The Brewers have done it! They’ve won a postseason series for the first time since 2018, and, as they did back then, they’ll be facing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS. On the other side of the bracket, the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays face off for the American League crown. Let’s take a deeper look.
National League: (1) Milwaukee Brewers (97-65) vs. (3) Los Angeles Dodgers (93-69)
Brewers won regular-season series 6-0. Game one on Monday on TBS, TruTV, and HBO Max (time TBA)
The Brewers
and Dodgers will meet for the third time in the postseason, with the Los Angeles looking to defend their 2024 title and the Brewers looking to make the World Series for the first time since 1982 (and the second time in franchise history). These teams’ most notable postseason meeting was the 2018 NLCS, which Los Angeles won in seven games; the Dodgers also took a two-game sweep in the odd 2020 postseason. Milwaukee got here by defeating the Cubs in a tight five-game series; the Dodgers swept the Reds in two games in the Wild Card round, then decisively defeated the Phillies in four games in the Division Series.
The Dodgers were, of course, expected to be a juggernaut at the beginning of the season after they added Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott, and Kirby Yates to their World Series-winning roster. Scott and Yates did not work out, and Sasaki missed most of the season, but he emerged in the Division Series as possibly Los Angeles’s most potent bullpen weapon, something they desperately needed after the bullpen was, by far, the team’s biggest weakness.
The rest of the Dodgers seem to be rolling into form at exactly the right time after a regular season which did not live up to most of the preseason expectations. After struggling for much of the season, Mookie Betts hit .307/.348/.554 over his last 25 games and then went 6-for-9 in the Wild Card Series versus the Reds. Shohei Ohtani is almost certain to win his fourth MVP Award. Freddie Freeman recently turned 36, but he was still one of the better hitters in baseball this season.
But the group that looks especially formidable is this team’s starting pitching. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was one of the best pitchers in the National League all season and had an outstanding outing versus the Reds in the Wild Card round (though he was beat up a little bit in the Dodgers’ one loss to the Phillies). Ohtani is fully stretched out as a starting pitcher. Tyler Glasnow is healthy. And Blake Snell, after missing a big chunk of the season, looks like the best starting pitcher remaining in the postseason.
One health question is the catcher Will Smith. He had an excellent regular season and was in the running for a batting title for much of the year, but he suffered a hairline fracture in his hand in early September and didn’t play after September 9th. He did make the NLDS roster and played in all four games (including starts in games three and four), but he went just 2-for-13 and it’s not clear that he’s fully healthy. Certainly, if he is fully healthy, he would be a huge boost for the Dodger lineup.
American League: (1) Toronto Blue Jays (94-68) vs. (2) Seattle Mariners (90-72)
Blue Jays won regular-season series 4-2. Game one on Sunday at 7:03 p.m. on Fox.
The Toronto Blue Jays, the American League’s top seed, advanced to the ALCS for the first time since 2016 after a convincing four-game series victory over the Yankees, and will be looking to make it to their first World Series since they won back-to-back championships in 1992 and 1993. Seattle needed 15 innings in the fifth game of their series with the Tigers, but prevailed to make it to their first ALCS since 2001. The Mariners have never played in the World Series. Toronto and Seattle have played in the postseason once, when Toronto swept a best-of-three Wild Card series in 2022.
Toronto comfortably dealt with the defending American League champs in the ALDS, and put up 34 runs across four games, losing only when Aaron Judge sparked a five-run comeback in game three. It was a massive offensive series: two Blue Jays hit over .500: Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who was 9-for-17 with three homers and nine RBI, and Ernie Clement, who was 9-for-14 with a homer and five RBI. Wisconsin native Daulton Varsho also hit .438 (7-for-16) with two homers, and catcher Alejandro Kirk had only four hits but two of them were home runs.
Toronto’s pitching could be a bit of a question. The rotation is led by the veteran Kevin Gausman, but a major role was played by rookie Trey Yesavage in the Division Series, and former Cy Young winner Shane Bieber started a game in the DS but has made only seven regular-season starts in the past two years. Jeff Hoffman, the closer, has been far from untouchable this season, and there are few arms in the bullpen that would be considered “shutdown” relievers.
Seattle eked out a series victory over the Tigers after managing to win two games that were started by Tarik Skubal. Offensively they are led by the potential AL MVP Cal Raleigh, who hit 60 regular-season homers and another against the Tigers; he hit .381/.480/.571 in the Division Series. Another star in that series was Jorge Polanco, who had only four hits in 22 at-bats but two of those hits were homers off of Skubal and another was the walk-off single in the bottom of the 15th inning in game five. Seattle’s lineup also includes Julio Rodríguez, who had a tough finish to the ALDS but had an excellent season, and two big trade deadline pickups, Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez.
Seattle’s rotation includes several stars: Logan Gilbert (eight innings, one run in the DS), Luis Castillo (six scoreless, including a win in game five) and George Kirby (ten innings, three runs). The bullpen is anchored by their fantastic closer Andrés Muñoz, who had a 1.73 ERA and 38 saves during the regular season and through 5 1/3 scoreless innings in the Division Series.
