Nothing has come easy for any team through two weeks of playoff baseball, and that continued into Wednesday night’s action.
The resilient New York Mets became the first team to punch their ticket to the Championship Series behind some heroics from Francisco Lindor. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Dodgers staved off elimination with a dominating performance against the San Diego Padres.
In the American League, the gritty Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees moved one victory away from the ALCS, with Game 3 wins sparked by timely hitting and solid pitching.
With another night of October baseball gone, here are some takeaways from all four games.
LINDOR ADDS ANOTHER CHAPTER TO EPIC METS SEASON
Francisco Lindor has been the face of the Mets’ Amazin’ run with multiple clutch moments.
So it was only appropriate that the switch-hitting shortstop played the hero in the Mets’ biggest playoff victory since 2015.
New York had Phillies’ pitchers under pressure all game long, but couldn’t push a run across through the first five innings. But in the sixth, it was Lindor’s moment. With “M-V-P” chants raining down at Citi Field, you could sense a significant swing coming.
Lindor worked a 2-1 count, taking a massive cut at a pitch on the edge of the plate, before Philadelphia Phillies reliever Carlos Estévez threw a 99.4 m.p.h fastball that the Mets star didn’t miss.
He drove the pitch 398 feet to right-centre field, then calmly rounded the bases as pandemonium broke out around him.
“We’ve got to finish the job, and the job wasn’t finished at that moment,” he told SNY after the game of his stone-cold reaction. It’s that presence that has allowed Lindor to lead these resilient Mets all the way to the NLCS.
PITCHING HAS TIGERS ON BRINK OF ALCS
Entering this intra-divisional ALDS, the Guardians’ bullpen was the relief corps hailed as MLB’s stingiest group. But it’s been the Tigers’ relievers who have their team on the cusp of the Championship Series.
“Skubal and chaos” has been the rallying cry for Detroit’s group of unheralded arms that continues to impress, and the further we get into this post-season, the more that chaos has turned into a reliable way to get hitters out.
In Wednesday’s Game 3 win, the Tigers turned to six different pitchers, who combined for a six-hit shutout to give Detroit its first post-season win at Comerica Park in over a decade.
There was a sense of bend, but don’t break to the performance, as Cleveland managed to get some traffic on the bases, but the Tigers made big pitches when they needed to, holding the Guardians hitless in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position.
Part of that comes from Detroit manager A.J. Hinch continuing to pull the right levers at the right time. In perhaps Cleveland’s two best chances to score Wednesday, Hinch called on two of this post-season’s most reliable relievers — Beau Brieske and Will Vest — who escaped jams against the heart of the Guardians’ order.
Tigers relievers now have a 1.86 ERA over 29 innings in these playoffs and have held opposing hitters to a .186 batting average. With chaos lined up for Game 4 and Skubal waiting in the wings for Game 5, the Guardians are going to need to beat both to spoil Detroit’s magic run.
STANTON PADS POST-SEASON RÉSUMÉ
When opposing pitching staffs game plan for the Yankees, a lot of attention goes into shutting down Juan Soto and Aaron Judge. For the Royals in this ALDS, they’ve been able to relatively hold down New York’s All-Star duo as Aaron Judge owns a .377 OPS and Juan Soto hasn’t done much damage despite reaching base at a .429 clip.
So, without their stars leading the way, the Yankees need some help from the other seven hitters in their lineup.
On Wednesday, it was Giancarlo Stanton who stepped up.
Entering Game 3, Stanton had already established himself as a playoff performer. In 29 post-season contests, the former NL MVP has 11 home runs, 25 RBIs and a .915 OPS.
All those numbers will go up after Stanton single-handedly carried New York’s offence to a series lead in Kansas City. The 34-year-old accounted for three of the four Yankees hits, driving in two with a fourth-inning double and a go-ahead homer that stood as the difference in the eighth. He even mixed in his first stolen base since 2020 to cap his most important performance of the season.
DODGERS FINALLY PUT IT ALL TOGETHER — WHILE SHORTHANDED
The Dodgers entered October down three of their top starters, and injuries have slowly piled up the NL West champs over the course of this NLDS against the Padres.
Without Freddie Freeman and Miguel Rojas for the first time this post-season, combined with turning to a bullpen game with their back against the wall seemed like a formula for a devastating season-ending loss.
But Los Angeles turned in its best October effort yet. Its bullpen, led by Ryan Brasier, shut out the rolling Padres, allowing just nine baserunners in an 8-0 win — the largest shutout post-season victory in franchise history. Mookie Betts continued to put his playoffs woes behind him with yet another first-inning homer, Will Smith snapped his hitless post-season with a two-run shot to put the Dodgers up five and L.A. racked up 12 total hits as it overwhelmed San Diego’s pitching staff.
Through the first three games of this series, it felt like the Padres exposed some of the Dodgers’ flaws. Without reliable starting pitching that can work deep into games and with San Diego’s lineup matching in star power, Los Angeles looked like the club trying to keep up. But for one night, at least, the Dodgers put their foot down. They got star-level production from Shohei Ohtani and Betts and shut down the likes of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado in their most complete performance despite not running out their A-lineup.
Now, this performance doesn’t make those issues go away ahead of Friday’s winner-take-all Game 5. But if the Dodgers can put together all facets of the game, as they did Wednesday, they should be in a pretty good spot to clinch a spot in the NLCS.