October quadrupleheader: Yankee-killing Blue Jays, Schwarber’s epic blast and a two-pitch strikeout

Here we go, one last time. One final October quadrupleheader unfolding across a flatscreen near you. One last chance to sprawl on your sofa and watch nine hours of must-win postseason baseball, featuring (among other things) …

A “three-pitch” strikeout that never got around to requiring all three pitches … an infield fly that was so invisible, it didn’t qualify for the infield fly rule … and a SpaceX launch, at one of baseball’s most iconic stadiums, unlike any home run hit there in the last half-century.

So did you catch all that? I hope so. I was told it was a spectacular autumn afternoon and evening where I live. But how the heck would I know? I was glued to every one of those 1,395 pitches that went whooshing toward home plate Wednesday.

And what did you miss if you weren’t watching all 1,395 of them? Let’s fill you in, with one final LDS quadrupleheader edition from us knuckleheads at Weird and Wild Postseason Headquarters.

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The Fantastic Four

Days like Wednesday are baseball treasures. Well, not if you’re a Yankees fan maybe. But just understand what we (I) got to watch Wednesday.

Four games, all of them potential Division Series clinchers … on the same day? Sign me up for that.

In the 21st century, we’ve had only three other days like that — in 2012, 2019, and precisely five years ago to the day, on Oct. 8, 2020, in the pandemic bubble. Do those bubble games, with zero fans in the stands, even count? Discuss!

But that doesn’t quite capture what this was, because then these four games actually happened. And a day full of clinches did not happen.

Only the Blue Jays succeeded in ousting the Yankees. But the other teams in danger — the Tigers, Cubs and Phillies — all had other ideas. So they’re still very much alive. And a day like that is an official postseason rarity.

Just so you know, if we don’t count days with a Game 5 (meaning somebody has to lose), we’ve only had that happen — meaning at least three out of four teams staving off LDS elimination — on one other day in the last 30 postseasons:

Oct. 7, 2019 — What a wild day. The Dodgers couldn’t close out the Nationals in Game 4 (and went on to lose Game 5). The Braves couldn’t finish off the Cardinals in Game 4 (and also lost that series). And the Astros couldn’t eliminate the Rays at the Trop in Game 3 (so they wound up having to go all the way to a fifth game back in Houston to move on). That left only the Yankees, to do one of their favorite October things — and finish off their annual sweep of the Twins.

So what’s the moral of that story? When you give teams on the brink another day of life, you just might wind up getting back on a plane to go play a Game 5. Is that where this postseason is leading us? Don’t touch that remote!

East side story

But how ’bout that team that did get to spray champagne. The Blue Jays didn’t merely wipe out the Yankees in four in this ALDS. This was a major whooping.

The Jays came to bat in 34 innings in this series — and scored 34 runs. Think about that. This was the 59th season in which the Yankees played postseason baseball. They’ve now played at least one playoff series against 26 different teams. But they’ve never run into this.

It’s the first time any team ever averaged a run per inning against them in any of those series. Un-be-frigging-lievable. But hang with us. There’s more.

Eastbound and down — This was only the second time the Yankees had gotten bounced from the postseason by another AL East team in any version of Yankee Stadium. If you don’t recall the other time, you can learn all about it on Netflix. Just search for “2004 Red Sox.”

Start spreading this news — I’m aware it’s been a few decades since the Blue Jays were a team known for blitzing through October. But did you know this was the first time they’d won a postseason series against another team from the AL East? They won the 2016 Wild Card Game against the Orioles, but that was only one game. So are we counting that? Not in this column!

What a difference — The Blue Jays outscored the Yankees, 34-19, in this series. On one hand, that wasn’t the most lopsided run differential ever laid on the Yankees in a postseason series. On the other, it makes this incredible Yankee killer leaderboard. All the other teams on it played in the World Series by the way.

(Source: Baseball Reference / Stathead)

Getting’ Miggy wit’ it — Oh, and one more thing. Remember in 2012, when a fellow named Miguel Cabrera won the AL Triple Crown? Well, the Yankees spent this series basically turning the entire Blue Jays lineup into that Miguel Cabrera. Check this out.

Blue Jays hitters in this series — .338/.373/.601

Triple Crown 2012 Miggy — .330/.393/.609

Lost in space  

I know NASA is tight on funds these days. But if it’s ever in need of a new launching pad down there at Mission Control, Kyle Schwarber might be able to help.

In the Phillies’ 8-2 pounding of the Dodgers, the Schwarbino launched a home run Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium that had a better chance of orbiting the moon than it did of getting caught by anybody roaming around the Dodgers’ outfield. I don’t know how humans do stuff like this. But apparently it’s possible, because we have video.

This looks straight out of a video game 🤯 pic.twitter.com/erDreq138T

— MLB (@MLB) October 9, 2025

The Statcast data collectors will try to impress you by telling you this ball left the bat at 117.4 mph — which is a lot faster than you’ll ever drive to the grocery store. But it’s also a lot faster than pretty much everyone else on Earth is capable of propelling a baseball.

Did you know that since we started keeping track of exit velocity a decade ago, only five postseason home runs have ever roared off the bat of a left-handed hitter at 117 mph or harder? True — and that Schwarber guy has hit three of them.

But now that we have that out of the way, it’s time to really impress you. This was a home run whose magic can’t be summed up by decimal points or its 455-foot distance projection. No, this was a home run whose magic will be defined by the things that really matter:

People are going to talk about it forever — or as long as Dodger Stadium is still standing anyway. And that’s because this baseball landed in a place where no ball has traveled in more than 50 years.

I’ve watched a lot of baseball games at Dodger Stadium. Mark Langill, the Dodgers’ resident historian, has watched many more. So I conferred with him Wednesday night. And we agreed that we’d just seen something basically never before witnessed.

This is the 63rd season of baseball at Dodger Stadium. And in all those years, only one man — Willie Stargell — had ever hit a home run that flew over the right-field pavilion at Chavez Ravine. Until now.

Stargell actually did it twice — an estimated 506-foot rocket on Aug. 5, 1969, that somehow cleared the pavilion roof and came down in the parking lot, and a pedestrian little 470-foot shot on May 8, 1973, that merely clanked on top of that roof. There’s one word to describe those blasts: legendary.

So how do they compare with what Schwarber did Wednesday? Take a moment to watch the Dodgers’ YouTube video on those Stargell homers. Come for the Charley Steiner narration but definitely stay for the black and white diagrams.

It took another 52 years. But on Wednesday, Schwarber joined Stargell on the list of men who have hit a baseball that soared beyond that pavilion.

It landed under the roof, so it wasn’t quite Stargell-esque. But it won’t be forgotten. The Dodgers have placed markers around the stadium for every ball that has ever cleared the pavilion in either right field or left. So there’s that.

But there’s also the imprint this homer left in the memories of everyone whose eyeballs recorded the scene.

“Never seen a ball go up like that,” said the man on deck, Bryce Harper. “Especially in L.A. at night. So, yeah, super impressive.”

It made the Phillies’ elimination-game bashing of the Dodgers more than just your average stayin’-alive October triumph. It was one of those rare swings of the bat that made October memories … for a lifetime.

Gonna be a long walk home

Javier Báez admires his two-run homer, which helped Detroit win at home for the first time in more than a month. (Duane Burleson / Getty Images)

Those plucky Detroit Tigers won a must-win game in their home park Wednesday. Nothing particularly Weird or Wild about that, you say? True, except for one thing …

It was the first game they’d won in Comerica Park since Sept. 6!

How long ago was that? They were still 10 games ahead of the Guardians back then. The Astros had four more wins than the Mariners back then. The 2025 Lions hadn’t even played a regular-season game yet back then.

In between those victories in Detroit, the Tigers lost eight home games in a row. Meanwhile, the Dodgers haven’t even lost eight games, period, since then! (They’re 19-6.)

So does 32 days seem like kind of a long time to go 0-for-home — for a team that A) actually made the playoffs and B) then won a home game in October?

Seemed like it to me. So I asked my friends at STATS Perform to see if we’d just witnessed history — namely, the most days ever between a team’s last regular-season win at home and its first postseason win at home. And that answer was …

(Amazingly) no! Believe it or not, it was only the second-longest gap between hometown triumphs… but at least it was the longest in 99 years.

The record-holder turned out to be Wild Bill Hallahan’s 1926 Cardinals, at 34 days! But trust me. Nothing about the Cardinals’ month-long home-win drought resembled the Tigers’ month-long home-win drought other than the drought itself.

Tigers’ home losing streak — 32 days, eight losses in a row

Cardinals’ home losing streak — 34 days, zero losses in a row

Yes, the Cardinals won a game in St. Louis on Sept. 1, then took off on a bizarre little 24-game road trip to finish the season — which made it challenging to win any more home games. They also played two exhibition games in the middle of all that, in conveniently located Buffalo and Syracuse. I bet that paid a few bills.

So what was the deal with that 24-game road trip? Let’s mostly blame the Browns (the St. Louis Browns, not the Cleveland Browns), since the Browns shared the old Sportsman Park with the Cardinals back then. That doesn’t explain the Buffalo/Syracuse part, but whatever. (Hat tip: Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)

Nevertheless, the Tigers top the leaderboard of teams that didn’t visit Buffalo and Syracuse. Here’s how that one looks:

DAYS	TEAM	DATES
32	2025 Tigers	9/6-10/8
29	1924 Senators	9/6-10/5
29	1909 Tigers	9/13-10/12
28	1917 Giants	9/12-10/10

(Source: STATS Perform)

But now, with their shocking 9-3 win in the books, those Tigers are off to Seattle for an epic Game 5. Will they win another game in Detroit this year? Will they even play another game in Detroit this year? Stay tuned.

Survivor Wrigleyville

From left, Nico Hoerner, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Dansby Swanson celebrate a do-or-die win. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

Full transparency: I haven’t watched a full episode of “Survivor” since Season 1. But here’s more transparency: I’ve watched hundreds of postseason baseball games, so I know exactly what Survivor — baseball style — looks like.

On Wednesday, it looked exactly like the Cubs and Tigers winning at home and living to play yet another survivor game this week. But are they up for doing this again? Let’s let history be our guide.

Years in which the Cubs won back-to-back home elimination games in the same series: Now that the Cubs have won Game 3, they’ll be required to win Game 4 at Wrigley Field on Thursday. So how often, in their storied history, have they won two straight elimination games at home in the same series?

Let’s see now. There was … no, not that year … and no, not that year … and, uh-oh … turns out that answer is, somehow or other, never. They’ve played 16 home elimination games stretching back to 1910. But you’ll notice that “back-to-back” isn’t part of the lyrics to “Go, Cubs, Go,” and for good reason, evidently.

So just for fun, I thought: Let’s take away the “home” part. How many times have the Cubs won back-to-back postseason elimination games anywhere — any time, any place, any postseason? I bet you know this answer. That would be once. And if you can’t name when that was, I’m not sure why you’re even reading this.

It only happened in the three most important elimination games in the history of the franchise — in the 2016 World Series. The Cubs fell behind, three games to one, but then went into curse-buster mode … and won Game 5 (at Wrigley), Game 6 (in Cleveland) and Game 7 (in Cleveland). Good timing for an elimination-game win streak!

All right, now let’s do the Tigers.

They’ll be playing Game 5 on Friday in Seattle, so it won’t be possible for them to win back-to-back elimination games at home. Which means the question is: How many times have the Tigers ever done what they need to do to survive this series — win the final two games of a postseason series anywhere after finding themselves one game away from elimination?

Well, that answer isn’t never. They’ve actually done it twice — and they were about as memorable as postseason comebacks get:

1968 World Series — The Tigers fell behind in this Series, three games to two. Then all they did was go to St. Louis and … win Game 6 in a 13-1 blowout behind 30-game winner Denny McLain … and then win Game 7 by beating Bob (1.12 ERA) Gibson at the height of Gibson’s unhittable powers. (Incidentally, the nine runs the Tigers scored Wednesday were their most since that 13-1 game … 57 years ago.) So that was cool. But let’s also not forget the …

2013 ALDS — The 2013 Tigers were a star-studded Super Team. The 2013 A’s were all about being upstart 96-win underdogs. And they got one win away from pulling an upset before … the Tigers won Game 4 in Detroit and Game 5 in Oakland. So how’d they do that? They were smart enough to pitch two obscure starters named Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. It was something, all right. I can still recall watching that Game 5 in a bar with a group of Tigers scouts. They just resumed breathing about 20 minutes ago.

So will any of that history repeat itself? Can’t wait to find out.

North of 60

Cal Raleigh is already in the 60-Homer Club, but he could venture into even more exclusive territory. (Alika Jenner / Getty Images)

Is there any cooler club than the 60-Homer Club? Let’s go with no, just for the sake of this note, OK?

I ask because, as you might have heard, Cal Raleigh, trusty Mariners catcher, bombed 60 home runs this season. Then he did something very few men have ever done.

He kept hitting homers when the calendar turned to October. He hit No. 61 Tuesday, into the hands of a guy wearing a “61” shirt. And the Mariners are still playing. So it’s possible Raleigh could hit more postseason homers following a 60-homer season than anyone who ever lived. Take a look.

HIT 60 HOMERS, ALSO PLAYED IN POSTSEASON THAT YEAR 

Babe Ruth, 1927 (2) — The Babe homered in Games 3 and 4 of the ’27 World Series. Because of course he did.

Roger Maris, 1961 (1) — After breaking Ruth’s record, Maris homered just once in the ’61 World Series, but it was a ninth-inning game-winner, off the Reds’ Bob Purkey.

Aaron Judge, 2022 (2) — Judge played in nine games that October after breaking Maris’ record, but only homered twice — both against Cleveland in the ALDS.

Sammy Sosa, 1998 (0) — Slammin’ Sammy slammed 66 long balls that season, but his team got swept in the NLDS and he went homerless. Oh well.

So if Raleigh makes two more home run trots somewhere along the trail this October, he’ll sit atop this list. And boy, won’t the rest of that 60-Homer Club be jealous?

Baseball is so Weird (and Wild)

Aaron Judge did his part this October, but it wasn’t enough to get the Yankees back to the World Series. (Al Bello / Getty Images)

You know our motto here at the Weird and Wild column: The best thing about baseball is … it makes no sense. And yeah, that’s still true, even in October.

Aaron Judge is often said (mostly by baseball writers looking for a storyline) to be the man who will determine how far the Yankees go in the postseason. So naturally, he just finished batting .600 for an entire postseason series (9-for-15), and the Yankees still lost it.

In case you’re wondering, only two other players with as many plate appearances as Judge have ever had a batting average of .600 or better and still had their team lose that series: Fred Lynn (.611 for the Angels in the 1982 ALCS) and Mark Grace (.647 for the Cubs in the 1989 NLCS).

Ranger Suárez normally starts games for the Phillies. But their sneaky Game 3 strategy was to let Aaron Nola start and twirl a couple of innings, then wave for Suárez in the third inning. So how’d that work out? Ha. He served up a home run to Tommy Edman on the first pitch he threw.

The rest of his (and their) night actually turned out fine after that. But in case you’re wondering, to find the last time Suárez allowed a home run on the first pitch of a game he started, you’d have to go back to the second start of his big-league career, on Aug. 16, 2018. That was 125 starts ago, counting the postseason.

The infield fly rule seems so cut and dried that I bet you thought it applied to, well, every infield fly with runners on first and second and less than two outs. But then this happened Wednesday afternoon at Wrigley.

The Cubs let this pop up fall and the bases are loaded pic.twitter.com/0aXllLtEso

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) October 8, 2025

So now you know. When the infield is engulfed by shadows and glare, and none of the infielders know where that “infield fly” is descending to earth, that’s no longer an “ordinary” play, which means don’t go looking for help from that infield fly rule. Elsewhere on The Athletic, Dan Hayes wrote all about this.

“I’ve seen some crazy things in baseball, you know,” Cubs pitcher Jameson Taillon told Hayes. “Just try not to let the moment take me there. Just step off, regroup, grab my sights, figure out what pitch I want to throw next and just move on to the next. But yeah, I mean, it was a weird way to start the game, but again, I’ve seen it all.”

Strike two … you’re out — OK, so that’s not an exact quote from what happened to the Phillies’ Brandon Marsh in the fifth inning Wednesday. But it might as well have been.

As he went to step into the batter’s box, he politely waited for the batboy to vacate the area. And how did he get rewarded for that considerate behavior? Home plate ump Nic Lentz slapped a pitch-clock violation on him. So here’s how Marsh’s at-bat went from there:

Strike one — violation, so no actual pitches.
Strike two — takes a slider for a called strike.
Strike three — swings-and-misses at another slider.

So are you adding along at home? Why the heck not? That’s three strikes … on two pitches. According to our friends from STATS, it was the first two-pitch strikeout in postseason history. As well it should be.

I’d like to be able to argue that it should be impossible — logically, mathematically, cerebrally and emotionally — for any strikeout to be made up of more strikes (three) than pitches (two). But as you know, there’s always that one powerful explanation for moments like this. It’s …

Baseball!

— The Athletic’s Matt Gelb contributed to this report.