Maple Leafs Weekly Recap - August 12 to 18, 2025
A Christie Pits thriller wrapped up the Leafs' regular season in Week Fourteen.
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| Ayami Sato returned to the mound at Christie Pits to start the final game of the regular season. |
The Toronto Maple Leafs played a pair of games to wrap up the final week of the 2025 IBL regular season.
It was a home-and-home series against the Brantford Red Sox.
Already eliminated from the postseason, the Sox had nothing to play for but pride and a surprise hey-now-the-pressure's-off home win streak. The Brantfords have done so well at home in August that they eclipsed the home record of the Leafs.
The club's rogue scorekeeper-slash-historian may be able to correct my next assumption, but I can't remember a year when the Leafs won only six games at home.
They saved the best for last, however. The regular season finale at Christie Pits was a thriller in the old style.
Another huge Saturday night crowd watched Ayami Sato make her final regular season start. The game featured almost nonstop scoring, a monster night at the plate for Jordan Castaldo, and the breaking of an IBL record by Ryan Dos Santos. For at least one night, the Pits was a field of dreams again.
Here is the recap of Week Fourteen in Leafs baseball.
Friday, August 15, 2025 - Toronto Maple Leafs at Brantford Red Sox
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| The IBL's newest tradition, a Brantford sun delay. |
Guessing that when the grounds of what became Arnold Anderson Stadium in Brantford were first laid down in 1919 or whenever, it was not imagined they would ever play night games there.
I did some research* and it looks like the home of the IBL's Red Sox is the only ballpark in North America where home plate faces due west.
Making the trip to Telephone City for the Toronto Maple Leafs' final road game of the year, I got to experience the IBL's newest tradition, a sun delay.
For decades, night games at Brantford only began once the sun had set. This year, the club's new ownership received permission to move their start times up to 7:15 PM. The switch has produced some peculiar scenarios. Some games have gotten under way only to be halted when the setting sun threatened to blind batters, catchers and umpires. Thus was born the Brantford sun delay.
On Friday night, the life-giving fireball of our solar system caused a 45-minute delay before a single pitch was thrown. We waited it out and the game started at the traditional time of 8:00 PM.
Toronto took an early lead in the top of the second inning. With the bases loaded, DH Connor Lewis stroked a single off starter Connor Irvine that drove in two runs.
Franklin Hernandez made the start on the mound for the Leafs. After pitching a couple of scoreless innings, he was touched up for one run in the third and three more in the fourth. Marek Deska bailed him out of further trouble but the Red Sox went ahead 4-2 after four innings.
In the top of the fifth, the Leafs got one run back thanks to a sac fly off the bat of centerfielder Dennis Dei Baning. That made it 4-3 through five.
After that, the visitors would score no more. Greg Carrington and Nathan Currah combined to pitch the final three innings for Toronto. The Red Sox put three more runs on the board and extended their late-season home win streak to five games with a 7-3 FINAL score. Brantford fans will be left to wonder where these wins were when it still counted, as the Red Sox failed to qualify for the IBL postseason for the second year in a row.
Irvine got the win, Hernandez got the loss, and the Leafs' travelling caravan turned for home and the next day's season finale at Christie Pits.
* I did no research.
Toronto 3 7 2
Brantford 7 9 1
W - Irvine (4-4, 4.06)
L - Hernandez (1-2, 4.90)
S - Arbach (1)
Saturday, August 16, 2025 - Brantford Red Sox vs Toronto Maple Leafs
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| Jordan Castaldo had an average day at the office. The future first-ballot Hall of Famer drove in 8 runs and hit a grand slam. |
The regular season finale at Christie Pits was dubbed the Field of Dreams game.
The Toronto Maple Leafs warmed up in vintage shirts and wore hats with a retro club logo. They emerged through a "cornfield" and took their places for the anthem accompanied by players from a local junior team.
A roily and momentous game followed.
As she did on opening day, Ayami Sato started on the mound. While she never emerged as an ace for the Leafs, her impact on the club this year has been undeniable. Despite disappointing stats, she remained a consummate professional and teammate, and one of the faces of this year's team.
Neither starter went deep. Sato pitched into the third inning and gave up four runs (three earned) on six hits. Her opposite, the Brantford Red Sox's Noah Law, couldn't make it out of the second.
In the bottom of the first inning, Jordan Castaldo doubled in a pair of runs.
In the bottom of the second, Castaldo hit a grand slam. Not only did it put the Leafs ahead 6-3, but Castaldo's thunderbolt was his twelfth of the season and he clinched the 2025 IBL home run title.
Some additional context to Castaldo's achievement. This year, he missed 11 games. Despite playing basically 3/4 of a season he still hit more home runs than anyone else in the IBL. If that's not an MVP performance I don't know what is. Future generations will envy us that we were able to watch Castaldo play baseball at Christie Pits, and we watched for free.
The game slogged on and both sides took turns tagging each other's pitchers. Adam Jafine and Wilgenis Alvarado combined to pitch 3.2 innings in relief of Sato, but they gave up a total of nine runs (four earned). The Leafs racked up 15 hits to Brantford's 11. Runs were scored in almost every half-inning through the end of the sixth.
In the bottom of the fourth, centerfielder Dennis Dei Baning hit a two-run bomb to tie the game at 9-9.
In the bottom of the fifth, Castaldo rapped a single that scored two runs. That put the Leafs ahead 11-9 and gave Castaldo 8 RBIs on the day.
Brantford surged ahead with four runs in the top of the sixth to take a 13-11 lead.
The bottom of the sixth was decisive. Brothers Justin (first baseman) and Dan (second baseman) Marra got aboard with a single and a walk. Left fielder Ben Sitarenios singled and Justin scored on a fielding error. With two men on, DH Mike Cecchetto bopped the game-winning hit. Both runners scored on Cecchetto's single, the Leafs went ahead 14-13 and the Pits erupted.
IBL record alert: this was the game where Ryan Dos Santos wrote his name into league history. Dos Santos led off the first inning with a roaring double, but later in the game he drew a pair of walks to set a new IBL single season record with 46 bases on balls. The previous record of 44 was set by the Leafs' Bill Byckowski in 1988.
Luis Florentino pitched the seventh and eighth innings for the Leafs. He surrendered just one hit while striking out five.
As the game ticked over the three hours, forty minutes mark, Matt Brown ended the night. A pair of swinging strikeouts helped him retire the side and secure a 14-13 FINAL for the Leafs. Alvarado grabbed the win while the loss was hung on Tyler Soucie.
A momentous evening with a winning outcome. This one might go down as my favourite game of the year.
Brantford 13 15 1
Toronto 14 11 5
W - Alvarado (4-2, 5.72)
L - Soucie (0-1,11.57)
S - Brown (1)
So endeth the 2025 regular season.
Despite springtime high hopes, the Leafs finished seventh in the IBL standings. Their 18-24 record left them 13 games behind the Welland Jackfish.
On to the postseason, beginning with the best-of-five quarterfinals. As if destined by fate, the Leafs will face their historic rivals the Barrie Baycats. The series opens in Barrie this Thursday night.
GAME 1: Thursday, August 21 - Toronto Maple Leafs at Barrie Baycats, 7:35 pm at Athletic Kulture Stadium
GAME 2: Friday, August 22 - Barrie Baycats vs Toronto Maple Leafs, 7:30 pm at Christie Pits
GAME 3: Sunday, August 24 - Toronto Maple Leafs at Barrie Baycats, 4:05 pm at Athletic Kulture Stadium
GAME 4 (if necessary): Tuesday, August 26 - Barrie Baycats vs Toronto Maple Leafs, 7:30 pm at Christie Pits
GAME 5 (if necessary): Wednesday, August 27 - Toronto Maple Leafs at Barrie Baycats, 7:35 pm at Athletic Kulture Stadium
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