How Jose Abreu went from career lows to ALCS dominance
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Buster Olney, ESPN Senior Writer
ARLINGTON, Texas — In the worst of times for Jose Abreu, among the many days and weeks of professional failure for someone who had had so much success, he ran into Reggie Jackson, the Hall of Famer who serves as an adviser in the Houston Astros organization, at Minute Maid Park. The two men walked across the outfield early one May afternoon, and Abreu, speaking in Spanish, quietly “talked and talked and talked,” Jackson recalled late Thursday night. And Jackson listened.
Maybe Abreu sought out Jackson because he’s a former MVP, someone who could relate to Abreu’s challenges as a slugger with high expectations for himself. Maybe it was because Jackson is part of the Astros’ leadership. Or maybe it was because Jackson understands what it means to be a star moving from one team to another and feeling like you’re letting new teammates down. What Abreu said to Jackson that day — the feelings he expressed — now must feel like some nightmare, one that he has moved beyond to assume his intended role as a clubhouse and production leader.
Abreu clubbed a pivotal three-run homer in the Astros’ 10-3 wipeout of Texas in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series Thursday night, and after he waded through 20 minutes of media questions about his restored preeminence, describing a strange tag that he made to blunt a Texas Rangers rally and laughing about his first stolen base in 925 days, Abreu walked over to teammate Martin Maldonado, grinning. He lifted a fist, as if he was going to club his friend, before gently tapping Maldonado on the back. Each chuckled, sharing silent emotions.
A moment like Abreu had in Game 4, Maldonado said later, “couldn’t happen to a better person, after everything he has been through; it has been tough.”
After a first half that ranks among the lowest in his career — his .537 April OPS was the worst of any month he’s ever had –, Abreu is mashing again, wrecking the line scores of pitchers. He’s clubbed four homers in eight games in this postseason, driving in 11 runs, the sort of production the Astros envisioned when they signed Abreu to a three-year, $58.5 million deal in the offseason. Houston added an experienced, dangerous slugger capable of punishing as Abreu follows Yordan Alvarez in the lineup.
The Astros and Rangers were tied 3-all in Game 4 when Houston hitting coach Alex Cintron pulled Abreu, getting ready to bat in the fourth inning, aside in the dugout. Cintron showed him videotape of Abreu’s plate appearance in the second inning, with a side-by-side comparison from an at-bat in September. Cintron told Abreu that he needed to be sure to keep his weight on his right leg a little longer, rather than to spin out. By the time Abreu strode into the batter’s box, the Astros led 4-3 after Alvarez drove home a run with a deep sacrifice fly. Cody Bradford, the left-hander brought in to face Alvarez, now had to deal with Abreu — with two runners on base. Bradford tried to pump a 91 mph fastball past him.
Without success. Out in the visitors bullpen, the Astros’ Hunter Brown initially thought he might be able to catch Abreu’s drive, only to watch it soar into the seats way over his head, 438 feet from home plate. Abreu trotted around the bases, and teammates spilled onto the apron of the Houston dugout, celebrating, pointing at him. Javier Bracamonte, an Astros’ coach in the bullpen, ran around happily among the relievers. Afterward, Abreu would look at Cintron’s tablet again, to see the at-bat once more.
“It was a great swing,” Abreu would later say in Spanish. “I think the team, in that moment, needed something to open up the scoring a little bit more. Just grateful for what life has given me. … It was a really pretty swing. When I watched it back on the iPad, it reminded me of who I am.”
Teammate Mauricio Dubon said, “He’s an ox. He’s a strong man. There’s nothing to be surprised about.”
One inning later, Abreu came up big again. The Rangers started to counterattack, with two runners on base and nobody out in the fifth inning. Corey Seager smashed a line drive — right at Abreu, who speared the ball and tried to tag out Marcus Semien as the runner slid back into first base. Semien was called safe, but the Astros asked for a replay review, which would show what Abreu said he felt — that he had brushed the batting glove hanging out of Semien’s back pocket. The call was overturned.
In the dugout, Astros manager Dusty Baker joked with Abreu, who was born in Cuba, that he knew there was no football in Abreu’s homeland, “but you’ve got to tackle him and make sure he doesn’t get to the bag.”
Abreu would walk in the seventh, steal second base — his first steal in 925 days — and score again. The Astros evened the series at 2-all, and now Jose Abreu and his teammates are two wins away from reaching the World Series, two victories away from having a shot at becoming the first team in 23 years to win back-to-back titles. Back in spring training, a friend had asked Abreu if it was difficult after leaving the White Sox, an organization he had played for, won his MVP for, over nine seasons. “What are you talking about?” he retorted. “I’m with the champs.”
Abreu began working out in the Astros’ camp well before it officially opened in mid-February, wanting to indoctrinate himself as quickly as possible, and out of excitement for the opportunity to augment a roster that had just won the 2023 World Series. He said he felt right away as if he was welcomed like family.
Abreu would need the full support of teammates, because he had a horrific start: before he hit his first homer in his 51st game with the team, he was hitting .214 — lots of singles, very little power. And the more he struggled, the more work that he put in to try to revitalize his offense. Cintron began to view Abreu’s relentless diligence as a problem. As Abreu relentlessly took batting practice, his coaches believed, he was sapping his energy day after day — and likely prolonging his slump.
On that May day when Abreu walked with Jackson, he assured Jackson that he was working hard, that he was trying to get better. He apologized for how he had performed. He felt bad about how he was doing, Jackson recalled. And he said how much he appreciated all the support he was feeling, from ownership and the front office and Baker and his teammates.
But it took several more months — and a more drastic intervention — before Abreu’s season turned around. He had a sore back, and staffers talked to him about going on the injured list. Abreu pushed back on that idea. He felt like he needed to stay on the field, something he’d always done with the White Sox; in six of his eight full seasons in Chicago, he played in at least 152 games.
He finally relented and was placed on the injured list Aug. 10, getting a chance to let his body and his mind heal. “After that,” Cintron said, “he was a different guy.”
Abreu had 34 hits in his last 31 regular-season games, with eight homers among 16 extra-base hits, and staffers sensed him relaxing. On Thursday night, Abreu told the horseshoe of reporters who surrounded him, “I’m somebody who likes to read. I’m somebody who likes to think positively, listen to stuff about motivation, things like that. I have to acknowledge my family. My wife has always been there for me. My kids are a major motivation to stay positive every day, because they demand more of me each day.”
“This team has helped me in any way possible to be in the best position possible to compete, and I’m grateful to all of them — all of the guys here, the coaches. They’ve always been there for me. All I should really say, truly, is ‘thank you’ to all these guys here who have supported me every step of the way.”
And now, in October, he is rewarding Baker, Jackson and his teammates for their faith in him, for their trust.
Sports
World Series Drought-Buster Watch: Which MLB playoff teams could end longest runs without titles?
Editor’s note: This file originally ran on Oct. 2, 2025 with seven teams that have gone longer than 30 years without a title remaining and will be updated with teams removed as they are eliminated from the 2025 postseason
Mathematical probability, in a perfectly equitable distribution of championships, means each MLB team would win a World Series once every 30 years. That is not the world we live in, of course, so many franchises have experienced long title droughts that have stretched into multiple decades. There is even one that has never appeared in the Fall Classic.
That establishes a super fun element to this year’s postseason. We have several playoff teams who have gone longer than 30 years since their last World Series championship — including the Milwaukee Brewers, who have never won, and the Seattle Mariners, who have still never reached the World Series 48 years into their franchise history.
Maybe, just maybe, some team’s long-suffering fans will experience that euphoria of winning the final game of the season.
Yes, it’s the year of the World Series Drought-Buster Watch. Let’s look at those seven franchises, what went wrong through the years, and why this may finally be The Year.
Milwaukee Brewers
Last World Series title: None (franchise debuted in 1969, moved to Milwaukee in 1970).
Last World Series appearance: 1982 (lost to the Cardinals in seven games).
Closest call since then: Lost the 2018 NLCS to the Dodgers in seven games.
Three painful postseason moments:
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Leading 3-1 in the bottom of the sixth inning in Game 7 of the 1982 World Series, the Cardinals load the bases with one out. Keith Hernandez hits a two-run single off Bob McClure and George Hendrick follows with a go-ahead single as the Cardinals go on to a 6-3 win. Brewers fans will always wonder what the outcome might have been if Hall of Fame reliever Rollie Fingers, who got injured in September, had not missed the World Series.
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Pete Alonso‘s three-run, go-ahead home run in the ninth inning off Devin Williams in last year’s Game 3 of the wild-card series.
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Leading the Nationals 3-1 in the bottom of the eighth of the 2019 wild-card game, Josh Hader loads the bases with a hit batter, single and walk. With two outs, Juan Soto singles to right field and rookie Trent Grisham overruns the ball, allowing all three runners to score.
Why they haven’t won: Lack of offense has led to early playoff exits.
For a long time, the Brewers were just bad. They didn’t have a winning season from 1993 to 2006. Current owner Mark Attanasio bought the team from the Selig family in 2005, however, and after a breakthrough season in 2008, the Brewers have mostly been competitive since, despite the challenges of playing in MLB’s smallest market. The Prince Fielder-Ryan Braun teams were built around offense, but the teams under managers Craig Counsell and now Pat Murphy have centered more on pitching, defense, speed and doing the little things well.
While Christian Yelich was an MVP in 2018 and runner-up in 2019, the recent teams have often lacked one true offensive star to anchor the lineup. That’s one reason the Brewers have had trouble scoring enough runs in the postseason, and that has led to losses in that 2019 wild-card game and wild-card series in 2020, 2023 and 2024. They were in the NLDS in 2021, but scored just six runs in four games, including two shutouts. Overall, the Brewers have gone 2-10 in the playoffs since 2019 entering this year and have hit just .229/.290/.351.
Why this could be the year: Even though the Brewers still don’t have that superstar hitter and rank below average in home runs, this is a deep, good offensive team. Only the Yankees and Dodgers scored more runs during the regular season. Only the Blue Jays struck out less among the playoff teams. And the Brewers do have guys who can hit home runs: Yelich has had his best power season since 2019; Brice Turang has slugged over .500 in the second half; Jackson Chourio can hit it out; and William Contreras hit nine home runs in August, so if he gets hot at the right time, he can help carry a lineup.
The Brewers also earned the No. 1 overall seed and have played well at home, with a 51-29 record. That could be a nice advantage. And even without the injured Trevor Megill, this is a strong bullpen with hard-throwing Abner Uribe capable of closing down leads. The Brewers had the best record for a reason: They’ve quieted skeptics and have remained the most consistent team all season long.
Seattle Mariners
Last World Series title: None (franchise debuted in 1977).
Last World Series appearance: None.
Closest call: Lost the 1995 ALCS to Cleveland and the 2000 ALCS to the Yankees, both in six games. Also lost the 2001 ALCS in five games. Were up 2-1 in the 1995 ALCS against Cleveland, but a powerful Mariners lineup got shut out twice in the final three games.
Three painful postseason moments:
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Leading 1-0 and looking to tie the 2001 ALCS against the Yankees at two games apiece, New York’s Bernie Williams ties the game with an eighth-inning home run off Arthur Rhodes, and Alfonso Soriano hits a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth off Kazuhiro Sasaki.
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Rhodes again. In Game 6 of the 2000 ALCS, the Mariners are leading the Yankees 4-3 in the seventh when David Justice blasts a three-run homer off Rhodes and sends Yankee Stadium into a deafening roar.
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Back in the playoffs in 2022 for the first time since 2001, the Mariners lead the Astros 7-3 in the eighth inning in the division series. Alex Bregman hits a two-run homer in the eighth. With two on and two outs in the bottom of the ninth, manager Scott Servais summons starter Robbie Ray out of the bullpen to face Yordan Alvarez. Wrong decision. Alvarez blasts a game-winning three-run homer.
Why they haven’t won: Bad offenses and, for the longest time, bad drafting. And just missing the playoffs.
The Mariners couldn’t win in the mid-to-late ’90s despite a roster that featured Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez and Edgar Martinez. Then came the miracle season of 2001, when they won a record 116 games with only Martinez still on the roster. Then came the long playoff drought, from 2002 to 2021. Those teams were marked mostly by inept offense: They once finished last in the AL in runs four straight seasons. In 2010, they traded for Cliff Lee and went all-in on pitching and defense. ESPN The Magazine put them on its cover. They lost 101 games.
Jerry Dipoto was hired as GM after the 2015 season and began turning things around. He drafted Logan Gilbert and George Kirby in the first round in 2018 and 2019, Cal Raleigh was a third-round pick in 2018, Bryan Woo was a sixth-round pick in 2021. The organization signed Julio Rodriguez in 2017. Since 2021, the Mariners have had five straight winning seasons and are seventh in the majors in wins — but this is only their second playoff appearance, having just missed in 2021, 2023 and 2024.
Why this could be the year: With Raleigh’s historic campaign leading the way, this is the best offense the Mariners have had in 25 years, with their highest wRC+ since 2001. Dipoto’s deadline trades for Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suarez created one of the best one-through-nine groups in the majors. They ranked third in the majors in home runs, and Rodriguez, Randy Arozarena and Naylor (!) each stole 30 bases. The Mariners’ bullpen isn’t super deep, but the late-game foursome of Andres Munoz, Matt Brash, Eduard Bazardo and Gabe Speier has been reliable.
As that stretch of 17 wins in 18 games in September showed, the starting pitching might finally be living up to the preseason expectations following a stellar 2024 season. The concern is Woo’s health. Seattle’s best starter all season with 15 wins and a 2.97 ERA, Woo left his final start with inflammation in his pectoral muscle. The Mariners still have Gilbert, Kirby and Luis Castillo, but if the only franchise never to reach a World Series is to get there, a healthy Woo feels necessary.
Last World Series title: 1993
Last World Series appearance: 1993 (beat the Phillies in six games).
Closest call since then: Lost the 2015 ALCS in six games to Kansas City. Also lost the 2016 ALCS, in five games, to Cleveland.
Three painful postseason moments:
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Game 6 of the 2015 ALCS is tied in the eighth when Kansas City’s Lorenzo Cain draws a leadoff walk. Eric Hosmer then singles to right field with Cain heading to third, and when Jose Bautista throws the ball into second base, Cain keeps on sprinting home for the winning run in a 4-3 victory.
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In Game 2 of that series, the Blue Jays lead 3-0 in the seventh, but manager John Gibbons leaves in a tiring David Price to give up five hits and five runs.
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The Blue Jays blow an 8-2 lead at home in Game 2 of the 2022 wild-card series against Seattle. The winning runs come up when J.P. Crawford clears the bases with a bloop double to center field as a diving George Springer collides with Bo Bichette.
Why they haven’t won: A tough division and the bats going dry in October.
After back-to-back World Series titles in ’92 and ’93, the Blue Jays went 20 years without a playoff appearance even though they were rarely bad in that period. They just couldn’t beat the Yankees and Red Sox or, later, the Rays and Orioles. They finally broke through and won the American League East in 2015 with the Josh Donaldson/Jose Bautista team that scored 127 more runs than any other AL team. They lost to the Royals in the ALCS that year and to Cleveland in 2016 — when the Jays scored just eight runs in five games. Remember when Cleveland had to start an obscure minor leaguer named Ryan Merritt, who had started one game in the majors, in Game 5 because they had no other starters? He tossed 4⅔ shutout innings.
In recent years, the Blue Jays went 0-6 in wild-card series in 2020, 2022 and 2023, scoring three runs in 2020, getting shut out once in 2022, and scoring one run in two games against the Twins in 2023. Entering 2025, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has hit .136 in six playoff games (no home runs, one RBI) and Bichette .273 with the same no home runs and one RBI.
Why this could be the year: This is a better Blue Jays club than those past three playoff teams. They have home-field advantage throughout the AL bracket and went 54-27 at home. Since May 27, only the Brewers have a better record, and they do things that work in postseason baseball: They play good defense and they had the lowest strikeout rate in the majors. Kevin Gausman and Shane Bieber give them a strong 1-2 punch and rookie Trey Yesavage could be a huge secret weapon, either as a starter or reliever, despite just 14 innings in the majors. Plus, Guerrero and Bichette (if he’s healthy) are due to finally do something in October.
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Bradford Doolittle
Let’s ignore the fact that the 2025 MLB playoffs began on the last day of September and might end on the first day of November — because it’s always October when it comes to playoff baseball — and ask this: Who is this year’s Mr. October?
We last checked in after the LDS round, and things have changed, not the least of which is that we’re now down to the last three teams still vying for a World Series crown. Our leader last time was the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ Roki Sasaki and while that’s no longer the case, Los Angeles’ collective playoff blitz still paints the leaderboard a vivid Dodger Blue.
At least that’s the answer through the rubric of Win Probability Added (WPA, a metric that’s been around for a while now and has a lot of utility in putting numbers to the narratives that emerge as the October bracket plays out.)
Between Shohei Ohtani‘s unprecedented performance in the Dodgers’ Game 4 win to close out the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series and the ongoing dominance of the L.A. rotation, led by Blake Snell, this WPA exercise has a chance to reverberate beyond the crucible of this one postseason. There is potentially historic stuff happening. Let’s dig in.
Jump to:
Methodology | Top 5 | WPA hero of the day
Top 10 for eliminated players | Ohtani tracker | The all-time WPA champs
Methodology
The way WPA works is that play-by-play during a game, if you do something that improves your team’s chances to win, you get a positive credit. If you don’t, it’s a negative. In small samples, one play can have an outsized effect on WPA. A grand slam in a 10-0 game? Great for your stat line, but the blast does little to change the game’s outcome. Hit the same homer with your team down 3-0 in the eighth, and you’ve made some history. Because of that, there is a bias toward players who end up in a lot of close games — but only if they come through.
All we’ve done here is to marry the hitting and pitching versions of WPA together based on the version of the system at Baseball-Reference.com. Why add pitching and hitting WPA together in 2025, the era of the universal DH?
Well, you know why — Mr. Ohtani — and it was his historic debut as a two-way postseason player this season that inspired us to watch the WPA results a little more closely this October. Ohtani had been pretty quiet during this postseason, but his epic Game 4 against the Brewers shows why we wanted to track this.
Top 5 alive
Best postseason WPAs from players on teams still playing
1. Blake Snell, Dodgers | 1.203
Snell’s .622 WPA showing from his Game 1 masterpiece against Milwaukee is easily the best score from any player so far this postseason. Whereas Ohtani’s two-way brilliance in the clincher of that series came in a mostly one-sided game, Snell’s 90 game score over eight innings was posted in a more intense context.
That game was scoreless until Freddie Freeman‘s sixth-inning homer, and the Dodgers didn’t tack on the second run of their eventual 2-1 win until the ninth, after Snell departed. And it was only when that happened that Milwaukee was finally able to crack the scoreboard. Snell was not just brilliant, but he was brilliant in a game that allowed for no margin for error. WPA loved it.
Snell has been lights-out in all three of his playoff starts and the 1.203 WPA he’s rolled up already ranks in the top 30 all time among postseason pitchers. If Snell gets two starts in the World Series and approaches the .401 WPA per game he’s averaged so far, he’s going to crack the WPA pantheon, and if the games in the Fall Classic are close, he might end up leading the way.
2. Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners | .800
Raleigh was already having a great postseason, but his eighth-inning, game-tying homer off Toronto reliever Brendon Little was the kind of game-turning event (.320 WPA all by itself) that flips a leaderboard. It wasn’t quite enough to overcome Ohtani for the WPA crown for the night, but it did put Raleigh in position to win Mr. October if Seattle keeps advancing.
3. Alex Vesia, Dodgers | .708
Vesia has strung together six straight scoreless outings, all in close Dodgers wins. The outings have yielded four holds and two wins. Vesia has been understandably overshadowed by what some of his teammates have been doing, but he has played a key role in Los Angeles’ playoff spree.
4. Andres Munoz, Mariners | .704
Not all of Munoz’s outings have been high-leverage, but they’ve all been virtually spotless. Over six outings, Munoz has posted 7⅓ scoreless and hitless innings.
5. Roki Sasaki, Dodgers | .686
Sasaki’s shaky Game 1 outing in relief of Snell against Milwaukee cost him a little ground in the series by WPA. But he has posted two clean outings subsequent to that, and as long as he’s finishing close games, he can climb on this leaderboard.
Next five: 6. Tyler Glasnow, Dodgers (.596); 7. Nathan Lukes, Toronto Blue Jays (.506); 8. Bryce Miller, Mariners (.478); 9. Eduard Bazardo, Mariners (.467); 10. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Blue Jays (.462)
About last night
Golden Guy: Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers (.349)
Alas, WPA doesn’t really capture the full breadth of what we saw Ohtani do as the Dodgers swept the Brewers out of the NLCS. The .349 is impressive but because the Dodgers jumped to an early 3-0 lead (aided by Ohtani’s first homer to begin the onslaught), the rest of the game had limited leverage potential. Besides, there’s not one number that can fully do justice to what Ohtani did. It’s all of the numbers.
Three homers? It’s been done in the postseason, 12 other times in fact before Ohtani. Babe Ruth — Ohtani’s most common historical comparison — did it twice. But none of those previous instances were done by a game’s starting pitcher. And even if you want to get technical and point out that Ohtani’s third homer came after he had shifted to DH, well, no pitcher had homered even twice in a postseason game.
Ruth never homered in a World Series game in which he pitched. He owns the third-lowest career postseason ERA (0.87) among pitchers who have made at least three starts. But none of his amazing World Series outings as a pitcher also featured anything close to what Ohtani did with the bat against Milwaukee.
Ten whiffs? A 75 game score, which Ohtani earned in Game 4? Sure, many pitchers have exceeded those numbers in a postseason game. But none of them also hit three homers. In fact: No one had ever hit three homers while striking out 10 batters in the same game, period. Postseason, regular season, any season.
More than anything, the awe with which we watched Othani on Friday wasn’t just what he did, but how he did it.
According to the timestamps in Statcast’s play log, Ohtani struck out William Contreras swinging for this third straight whiff in the first inning at 7:45:18 p.m. PT. He then stomped off the mound, threw on his batting helmet and grabbed a bat, then hit a 446-foot homer at 116.5 mph off the bat against Jose Quintana at 7:50:05 p.m. — less than five minutes later. How is that possible?
Well, how is it possible that he struck out Jake Bauer on a splitter at 8:49:47 p.m. then, seven minutes later, hit a 469-foot bomb over the roof at Dodger Stadium against Chad Patrick? Or that, after finishing up his six standout innings on the mound, he then hit one out to center off Trevor Megill? Three homers off three different pitchers. Three homers during a six-inning start in which he allowed two hits. Who does that?
How is it possible that the same player who threw the 11 fastest pitches of the game — and the only two over 100 mph — also recorded the game’s three hardest hit balls, all at 113 mph or more? It’s not just that no one had ever done what Ohtani did on Friday. It’s arguable that no one else has even been capable of doing all those things in the same game. And oh yeah: That game happened to put his team back in the World Series.
There’s no one number that proclaims Ohtani’s Game 4 performance as the best single-game showing in baseball history. But if you want to make that argument, I for one am not going to stand in your way.
Good while they lasted
Top 10 postseason WPAs from players on eliminated teams
1. Will Vest, Detroit Tigers | .848
2. Tarik Skubal, Tigers | .609
3. Kerry Carpenter, Tigers | .591
4. Aaron Judge, New York Yankees | .579
5. Jose Ramirez, Cleveland Guardians | .482
6. Keider Montero, Tigers | .441
7. Jacob Misiorowski, Brewers | .362
8. Cristopher Sanchez, Philadelphia Phillies | .349
9. Garrett Crochet, Boston Red Sox | .348
10. Cam Schlittler, Yankees | .314
Ohtani tracker
Since Ohtani inspired all of this, we should keep tabs on his WPA progress.
Through the NLCS:
Hitting WPA: minus-.062
Pitching WPA: .109
Overall WPA: .047 (98th of 284 players this postseason)
Ohtani jumped from 277th to 98th on Friday night. Let’s cross our fingers for two Ohtani starts in the Fall Classic.
The WPA pantheon
Top 10 single-season postseason WPAs since 1903
Note: It’s a big time frame, but the cumulative nature of the leaderboard heavily favors the recent decades when there have been more playoff rounds.
1. David Freese, 2011 St. Louis Cardinals | 1.908
2. David Ortiz, 2004 Red Sox | 1.892
3. Curt Schilling, 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks | 1.748
4. Alex Rodriguez, 2009 Yankees | 1.704
5. Yordan Alvarez, 2022 Houston Astros | 1.646
6. Carlos Beltran, 2013 Cardinals | 1.582
7. Bernie Williams, 1996 Yankees | 1.545
8. John Wetteland, 1996 Yankees | 1.522
9. Eric Hosmer, 2014 Kansas City Royals | 1.443
10. Mariano Rivera, 2003 Yankees | 1.420
Snell’s total at the end of the NLCS puts him in range of this select group. With two more outings in the World Series like his start in Milwaukee — in tight games — it’s conceivable he could challenge Freese for the all-time Mr. October throne. It’s a long shot, but either way, this has been an amazing run for Snell.
As for Ohtani, here are the four instances in which a player posted at least .200 WPA on both the hitting and pitching sides during the same postseason. This is the list we thought Ohtani might join. He has some work to do to get there, but at least we know that if he doesn’t do it, in 2025 baseball, no one else will.
• Christy Mathewson, 1913 New York Giants (1.054 WPA | .447 hitting; .607 pitching)
• Rube Foster, 1915 Red Sox (.883 WPA | .303 hitting; .580 pitching)
• Babe Ruth, 1918 Red Sox (.710 WPA (.209 hitting; .501 pitching)
• General Crowder, 1935 Tigers (.923 WPA | .207 hitting; .716 pitching)
• Jake Arrieta, 2016 Chicago Cubs (.480 WPA | .218 hitting; .262 pitching)
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