Final Night time in Baseball: The Tigers, Cubs and Phillies All Survived Elimination

Having a tough time following along with the MLB postseason? Just want to relive the best moments?

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 last night in Major League Baseball:

Tigers will get their Game 5

For a brief time, it looked like the Mariners were going to advance to the ALCS. Tigers fans were booing their lifeless ballclub of choice, and Seattle had seemingly coaxed a useful start out of Bryce Miller, whose 2025 was… well, not that. 

Josh Naylor picked up his first and second hits of the postseason, and Seattle’s first two runs, then followed it all up with a nifty little unassisted double play at first base to help Miller keep things going.

The wheels did not take long to fall off, though. Miller finally got into trouble the Mariners couldn’t bail him out of, and then the first reliever, Gabe Speier, simply did not have it. The Tigers tied things up, courtesy Javier Baez…

…and then Riley Greene gave them the lead.

Zack McKinstry kept it going…

…and then Baez made it 7-3 with a dinger. The fans were no longer booing at this point.

Seattle failed to respond in any way, and the Tigers forced a winner-take-all Game 5 that will be played on Friday on the Mariners’ turf. It’s easy to forget that Detroit was a pretty good baseball team for most of the season — they had 80 wins entering September! They finished with just 87, though, and barely made it to the postseason, so that obscured that there is a dangerous team in a short series here. Especially a team with Tarik Skubal on it. Who, by the way, the Mariners will have to overcome in Game 5 if they want to see the ALCS.

Beefy Boys

Kerry Carpenter is listed at 6-foot-1 and 220 lbs. Josh Naylor is just 5-foot-10, but 235 lbs. This was a big boy collision at first.

Everyone was okay, and Carpenter was even laughing about his being thrown wildly spinning off course by the encounter. And the Tigers hadn’t even taken the lead yet at that point!

Cubs force Game 4

It was a night — mostly — for staving off elimination. And the Cubs, like the Tigers, managed to push their doom off for at least one more day against the team with the better record. The Brewers might have gotten out to a 1-0 lead in a hurry, but Chicago responded just as quickly. Michael Busch, again, led off for the Cubs with a dinger.

And then Pete Crow-Armstrong made it 3-1 Cubs with a 2-out, 2-run single to right that scored Nico Hoerner and Kyle Tucker.

The Cubs would add a fourth run when Nick Mears threw a wild pitch, and that would be all they would score for the entire game, but also all they would need. The Brewers could only muster two other runs against Chicago pitching the rest of the way, and the Cubs won, 4-3. 

They’re still down 2-1 in the series, but you have to take these things one game at a time — you can’t win Game 5 until you win Game 3 and Game 4. The Cubs will attempt that very thing on Thursday night at 9:08 p.m. ET — as of publication time, no starters have been announced for either team, though.

Dodgers get Schwarbered

The Phillies kicked off Game 3 down 2-0 to the Dodgers, but they didn’t appear haunted by the bunt that shouldn’t have been from Game 2. Instead, they put up 8 runs on the Dodgers, giving Clayton Kershaw what could be, depending on the outcome of the series, far worse memories of his last time on the mound than ending things with his final regular season start would have given him.

Kyle Schwarber was at the center of it all. He hit a solo shot to tie the game early, but this was such a Schwarbomb that it should have counted for more runs than that. Look at this thing go.

He would add another in the eighth off of Kershaw, with the Phillies already up 6-1, to give them an 8-1 lead. 

While starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the pair of relievers that preceded Kershaw had given up a combined three runs over six innings, the soon-to-be-retiree allowed five runs over two innings without striking out a single batter, while walking 3 and giving up 6 hits. It was brutal, and while none of those runs actually impacted the outcome, given the Dodgers scored just two runs on the night, it still was not pretty.

Los Angeles is still up 2-1, however, with Game 4 being played at home as well. Tyler Glasnow will take the mound against Cristopher Sanchez in a game that the Phillies have to win, or else their season is over. Game 3 didn’t go well for the Dodgers, no, but they have one more loss to spare before it’s truly a problem for them.

Yankees lose, Blue Jays advance

Cam Schlittler did the job he was supposed to do. It was a tough one, but he was up for it: pitch well enough to keep the Yankees offense in it against the Blue Jays in an elimination game. Things began a little shaky, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. giving Toronto an early lead in the first…

…but overall, Schlittler did his job by allowing just two earned runs over 6.1 innings. He was charged with four runs, though, because what should have been an inning-ending double play in the seventh instead became an error in the hands of Jazz Chisholm Jr.

Not only would the inning keep going, but Schlittler would be lifted, and then reliever Devin Williams would allow both inherited runners to score thanks to Nathan Lukes, giving the Blue Jays a 4-1 lead.

Toronto would add another in the eighth, and New York would muster just one more run in an attempt to save their season. The Blue Jays advanced to the ALCS, while the Yankees once again have to watch a team celebrate on their field.

The Blue Jays are incredibly petty

Haters rejoice, the Blue Jays are experts at it. During their clubhouse celebration, Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” played while manager John Schneider yelled about the need to start spreading the news.

And then there was Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s postgame interview with the FOX Sports crew. Guerrero Jr., if you have forgotten or did not know, claimed a few years ago that he would never play for the Yankees, even if he were “dead.” That he loved playing in New York, but solely so he could crush “Los Yanquistas and the Yankees.” He was not lying about his dislike, that’s pretty clear.

Cheer up, Yankees fans. Gerrit Cole will be healthy in 2026, yeah?

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