FSM Feature: The Las Vegas Aviators Clinch Home-Field Advantage in the 2025 LCS with the Best First-Half Record in the MiLB

New FSM Feature: The Las Vegas Aviators Clinch Home-field Advantage in the LCS with the Best First-Half Record in the MiLB

Franchise Sports Media

For the first time in six years, the Las Vegas Aviators have clinched a Pacific Coast League playoff spot after posting an MiLB-best 49-26 record in the first half of the season.

The Las Vegas Aviators have won the Pacific Coast League title for the first half of the MiLB season after posting a 49-26 record. With the title, the Aviators secure a home playoff berth in the League Championship Series, which, under the current MiLB rules, will feature a four-team playoff between the first-half and second-half champions in the Pacific Coast League and the International League.

If Las Vegas were to repeat as the season’s second-half champions, then the second LCS spot defaults to the team with the next-best record for the latter half of the season. The Aviators will await their playoff opponent with the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, winners of the International League first half title, who at 47-28 had the second-best record in the MiLB.

Las Vegas to host the 2025 MiLB National Championship Game for the fourth straight year, giving the Aviators a chance to play the entire playoffs at the Las Vegas Ballpark.

The four playoff teams will then face off in a three-game series beginning Tuesday, September 23. The winner of the Pacific Coast League and International League playoff series will face each other in a single-game championship on Saturday, September 27, at the Las Vegas Ballpark, giving the Aviators a chance to play the entire playoffs in front of a home crowd.

With hometown favorites like Denzel Clarke, Willie MacIver, Jacob Lopez, Jack Perkins, and a host of other players now donning green and yellow in Sacramento, playing for the Athletics, the Aviators have shifted lineups, field positions, and batting orders almost daily without skipping a beat.

With a laundry list of other transactions shuffling players between the Athletics’ farm systems over the past month alone, the Aviators found consistency at not only the plate but the mound as well en route to two double-digit winning streaks this season. Las Vegas, having only one six-game sweep since the six-game series format debuted in 2021, would earn two six-game sweeps this season, once in early May against the Tacoma Rainiers and most recently against the Salt Lake Bees.

Posting a +176 run differential, scoring 522 runs while allowing 346 earned runs, all of which were league bests, Las Vegas also spent much of the season in first place, leading the Pacific Coast League with a collective .296 batting average while posting a 4.26 team ERA. Las Vegas also had the PCL pitcher of the week three weeks in a row to close out the first half of the season, with Jack Perkins winning the award twice in a row before getting the call to make his MLB debut on June 22.

Kade Morris would win the award for the week of June 16-22 after pitching a seven-inning complete game shutout of the Sugar Land Space Cowboys in game one of a doubleheader. Morris would be the only MiLB pitcher to throw not only a complete game, but a complete game shutout in the Pacific Coast League so far this season.

Las Vegas looks to stay hot in the second half of the season after a season-long run of dominance in the first half of the season.

With the first half of the season in the rearview mirror and a playoff spot clinched, the Aviators aim to maintain their hot streak to keep their momentum going into the playoffs come September.

The Aviators, who haven’t won a championship since 1988 as the Las Vegas Stars when they were the affiliate of the San Diego Padres, look to break a 37-year-old championship drought and give the Las Vegas valley a preview of what the future of Las Vegas baseball has to offer when the Athletics finally arrive in 2028. With the way they’ve been playing, many of the players currently on the Aviators could very well be Athletics by then.

The Aviators now shift their focus to the Albuquerque Isotopes as they begin a nine-game home stand to start the second half of the season with a six-game series against Albuquerque starting June 24, before a three-home, three-away series against the Oklahoma City Comets beginning July 1. 

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– Matthew Conigliaro

Follow Matthew on Instagram @conigliaromatt

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