Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, postseason edition! We'll keep you up to speed on everything you need to know every weekday throughout the 2025 MLB playoffs. Thanks for being here. We have just one more sleep left until the start of the 2025 World Series between the Dodgers and the Blue Jays. To no surprise, the Dodgers are the clear favorite in this matchup. They are the reigning champions after all, and have gone 9-1 in the postseason. The Blue Jays, by comparison, were a last-place team in the AL East one year ago. Toronto has its stars, but Los Angeles, with Shohei Ohtani and company, is stacked with former MVPs and future Hall of Famers. Plus, when we last saw the Dodgers, they were rolling right past the 97-win Brewers in a convincing four-game sweep. While L.A. rested, the Blue Jays were expending all of their energy to defeat the Mariners in the ALCS and needed some heroics from George Springer in Game 7 to keep their title hopes alive. But given the road that each team took to get to this point, history might actually be on the Blue Jays' side in this Fall Classic. As broken down by the great Sarah Langs, this year marked the fifth time since 1985 -- when the League Championship Series round became best of seven -- that one LCS finished in a sweep while the other one went the distance. Here's a glance at those four other years:
2012: The Giants won Game 7 vs. the Cardinals; the Tigers swept the Yankees
2007: The Red Sox won Game 7 vs. Cleveland; the Rockies swept the D-backs
2006: The Cardinals won Game 7 vs. the Mets; the Tigers swept the A's
1988: The Dodgers won Game 7 vs. the Mets; the A's swept the Red Sox Those four teams that went to Game 7, do you see anything that they all have in common? Yep, they ended up winning that year's World Series over the club that authored an LCS sweep. There have been 10 LCS sweeps since '85, and seven of those 10 teams went on to lose the World Series. The 21 teams that won a Game 7 to get to the Fall Classic during that same time frame went 10-11 with the game's greatest prize at stake. What does that ultimately mean for this year's series? Well, probably not a whole lot since we're really dabbling in small sample size theater here. But the facts don't lie, and any Blue Jays fans looking for another reason to believe that their team can pull off the upset can consult this little bit of postseason history. -- Brian Murphy |
Who will take home this year's Silver Slugger Awards? The finalists in both leagues are now out, with the winners set to be revealed on Nov. 6 (NL) and Nov. 7 (AL).
Below, we're taking a look at two of the most interesting position battles, one in each league. And for a look at the full list of finalists, click here.
National League: Shortstop Francisco Lindor notched his second 30-30 campaign (31 HR, 31 SB) in three years, but he's not a shoo-in for the Silver Slugger. He's up against Geraldo Perdomo, who quietly put up 20 homers with 27 steals and outproduced Lindor in batting average (.290), on-base percentage (.389) and OPS (.851). Also in this group? NL batting champion Trea Turner, whose .812 OPS was slightly higher than Lindor's .811 mark.
American League: Third base
José Ramírez has won five Silver Sluggers, but he faces a serious challenge for his sixth, even after hitting .283 with 30 homers, 44 stolen bases and an .863 OPS. That's because Junior Caminero recorded 45 dingers, 110 RBIs and an .846 OPS in his age-22 season. Alex Bregman (.821 OPS) is the other AL finalist at the hot corner. -- Thomas Harrigan |
'THE WORST STADIUM IN SPORTS' |
Rogers Centre, with its $400 million (CAD) facelift completed just last year, has never looked better -- and just in time for its return to center (or centre!) stage for the World Series tomorrow night. But even when it opened as SkyDome in 1989, with baseball's first retractable roof, it was a sight for sore eyes for anyone who'd played or merely watched a game on a frigid Ontario night at the Blue Jays' original home park.
The open-air Exhibition Stadium, from its snow-covered inaugural Opening Day in 1977 onward, was one of the least-favorite stops for visiting American League players. The Blue Jays weren't exactly in love with the retrofitted CFL stadium either.
"Except for the people in the stands," said former Toronto catcher Rick Cerone, "there wasn't one good thing about that stadium."
With winds gusting in off Lake Ontario, players could get caught up worrying more about avoiding frostbite than anything else.
"You had every stitch of clothing in your locker on," said former Orioles star Ken Singleton. "To me, it was just play the game, get it over with and maybe it'll be warmer tomorrow."
For more on the history of "the worst stadium in sports," check out Sweeny Murti's ode to Exhibition Stadium here.
-- Ed Eagle |
ANOTHER SPLASH IN FREE-AGENT POOL |
Here's a good trivia question: Before Shohei Ohtani struck out Mike Trout to end the 2023 World Baseball Classic and deliver Japan the victory, who provided their final run? It was actually slugger Kazuma Okamoto, with a fourth-inning home run off Kyle Freeland inside Miami's loanDepot park.
That may not be Okamoto's final home run in a big league park (to say nothing about what may happen at next spring's Classic). On Wednesday, the Yomiuri Giants announced that they are planning to post their star corner infielder for MLB clubs.
Yesterday, we talked about slugger Munetaka Murakami, who is four years younger than the 29-year-old Okamoto. But there are reasons to believe that Okamoto may actually adjust to the Major Leagues just as easily, if not more so.
Okamoto -- who previously played alongside the Dodgers' Enrique Hernández in the Puerto Rican Winter League -- topped 30 home runs in six consecutive seasons from 2018-23. Okamoto is a career .289 hitter against fastballs 93 mph and higher and saw his strikeout rate dip to a miniscule 11.3% this past season, the same rate at which he walked.
Perhaps most impressively: Though he played in just 69 games because of a left elbow injury from a collision, Okamoto upped his slash line to a career best .327/.411/.581 in a tough offensive environment. The NPB's average ERA was just 3.01 this past year, compared to the Major League average of 4.15.
Murakami may have the kind of power that few people on this earth possess, but for teams looking for a first or third baseman, Okamoto provides plenty of thump himself -- with a few qualities that set him apart. -- Michael Clair |
NEW VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE FOR ANDROID |
MLB has a new "extended reality" app for Android XR headsets, and we got to try it out. So for any XR fans out there, here's what it's like to watch baseball in the virtual world. I pulled up the replay of the Dodgers' Game 1 win over the Brewers in the NLCS to see what watching a game on an XR headset was like. The MLB.TV stream was pretty much the same as if you were watching on your TV, laptop or phone. But there was A LOT more going on all around the game broadcast. If I looked to my left, I could see the game's play-by-play hovering in the air and "click" (either with a controller connected to the headset or by pinching my fingers together in the air) to re-watch any highlight. If I looked to my right, I could see the box score and a dashboard of stats for the current situation. But the coolest part for me by far was the 3D visualization of the game that you get along with the TV broadcast. When you put the headset on to watch a game in XR, a completely realistic rendering of the ballpark is all around you, with the TV feed basically like the Jumbotron in the center. MLB's Gameday 3D technology re-creates the game in real time, with 3D models of the players and full tracking of the plays on the field. You can see the location of every pitch, the trajectory of every home run, the baserunners and fielders moving around … everything. And you get the Statcast data for all those plays superimposed on the 3D game. If you want an immersive experience, look no further.
– David Adler
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