Deion Sanders’ roster remake at Colorado like nothing college football has ever seen
By Kyle Bonagura, Adam Rittenberg and Andrea Adelson
BOULDER, Colo. — In the midst of training camp, three weeks before the season opener, first-year Colorado coach Deion Sanders was in no mood to sing the virtues of building a strong team culture. In fact, he took exception to the idea that it was even necessary as part of his Rocky Mountain reclamation project.
“I’m not welcoming to that word, culture,” Sanders said. “That’s all I heard when I was in Jackson. Culture, culture, culture, culture, culture. Now culture, culture. What the heck does that mean?”
In this context, it was defined for the Pro Football Hall of Famer as creating an environment to become a good football team. For example, what little things do the players have to do every day to maximize their potential?
“I don’t think you got to have unity whatsoever,” Sanders said. “You got to have good players.”
While that might partially defy conventional wisdom, it does sum up the blueprint from which Sanders has built his team over the past nine months. Since his splashy arrival in early December, hired following a successful three-year stint at FCS Jackson State, Sanders made it clear he planned on taking advantage of college football’s now unrestrictive transfer rules to overhaul his roster — even encouraging holdover players to enter the transfer portal the first time he addressed the team.
He hasn’t wavered in his plan since.
The Buffs weren’t just one of the worst teams in college football last season, they were one of the worst teams in recent memory. Coach Karl Dorrell was fired after an 0-5 start in just his third season, and the team finished 1-11. Colorado lost games by an average margin of 29.1 points last year, the worst in the country and the fourth-worst among Power 5 programs in the past 30 years.
When the Buffaloes take the field in Fort Worth, Texas, against No. 17 TCU on Saturday (noon ET, Fox), the only resemblance from last year’s team will be the uniforms. Only 10 scholarship players from the 2022 roster remain with the team. The team’s 86 new players come from all over — from high school to junior college to the SEC — including nine who followed Sanders from Jackson State, led by Shedeur Sanders, Deion’s son and CU’s starting QB, and Travis Hunter, the No. 2 overall recruit in the 2022 class. According to ESPN Stats & Information, it’s the most incoming players to an FBS roster since the inception of the transfer portal in 2018.
“I know it’s a huge overhaul,” Sanders said. “But it had to be done.”
No coach has ever been so brash about wanting to force out so many of the players he inherited. Even though it became easier in 2021 to transfer, once the rules had changed and players did not have to sit out for a season, the extent of Sanders’ undertaking is unprecedented in college football.
Colorado’s 53 incoming transfers — including roughly two dozen since the end of spring practice — is the most any team has ever added in an offseason.
While some coaches might have reservations about how this unorthodox approach could impact team chemistry, Sanders could not care less.
“I don’t care about culture. I don’t care. I don’t care if they like each other, man. I want to win,” he said. “I’ve been on some teams where the quarterback didn’t like the receiver, but they darn sure made harmony when the ball was snapped.”
Sanders said that doesn’t mean his players don’t get along. He said there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. However, it does illustrate how his long professional playing career has influenced his priorities as he attempts to resuscitate a once-proud program.
“He understands the business,” a team source told ESPN. “If he doesn’t win, they’re going to get rid of him like they have the previous staffs, so you better be confident enough to make the moves you feel fit within the vision you have for that program. The one thing that no one can deny — you may agree or not agree with what he says — Deion Sanders has been a winner his entire life.”
After Colorado spent most of the past two decades mired in irrelevance, Sanders has put the school squarely in the spotlight. Historic numbers of players have transferred in and out. Season tickets are sold out. Merchandise sales have spiked, with sales of Colorado gear in December — the month Sanders was hired — up 505% over the previous year, according to the university. The Buffs have been one of the most talked-about teams in the country.
Now it’s time to play football.
ESPN spoke to several players who transferred after Sanders’ arrival, as well current players and coaches, to find out what actually happened during the spring roster overhaul, what kind of a team Sanders is attempting to build and, ultimately, whether one of the most fascinating offseasons in the sport’s history will pay off.
On Saturday, April 22, the day after a spring snowstorm, nearly 50,000 people made their way to Folsom Field for Coach Prime’s first spring game. The crowd was bigger than all but two of the team’s regular-season home games last season and marked the first time the school sold tickets to the event since the 1970s.
“This was the beginning of everything in the direction that we go right now,” Sanders said afterward. “You all know that we’re going to move on from some of the team members and we’re going to reload and get some kids that we really identify with. This process is going to be quick, it’s going to be fast, but we’re going to get it done.”
The Sunday and Monday following the spring game were uncomfortably quiet around the UCHealth Champions Center, headquarters of the Buffaloes football program. Players had been summoned to meet with their position coaches and, in some cases, Sanders as well.
They came and went, some never to return. Sanders’ proclamation at Colorado’s first team meeting back in December — “I want y’all to get ready to jump in that portal” — had gone into full effect, just a bit later than many had expected.
Former Colorado linebacker Mister Williams remembered entering a mostly empty building for a Sunday meeting with both Sanders and linebackers coach Andre’ Hart. The coaches reviewed Williams’ performance and told him he ultimately didn’t fit with the direction Colorado wanted to go.
“Coach Prime asked me, do I know what that means?” Williams said. “Like, do I know what I need to work on so that whenever I do find a new place, that won’t be an issue?”
Williams, who originally had no intention of transferring from Colorado, mostly listened during the meeting. He thanked the coaches for the opportunity as they parted ways. He then went to the locker room and gathered his things. He eventually transferred to the University of the Incarnate Word.
“Some people, they don’t plan on transferring the whole time that they’re in college,” said Jason Oliver, who transferred from Colorado to Sacramento State after the spring game. “The fact you can get cut like that, it kind of sucks, but that’s what college football is nowadays. It’s just a business, so you’ve got to start to understand it.”
Wide receiver Jordyn Tyson led CU in receiving yards, receiving touchdowns and total touchdowns in 2022 before sustaining a season-ending knee injury in early November that required surgery. He had spent the winter and spring rehabbing, which limited his interactions with Sanders and the new coaching staff. But Tyson planned to stay and remain a significant contributor, until his meeting with Sanders and wide receivers coach Brett Bartolone.
“I just wasn’t wanted, basically,” Jordyn Tyson said. “They basically said that.”
It was harsh, like an NFL cutdown day, except for players who mostly arrived in Boulder under the assumption they had a home until they exhausted their eligibility. Their scholarships would have been honored if they wanted to remain at CU as students, but the whole process came across as impersonal, multiple players told ESPN. If the initial wave of more than two dozen incoming transfers before spring practice was Phase 1 of Sanders’ transformation, Phase 2 commenced during the post-spring exit interviews.
“Sometimes when you’re telling somebody what they want to hear, it is worse than just telling people the truth,” said Colorado defensive coordinator Charles Kelly, who joined Colorado in December after four years on staff at Alabama. “The one thing that [Sanders] firmly believes in is he’s going to tell people the truth. He has not done anything since he’s been the head coach that he didn’t say he was going to do. He spelled it out exactly what his plan was.”
Sanders might say he doesn’t care about culture, but his coaching philosophy is built on the same core principles he learned as a player at Florida State under Bobby Bowden and defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews.
In an interview last year with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, Sanders said, “I’m pretty much a version of Mickey Andrews right now, the way I go about my job.”
He made similar comments to The Ledger newspaper when Andrews retired in 2009: “Not a day goes by when I am coaching, mentoring or teaching somebody that I don’t use things coach Andrews taught me. He is one of the all-time great defensive coaches in college football history.”
Andrews spent 26 years as defensive coordinator with the Seminoles, and molded Sanders into a two-time All-American in 1987-88. Andrews’ relentlessness with his players, tough love and emphasis on hard work and discipline are core tenets Sanders has taken with him as a coach. Andrews told ESPN from his home in Tallahassee, Florida, that he and Sanders have talked at length about their similar approach to coaching.
“He has told me a lot of times that he finds himself repeating some of the language I used, and the way I went about talking with players and trying to challenge them,” Andrews said. “Deion is a very honest person. I tried to be the same way with the players. I was tough on them, and I understand he is. I tried to create self-discipline. That’s how you become disciplined. You have to take ownership of that.”
Andrews said the first team meeting that Sanders held at Colorado — when he sent an eye-opening message about his expectations — reminded him of his freshman year at Alabama under Paul “Bear” Bryant in 1959.
“I saw the players were sitting around expecting a guy to come in there being jovial. He pinned their ears to the wall right off the bat,” Andrews said. “It reminded me so much of Coach Bryant. His deal was you get in or you get out. He wasn’t going to have a meeting and try to encourage you to join his team. He told us the first step to winning is to keep from losing, and he said you guys in here that can’t abide by that need to find another place to go to school. He was going to force you to make a decision. Deion kind of did the same thing.”
Sanders often points to five qualities he’s looking for in his players: smart, tough, fast, disciplined, great character. Those close to Sanders describe an approach that prioritizes similar qualities that Bowden valued while building Florida State into a national power, but Sanders has taken full advantage of modern NCAA rules.
First-year head coaches, like Sanders, have access to the NCAA’s “Aid After Departure of Head Coach” rule, which allows them to cut scholarship players and not have them count against the 85-scholarship limit, so long as those players remain on scholarship through the university. The transfer eligibility rules that went into effect in 2021 allowed this to become a mechanism for clearing roster space. Additionally, the NCAA Division I Council announced last year a two-year waiver for initial counter limits, which previously capped the amount of incoming scholarship players — high school recruits and transfers — in the offseason at 25. These rules make it possible for Sanders and other first-year coaches to revamp their rosters in ways they couldn’t before.
For a losing program like Colorado, Sanders’ approach, while callous to some, is a welcome change for others. Former Colorado and NFL offensive lineman Matt McChesney trains college athletes in a gym near Denver, including about 10 former Colorado players who transferred in the offseason. He welcomes the “unapologetic” and “business-related” approach Sanders has taken so far at his alma mater.
McChesney admitted Colorado’s offseason overhaul included some players the team wanted to keep but said some of the negative feedback — ranging from criticism from other college football coaches to those in media — was misplaced.
“I don’t have an issue with what he did at all. In fact, I dig it and I hope he does more of it,” McChesney said. “Honestly, I want it to be as cutthroat as humanly possible. I want everybody walking on eggshells. I want guys to fear for their jobs, so they do it at a high level. The perception that somehow this is dirty, I don’t understand how people can feel like that.”
McChesney attributes Colorado’s decline to a less-demanding environment and not living up to the words that came to define the program.
“It’s embarrassing when people in the state look at the logo and they’re like, ‘Hey, you should be in the Mountain West,'” McChesney said. “So the fact that he’s brought the pride back to the university when our motto is ‘The pride and tradition of the Colorado Buffaloes will not be entrusted to the timid or the f—ing weak,’ it resonates.”
Receiver-turned-tight-end Mikey Harrison is one of the 10 scholarship players returning from last season. As some teammates talked of transferring after the coaching change, Harrison was convinced he wanted to stick it out.
“I knew he was going to bring guys here, and to me, I’ve always believed in myself and believed in my abilities on the field,” Harrison said. “I even thought, this is one of the greatest football players of all time. … I feel like he’ll be able to see my ability.”
Harrison’s exit interview went better than many other returners, and he went into the summer believing he had a good shot at playing time this fall. Still, it marked a kind of awkward transition as many close friends departed.
“It kind of sucks in the moment. You build relationships with the guys you’ve been here with forever and then you see ’em go,” Harrison said. “Some guys are ending up in better positions for themselves, which obviously as a friend and as a teammate, that’s what you want for them.
“And then the guys coming in like any other team, you just embrace them because you know that these are the guys you’re going to go play with on Saturday. There’s no other option but to accept them and embrace into our team and into our community at CU.”
For the incoming players, like former Florida State defensive back Omarion Cooper, the opportunity to head to Boulder was similar to signing as a free agent for an expansion team. They weren’t transferring to play for a team that just went 1-11. That team no longer existed. They were signing up for the chance to play for one of football’s all-time best players as he built a team from scratch.
Cooper didn’t arrive until after spring practice. It wasn’t ideal timing given all the missed reps from the spring, but there’s a confidence that comes from having played major college football that eases the learning curve.
“It was a little challenging [coming in late], but having that college experience, being through workouts and stuff like that, you kind of know what to expect,” he said. “So, it was a little challenging, but we got adjusted pretty well.”
Given all the moving pieces, it might be hard to get a firm grasp on what the Buffaloes’ season will look like. But expectations are not high. They are projected to finish second to last in the conference with Las Vegas odds ranging from +5,000 to +15,000 to win the conference in their last Pac-12 season before the Buffaloes return to the Big 12.
“I really don’t even too much care about that,” quarterback Shedeur Sanders said at Pac-12 media day. “Because that’s what [media is] supposed to do. They’re supposed to hype things up and create chaos. That’s what media is.”
Of course, the Buffs haven’t won a conference title since 2001. The old way decidedly wasn’t working.
So Colorado is trying something different — something that has never been done in the modern history of the sport. It took a perfect storm of a one-of-a-kind coach, an overhaul of NCAA rules and a program desperate for respectability.
Will it work this year? Will it work at all?
That might be impossible to say right now. But either way, don’t expect Sanders to assign credit or blame to the team’s culture. That’s not what scores points or makes tackles.
ESPN reporters Tom VanHaaren and Mark Schlabach contributed to this story.
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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