Ethan Petry Photo: Ken Ruinard/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the rampant overuse of the phrase “must-win game,” denying late timeouts, the Blue Jays’ victory over the Yankees, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., a Yankees postmortem, Aaron Judge’s partial postseason redemption, the athletic (and managerial) highlights and lowlights of the other ALDS and the two NLDSes, the swan song of October Clayton Kershaw, postseason sacrifice bunting, Bryce Harper’s thoughts on childbirth, and more.
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 »
Shutting down the Dodgers offense has been one of the toughest assignments in baseball this October. A series of great opposing pitchers, including Cy Young candidates aplenty, surrendered 27 runs in their first four playoff games. Sure, the Los Angeles pitching has been great too, but you can score on the Dodgers. The difficulty has been with stopping their unending procession of base-clearing prowess.
The Phillies seemed to be well suited to stopping the Dodgers, but that was before Los Angeles won the first two games in Philadelphia. Even worse, the Dodgers sent ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto to the mound, so limiting the offense figured to be even more important than normal. That’s too much work for one starter, so Rob Thomson turned to Aaron Nola and Ranger Suárez looking for a tandem performance. As it turned out, that decision was inspired. Along with two Schwarbombs, the Nola-Suárez piggyback propelled the Phillies to an 8-2 win at Dodger Stadium and postponed elimination for at least one more night.
Nola has had a rough year. He missed three months with injury, and looked much diminished when he did pitch en route to posting the worst single-season ERA (6.01) and FIP (4.58) marks of his long, decorated career. He wasn’t in this game for a long time, but he was in it for a good time. He came out absolutely jacked, with his velocity up two to three ticks and a snapping knuckle-curveball that hearkened back to his form of a few years ago. It didn’t click right away – Shohei Ohtani scorched a line drive for an out and then Mookie Betts tripled – but Nola buckled down, blew away Teoscar Hernández with a beautiful curve, and escaped the inning unscathed. He kept it going through a perfect second, perhaps as far as he was ever expected to go. 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 »
Maybe the three runs the Tigers scored in the ninth inning of their Game 3 blowout loss weren’t so inconsequential after all. Maybe they were a sign of better things to come on Wednesday. Facing elimination, Detroit’s bats woke up in a big way in Game 4 en route to a 9-3 victory. That sends the American League Division Series back to Seattle on Friday for a decisive Game 5, allowing Tarik Skubal one more chance to beat the Mariners for good.
Consider this: Through the first three games of the ALDS, the Mariners had hit more home runs than the Tigers had extra-base hits. Kerry Carpenter hit a home run in Game 1, the team’s lone long ball to that point, and Spencer Torkelson and Gleyber Torres each had a pair of doubles, but that was it. Granted, three of those extra-base hits drove in runs, and two of them tied the game — the Tigers made the most of their limited opportunities — but Seattle had been absolutely outslugging Detroit:
Tigers Hitters, Through ALDS Game 3
Player
H
RBI
WPA
wOBA
xwOBA
wRC+
Gleyber Torres
4
0
0.03
0.382
0.372
147
Spencer Torkelson
2
4
0.39
0.299
0.337
90
Colt Keith
1
0
-0.05
0.225
0.370
39
Kerry Carpenter
1
3
0.00
0.210
0.405
29
Riley Greene
2
0
-0.15
0.147
0.117
-14
Zach McKinstry
1
1
0.10
0.131
0.145
-25
Indeed, outside of Carpenter’s clutch home run, a pair of two-run doubles from Torkelson, and four hits off the bat of Torres, the Tigers offense had been conspicuously absent during the series. Even after their mini-rally in the ninth on Tuesday, Detroit was batting .165 and slugging .233 as a team entering Game 4. On the other hand, Seattle was slugging .423 even while batting just .212 through three games. That narrative completely flipped on Wednesday. The Tigers collected seven extra-base hits (three home runs and four doubles), while the Mariners could only muster one. Torkelson, Torres, Zach McKinstry, and Javier Báez each had multiple hits, and Jahmai Jones had a huge pinch-hit double in the decisive fifth inning.
And as they have all series long, home runs defined the shape of Game 4. Riley Greene had been mostly bottled up during the ALDS; he had collected just two hits through the first three games of the series. His first extra-base hit against Seattle was a 454-foot blast to give the Tigers a 4-3 lead in the sixth inning. After hitting 36 homers during the regular season, his go-ahead home run was the first of his postseason career and broke open the floodgates for the Tigers. For his part, Báez hit his first postseason home run since the 2017 NLCS, a two-run shot, later in the inning. Then in the seventh, Torres continued his hot hitting by launching an opposite field solo shot to extend the Tigers’ lead, making it 8-3.
The game hadn’t started off so lopsided. As they have in each game of the series, the Mariners got on the board first, scoring a run in each of the second, fourth, and fifth innings. With a 3-0 lead halfway through the ballgame, things were looking pretty encouraging for the Mariners. They’ll likely look back on Wednesday and be haunted by some pretty big missed opportunities to put the game away early. In the fourth, Seattle loaded the bases with no outs, but wound up pushing just one run across after a double play and a pop out squelched the threat. The next inning, the first two batters reached, earning the team another run, but the Mariners couldn’t keep the rally going.
Things turned in the bottom half of that inning. Torkelson led off with a single, and after a fielder’s choice, Dillon Dingler drove in the Tigers’ first run with a double. That chased Bryce Miller from the game, and Mariners manager Dan Wilson went with trustworthy lefty Gabe Speier to face the bottom of Detroit’s lineup. Jones, pinch-hitting for Parker Meadows, ripped the first pitch he saw down the left field line to drive in Dingler, and Báez tied the game with a single up the middle in the next at-bat. Speier came back out in the sixth inning to face Greene, but the Tigers left fielder turned on a hanging slider and deposited it in the right field stands. From there, the flood gates opened. The Tigers scored three more in the sixth, capped off by Báez’s home run off Eduard Bazardo, and they added insurance runs in the seventh and eighth.
For Seattle, it’s a pretty concerning shift from what had been a fairly dominant bullpen through three games. Even when you include the three runs allowed by Caleb Ferguson in the ninth inning of Game 3, Mariners relievers had put up a 3.38 ERA and a 1.71 FIP in 13.1 innings during the ALDS — their ERA drops to 1.35 if you ignore those garbage time runs. The Tigers have also scored all of their runs in this series in the fifth inning or later, putting even more pressure on the Mariners’ relief corps.
The runs Speier and Bazardo allowed in Game 4 were their first of the series, and you have to wonder if familiarity is starting to work against Seattle’s ‘pen. Bazardo has appeared in all four games, while Speier has now gotten some high-leverage work in three of the four games, including facing Carpenter and Greene three times apiece. Because Detroit’s most dangerous hitters are left-handed, Speier will almost certainly be called on to work in Game 5 on Friday, and thanks to Ferguson’s struggles on Tuesday — he’s the only other lefty in Seattle’s bullpen — Speier seems like the most critical piece of the pitching puzzle for Wilson and the Mariners.
The Tigers turned to Game 1 starter Troy Melton to shut down the Mariners bats once they had tied it up in the fifth. Melton worked around some trouble in the sixth, getting Randy Arozarena to fly out to center after allowing two two-out baserunners. The right-hander carved through the heart of the Mariners order on seven pitches in the seventh, then erased a leadoff baserunner in the eighth with a made-to-order double play, again only needing seven pitches to set the M’s down in order; he has to have Tigers manager A.J. Hinch feeling really good should the team need a fireman to quell a late rally from the Mariners on Friday. Will Vest closed the door with a 1-2-3 ninth.
While Detroit’s starter for the decisive Game 5 isn’t in question, Seattle’s is still unsettled. Both George Kirby and Luis Castillo could start Friday’s game on normal rest, and both looked pretty good in their earlier starts this series. Ultimately, it’ll come down to who Wilson trusts more to work through the Tigers’ lineup twice, with whoever doesn’t make the start likely available out of the bullpen anyway. I should mention that between the two, Kirby is the only one who has made a relief appearance during his big league career, closing out Game 2 of the 2022 Wild Card series against the Blue Jays.
No matter who starts for the Mariners on Friday, this was the exact scenario they were hoping to avoid. Allowing Skubal two opportunities to affect the outcome of the series is a very dangerous proposition, even if Seattle has beaten him three times this year. Tempting fate a fourth time tips the scales toward Detroit; our ZiPS game-by-game odds currently give the Tigers a 54% chance of advancing to the ALCS (assuming a Kirby start for Seattle). That’s a percentage Mariners fans are well acquainted with.
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 »
Sponsor Us on Patreon
Give a Gift Subscription
Effectively Wild Subreddit
Effectively Wild Wiki
Apple Podcasts Feed
Spotify Feed
YouTube Playlist
Facebook Group
Bluesky Account
Twitter Account
Get Our Merch!
