The Seattle Mariners lead the ALCS three games to two over Toronto. They’ve also out-homered the Blue Jays 11-7 so far in the series. A total of 18 balls have left the field in five games, but you wouldn’t
really know that if you listened to the broadcast. It seems the only thing the Jays can do is shorten up and put the ball in play, and the only talent Seattle has is in their pitching.
The Dodgers, of course, brushed the Brewers aside in the NLCS, and while the story of that series really does revolve around LA’s pitching, they still out-slugged Milwaukee 6-1. Indeed, those scrappy Brewers might have been better served by a couple more balls leaving the stadium — none of their four losses were exactly blowouts, but they managed just a single run in all of them.
The wisdom so often spouted by the boys in the booth is that October is different, that you can’t just smash your way to a pennant, that against the best pitching, with extra off days, you need to try and string together base hits. Take the ball the other way, pass the torch, just make contact, all that stuff seems to be the currency of the realm if you ask onetime Atlanta Braves.
Except, when you’re facing the best pitching with extra off days, you’re not going to string together base hits. First, the pitchers are just too good, and the managers have itchy trigger fingers with loaded bullpens. Regular season batting average was .245, OBP .315. Come October, those numbers drop to .227 and .303 respectively. You’re going to get fewer hits in the postseason, so why on Earth would I want those hits to net fewer bases?
We saw this in the ALDS as well, where of course the narrative was those Contact Blue Jays were too old school for the all-or-nothing Yankees. The Jays hit nine home runs to the Yankees’ four, with eight of them coming in the two blowout wins at home that really put New York out before they were in the series. The Yankees lost the ALDS, not because they’re “all-or-nothing,” but because Ryan McMahon was their second best hitter, and as the Rockies learned, that’s not gonna get you very far.
Against the top-flight pitchers, especially top-flight bullpen arms, you need to drive the ball for extra bases. These guys make very few mistakes, so when they’re made you have to jump on them. Games are tighter, offense is suppressed, so the best way to score is to have the one kind of hit that guarantees a run comes in.
Giancarlo Stanton was perhaps the biggest disappointment in this year’s playoff run for the Yankees. October G is a meme at this point, we expect him to go off and at times carry the 26-man roster all by himself. Stanton is also about as close to an all-or-nothing player as there is in baseball these days — but his problem this fall was that he made too much contact. He’s run a 30 percent plus strikeout rate since 2021, in this recent postseason he brought that all the way down to 20 percent, and slammed ground ball after ground ball to third base and shortstop.
There’s a good chance these are the defining images of the 2025 Championship Series. They’re also the home runs that more or less won key games — and in the Dodgers’ case, iced an entire series. To win in October, jump on mistakes and hit them as far as you can.
