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.

There are no guarantees in baseball, but a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven postseason series is about as close as you can get. Just one of 41 teams to fall into such a hole has climbed all the way out.

The Blue Jays avoided that fate last night, bashing their way to a 13-4 victory in Game 3 of the ALCS in Seattle. Can the Brewers do the same today in Los Angeles and prevent Friday’s NLCS Game 4 from becoming an elimination game? Here are three ways the Brew Crew can follow the Jays’ lead and make this a series.

1) Get their big bats going: No, the Brewers’ lineup doesn’t feature a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. or a George Springer. Milwaukee scored the third-most runs in the Majors more because of top-to-bottom depth than star power. But they still need some of their lineup cornerstones to lead the charge after batting just .086 as a team across Games 1-2.

Things won’t necessarily get much easier against Tyler Glasnow in Game 3, but they certainly can’t get harder. Two players to look out for in particular? Our Paul Casella makes the case for Christian Yelich and Brice Turang. As those two go, so go the Brewers. Yelich, in particular, badly needs a postseason turnaround. He has hit just .241 with a .293 SLG in 15 homerless games across the team’s past four postseason runs.

2) Have a veteran pitcher step up: For Toronto, that was Shane Bieber in Game 3. Unlike Bieber, Jose Quintana won't start -- the Brewers will go with Aaron Ashby as an opener -- but the 36-year-old left-hander is nearly certain to play a significant role in their pitching plans. 

Quintana is no stranger to the playoff spotlight, with nine previous October appearances (seven starts), which have yielded a 3.25 ERA. In his only appearance of this postseason, he tossed three scoreless innings of bulk relief against the Cubs in NLDS Game 3, when his outing set him up for two matchups apiece with lefty sluggers Michael Busch and Kyle Tucker. Sub in Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman, and Quintana’s outing Thursday could look similar.

3) Take a punch and quiet the crowd: The Brewers are a resilient bunch, but the 50,000-plus fans who will pack Dodger Stadium are going to test that, especially if the home team jumps out in front. But if the Crew can keep its cool like the Jays did last night, they will give themselves a chance (especially if the game becomes a bullpen battle in the late innings).

-- Andrew Simon

When Max Scherzer throws his first pitch for the Blue Jays tonight (8:33 ET on TBS), he will have played for six different teams in the postseason, tying an MLB record held by four other players.

It makes sense he's had so many different October baseball moments: Scherzer, a three-time Cy Young and eight-time All-Star, has been one of the most consistent winners of his generation.

This all gets to why the Blue Jays – attempting to knot the AL Championship Series with Seattle at two games apiece – have handed one of the biggest starting assignments of their season to a 41-year-old hurler who had mixed results this season and has not seen game action since Sept. 24. 

“He's a [future] Hall of Famer for a reason,” manager John Schneider said on Tuesday. “You feel good about handing him the ball and watching him go to work."

In that vein, Toronto expects a more recognizable version of Scherzer than the one that went 1-3 with a 9.00 ERA in his final six starts of the regular season. He was 3-1 with a 1.80 ERA in the four starts prior, and the team feels like taking time to rest and refocus will help him recapture what makes him special.

“I think you get the best version out of Max.” Schneider said. “… You trust that he's going to be prepared and go out and give everything he has and hopefully rise to the occasion of a big moment.”

Will Scherzer reward their faith? The Blue Jays’ season may depend on it.

-- Bryan Horowitz

Coming off a regular season with one of the lowest rates of intentional walks in history, there have been 24 free passes issued so far in the playoffs. That’s already three more than last year, and nearly as many as the 2022 and ’23 postseasons combined.

So, what gives? Why are we seeing these opposing trends in-season vs. postseason?

Well, the obvious answer is that opposing managers don’t want guys like Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh and Shohei Ohtani -- who has received four free passes himself despite his well-publicized struggles at the plate -- to beat them when one swing can change a series.

But is this approach any more effective in the playoffs than in the regular season, when it’s been all but abandoned? Our stats sage Mike Petriello goes into great detail to break down exactly how this strategy is -- or isn’t – working.

-- Ed Eagle

If you watched Game 3 of the ALCS on Wednesday night, you saw Mariners fans try to will their team to a comeback against the Blue Jays by putting shoes on their heads. One guy even had what FOX broadcaster Joe Davis dubbed a "rally shoe closet" atop his noggin.

Despite the fans' efforts, the Mariners lost, 13-4. But not before the unique superstition had its moment in front of an international TV audience.

The phenomenon actually started during Game 2 of the 2022 AL Wild Card Series, also against Toronto, when Mariners fan Ben Cox put a sandal on his head during a watch party at T-Mobile Park hoping to spark a comeback in a game Seattle trailed by seven runs at one point. Other fans followed and, well, the M's came back to win, 10-9, and take the series. 

Cox's Rally Shoe was donated to the Mariners Hall of Fame and even made its way into the design of a "reversible rally cap" promotion in 2023. It doesn't matter that they aren't 100% effective. Fans will keep doing their part in times of trouble, because you never know which shoe holds the magic.

To paraphrase Crash Davis in "Bull Durham," if you believe you're creating runs because you have a shoe on your head, then you are.

-- Jason Foster

Just 21 big league players have hit four home runs during a game. It’s a pretty safe bet that Kyle Schwarber was the only one to do it while also filming a network television show.

A few hours before his Phillies hosted the Braves on Aug. 28, Schwarber took part in rehearsals for his special guest role as himself in an episode of “Abbott Elementary” that aired last night on ABC.  He then went deep four times that night with members of the cast and crew in the Citizens Bank Park crowd, before filming his scene after the game.

“For it to be Kyle, for it to be Schwarbs, who homered four times, who was already such a big part of the episode, that was just wild and ecstatic,” said Chris Perfetti, who plays the character Jacob Hill on the Emmy-winning show. “It was surreal. We had the freedom to sort of react to the game, to just stay in character and be there. But I remember, it was after the third homer, I think, we all just stood up as ourselves, losing our minds that it was Kyle again.”

It was a memorable night for Schwarber on multiple levels.

“I really enjoyed making my acting debut with such a great crew on a show that’s so Philly and hilarious," Schwarber said. "Quinta [Brunson] and the team definitely brought me some luck that night.”

For more on how this all came together, check out Todd Zolecki’s story here.

-- Ed Eagle

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