The 2025 postseason has been full of incredible highlight-reel plays — from moonshot home runs to electric strikeouts to sensational catches.
Here are the best of the best, with all the eye-popping numbers behind those plays captured by Statcast powered by Google Cloud.
Statcast tracks the distance of all those homers, the velocity of all those K’s, the catch probability of all those web gems. And you’ll want to watch these over and over again.
These are the 10 coolest Statcast moments of the playoffs.
1) Ohtani’s three monster home runs
Shohei Ohtani’s Game 4 of the National League Championship Series was maybe the greatest baseball game ever played — six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts as a pitcher, three home runs as a hitter. But the homers were especially ridiculous.
First, Ohtani hit a leadoff home run 116.5 mph and 446 feet to the back of the right-field bleachers at Dodger Stadium. Then he crushed his second one 116.9 mph and 469 feet, over the roof of the pavilion beyond the bleachers and clear out of the stadium. And just for good measure, he hit a third one 113.6 mph and 427 feet to center field off a 98.9 mph fastball from Trevor Megill.
2) The Brewers’ 404-foot ‘GIDP’
Maybe the craziest play of the postseason happened in Game 1 of the NLCS, when the Brewers got the Dodgers to “ground into a double play” … on a 404-foot fly ball.
L.A. had the bases loaded and one out when Max Muncy crushed a ball to the center-field fence in Milwaukee — a ball that, based on its 104 mph exit velocity and 32-degree launch angle, is a hit 77% of the time and a home run 72% of the time. Sal Frelick tried to rob Muncy at the wall, only to have the ball bounce out of his glove, off the top of the fence and back into his glove.
Teoscar Hernández, the runner on third, was confused about whether the ball had been caught (it hadn’t), and whether he had to tag up (he didn’t). His back-and-forth route from third to home took him 12.35 seconds, and that gave the Brewers enough time to force him out at the plate.
Frelick fired an 87.9 mph throw in to shortstop Joey Ortiz, who got rid of an 84.9 mph relay to catcher William Contreras in just 0.73 seconds. Then Contreras saw that Will Smith, the runner on second, hadn’t advanced either. So Contreras jogged up the line from home to third and forced out Smith. Incredibly, that goes as a “grounded into double play” in the scorecard … even though it’s one of the longest double plays of any kind in Statcast history.
3) Judge’s HR off the foul pole
Aaron Judge came through with a huge clutch swing in Game 3 of the American League Division Series with the Yankees facing elimination against the Blue Jays. Judge somehow turned on a 99.7 mph 0-2 fastball from reliever Louis Varland that was six inches off the plate inside and launched it off the foul pole at Yankee Stadium for a game-tying three-run homer.
Judge could only get his barrel to the ball thanks to his elite bat speed. His swing was 77.9 mph, well above Statcast’s 75-plus mph “fast swing” threshold. Of all the 329 home runs off 99-plus mph pitches in the Statcast era, none was farther off the plate than the one Judge hit (1.2 feet from the center of the strike zone).
4) Skubal’s triple-digit K’s to open the playoffs
Tarik Skubal is the most dominant pitcher in the Majors, and he proved it this postseason, with his 1.74 ERA and 36 strikeouts in 20 2/3 innings in his three starts. And the Tigers ace got the playoffs started with a bang.
Skubal racked up 14 K’s against the Guardians in the first game of the 2025 postseason, including three on triple-digit heaters — 100.2 mph, 100.4 mph and 101.2 mph. He became one of just three starting pitchers to record a 100-plus mph K in the postseason in the Statcast era, along with Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard. And he went on to record seven strikeouts on triple-digit fastballs in the playoffs, the most by a starter in a single postseason over that time.
5) Yamamoto’s World Series complete game
In his Fall Classic gem against Toronto in Game 2, Yamamoto collected eight strikeouts — four apiece on his fastball and curveball. Yamamoto’s four-seam K’s reached as high as 97.1 mph and generated as much as 19 inches of “rising” movement. His curveball K’s got all the way down to 76.6 mph — over 20 mph slower than some of his fastballs — and induced as much as 19 inches of drop. It was a masterclass in changing speeds and movements.
6) Miller’s record-setting K
The Padres fireman struck out the first five Cubs batters he faced, including Carson Kelly on a 104.5 mph fastball. That heater set a new record for both the fastest postseason strikeout pitch and the fastest postseason pitch, period, since pitch tracking began in 2008. The next-fastest K is 103.7 mph by Aroldis Chapman in the 2017 AL Wild Card Game.
7) Barger’s golden glove, rocket arm in the Fall Classic
In the instant-classic, 18-inning Game 3 of the World Series, both teams kept runs off the board with a series of key defensive plays to throw runners out on the bases. Arguably the most impressive of those was Addison Barger’s 98.5 mph laser from right field to the plate to nab Freddie Freeman trying to score in the third inning.
Barger’s throw was the hardest direct outfield assist (straight from the fielder to the base for the out) under Statcast tracking. The previous fastest was a 97.4 mph throw to the plate by the Astros’ Marwin Gonzalez in Game 1 of the 2017 ALCS.
Then, in Game 5, Barger helped Toronto take a 3-2 lead in the series with a terrific diving catch to rob Ohtani on an absolutely scorched 117.3 mph line drive. Barger needed to react quickly to cover 38 feet in just 3.0 seconds, and he had a catch probability of just 30%. Meanwhile, Ohtani’s lineout is tied for the second-hardest-hit out in the postseason since Statcast started tracking.
8) Crochet’s late-inning heat
Skubal wasn’t the only flame-throwing ace who dominated this postseason. Garrett Crochet did the same in the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry showdown in the AL Wild Card Series.
Taking the ball for Boston in Game 1, Crochet beat the Yankees with 7 2/3 innings of one-run, 11-strikeout baseball. The southpaw capped it off by striking out Austin Wells with a 100.2 mph fastball on his 117th pitch of the game. That is the only 100-plus mph strikeout by a starting pitcher in the eighth inning or later of a postseason game in the pitch tracking era.
9) PCA’s grab in the Wild Card Series
Pete Crow-Armstrong is one of the best defensive outfielders in the world, and he flashed the leather in the Cubs’ winner-take-all Game 3 of the NL Wild Card Series against the Padres.
PCA robbed Manny Machado of a hit with a slick sliding catch in center field in the first inning — a play that had a catch probability of just 10% according to Statcast. Crow-Armstrong got an incredible jump to cover 46 feet in just 3.1 seconds to make the play. It set the tone for the Cubs in their win over San Diego.
10) Ohtani’s ‘fire vs. fire’ home run off Greene
Let’s bookend the list with Ohtani … who else? Ohtani was crushing home runs all postseason long — including in the Dodgers’ very first game.
Ohtani started L.A.’s Wild Card Series rout of the Reds with a 117.7 mph leadoff home runs off a 100.4 mph fastball from Reds ace Hunter Greene. In all of the Statcast era, regular season or postseason, no player has hit a harder home run off a 100-plus mph pitch. Ohtani’s is four full mph harder than the next home run, a 113.7 mph shot by Rafael Devers off a 100.1 mph fastball from Gerrit Cole.
