Final Evening in Baseball: Yankees, Cubs and Tigers Be a part of Dodgers in Division Sequence

There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to follow themselves.

Don’t worry, we’re here to help you by figuring out what you missed but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from the weekend in Major League Baseball:

Red Sox on the wrong side of history

In a decisive Game 3 of the American League Wild Card Series, it was the Yankees advancing over the Red Sox. Thanks to a dominant performance by rookie Cam Schlittler — more on his masterful turn in a bit — New York took Game 3 by a score of 4-0.

There was much more drama in it than that score suggests, too. The Yankees broke a scoreless tie in the fourth with all four runs that they would score for the night, and then the game was about making sure that lead didn’t vanish.

Ryan McMahon, acquired at the trade deadline from the Rockies, did his best to make sure that things worked out for New York.

The Yankees are now the first team under the current wild card format — introduced for 2022 after the most recent collective bargaining agreement permanently expanded the postseason — to come back and win the series after losing Game 1. And against the Red Sox, no less. There’s just a little bit of history between those two teams over the years, in case you weren’t aware. 

Schlittler makes his mark

As promised: Cam Schlittler. What a night for the Yankees’ rookie. In an elimination game, making his postseason debut, Schlittler was just lights out. He struck out the side in the fifth inning after the Yankees went up 4-0, and became the first-ever rookie to strike out at least 8 batters in a winner-take-all elimination game. Highly specific, sure, but that’s still his name at the top of the list.

He did not stop at that many strikeouts. 

Schlittler’s 11th of the evening set a record for the most for any Yankees pitcher in their postseason debut, not just a rookie, and then the 24-year-old right-hander whiffed one more for good measure.

All told, he went eight innings on 107 pitches, striking out a dozen without walking anyone, and scattered five hits to avoid giving up a single run. A dominating performance from a pitcher who, after debuting in July right before the All-Star break, helped to stabilize the Yankees’ rotation by posting a 2.96 ERA over 14 starts. 

Cubs rebound against Padres

The Cubs did not pull a Red Sox, and instead defeated the Padres on Thursday in their Game 3 matchup. Dansby Swanson, once again, was a problem for the Padres.

It wasn’t just a lack of runs scored, however, but also that Padres’ pitchers couldn’t get the Cubs off the board.

Sure, the game might have ended differently if the ABS challenge system were already in place…

…but it is not, and a walk there doesn’t guarantee that San Diego would have kept scoring, either. That’s a problem to be solved in the future; in the present, that is simply the call, as unfortunate as it might be, and not a gift given exclusively to the Cubs. Even with umpiring as good as it is across the league these days, the push for a robot-umps challenge system is still being implemented for a reason.

Anyway, hey, look who not only got to show up on the broadcast in multiple games, but also made his way into the clubhouse to celebrate with the team. You simply can’t find a better fan.

Now that the Padres are in the Cubs’ Rearviewmirror, they are set to take on the Rival Brewers. Since the Cubs only won a wild card, they had to Take The Long Way to get there, but a win over San Diego made it worth it for the Wrigley Faithful. As for the Padres and the 2025 season, they will now be Parting Ways. They are Gone. This year is no longer in the Present Tense; the NLDS is Not For You. Hopefully for their fans, they don’t make a Habit of losing like this, or else they will feel like they have lived a Life Wasted. 

Man there sure are a lot of Pearl Jam song titles you can use in sentences.

Tigers survive Guardians

The Tigers might have collapsed so hard in September that the Astros simultaneously falling apart is the only reason they still made it to October in the first place. However, they won when it truly mattered, which was against the Guardians in a win-or-go-home Game 3 in the AL Wild Card Series. The Guardians looked to be in a good place for a while there, as they got 2.1 innings out of Slade Cecconi before handing the game off to the bullpen, which was mostly equipped to keep the Tigers in check. It helped when Jose Ramirez tied things up and undid the one real mistake Cecconi made.

It was not to be, however. Ramirez ended a chance at a rally by getting caught stealing by Dillon Dingler, and then later on, Dingler launched a dinger to put the Tigers ahead.

One inning later, Detroit erupted. After struggling to score in the first two games — the Tigers scored a combined three runs in Game 1 and Game 2 — they put four on the board in the seventh, with Hunter Gaddis taking the brunt of that damage: he allowed both of his inherited runners to score, then another two on top of that, to put Detroit up 6-1.

Cleveland would fight back — it’s what they’ve been doing basically nonstop for a month now — but they couldn’t muster enough offense to keep going any further, and Detroit would take the game and the series, 6-3. The AL Central champions have been eliminated — the only division champs knocked out in the first round.

The Division Series is set

With that, the Wild Card Series round is over, and the Division Series round will begin on Saturday. Here are your finalized matchups:

The Cubs, fresh off of defeating the Padres, will take on the Brewers, whose 97 wins led the majors in 2025, with the series opening in Milwaukee. The Yankees head to Toronto to face the AL East champion Blue Jays. The Dodgers will kick off a series in Philadelphia against the Phillies, pitting the NL West and NL East champs against each other. And the AL’s third wild card, the Tigers, will head to Seattle to take on the AL West-winning Mariners in their first non-wild card postseason appearance since winning the division in 2001.

Yankees-Blue Jays Game 1 will broadcast on FOX at 4:08 p.m. ET, while Tigers-Mariners can be watched on FS1 at 8:38 p.m. ET.

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