The Buzz — Friday, October 9

José Ramírez

The take Clutch go-ahead homer forces Guardians ALDS Game 5

The cycle across two postseason games — double, triple, homer, single in Games 3 and 4 — makes him the fifth player in MLB history to do it, and it is the clearest measure of what changed this series. Ramírez was quiet through Games 1 and 2, and Cleveland was down 2-0. Then he started hitting everything, and the series came home.

The home run that flipped Game 4 came on a 99.9 mph fastball from Jordan Hicks — his first October homer since 2024, ending a drought that ran alongside a down regular season after hand surgery. He finished 2-for-5 with three RBIs in the 9-5 win Thursday, adding a run-scoring single in the six-run sixth. The crowd sees a clutch moment. The record shows a two-game tear that pulled a team back from 0-2.

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Jackson Chourio

The take Young star's record playoff RBIs and clutch Brewers hits

Seventeen RBIs in 16 career postseason games, and the number that gives it weight is the 27 it took Ryan Braun to get to 16. Chourio passed the franchise record in roughly half the games, at age 22, and he is also the Brewers' all-time postseason home-run leader with five.

What makes the total more than a counting stat is how the runs arrived. Against the Padres in this NLDS he drove in six of Milwaukee's thirteen playoff runs to that point: a game-tying two-run homer in Game 1, a two-out two-strike walk-off single in Game 2, a tying sac fly in Game 3, and a go-ahead single in the clinching Game 4. Every one was a late-leverage swing that either tied or took the lead. The Brewers are in the NLCS because a 22-year-old keeps showing up in the at-bats that decide games.

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Shohei Ohtani

The take Ohtani quiet power and lineup drop in Dodgers playoffs

The quiet is real, and it started before October. Ohtani is hitting .154 with no home runs, no RBIs, and two hits in 13 at-bats across four postseason games, an OPS of .421. He has not homered since August 18 — a gap that spans the late regular season, an IL stint for his right biceps and left knee, and the entire NLDS.

All 30 of his regular-season home runs came before that stint. After it, he went 5-for-21 with eight strikeouts in five games, and that dip carried straight into October. The drop to fifth for Game 3 against Chris Sale — the lowest he had hit since Sept. 23, 2020 — was Roberts managing a short series around a player searching for timing. Ohtani reached base twice in that game without a hit, the Dodgers won 3-1, and they took the series.

The crowd reads the silence as a mystery. It is not. It is a player who lost weeks to injury and has not got the timing back, on a team good enough to advance while he works through it. If the power returns against Milwaukee, this stretch becomes a footnote. If it does not, the Dodgers will find out how far a lineup can carry a slumping bat in a longer series.

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Anthony Volpe

The take Fan interference cost Volpe a tying ALDS homer

The ball traveled 357 feet on a 96 mph sinker, and replay said that was not enough. Volpe's sixth-inning drive was overturned from a tying two-run homer to an RBI double after MLB ruled a fan reached over the wall and the ball would not have left the field. The Yankees lost 4-3 and were swept, so the overturned run was the difference. At 357 feet to left, this was a wall-scraper — replay did not steal a home run, it confirmed the ball was never leaving the park.

Anthony Volpe cards on eBay →(paid link)

Munetaka Murakami

The take White Sox power bat central to tied ALDS

His first MLB postseason homer was a 440-foot blast at 112.2 mph, the decisive swing in a 3-0 Game 1 win that gave Chicago a lead nobody expected.

The regular-season line explains why the crowd was not ready for it. Murakami hit .207, which sounds like failure until it sits next to 35 home runs, 92 walks, and a .347 OBP. That is a profile that produces a low average and an .825 OPS at the same time, and it can vanish for a week or win a game with one swing.

The series is tied 2-2 after Cleveland won 9-5 on Thursday. Chicago had a 2-0 lead and two chances to clinch at home and could not. They are in Cleveland for a winner-take-all Game 5 on Saturday, and the bat that opened this series is the one they need to extend it.

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