It is the endless season, where one game represents the smallest fraction possible of any sports season. Yet somehow, at the end, that one little game means everything.
And so we arrive at Game 162 and several Major League Baseball teams playing for almost everything as the 2025 regular season draws to a close.
“It’s why we all do what we do. This is the exact situation you want to be in,” says Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider, whose club can lock up the American League East with a Game 162 win against the Tampa Bay Rays. “Baseball’s funny, man.
“One sixty-two is a lot and then you look up and, of course, it comes down to 162 to get where you want to, right?”
MLB BRACKET: Where races stand heading into final day of 2025 season.
It’s the same story in the Bronx, where the unstoppable New York Yankees will also aim for the East title – though they don’t entirely control the outcome, needing a Blue Jays loss to win the division and the hall pass out of the wild card series.
As the day of reckoning arrives, a look at the winners and losers from the penultimate day of the season, when two playoff tickets were punched and others stayed alive:
Winners
Detroit Tigers
Collapse? What collapse? Hey, nobody remembers a 2-14 stretch drive and losing five of six against your division rival to blow a 15 ½-game division lead when it all ends in a sensory overload of champagne spray and cigar smoke.
Yep, the Tigers righted the ship just long enough to claim a 2-1 victory over the Boston Red Sox and cement a playoff berth. And maybe even the division title if the Cleveland Guardians cooperate.
Either way, the Tigers enter the playoffs as the team that flatlined but were resuscitated to life. They’re not as potent as the 2023 Texas Rangers, and perhaps not as plucky as an 83-win 2006 St. Louis Cardinals team that beat a heavily favored Tigers team in the World Series.
But they do have Tarik Skubal, an ace in a landscape with few of them. And that can cover up a nearly disastrous tank job and a roster that ultimately won just 87 games.
In fact, the Tigers are dreaming of bigger things than an AL Central title: Skubal will not start the season finale, Detroit hoping Chris Paddack and a Guardians loss can hand them the division crown. The grander point: Skubal will start Game 1, be it in the wild card series or AL Division Series on Oct. 4.
Javy Báez
It’s Detroit’s second consecutive postseason trip, yet Báez was not around for the first one: He opted for season-ending hip surgery, team and player knowing he had to get right, and the club launched a chaotic run to the AL Division Series without him.
This year, he was healthy, and an All-Star, and then befallen by a .221/.229/.300 second half, his demise coinciding with Detroit’s. But in Game 161, he was nails, with a Superman-like diving catch to save one run and then a 29.3 feet per second sprint toward home to score the eventual winning run on Jahmai Jones’ single.
“Obviously last year I couldn’t be here because of the surgery,” Báez said amid the clubhouse revelry. “I told the boys, I know it’s been a crazy season with the ups and downs and injuries, but we deserve it more than anyone.
“Keep playing.”
This year, Báez will do just that.
Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton
Uh-oh.
There’s plenty of factors behind the Yankees’ rise but nothing is quite so gloriously unsubtle than when their 6-7 and 6-6 sluggers are pounding baseballs out of sight. Judge and Stanton each homered in their Game 161 triumph over Baltimore, the eighth time this year they’ve gone deep in the same game and the 59th , including postseason, in their eight years together. Only Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth (75) have done that more in Yankee history.
Judge’s MVP-caliber season makes it easy to overlook that Stanton, after missing the start of the season due to pain in both elbows, has a .272/.348/.946 line and 24 homers in 76 games.
They may be the AL’s toughest out – duo and team – and have a shot at five days off if things break right one more time.
Trey Yesavage
From Dunedin to Vancouver (British Columbia) to New Hampshire to Buffalo to Toronto and finally to starting the biggest game of the year, it’s been quite a ride for the 20th overall pick in the 2024 draft.
And Yesavage showed he has the big-game mettle that should make him a huge postseason factor for the Blue Jays.
He tossed five scoreless innings against Tampa Bay for his first major league win, shaking off a booted double-play ball to strike out five and leave with a 4-0 lead.
With his long extension and unique arm angle, Yesavage is an imposing figure for opposing hitters – and none of the Blue Jays’ AL playoff opponents have ever seen Yesavage. He looks like a rotation lock even in a best-of-five series – though it will fall on veteran Kevin Gausman to pitch Toronto past the Rays in Game 162 and out of the wild-card series.
“I got all the confidence in the world in Kev,” says Schneider.
The Mendoza Line
Mario Mendoza never liked the fact his career was associated with hitting worse than .200. Well, thanks to the Cleveland Guardians’ playoff qualification, perhaps that stigma will be lessened.
Four players in the box score from their clinching win over the Texas Rangers are batting between .152 and .188, including cleanup hitter Johnathan Rodriguez (.188), whose two-run homer kept the Guardians level with Texas before they could win it on a walk-off hit-by-pitch. Jhonkensy Noel (.152), Austin Hedges (.161), Bo Naylor (.192)? They’re going to the playoffs and you’re probably not. Life’s never been better on the interstate.
Pete Alonso
Will the Mets ever be able to quit the Polar Bear?
It doesn’t seem like it, not when dude seems to clutch up when they need him the most. A loss to Miami in the opener of their season-ending series put the Mets on the brink, but Alonso roared out of the gate Sept. 27 with an RBI double and home run.
That was enough for starter Clay Holmes, and now the Mets aim for hope from Milwaukee. Alonso has surely played well enough to opt out of the last year of his $54 million contract and hit the market again.
If Alonso bails them out two years in a row, can the Mets afford not to bring him back yet again?
Losers
Houston Astros
If a dynasty topples in a series no one’s watching in Anaheim, does it make a sound?
Lost in all the hysteria over Guardians magic and Tigers suckage is the fact the Astros – playoff participants for eight consecutive seasons – were about to fold the tent on their semi-dynasty.
They’ve kind of been a dead team walking since the Seattle Mariners roared through Daikin Park with a sweep to essentially ice the AL West. Now, Houston’s lost six of seven and saw its postseason hopes officially end when the Tigers and Guardians both won.
Sure, 2017 was a relatively long time ago, but we get the sense there won’t be many tears shed beyond Harris County.
Jacob Misiorowski, reliever
With the Brewers hesitant to put 6-7 All-Star rookie Jacob Misiorowski in their playoff rotation, The Miz got a shot at workshopping a relief role in a most difficult spot: Bases loaded, two outs, third inning of a 1-0 game against Cincinnati.
It did not go well.
Sure, Misiorowski ran into a little bad luck with a swinging bunt off the bat of Ke’Bryan Hayes that registered 57.8 mph on the exit velocity and drove in a run. But then a bases-loaded walk to Matt McLain was followed by a TJ Friedl single to left field, mayhem briefly visiting when an Isaac Collins throwing error allowed another run to score.
The Brewers can certainly analyze the situation and realize this wasn’t all Misiorowski’s fault, but on the other hand they brought him into a 1-0 game and it soon became 6-0.
The overriding lesson once the NLDS arrives: Bring The Miz in at the start of an inning, lest the Brewers’ playoff run go sideways quickly.
Of course, that’s too late to save the Mets, who could only watch as Misiorowski teetered and pushed their postseason hopes to the very edge.
ESPN
They’ve been sitting on a dream Yankees-Red Sox matchup in the wild-card series – in this, the year they opted out of the remainder of their contract to broadcast it – yet the ratings magic carpet might just get pulled out from under them.
A Tigers win over the Red Sox and Guardians win over the Texas Rangers would knock Boston from the No. 2 wild card to No. 3 – and send them packing for the Rust Belt for a wild-card series against the Central champion.
Meanwhile, the Yankees would welcome either the Guardians or Tigers to the Bronx.
In a sense, it might help spreading the Northeast ratings behemoths across two series. But it’s hard to shake the sense the chance at a ratings jackpot would be missed.