A wild Division Series weekend showed off the best of October baseball
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Jeff PassanESPN
SEATTLE — As Saturday was just beginning, fans thirsty for playoff baseball and hungry for Seattle dogs — hot dog, cream cheese, sauteed onions — were already snaking around T-Mobile Park in anticipation of what was to come. The Seattle Mariners were down 2-0 in their American League Division Series against the Houston Astros, an obstacle only one in 10 teams historically have overcome. And yet that fact did nothing to dissuade those lined up from believing they were about to witness something memorable. Two decades of postseason absence can normalize a sense of pessimism, but Seattle fans preferred on Saturday to be dreamers, to embrace the special sort of magic this sport lives to foment.
“Baseball’s just a really funny game,” Trey Mancini said about nine hours later, headed for a bus that would begin the Astros’ journey home for their sixth straight AL Championship Series. What had occurred in the time since was a one-of-a-kind game: 6 hours, 22 minutes, with 42 strikeouts against four walks, where hits were sparse and runs nonexistent until the 18th inning, when a rookie whacked a home run to win it.
Mancini is 30, in his sixth year in the majors. He lived through the leanest of lean years with the Baltimore Orioles and came to the Astros at the trade deadline. He has beaten cancer. He knows that “funny” can mean the sad-funny of rebuilding or the we-really-don’t-know-anything funny of this division series weekend, and particularly of Saturday, when across the country four games of varying incarnations played out in what would be the last busy day of the baseball calendar this season. Mancini loves the game because of days like Saturday.
As this weekend’s division series proved, baseball in October is something different. It’s not always about who’s better. Sometimes what matters is who happens to get hot. It’s not just unpredictable; it’s unknowable, capable of rendering itself at any moment.
Take, for instance, the game Mancini played for eight innings and watched for 10 as a spectator after being lifted for a pinch hitter. It embodied the excellence of modern run prevention, with a paucity of baserunners, a surfeit of strikeouts and unshakeable defense. Was it so pretty it got a little ugly, or so stingy it was beautiful, or something along the continuum instead? No one knew for sure. No one cared, either.
“It’s wild how the lines get blurred so much in games like that,” said Astros reliever Ryne Stanek, marveling at how similar the Astros’ 1-0 victory over the Seattle Mariners was to the Cleveland Guardians‘ win last week by the same score in the clincher of their wild-card series against the Tampa Bay Rays. “I saw it in the Rays-Cleveland game, where they were talking about how when things get rolling like that, it just seems to almost stay [like that] — like it’s inertia, just kind of stays in motion.”
Perhaps that’s just a post-facto explanation, the easiest way to organize the game’s chaos and understand how two teams like Houston and Seattle — one offensively elite and the other capable of homering with the best — can find themselves locked in a game that sucks away your breath and replaces it with tension, nerves, anxiety — feelings, the sort of feelings that permeated from the dugout into the stands all the way across the Pacific Northwest. The feelings that resonated 1,000 miles away in San Diego, only with a twist: from dread to elation, in almost an instant.
“Hitting really is contagious,” Mancini said, an hour before the San Diego Padres would enter the seventh inning of their National League Division Series-clinching win against their rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers, down 3-0. They then recorded a walk, single, single, double, single, strikeout, popout, single — five runs in all.
This is postseason baseball: A team like San Diego — missing its superstar shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. and short enough on rotation depth that its choices for a potential Game 5 starter against the Dodgers were bad, worse and nightmare — vanquished a 111-win team to whom it lost all six series this season with a 5-3 victory.
All the way across the country, in Philadelphia, another team with a tortured recent history like Seattle’s and San Diego’s had engaged in its own hit parade, going single, hit-by-pitch, single, single, single to push a tight game into comfortable territory. No lead is truly comfortable against the Atlanta Braves, but the Philadelphia Phillies are just like the Padres, puffing out their chests after their domination and defeat of a Braves team that over 162 games had finished 14 ahead of the Phillies.
This is October baseball: Five wins in six games for a team that was so bad its manager was fired midseason and so good it won nine straight immediately after. From that point on, Philly played at a 90-win pace, which is nobody’s idea of championship caliber, except for the fact that seven teams with 90 or fewer wins have won rings, including last year’s 88-win Atlanta unit.
October baseball entrances even Astros players, celebrating in the afterglow of their clinching win, enough to put down their bottles of bubbly and pause their party to watch. In Cleveland, the Guardians trailed the New York Yankees by a run. There were two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. The bases were loaded. A rookie named Oscar Gonzalez was at the plate. His walk-up music is the theme to “SpongeBob SquarePants.” He had already hit the walk-off home run that provided the one run in Cleveland’s aforementioned 1-0 win against Tampa Bay, as well as the go-ahead swing on a blooper in Game 2 against the Yankees.
When Gonzalez lined a single up the middle to plate the tying and winning runs, the lunchroom in the back of the Astros’ clubhouse erupted in screams. Some of the Astros loathe the Yankees just for being the Yankees, and others were taken by the moment itself, regardless of who won or lost. These men know as well as anyone just how precious October victories are, how days like Saturday — when every game is a treat of varying flavors — are magic.
The Astros, amid two upsets and the Yankees facing a winner-take-all Game 5 in the Bronx on Monday night, are the exception.
They won 106 games and the top seed in the AL, and, after five days off, swept their first series against the Mariners, coming from behind in the first two wins and grinding through two games’ worth of innings to capture the third. This group of playoff-tested veterans relied on a rookie, Jeremy Peña, to provide the lone run in the clincher. He took a slider from another rookie, Seattle right-hander Penn Murfee, and deposited it over the center-field wall, sucking the oxygen out of a stadium that had spent most of the day deprived of it thanks to the hyperventilation games like this invite.
“It’s just intense, like — you feel it,” Astros third baseman Alex Bregman said. “You feel every pitch [that] one pitch could swing it.” And nauseating and stomach-turning though that may be, Bregman said, “People in our clubhouse feed on it. We love it.”
This is one of the many things that makes the Astros great. This might be their best team yet. Even if the offense isn’t quite as dangerous as their teams with George Springer and Carlos Correa, Houston’s pitching is world class — from Lance McCullers Jr. spinning six shutout innings to start Game 3 to Luis Garcia booking five scoreless to end it and a parade of six relievers in between throwing up zeroes.
Yes, their lone championship came in the season during which they used a sign-stealing scheme to cheat. But by the end of the ALCS, Houston will have played in at least 80 playoff games over the past six years. It is more than any team ever in a six-year span, and while that certainly can be attributed to playoff expansion, outdoing the dynastic Yankees of the late 1990s and early 2000s as well as the 2016-21 Dodgers puts the Astros in rarified company among their modern peers.
They’ve played so many postseason games that when Jose Altuve calls Game 3 “the craziest we’ve played,” he needs to pause for a moment and think that through. It’s easy, in the moment, to assign fantastical adjectives to a game that just ended, even to a day like Saturday, but it’s understandable, too.
Baseball really is a funny game, right? It sends us on rides for which the blueprint need only be a win-expectancy chart, in which calmness cedes to commotion in an instant — up and down, revolting one minute and life-affirming the next. It is the best, and then it is the worst, and maybe again the best, and that’s the fun of it. We never know what it’s going to be, which is precisely what keeps us coming back for more.
The 2025 MLB All-Star Home Run Derby is fast approaching — and the field is set.
Braves hometown hero Ronald Acuna Jr. became the first player to commit to the event, which will be held at Truist Park in Atlanta on July 14 (8 p.m. ET on ESPN). He was followed by MLB home run leader Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners, James Wood of the Washington Nationals, Byron Buxton of the Minnesota Twins, Oneil Cruz of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Junior Caminero of the Tampa Bay Rays, Brent Rooker of the Athletics and Jazz Chisholm Jr. of the New York Yankees.
On Friday, however, Acuna was replaced by teammate Matt Olson.
With all the entrants announced, let’s break down their chances at taking home this year’s Derby prize.
Full All-Star Game coverage: How to watch, schedule, rosters, more
2025 home runs: 17 | Longest: 434 feet
Why he could win: Olson is a late replacement for Acuna as the home team’s representative at this year’s Derby. Apart from being the Braves’ first baseman, however, Olson also was born in Atlanta and grew up a Braves fan, giving him some extra motivation. The left-handed slugger led the majors in home runs in 2023 — his 54 round-trippers that season also set a franchise record — and he remains among the best in the game when it comes to exit velo and hard-hit rate.
Why he might not: The home-field advantage can also be a detriment if a player gets too hyped up in the first round. See Julio Rodriguez in Seattle in 2023, when he had a monster first round, with 41 home runs, but then tired out in the second round.
2025 home runs: 36 | Longest: 440 feet
Why he could win: It’s the season of Cal! The Mariners’ catcher is having one of the greatest slugging first halves in MLB history, as he’s been crushing mistakes all season . His easy raw power might be tailor-made for the Derby — he ranks in the 87th percentile in average exit velocity and delivers the ball, on average, at the optimal home run launch angle of 23 degrees. His calm demeanor might also be perfect for the contest as he won’t get too amped up.
Why he might not: He’s a catcher — and one who has carried a heavy workload, playing in all but one game this season. This contest is as much about stamina as anything, and whether Raleigh can carry his power through three rounds would be a concern. No catcher has ever won the Derby, with only Ivan Rodriguez back in 2005 even reaching the finals.
2025 home runs: 24 | Longest: 451 feet
Why he could win: He’s big, he’s strong, he’s young, he’s awesome, he might or might not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. This is the perfect opportunity for Wood to show his talent on the national stage, and he wouldn’t be the first young player to star in the Derby. He ranks in the 97th percentile in average exit velocity and 99th percentile in hard-hit rate, so he can still muscle the ball out in BP even if he slightly mishits it. His long arms might be viewed as a detriment, but remember the similarly tall Aaron Judge won in 2017.
Why he might not: His natural swing isn’t a pure uppercut — he has a pretty low average launch angle of just 6.2 degrees — so we’ll see how that plays in a rapid-fire session. In real games, his power is primarily to the opposite field, but in a Home Run Derby you can get more cheapies pulling the ball down the line.
2025 home runs: 20 | Longest: 479 feet
Why he could win: Buxton’s raw power remains as impressive as nearly any hitter in the game. He crushed a 479-foot home run earlier this season and has four others of at least 425 feet. Indeed, his “no doubter” percentage — home runs that would be out of all 30 parks based on distance — is 75%, the highest in the majors among players with more than a dozen home runs. His bat speed ranks in the 89th percentile. In other words, two tools that could translate to a BP lightning show.
Why he might not: Buxton is 31 and the Home Run Derby feels a little more like a younger man’s competition. Teoscar Hernandez did win last year at age 31, but before that, the last winner older than 29 was David Ortiz in 2010, and that was under much different rules than are used now.
2025 home runs: 16 | Longest: 463 feet
Why he could win: If you drew up a short list of players everyone wants to see in the Home Run Derby, Cruz would be near the top. He has the hardest-hit ball of the 2025 season, and the hardest ever tracked by Statcast, a 432-foot missile of a home run with an exit velocity of 122.9 mph. He also crushed a 463-foot home run in Anaheim that soared way beyond the trees in center field. With his elite bat speed — 100th percentile — Cruz has the ability to awe the crowd with a potentially all-time performance.
Why he might not: Like all first-time contestants, can he stay within himself and not get too caught up in the moment? He has a long swing, which will result in some huge blasts, but might not be the most efficient for a contest like this one, where the more swings a hitter can get in before the clock expires, the better.
2025 home runs: 23 | Longest: 425 feet
Why he could win: Although Caminero was one of the most hyped prospects entering 2024, everyone kind of forgot about him heading into this season since he didn’t immediately rip apart the majors as a rookie. In his first full season, however, he has showed off his big-time raw power — giving him a chance to become just the third player to reach 40 home runs in his age-21 season. He has perhaps the quickest bat in the majors, ranking in the 100th percentile in bat speed, and his top exit velocity ranks in the top 15. That could translate to a barrage of home runs.
Why he might not: In game action, Caminero does hit the ball on the ground quite often — in fact, he’s on pace to break Jim Rice’s record for double plays grounded into in a season. If he gets out of rhythm, that could lead to a lot of low line drives during the Derby instead of fly balls that clear the fences.
2025 home runs: 19 | Longest: 440 feet
Why he could win: The Athletics slugger has been one of the top power hitters in the majors for three seasons now and is on his way to a third straight 30-homer season. Rooker has plus bat speed and raw power, but his biggest strength is an optimal average launch angle (19 degrees in 2024, 15 degrees this season) that translates to home runs in game action. That natural swing could be picture perfect for the Home Run Derby. He also wasn’t shy about saying he wanted to participate — and maybe that bodes well for his chances.
Why he might not: Rooker might not have quite the same raw power as some of the other competitors, as he has just one home run longer than 425 feet in 2025. But that’s a little nitpicky, as 11 of his home runs have still gone 400-plus feet. He competed in the college home run derby in Omaha while at Mississippi State in 2016 and finished fourth.
2025 home runs: 17 | Longest: 442 feet
Why he could win: Chisholm might not be the most obvious name to participate, given his career high of 24 home runs, but he has belted 17 already in 2025 in his first 61 games after missing some time with an injury. He ranks among the MLB leaders in a couple of home run-related categories, ranking in the 96th percentile in expected slugging percentage and 98th percentile in barrel rate. His raw power might not match that of the other participants, but he’s a dead-pull hitter who has increased his launch angle this season, which might translate well to the Derby, even if he won’t be the guy hitting the longest home runs.
Why he might not: Most of the guys who have won this have been big, powerful sluggers. Chisholm is listed at 5-foot-11, 184 pounds, and you have to go back to Miguel Tejada in 2004 to find the last player under 6 foot to win.
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