The first day of the playoffs featured tense moments, superb pitching, clutch hitting, great defense and the taut, almost unbearably nerve-wracking moments that only the baseball postseason can provide. We hope you are not too exhausted because on Wednesday, we’re going to do it all again.
This time, though, four teams will be facing elimination.
Throughout this postseason, I’ll be previewing each day’s action, game by game, with the major storyline from each one. Wednesday’s preview focuses on the fact that this could be the last stand for the four clubs facing a 1-0 deficit in these best-of-three series.
Can the Guardians’ bats make any noise?
As baseball writer Joe Sheehan pointed out in his newsletter, this Guardians team posted the lowest OBP (.296) of any postseason team … ever. Seriously, like ever: The closest team is the 1968 Cardinals at .298, back in an era when OBP was valued a lot less than it is now, and one year before the mound was lowered to combat pitching dominance. Now, obviously, facing Tarik Skubal in Game 1 was always going to be a challenge, but, well, just four balls making it out of the infield — one of them a pop fly caught by the shortstop — is probably not going to cut it.
The Guardians are done with Skubal for the series at least, but it’s not like Mize has been a pushover, and he was excellent in September (3.49 ERA, 8 K’s per BB) after a rough August. That the Guardians made history by fighting all the way back from a 15 1/2-game deficit to the Tigers in the AL Central is incredibly impressive. But it sure will feel like a historical footnote if it’s immediately followed by a sweep at the hands of that very same Detroit team.
Somehow, some way, Cleveland has to find some offense, and this seems like the perfect time for José Ramírez to make his postseason mark.
Can the Cubs keep mixing and matching their pitchers?
At some point, the Padres are going to have to break through, right? After being shut out for the final 24 innings of their series against the Dodgers last year, they only scratched out one run against five Cubs pitchers in Tuesday’s Game 1, with just four hits (one for extra bases). This is your reminder that this lineup has Fernando Tatis Jr., Xander Bogaerts, Manny Machado, Luis Arraez and Jackson Merrill — All-Stars who went a combined 3-for-18. (The rest of the lineup wasn’t much help either, going 1-for-12.)
The key Tuesday was the Cubs bullpen, which used four pitchers to follow starter Matthew Boyd without allowing a single baserunner. The Padres are going to see more of that bullpen Wednesday, with Kittredge (who threw a perfect eighth inning in Game 1) working as an opener before presumably handing the ball off to Shota Imanaga to face the Padres’ left-handed bats. That still leaves more bullpen guys for the Padres to face, as Imanaga hasn’t thrown more than six innings in a month and gave up eight runs in his final regular-season start.
The Padres are too good to go 33 postseason innings scoring just one run. But if they don’t get it together right now, they can keep telling themselves that all offseason, when they are sitting at home.
Is Rodón going to have to pitch nine innings?
Obviously, Rodón isn’t really going to throw a complete game. He has thrown only three in his career, none since 2022, and no one has thrown a complete game in the postseason since Justin Verlander in 2017. (That was a very long time ago!) But you can hardly blame Yankees fans for begging him to do so anyway. The Yankees’ most glaring weakness, both pre- and post-Trade Deadline, has been their bullpen. It jumped up and bit them again in Game 1, with the Yankees coughing up their 1-0 lead instantly when Max Fried left the game after 6 1/3 innings. (Even David Bednar, the only reliever Yankees fans really trust, gave up a run Tuesday.)
Now, the Yankees don’t have to face Garrett Crochet again this series — the Red Sox have won all five Yankees matchups he has started this year — so theoretically their MLB-leading offense should be able to score more than one run in Game 2. But you can forgive Yankees fans for hoping to score as often as humanly possible on Wednesday. With this ‘pen, there is no such thing as too many insurance runs.
What do the Dodgers do about this bullpen?
For much of Game 1, the Dodgers looked like they were playing an entirely different sport than the Reds were. Blake Snell was unhittable. The crowd was roaring. Teoscar Hernández and Shohei Ohtani both homered twice, with Shohei giving the Dodgers a lead so quickly in the first inning that Reds fans had to wonder when, exactly, the playoffs were going to actually start. After seven innings, it was a 10-2 laugher. It wasn’t actually going to be this easy, was it? Well, no.
Among the reasons why the defending champs, a team loaded with MVPs, ended up playing in this series — rather than coasting to a first-round bye — is a problematic bullpen. That was on full display in an agonizing eighth inning in Game 1, as three relievers, especially Alex Vesia and Edgardo Henriquez, struggled to find the plate. Four walks and three runs later, the Reds very nearly brought the tying run to the plate before Jack Dreyer finally found an escape hatch.
The good news for the Dodgers is twofold: They survived Game 1, and their bullpen for this series includes three temporarily converted starters in Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki and Emmet Sheehan. Will Dave Roberts try that route to lock down some big outs in Game 2?
