The divisional round in the 2025 Major League Baseball playoffs continued on Sunday with two Game 2s on the ALDS side: The New York Yankees facing the Toronto Blue Jays and the Detroit Tigers visiting the Seattle Mariners.
The Blue Jays are in complete control of their series after a 13-7 Game 2 win thanks to rookie Trey Yesavage's utter domination of the Yankees. That means they need one win out of the next three games to send them to the ALCS.
All the way over on the west coast, the Mariners picked up a much-needed 3-2 win against the Tigers, with Jorge Polanco and Julio Rodríguez each playing hero. Polanco hit two solo home runs off of Detroit ace Tarik Skubal, then Rodríguez delivered the go-ahead double in the bottom of the eighth inning.
The LDS round is of the best-of-five variety. The winners will advance to the League Championship Series, where they'll fight for this year's pennant. Below are Sunday's scores, followed by winners and losers from the games.
Sunday's MLB playoff scores
ALDS Game 2: Blue Jays 13, Yankees 7
ALDS Game 2: Mariners 3, Tigers 2
Winner: History-making Blue Jays
The Blue Jays are now a win away from their first League Championship Series appearance since 2016. They can thank, among others, several history-making performers.
Rookie right-hander Trey Yesavage, he of three career regular-season major-league starts, showed no nerves in his first postseason appearance. Rather, he quickly set a franchise record for the most strikeouts in a single playoff game, punching out 11 of the 18 batters he faced across 5 ⅓ no-hit innings. (The previous record was eight, established on four different occasions.) Were it not for an early walk to Aaron Judge, Yesavage would have been perfect on the afternoon.
For all of the questions facing the Blue Jays rotation amid injuries to Chris Bassitt and José Berríos, Yesavage's outing on Sunday has to calm minds and raise spirits.
Offensively, the Blue Jays were paced by center fielder Daulton Varsho. He notched two home runs and two doubles and drove in four runs. His 12 total bases tied for the seventh most in a single postseason game and represented a new high for the Blue Jays franchise. The last Blue Jays player to tally even eight bases in a game was José Bautista back in 2015.
Of course, Varsho wasn't alone in having an excellent day. The Blue Jays, as a team, established a record for most runs scored through two postseason games with 23 -- you don't post those kinds of numbers just because one player goes off. Indeed, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. placed three hits, including a grand slam that blew open the game, and Ernie Clement's early home run set the pace.
The Blue Jays, a team firing on all cylinders, seem well positioned to advance as this series shifts to New York.
Trey Yesavage shuts down Yankees in ALDS Game 2 as Blue Jays rookie sets franchise strikeout record
R.J. Anderson
Loser: Yankees
Could the Yankees have had a more disappointing start to this series? Maybe, but you'd have to be awfully creative to dream up one. The issue is not that they lost both games -- though that is a problem unto itself -- so much as it is that they were largely uncompetitive.
Nearly each component of the Yankees roster has failed at some point in the first two games. The bullpen melted down in Game 1; their ace couldn't muster 10 outs in Game 2; and the offense waited until more than a game and a half into the series before starting to show signs of life. We know this is a good team based on what they did during the regular season: winning 94 games and tallying the best run differential in the American League. Yet you wouldn't know if this is your first look at them.
The series will now shift to New York ahead of Tuesday's Game 3. Realistically, the odds are stacked against the Yankees sending this series back to Toronto, let alone prevailing and advancing to their second consecutive ALCS. The talent is there for them to do it, but the margin of error is not. In this sport, the latter often matters more than the form in a short series.
Winner: Top of Mariners' order
One of the beautiful things about playoff baseball is that you never know who will play the hero in any given game.
Jorge Polanco has had a good career, and he certainly enjoyed a rebound showing at the plate this year versus last. (His OPS improved by 170 points in his second season in Seattle.) Even so, it's fair to think that when Tarik Skubal looked over the M's lineup, he didn't identify Polanco as the biggest threat.
Yet Polanco provided the Mariners with two key solo home runs. First to give them the lead, and then to extend it in the later innings.
In the process, he became the first Mariners player with a multi-homer postseason game since Jay Buhner in the 1995 ALCS.
Yes, the Tigers would rally and tie the game in the eighth, leading to Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez teaming up to plate the go-ahead run in their half of the frame. But Seattle wouldn't have been in that position were it not for Polanco.
That Raleigh, Rodríguez, and Polanco -- Seattle's Nos. 2 through 4 hitters -- will each be remembered for their Game 2 efforts is part of what makes this sport so cool.
Loser: Tigers
It goes like this sometimes.
Skubal pitched well, but Polanco managed to launch two home runs against him all the same and the Mariners were able to do just enough damage against Detroit's bullpen to pull ahead. Detroit's offense, meanwhile, drew its share of walks throughout, but the Tigers hitters just couldn't convert enough of those baserunners into runs, in part because they couldn't seem to buy a hit for most of the night.
There's no real need to panic if you're a Detroit fan. Still, the Tigers may come to regret losing this game -- because they had the AL's best pitcher on the bump, and because they could've easily found themselves ahead heading into the ninth. That combination may just end up making the difference in this series.
