At last, we have playoff baseball. (It has been 335 days, or exactly 11 months, since our last MLB postseason game. That’s too many days!) In a month or so, we will know the 2025 World Series champion, but we have a whole bunch of games to go before then. And those games start today.
Throughout this postseason, I’ll be previewing each day’s action, game by game, with the major storyline from each one. We couldn’t kick it off any better, with four games today and four more on Wednesday … and hey, you never know, maybe even four more on Thursday.
Can Skubal win this one by himself?
The Tigers have endured an absolutely miserable few months, going from a team that looked like the best in baseball at times in the first half to one that coughed up a 14-game division lead (not to mention a 15 1/2-game edge over Cleveland). Even worse, those Guardians are now the opponent they have to face in the Wild Card Series … on the road, no less.
The Tigers, fair to say, haven’t looked like much of a postseason juggernaut for quite a while now, with one rather notable exception: When they have Skubal on the mound. The likely back-to-back AL Cy Young Award winner has arguably enjoyed a better season in 2025 than he did last year — the underlying metrics clearly say he has — and he’s the best reason to be optimistic about Detroit’s chances.
Tigers manager A.J. Hinch sure looks like he’s going to have to rely on last year’s “Skubal And Pitching Chaos” strategy, which is going to be harder on days when Skubal doesn’t pitch, because the bullpen has been a mess for a while. But Skubal is pitching today. That, immediately, makes the Tigers, for today, one of the best teams in baseball. They absolutely must win every game he starts — starting with this one.
We’ve got postseason games at Wrigley Field again!
The last playoff game at the historic ballpark came in 2020, and if ever there were any stadium that just doesn’t feel right without fans, it’s Wrigley Field. So the last true Cubs playoff home game came on Oct. 2, 2018, a 13-inning marathon Wild Card Game that was so long ago that:
• It was a Wild Card Game.
• In the lineup for the Cubs were Ben Zobrist, Kyle Schwarber, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Báez (who batted fourth).
• It featured the Colorado Rockies.
So yeah, it’s been a while. It’s so long, in fact, that the Cubs are in an entirely different incarnation, having famously dismantled most of that 2016 World Series-winning team.
The Cubs have a lot of questions heading into the postseason — Kyle Tucker’s health foremost among them — but for one afternoon, seeing these two teams play in the sunshine of the Friendly Confines will be glorious, just on general principle. If only they would wear the same uniforms they wore for the 1984 NLCS.
Can Crochet be enough of an advantage on his own?
As exciting as this rivalry has been historically, these two teams are in different places right now. The Red Sox are young and on the rise — even if some of those key up-and-coming players are currently hurt — and should have their best years ahead of them. The Yankees are a veteran team now, with the pressure of 15 consecutive seasons without a World Series title (and last year’s World Series flop) weighing on them every night, every pitch, every at-bat. (It should also be noted that the Red Sox have won two World Series since the Yankees last won one in 2009.)
This series obviously means something to the Sox, who haven’t been in the playoffs since 2021. But it may, in an immediate sense, mean more to the Yankees. Which is why it has to be particularly terrifying to face Crochet in Game 1. Crochet has been the second-best pitcher in the AL this year, and he has been particularly excellent against the Yankees, with the Yanks losing all four of his starts.
Crochet also has done well against Judge, striking him out 11 of the 15 times they have faced each other. (To be fair, Judge does have two homers off him, including a particularly memorable game-tying blast in the ninth inning on June 13.) The Yankees look like the better team in this series. But it’s a very short series, and one of those games in that short series is being started by Garrett Crochet.
Do the Reds have a puncher’s chance?
This series, for a whole bunch of reasons, looks like a mismatch. The Reds haven’t won a postseason series in 30 years. (Though, it should be noted, that 1995 series was against Los Angeles.) The Dodgers are the defending champs. The Reds snuck into the playoffs thanks in part to the Mets’ collapse down the stretch. The Dodgers have been basically just tweaking their postseason roster since, well, Opening Day, really. The Reds are super, super happy to be here. The Dodgers are, uh, the Dodgers.
But the best hope for the Reds here is to lean on their primary strength: their starting pitching. Greene is a wonderful guy to have starting Game 1. He’s been terrific all season — only Yoshinobu Yamamoto has a better ERA than him on the Dodgers’ staff — and he’s 2-0 with a 2.64 ERA in September. The issue is that the Reds may need him to pitch all nine innings, which, considering he’s facing the Dodgers, is gonna be tough. The Reds need everything to fall right to win this series. That starts with Greene … he may really be their best — perhaps even only — hope.
