SI:AM | Ace Pitchers Take Center Stage in Decisive Game 5’s

Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Yu Darvish and Tarik Skubal are ready for the spotlight.

Darvish dominated the Dodgers in Game 2. / Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. This might be the biggest college football weekend of the season, with a bunch of marquee matchups like Ohio State–Oregon, Texas-Oklahoma, LSU–Ole Miss and Kansas State–Colorado. Which game featuring a ranked team playing on the road will I be at? Missouri at UMass, of course.

In today’s SI:AM:

🤯 WNBA Finals mayhem
😈 Boozer twins commit
🗽 Yankees move on

Who will become an October hero?

Are you ready for one of the best weekends of postseason baseball in years?

Earlier this week, all eight teams that were still alive in the MLB playoffs split the first two games of their division series—the first time since the playoffs expanded to eight teams in 1995 that all four LDS were tied 1–1 after two games. While two of those series ended in four games, the other two are now deadlocked at two games apiece, setting up a pair of do-or-die games this weekend. It’ll be the first time since 2019 that multiple division series go the distance.

The action begins on Friday night with Game 5 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres (8 p.m. ET on Fox), followed by the Cleveland Guardians and Detroit Tigers on Saturday night (8 p.m. ET on TBS and Max).

The Dodgers-Padres series has been the best of the bunch. Two of the games have been blowouts, but the series has been extremely tense, with personal animosity between the two teams reaching a boiling point. We’ll see if there are any more extracurriculars in Game 5, but hopefully the focus will be on what should be an exciting game. The Dodgers will send Yoshinobu Yamamoto to the mound against Padres starter Yu Darvish, which is a fascinating pitching matchup for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, it’ll be the first time in MLB history that two Japanese-born pitchers will start a postseason game against each other. There’s also the additional layer of Darvish being a former Dodger whose brief tenure in Los Angeles ended with two disastrous World Series starts in which he failed to escape the second inning. Darvish, pitching on the same mound where he was shelled by the Houston Astros seven years ago, was excellent in Game 2 of this series, though, allowing one run on three hits over seven innings. Friday night’s game will be an opportunity for further postseason redemption.

Yamamoto will also be looking to shake off the memory of a poor playoff performance—and one that is more recent than Darvish’s. He started Game 1 of this series and got knocked around for five runs on five hits in just three innings of work. The Dodgers managed to come back and win that game, but Yamamoto’s struggles put them in a serious hole. The good news (and the bad news) is that there is no one Los Angeles would rather have on the mound in a do-or-die game than Yamamoto. The Dodgers made a big splash last winter, signing him to a 12-year, $325 million contract. And he lived up to the hype—until he went down with a shoulder injury in mid-June and was sidelined for three months. He hasn’t been the same pitcher since returning, having not pitched more than five innings in any of his five starts. But for a Dodgers team that has dealt with numerous injuries to its starting pitchers, their best hope for a victory in Game 5 lies in Yamamoto returning to his pre-injury form.

Skubal hopes to send Detroit to an improbable ALCS run. / David Richard-Imagn Images

Darvish and Yamamoto are great pitchers, but Tarik Skubal is even better. Skubal, the presumptive AL Cy Young winner, will get the ball for the Tigers in Game 5 on Saturday. Skubal’s dominance is a major reason why Detroit is even in the postseason. He has allowed more than three runs in a start just three times since June 19 and had a 1.94 ERA in his final nine starts as the Tigers clawed their way out of a late-season hole. And he has been nearly untouchable in his two postseason starts, allowing no runs and seven hits over 13 innings. He has 14 strikeouts and just one walk.

The Guardians’ pitching situation is more fluid. The team has yet to announce who will start Game 5, but it’s likely to be Matthew Boyd, who started opposite Skubal in Game 2 and pitched well (4 ⅔ scoreless innings of four-hit ball).

Skubal is the only pitcher the Tigers have deployed as a traditional starter in these playoffs. In the games he hasn’t started, Detroit has cycled through multiple relievers, many of whom pitched less than an inning. In Game 1, the Tigers used five different pitchers. Six different pitchers took the mound in both Games 3 and 4. The off day between Game 4 on Thursday and Game 5 on Saturday will help Detroit’s overworked relievers catch their breath, but the Tigers will still need their ace to go deep into the game.

Games like these are when players define their October legacies. Pitching is only half the game, but with the quality of the starters on offer this weekend, it’d be a shock if the heroes in Game 5 aren’t the guys on the mound.

Courtney Williams (10) willed Minnesota to a wild comeback win over New York in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals. / Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

The best of Sports Illustrated

• The Liberty and Lynx played an instant classic in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals. Here’s Clare Brennan’s game story from a wild night in Brooklyn.

• Michael Rosenberg wrote about how the game showed that the Liberty still have a lot to fix before they can secure their first championship.

• Cameron and Cayden Boozer, twin sons of former NBA player Carlos Boozer, announced that they will follow in their dad’s footsteps and play basketball at Duke. Kevin Sweeney spoke with the brothers about their highly anticipated decision.

• After dispatching the Royals in Game 4, the Yankees are set up for their best championship opportunity in years, Stephanie Apstein writes.

• The Rays gave an update on the recovery efforts from Hurricane Milton after the storm tore the roof off the team’s stadium.

• The WNBA Finals will be expanding to seven games next season.

The top five…

… things I saw last night:

5. Dylan Guenther’s overtime goal to give the Utah Hockey Club its second NHL win.
4. David Fry’s go-ahead home run for the Guardians.
3. No. 1 pick Macklin Celebrini’s first NHL goal—a spinning shot from the faceoff circle that took a fortunate bounce off a defender’s skate.
2. Laviska Shenault’s 97-yard kickoff return.
1. Courtney Williams’s four-point play in the final seconds of regulation.