Trout’s Thunderbolt Lifts Panthers to Conference Finals

Sometimes the biggest moments come after the longest waits. One swing, one flash of timing, and a season turns on its heel.

For the Brooklyn Panthers, that swing belonged to Mike Trout.

Down to their final outs and trailing by two runs in the ninth inning, Brooklyn stormed back from the brink.

With two on and one out, Trout turned on a fastball from Jason Adam and sent it arcing high into the Buffalo night. It didn’t just clear the fence, it cleared the weight off a dugout’s shoulders.

The three-run blast flipped a 4–3 deficit into a 6–4 lead and ultimately sent Brooklyn into the next round, capping a 6–5 win that sealed the series four games to two.

“Trout’s been that guy his whole career,” manager Mike Maddux said afterward. “But seeing him do it here, in this moment, that’s something we’ll remember for a long time.”

It hadn’t looked promising earlier. The Panthers had taken an early 2–0 lead in the third on RBI hits from Juan Soto and Travis d’Arnaud, but Buffalo responded with Randy Arozarena’s solo homer in the fourth and a furious three-run sixth. By the seventh, the Braves led 4–2 and appeared ready to force a Game Seven.

Tarik Skubal gave Brooklyn five gritty innings, but it was the bullpen that held the line, Clay Holmes, Tommy Kahnle, and finally Carlos Estévez, who slammed the door despite Arozarena’s second home run of the night.

Bryan Woo was brilliant in defeat for Buffalo, striking out nine over seven innings of two-run baseball. But when the bullpen took over, the game unraveled. Blake Treinen allowed a single, a walk, and a run before Adam faced Trout, and the rest became October folklore.

Brooklyn outhit Buffalo 10–9, turning two sharp double plays that kept the game within reach. Trout finished 2-for-5 with three RBIs, Soto and d’Arnaud each added key knocks, and the Panthers once again showed that no lead is safe when their lineup is still breathing.

For Buffalo, it’s heartbreak — another late-game collapse, another postseason chapter that ends too soon. But for Brooklyn, it’s celebration: resilience, redemption, and a ticket to the Conference Finals.

“We just don’t stop,” Trout said quietly in the postgame scrum. “It’s who we are.”