivals squared off in the postseason, with the Red Sox riding a series winning streak that included the 2004 American League Championship Series, the 2018 AL Division Series, and the 2021 AL Wild Card Game. The only other time two rookie starters met in a winner-take-all game was in Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS, when the Dodgers’ Dustin May and the Braves’ Ian Anderson went head to head, though May pitched just one inning and Anderson three, and neither figured in the decision.

The two starters in this one began the season in Double-A, and didn’t figure to contribute substantially this season. Schlittler joined a banged-up Yankees rotation on July 9 and pitched brilliantly during the second half, overpowering batters with a four-seam fastball that averaged 98.0 mph as well as an effective cutter. He posted a 2.96 ERA and 3.74 FIP with a 27.6% strikeout rate in 14 starts, and was an easy choice for Boone to start Game 3 following Max Fried and Carlos Rodón. By contrast, Early only debuted on September 9, and pitched brilliantly (2.33 ERA, 0.91 FIP) but might not have made the postseason roster — or at least would not have started — had Lucas Giolito not been sidelined by elbow trouble. While Garrett Crochet’s 7 2/3 innings in Game 1 required Cora to use only closer Aroldis Chapman in relief, the manager didn’t like what he saw from Bello in Game 2 and pulled him with one out in the third, leaving him to call upon six relievers, one of whom (Garrett Whitlock) threw a season-high 47 pitches and gave up the winning run. Read the rest of this entry »