A Year to Remember for Indianapolis
IL Indianapolis Indians

A Year to Remember for Indianapolis

Published on September 24, 2025 under International League (IL)
Indianapolis Indians News Release


INDIANAPOLIS - It began with a thud. The Indians traveled to St. Paul to start the 2025 season and were promptly drubbed 11-0 on March 28, their worst Opening Day defeat in 16 years. Then came two lousy-weather postponements, no shocker for late March in Minnesota. They came home to start their 28th full season at Victory Field and were chilled 2-1 by Iowa in 55 degrees, giving up two runs in the ninth inning on a bases-loaded walk and double play. The next game was another postponement.

Two tough losses spread over six days. One run in 18 innings. Is this the way it would be - quiet, futile, cold and rainy? Hardly.

By the time the corner of West and Maryland saw its final 2025 inning more than five months later, on Sept. 14, the Indians had turned their home park into one long sun-splashed clanging of the Victory Bell. The 4-0 shutout of Iowa - the Cubs were here to help start the 2025 home season and here to help end it - was the 50th win at Victory Field, the most since the park opened in 1996, and the most of any minor league team this year. The 50-25 home record was the finest in all Triple-A baseball - five games better than anyone else in the International League -- and was built largely in the heat of a steamy summer. The Indians started 2-4 in the first six games at Victory Field and finished 7-11 in the last 18. In between was a 41-10 rampage.

The good times were not just at home. By the time the regular season ended with a 6-4 win on Sept. 21 at Gwinnett, there had been a wide variety of achievements, from the obvious to the eccentric. The overall record of 87-62 was the second best for Indianapolis this century, behind only 2012, and only 1.5 games off the top of the International League in 2025. The rally from 4-3 down on that final Sunday was the 37th comeback win of the season. There was a 9-5 mark in extra innings -- 7-0 until June. The 26-19 showing against opponents who were above .500, the best percentage in the league. The 63-39 record in games from Thursday through Sunday, making the Indians the most fearsome long-weekend team in Triple-A. The 75-18 record when the offense produced at least four runs, including the last 13 in a row. The 8-3 record in walk-off games. The 70-44 record against righthanded starters, best in at least 20 years. The 57 games where the pitchers struck out at least 10 batters.

There was team MVP Nick Solak's chase to the wire that nearly gave the franchise its first batting champion in 36 years, falling just short at .332, two points behind. Still, he had a remarkable season in his first as an Indian, reaching base in 100 of his 111 games and hitting safely in 90 of them.

And there was this centerpiece of consistency and resilience: The longest losing streak all season stopped at three games. No Triple-A team had managed that in four years.

Yeah, there was a pluck about the Indians. Take the April series in Toledo when the bats went mute and Indianapolis was shut out three times. The sounds of offensive silence. But it would be 73 games before the Indians were blanked again, not until late August.

"For the majority of the year it just felt like we were in every game," manager Shawn Bowman said. "No matter what the score was or whatever time the game was."

Put that all together and the result was a Victory Field season long on pitching and drama, with an appreciative audience there to see it. The pitchers struck out 747 batters in home games, the third highest total in the league. The 3.64 staff ERA at home was the second best in the IL. The Indians produced seven walk-off victories by June 13, from seven different batters. They had six for the entire 2024 season. The final 2025 attendance was 570,677, second highest in the league.

Looking back, the first home win of the season, 7-6 over Iowa on April 3, turned out to be a fitting harbinger of what was to come. The Indians let a 6-0 lead get away but won it on a run-scoring fielder's choice by pinch-hitter Malcom Nuñez, the first of eight walk-off victories for the season - all by July 9 - and the blastoff to a shiny 29-13 record in one-run decisions. Also, new arrival Solak homered on the third pitch he saw as an Indianapolis Indian, the first clap of thunder in a Team MVP season.

Something odd about all this, though. Indianapolis put together such glowing numbers, with only a plus-34 run differential for the season, and a minus-47 after the fourth inning. A lot of the best work came early in games. On July 2, they were 47-35 in the standings with a season run differential of minus-seven. As of Sept. 9, they were 78-60 with a differential of only plus-seven.

Very strange. But it was an unusual year, anyway, with Bowman moving from the Pirates front office to the manager's seat in early May when Pittsburgh fired manager Derek Shelton and Indians' skipper Chris Truby moved up to coach for the major league team. It meant a season of double duty for Bowman, who remained as supervisor of the Pirates minor league managers.

"What I've tried to do is compartmentalize so that everything basically before noon or one o'clock is the other job and then starting at one is this job," he said. "It doesn't work that cleanly, ever. You get a phone call at 3 o'clock from somebody wanting to talk about whatever and you have to give them the time. Largely it's worked out, but there's just been days where it's gotten cloudy."

Not to mention awkward. There was the day he sent a memo to all the Pittsburgh minor league managers to keep ejections down. "That very night there was a play that clearly I thought went the other way and I'm running out to go talk to umpire and in my head going, 'Oh crap, I just sent out something that we need to calm down,'" he said. "So I'm running out there fuming knowing that I'm going to have to channel this in a way that doesn't get me ejected after I just sent this message three hours ago to all of our managers."

Bowman was ejected only once all season - not that game. but in the first inning on July 9 - and watched from his office as Ronny Simon's double walked off Gwinnett, one of the moments Bowman said he'll remember most from the season because it was so typical of the Indians. They trailed the entire game but found a way to win late. Turned out that was Indy's last walk-off victory of the season.

"What you usually get at this level is unhappy players at this time of year," he said in September. "If you're here, that means you're not in the big leagues. If you're here, it probably means you're not performing at a level that you want, and if you are, you're handcuffed by somebody at the big leagues. What I can say is that this group has showed up every day with the same attitude and vigor and effort to compete and be better at both their individual skill set and try to help the team win. I think we're very fortunate to deal with a group that has that mentality."

So turn on the film and let the 2025 memories roll. ..

Four of the first five wins at home were walk-offs.

The pitchers did not allow a home run in the first seven games. That hadn't happened since 1975.

In early May, the Indians won four of six games against Columbus, despite scoring only 16 runs in the series. The pitchers allowed but 11, with the bullpen putting up an 0.62 ERA with 38 strikeouts in 29 innings. Then the Indians swept Louisville in six games, only their third since the league moved to the six-game series format in 2021. That made seven victories in a row, the longest winning streak of the season. Clearly, something special was afoot. The Indians went 14-3 at home in May, their most wins in a month in 12 years.

The pitching soared in June. The staff took no-hitters into the sixth inning in consecutive games for the first time in at least 20 years. Sean Sullivan had a three-inning save with no walks, hits or runs -- the first time that had happened in 13 seasons.

July was for the unusual. Simon hit his third and fourth leadoff home runs of the season in back-to-back wins at Louisville. That was a Victory Field era single-season record and Simon had done it in 22 games. He also paired his speed with Ji Hwan Bae, the two becoming the first Indianapolis pair to steal at least 12 bases in a month in more than two decades.

The Indians lost a 3-1 game to Louisville with three Bats runs in the ninth inning on one hit. Indy pitchers walked five batters in the inning. But then there was the 3-2 win over Toledo when Indianapolis had only two hits, the first victory in a game with only two hits in six years. July had barely turned into August when five pitchers struck out 19 Iowa batters in an 8-5 win in 10 innings. That was their most in eight seasons.

The Indians went into August with a 43-14 Victory Field record, the most home wins for any minor league full season team to carry into that month in at least 20 years. But then the troublemakers came to town. The Omaha Storm Chasers are notably unfazed by trips to Indianapolis. They promptly won five of six. The Indians had gone four months with only 14 home defeats but took five more in six days. Combined with two earlier Omaha wins in Indy, seven of the Indians' first 19 home losses had the fingerprints of one team from Nebraska. Included in that August series was the night Solak went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, ending a streak of 39 consecutive games reaching base, the longest for the Indians in 19 years.

Omaha is just bad news for Indianapolis. Since the two teams resumed playing in 2021, the Indians are 30-53 against the Storm Chasers.

The rest of the month was noted for its ups and downs. The Indians went to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and won, 6-5, despite going 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position. They won 9-6 on a night they had 16 hits, with six coming from Alika Williams and Tsung-Che Cheng, batting seventh and eighth in the order. But then they lost 11-5 in a game where the RailRiders put up double figures in nearly everything; 11 runs, 14 hits and 12 walks.

Indianapolis wiped out Syracuse, 16-1, but the next night was shut out for the first time in 74 games, 6-0. The Indians were blanked again 4-0 the next night, but next day won a 12-9 slugfest. And so it went.

The 5-3 victory over Buffalo on Aug. 29 was the fourth and last time the Indians halted a three-game losing streak. The run differential in those four skid-stoppers was 24-9. They won 2-1 the next night in a game that included only seven hits by both teams and needed only 1:59 to be played, Indy's shortest nine-inning contest on the campaign.

The stretch in September had its own unique moments. Solak's pinch-hit game-tying home run in the ninth inning could not prevent a 5-3 loss at Columbus. Indianapolis had two pinch-hit homers all season and Solak hit them both, the other in April. The Columbus series was also an example of how the Indians never let bad days linger. They were shellacked, 12-0, but the next day rallied with two home runs in the seventh to win, 10-9.

Two days later, Indianapolis and Iowa were scoreless through 10 innings, but the Indians lost 7-0 in the 11th. There were 32 combined strikeouts before the first run was scored.

Thirteen Pirates put in injury rehab assignments in Indianapolis. The last was Jack Suwinski, who promptly helped the Indians win their home finale with his 14th Triple-A homer of the season. Those 14 ended up matching Solak for team high, and Suwinski did it in only 56 games. It is a measure of how the Indianapolis offense had to find differing ways to score that team leaders Solak and Suwinski were in a 10-way tie for 51st in the International League in homers.

Reliever Brandan Bidois gave up a single in that same final home game. Why was that news? He had arrived from Double-A Altoona and continued a remarkable streak of facing 64 consecutive batters without allowing a hit. When the streak ended with that Iowa single on Sept. 14, it was the first hit Bidois had given up since late July.

Of the 47 men who threw a pitch this season for Indianapolis, Bidois might have had the most extraordinary numbers. He allowed one hit, no runs and an .026 batting average in nine appearances and 13 innings for the Indians, and across the entire season with four different Pittsburgh farm teams, had an 0.74 ERA and 8-0 record.

Another mid-season newcomer to shine was outfielder Jase Bowen, who arrived in early August from Altoona, homered in his first at-bat, reached base in each of his first 15 games, just as he did in 25 of his last 28.

Victory Field was not only the friendly confines for the home team in 2025 but also served its primary purpose as a launching pad to Pittsburgh. Eight Indians went on to make their major league debuts. That included the ballad of Bubba Chandler. The hottest mound prospect in the organization became the first Indian in 20 years to be named league Pitcher of the Month when he allowed only seven hits across five starts in April. He carried a 2.03 ERA through May, holding opponents scoreless in five of 11 starts. Then the struggles began. He righted himself to strike out 121 batters in 100.0 innings and the Pirates gave him his chance in August. It took him one night to become a national story. His four-inning scoreless save against Colorado - 12 outs in 40 pitches -- was the first such thing for a Pirate in his debut since saves became an official stat in 1969. Only the fourth time it has happened in the major leagues. No Pirates reliever had recorded any save in his first appearance since 1958.

Bowman watched with delight from afar. "Your first initial callup is always special regardless of who it is and what you do when you get there," he said. "So, Bubba stands out only because you wait your whole life for the moment you have that conversation with somebody. So that's special, it just makes the hairs of your neck stand up, just being an ex-player and knowing what it means to people."

Two other callups particularly elated Bowman because they reflected the hard road baseball can be. Simon began the season as a Miami Marlin, committed three errors in one game and wiped away tears as he left the field, to be designated for assignment days later. The Pirates picked him up and he reached base in 48 of 52 games for Indianapolis before Pittsburgh called him back to the big leagues. His season ended with a shoulder injury. Bae hit .455 for the Indians in the eighth and ninth innings and also got a shot with the Pirates.

"Just knowing what (Simon) went through at the beginning of the year with the Miami Marlins and having a tough game like he had and having a lot of emotion around that kind of exit he had with that team, and then for him to come here and put in all the work that he did to try to beef up his defense to a spot where he could play for a major league team and then to get his opportunity to do that was just a really cool timeline of events," Bowman said.

"(Bae) at times was probably on the radar to be promoted but just given where he was at with injuries and different things he got bypassed by other people, but he stayed the course. He stayed the course with the work, with the attitude, with managing his emotions and now he has his opportunity."

The Indians finished the season in a sprint, winning eight of their last nine, and the final order of business was to see if Solak could grab the batting title. He had a magical 2025, hitting .365 as late as August 6 before a mini slump opened the door for Lehigh Valley's Justin Crawford to move past. Crawford missed the final weeks with an injury, so he was able to sit on his .334 average.

"He's done everything that he's could to deserve to be in this race," Bowman said of Solak in the final weeks.

It didn't quite work out, but still, Solak had been a joy to watch this summer. They all were.

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