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Yankees and Dodgers Clinch as MLB Wild-Card Races Tighten
By @sharedot · · 6 pages
The Yankees and Dodgers clinched playoff berths Monday while the White Sox, Blue Jays, Padres and Diamondbacks kept the remaining races razor-thin.
Four teams are already in October
Monday night became a clinching night across Major League Baseball. The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Cincinnati Reds 4-1 behind seven shutout innings from Tarik Skubal, securing their 14th consecutive postseason appearance — matching the record the Atlanta Braves set from 1991 through 2005, per The New York Times. The New York Yankees clinched their record 61st postseason berth and ninth in ten years with an 8-3 win in Minnesota, in which Aaron Judge hit his first homer since May 24 after returning from a fractured rib, Sportsnet reports. They join the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays, who clinched Friday, leaving eight spots — four in each league — still up for grabs with roughly 12 games remaining.
An 18-pitch walk swung the AL Central
The most surprising at-bat of the night belonged to Chicago's Tristan Peters, who fouled off 12 pitches in an 18-pitch plate appearance against Cleveland ace Gavin Williams — the longest in MLB this season and tied for the third longest since 2000, according to Sportsnet. It keyed a six-run sixth inning as the White Sox beat the Guardians 7-3, pushing their AL Central lead to 1 1/2 games and clinching the season-series tiebreaker at 7-4. That is a striking reversal for a franchise that lost 102 games and finished last in 2025, and Chicago has led the division since July 4.
The wild cards remain a knife fight
Both leagues' final wild-card spots stayed unsettled. In the National League, the Padres won their eighth straight, 8-7 over Colorado, holding the last spot 2 1/2 games ahead of Arizona — whose Corbin Carroll hit a walk-off two-run homer against Miami to stay alive, The New York Times reports. Neither San Diego nor Arizona owns the tiebreaker, which will be decided in the season's final series.
What to watch Tuesday
Tuesday's slate could reshape the bracket. The White Sox and Guardians continue their series at 6:40 p.m. ET, with Cleveland needing wins to leapfrog Chicago in the division — likely its only route to October, since the Blue Jays and Rangers remain alive in the wild-card chase, per The New York Times. The Dodgers, whose magic number for a fifth straight NL West title is down to three, send Yoshinobu Yamamoto to the mound in Cincinnati, with Blake Snell penciled in for Wednesday. Milwaukee's NL Central magic number is two, with NL Cy Young front-runner Jacob Misiorowski starting against Pittsburgh, while the Brewers could still finish with MLB's best record and home-field advantage throughout October.