Ranking the best bat flips from Thursday's playoff games

Baseball has certainly changed over the last decade. The unwritten rules still exist, but bat flips and exuberance are now widely accepted as part of the sport. Never was this more evident than on Thursday, when a fun slate of playoff games was electrified by several fantastic bat flips from some of the sport's brightest young stars.

It's so hard to choose a favorite, but we tried anyway. Let's rank the five best bat flips from Thursday's action.

5. Robert goes really deep 💥

Luis Robert's bat chuck was overshadowed, rightfully, by how far that damn ball traveled. At 487 feet, his homer is the furthest-hit ball by a Chicago White Sox player during the postseason in the Statcast era. The 23-year-old rookie outfielder celebrated that tank with a toss that roughly translates to "I just did that and now I'm done with this piece of lumber."

4. Tatis energizes teammates ⚡

This is the bat flip of a man who wants to #TakeTheCake. At the time, the San Diego Padres looked unbelievably flat but had two runners on and were facing arguably the best pitcher on the St. Louis Cardinals' staff this year in Giovanny Gallegos. Fernando Tatis Jr. ripped one to left field for a three-run homer to make it a one-run game and celebrated accordingly: a coy bat flip followed by celebrations toward his dugout in an effort to get his teammates going. It worked.

3. Machado admires it, ties it 🥳

If anyone in the Padres' dugout wasn't jacked after Tatis' three-run job, Manny Machado's game-tying bomb did the rest. Extra points for admiring your work until it reaches the seats - sadly empty for the Padres' first playoff berth since 2006 - and more bonus points for celebrating with the team the entire way up the first-base line.

2. Ozuna shoots selfie mid-trot 🤳

Marcell Ozuna's casual flip was punctuated by his stopping to mime a selfie on the first-base line. That's something you can only do when you've just put your team up 3-0 and are on your way to shutting out your opponent over an entire playoff series.

1. Tatis does it again 💣

OK, maybe MLB's Jose Bautista comparison is a little much, but that doesn't take away from how epic this flip was. Tatis has the art of the bat flip down pat, casually ripping out hearts with one flick of the wrist. It's almost more fun than watching him hit the ball 400 feet.