Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. This could be the biggest college football weekend of the season, with some big matchups like Ohio State-Oregon, Texas-Oklahoma, LSU-Ole Miss and Kansas State-Colorado. Which game with a ranked team playing on the road will I attend? Missouri at UMass, of course.

In today’s SI:AM:

🤯 Chaos in the WNBA Finals
😈 Boozer twins commit
🗽 Yankees move on

Are you ready for one of the best weekends of postseason baseball in years?

Earlier this week, all eight teams still alive in the MLB playoffs split the first two games of their division series:the first time Since the playoffs expanded to eight teams in 1995, all four LDS were tied 1-1 after two games. While two of those series ended in four games, the other two are now stuck at two games apiece, setting up some do-or-die games this weekend. It will be so the first time since 2019 that multi-division series go the distance.

The action kicks off Friday night with Game 5 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres (8 p.m. ET on Fox), followed by the Cleveland Guardians and Detroit Tigers on Saturday night (8 p.m. ET on TBS and Max).

The Dodgers-Padres series was the best of the bunch. Two of the games were blowouts, but the series was extremely tense, with personal animosity between the two teams reaching a boiling point. We’ll see if there are any more extracurricular activities in Game 5, but hopefully the focus will be on what should be an exciting game. The Dodgers will send Yoshinobu Yamamoto to the mound against Padres starter Yu Darvish, which is a fascinating pitching matchup for several reasons.

For starters, it will be the first time in MLB history that two Japanese-born pitchers will start a postseason game against each other. There’s also the added layer of Darvish being a former Dodger whose brief tenure in Los Angeles ended with two disastrous World Series starts in which he failed to escape the second inning. However, Darvish, pitching on the same mound where he was shot by the Houston Astros seven years ago, was outstanding in Game 2 of this series, allowing one run on three hits in seven innings. Friday night’s game offers an opportunity for further redemption in the postseason.

Yamamoto will also try to shake the memory of a poor playoff performance – and one more recent than Darvish’s. He started Game 1 of this series and was walloped for five runs on five hits in just three innings of work. The Dodgers managed to come back and win that game, but Yamamoto’s struggles put them in a serious hole. The good news (and the bad news) is that there is no one Los Angeles would rather have on the mound in a do-or-die game than Yamamoto. The Dodgers made a big splash last winter, signing him to a 12-year contract worth $325 million. And he lived up to the hype – until he suffered a shoulder injury in mid-June and was sidelined for three months. He hasn’t been the same pitcher since his return, as he hasn’t pitched more than five innings in any of his five starts. But for a Dodgers team that has dealt with numerous injuries to its starting pitchers, their best hope for a Game 5 win lies in Yamamoto returning to his pre-injury form.

Darvish and Yamamoto are great pitchers, but Tarik Skubal is even better. Skubal, the presumptive AL Cy Young winner, will get the ball for the Tigers in Game 5 on Saturday. Skubal’s dominance is a big reason why Detroit is even in the postseason. He has allowed more than three runs in a start only three times since June 19 and had a 1.94 ERA in his last nine starts as the Tigers clawed their way out of a late-season hole. And he was nearly untouchable in his two postseason starts, allowing no runs and seven hits in thirteen innings. He has 14 strikeouts and only one walk.

The Guardians’ pitching situation is more fluid. The team has yet to announce who will start Game 5, but it will likely be Matthew Boyd, who started opposite Skubal in Game 2 and pitched well (4 ⅔ scoreless innings of four-hit ball).

Skubal is the only pitcher the Tigers have used as a traditional starter in these playoffs. In the games he hasn’t started, Detroit has gone through multiple relievers, many of whom pitched less than an inning. In Game 1, the Tigers used five different pitchers. In both Games 3 and 4, six different pitchers took the mound. The off-day between Game 4 on Thursday and Game 5 on Saturday will help Detroit’s overworked relievers catch their breath, but the Tigers will still need their ace to go deep in the game.

In games like these, players define their October legacy. Pitching is only half the game, but with the quality of starters on offer this weekend, it would be a shock if the heroes in Game 5 aren’t the guys on the mound.

…things I saw last night:

5. Dylan Guenther’s goal in extra time to give the Utah Hockey Club its second NHL victory.
4. David Fries ahead of the home run for the Guardians.
3. No. 1 pick Macklin Celebrini’s first NHL goal– a spinning shot from the faceoff circle that fortunately bounced off a defender’s skate.
2. Laviska Shenault Kickoff return of 97 yards.
1. Courtney Williams’ four-point play in the final seconds of regulation.