Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, postseason edition! We’ll keep you up to speed on everything you need to know every weekday throughout the 2025 MLB playoffs. Thanks for being here.

 

It’s Tarik Skubal and the Tigers vs. Cal Raleigh and the Mariners tonight for all the marbles in Game 5 of the American League Division Series(FOX, 8:08 ET).

 

Facing Skubal in a win-or-go-home postseason game is daunting. But the Mariners have triumphed all three times they’ve faced the Detroit ace in 2025, including Game 2 of this series. Can the Mariners’ hitters find a way to do the improbable and get to Skubal for a fourth time in a single year, or will Skubal shut them down with an ALCS berth on the line?

 

Here are three keys that will decide whether Skubal wins Game 5, or the Mariners do:

 

1) Can the Mariners keep punishing Skubal’s (few) mistakes?

 

The simplest reason the Mariners have been able to beat Skubal is: They’ve hit home runs off him.

 

The Mariners have homered off Skubal in all three games they’ve faced him this season. All their home runs have been off pitches Skubal left in the heart of the strike zone: a hanging slider to Dylan Moore on April 2, a hanging changeup to Julio Rodríguez on July 11, another hanging slider and a sinker right down the middle to Jorge Polanco in Game 2.

 

That’s a thing the Mariners have been very good at. Seattle has hit 162 home runs this season against pitches in the heart of the zone, tied for the fourth-most of any team behind only the Yankees, Dodgers and Phillies. On the other hand, Skubal is still dominant in the zone, with the most whiffs induced on heart-of-zone pitches of any pitcher this year, so punishing him for a fourth time won’t be easy.

 

2) What can Raleigh and Polanco do from the right side?

 

The Mariners have two big switch-hitters in their lineup in Raleigh and Polanco. Both have made huge strides from the right side of the plate this season, which matters a lot when you have to hit against Skubal.

 

Raleigh had a 1.032 OPS and 22 home runs vs. lefties in the regular season, and Polanco batted .305 with an .888 OPS vs. lefties.

 

But Skubal has had Raleigh’s number. Raleigh is 1-for-9 with five strikeouts and an insane 73% swing-and-miss rate (16 whiffs on 22 swings) vs. Skubal this year.

 

Polanco, on the other hand? He’s seen Skubal shockingly well. It’s not just the two homers in Game 2. Polcano hasn’t swung and missed a single time against Skubal this year, making contact on all 12 of his swings. Skubal leads MLB with 550 whiffs induced in 2025, but he hasn’t gotten Polanco yet.

 

3) Will Skubal’s underlying dominance bring back dominant results?

 

Skubal’s “zero wins against the Mariners” hasn’t really been as bad as it looks. He’s pitched better against them than his results show.

 

For example, Skubal has induced a 36% swing-and-miss rate against the Mariners in his three starts, which is his fifth-best mark against any one opponent in 2025. He’s also running a 30% strikeout rate against them, which is basically an elite-level K rate.

 

And even in Game 2, his stat line was seven innings, two runs, nine K’s — the Mariners had to scratch and claw to win the game.

 

So we can easily see Skubal racking up strikeouts and shutting down the Mariners in Game 5. But the Mariners just might have one more win in them, too, if things break right.

 

– David Adler 

Game 5 of the AL Division Series has been good to the Mariners. They’ve played two of them in franchise history — 1995 and 2001, both in Seattle. Both times, they won and advanced to the AL Championship Series. Will the M’s make it 3-for-3 tonight? They’ll have an electric home crowdbehind them and history on their side.

 

In 2001, Seattle won a record 116 games during the regular season. It faced Cleveland in the ALDS, and in Game 5 at Safeco Field (now T-Mobile Park), the Mariners won, 3-1, behind a strong start by Jamie Moyer and a 3-for-4 performance by Ichiro Suzuki.

 

But Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS is considered the most famous game in Mariners history. After falling into an 0-2 series deficit at Yankee Stadium, Seattle returned home to a raucous Kingdome crowd ready with signs bearing the club’s mantra that year: “Refuse to Lose.”

 

The Mariners reeled off two wins over the Yankees to force Game 5, which New York led by two runs in the eighth inning. But Ken Griffey Jr. launched his fifth home run of the series, and later in the frame, Doug Strange drew a bases-loaded, game-tying walk.

 

The contest remained knotted until the 11th, when Randy Velarde delivered a go-ahead single for the Yanks. Then, in the bottom of the 11th, Griffey and Edgar Martinez produced the most famous moment in Mariners history.

 

With Griffey at first and Joey Cora on third, Martinez lined an 0-1 pitch from Jack McDowell down the left-field line for a double. Cora scored easily and Griffey flew around second and third to score the winning run in what is widely considered the play that “saved baseball in Seattle.” (In a twist, Cora will be back in Seattle tonight — as the Tigers’ third-base coach.)

 

Thirty years later, do the Mariners have another dramatic victory in store? We’ll find out tonight.

 

— Manny Randhawa

In the middle of Dodger Stadium, filled with more than 50,000 people, Orion Kerkering must have felt like the loneliest man in the world in the bottom of the 11th inning of NLDS Game 4. But he wouldn’t stay that way for long.

 

Once Kerkering uncorked his errant throw to home plate that sent the Dodgers to the NLCS and ended the Phillies’ season on Thursday night, he bent his head down and placed his hands on his knees. He became the personification of the agony of defeat.

 

Quickly, the Phillies came to their teammate in this gut-wrenching moment. Catcher J.T. Realmuto consoled Kerkering first. Then outfielder Nick Castellanos made a beeline for him. That trio left the field together, whereupon manager Rob Thomson met the 24-year-old reliever at the top step of the dugout.

 

“Just keep his head up,” Thomson said when asked what he said to Kerkering. “He just got caught up in the moment a little bit. … I feel for him because he’s putting it all on his shoulders. But we win as a team and we lose as a team.”

 

Baseball is a game of failure. Even the greatest players have times when they feel like they let everyone down. No player is perfect, and no team loses solely because of one player. The Phillies expressed those sentiments to the distraught Kerkering after the game. Their words won’t erase what happened or dull the sting of the defeat. But the significance of that support wasn’t lost on the right-hander.

 

“It shows they care a lot,” Kerkering said of his teammates. “Just means everything, for sure.”

 

— Brian Murphy

Anyone who had the pleasure to get to know Sean Casey during his time as a player is likely wholly unsurprised that he’s made such a seamless post-career transition to TV. Pretty much everyone loves “The Mayor” within moments of meeting him. He’s a genuinely good-natured guy with zero ego and plenty of positive energy, which translates nicely onto the screen.

 

While baseball fans have been accustomed to seeing Casey do his thing on MLB Network, they might not know that he’s also been a regular on”Late Night with Seth Meyers” for years. The two are both huge Steelers fans (Casey grew up in Pittsburgh, as did Meyers’ dad), and Meyers calls the former first baseman “a live wire unlike any guest we’ve ever had.”

 

On Wednesday, Casey took a friend along with him for the taping of his eighth visit to the show: fellow MLB Network personality Mark DeRosa. With his years of experience on television — not to mention his pressure-packed role as manager of Team USA in the World Baseball Classic —  DeRosa was able to shake off any nerves he might have had about being interviewed in front of a live studio audience.

 

“Definitely, you feel a little something, but then you just get into talking ball and having fun,” DeRosa said. “So, kind of a really, really cool experience.”

 

You can read more about the experience here, and tune in tonight at 12:30 a.m. ET on NBC to see how our MLB Network hosts fared.

 

— Ed Eagle

The Cubs-Brewers rivalry will reach another level Saturday night, with the clubs — separated by only 90 miles and conjoined by division and the majesty of the Midwest — facing off in a winner-take-all NLDS Game 5(8:08 ET, TBS) for the right to advance to the NLCS.

 

Even including their Game 163 clash to determine the NL Central champ in 2018, there’s no question this is the biggest game between the two clubs in the chronicles of their conflict.

 

There is, however, one question looming. Actually, two questions: Who will be the starting pitchers? As of Friday afternoon, the answers remained unclear.

 

Milwaukee used ace Freddy Peralta in Game 4, so he’s unavailable. And Chicago won’t have All-Star Matthew Boyd after his scoreless 4 2/3 innings in the Cubs’ 6-0 victory.

 

“I don’t know. I don’t know who’s going to start, I don’t know what the pitching plans are,” Brewers catcher William Contreras said.

 

That being said, the Crew will surely get phenom Jacob Misiorowski into the action — even if it’s not to begin the game. That’s a formula that worked in Game 2, when The Miz tossed three electrifying innings to pick up his first postseason win.

 

For the Cubs, who entered the postseason without rookie sensation Cade Horton, they have 2023 All-Star Shota Imanaga at the ready, but the southpaw has struggled with the long ball recently and gave up two homers in his Game 2 start in Milwaukee.

 

The North Siders have a couple other options, as MLB.com‘s Jordan Bastian lays out, including one far-fetched scenario.

 

“The final game of a playoff series is usually kind of all hands on deck,” Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner said.

 

In other words: Expect the unexpected.

 

– Ismail Soyugenc

This weekend is your last opportunity to cast your vote for the Hank Aaron Award, which honors the best offensive player in each league during the regular season.

 

There were some mighty offensive performances across the MLB landscape this year, from Raleigh’s 60-homer tour de force to Nick Kurtz’s memorable rookie season to Juan Soto’s sterling inaugural campaign with the Mets.

 

But only one player from each league can win the prestigious Hank Aaron Award, so vote now until 11:59 p.m. ET Sunday.

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