There hasn’t been too much left unsaid about the absurdity – in the best sense – of the final game of the 2025 MLB season. That said, there may be a few things that haven’t been said enough and bear much repeating. My apologies for not getting my thoughts, which surely you were waiting for with bated breath, out sooner but real life has kept me busy since Saturday night – or was it Sunday morning? In no particular order…
After we spent a month listening to the experts* tell us that Toronto wins because “they don’t strike out! They put it in play!”, they lost because Alejandro Kirk “put it in play” by hitting a 71-mph groundball. For those of you who are unaware, a 71-mph ground ball is an out 96 percent of the time and should therefore be assiduously avoided. Hell, Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s sacrifice bunt – when he was intentionally trying to make an out – had a better chance of being a hit than Kirk’s grounder. Remember kids, it’s not about contact – it’s about good contact.
(*Usually meaning someone who was a Hall of Fame player and can therefore get away with consistently making factually inaccurate statements. To wit; Toronto, San Diego, Miami and Kansas City were the best teams in MLB in 2025 at avoiding strikeouts. They finished 4th, 16th, 18th, and 26th respectively in runs scored. They Yankees struck out more often than 25 MLB teams, and they led MLB in runs by a pretty good margin.)
Speaking of IKF’s 11th inning sacrifice bunt…
The run expectancy when there’s a runner on second base and no outs is 1.12. The run expectancy when there’s a runner on third base and one out is .86. Again, in 2025, multi-billion-dollar organizations are being run by middle managers who routinely make decisions that would horrify any 15-year-old playing Strat-O-Matic baseball.
Furthermore, we assuredly will be told by the aforementioned “experts” again next postseason, who all called Game 7, that “small ball wins in the postseason”. The fact that the team that played small ball with the game on the line lost, and the team that hit the ball over the wall when the game was on the line won – will never be acknowledged, and that’s what literally happened.
In fact, Kirk’s double play grounder – which was only a possibility because Toronto bunted an out away, Will Smith’s 11th inning home run, and Miguel Rojas’ 9th inning home run were the fourth, fifth, and 12th most impactful plays in postseason history, according to Baseball Reference’s cWPA (Championship Win Probability Added).
Finally, the end of Game 7 also reminded me of the “$325 million dollars?!? He’s never thrown a pitch in the major leagues!” crowd last offseason. First, the best Japanese pitchers have been getting MLB hitters out for over 30 years at this point, so that position was always stupid and a little xenophobic. Secondly, a team using its resources to acquire good players is a good thing for baseball – anyone who thinks otherwise sounds like the aforementioned “small ball wins in October” crowd.
And finally, the Game 7 Yoshinobu Yamamoto performance wasn’t great – it was Randy Johnson level legendary. Yamamoto throwing 2.2 innings of shutout ball after throwing 96 pitches as the winning pitcher the night before, was one of the best clutch performances ever – and I don’t even believe in clutch.
Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments or yell at me on the My Baseball Page account on BlueSky.
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