After two full days of baseball, we have only one team that has advanced out of the Wild Card Series: the defending champion Dodgers, who completed a two-game sweep of the Reds to cap Wednesday’s action.
In all best-of-three Wild Card Series, the winner of Game 1 has gone 18-2. Will anyone buck that trend on Thursday? Will the Tigers, Red Sox and Cubs recover from Game 2 stumbles and advance? Or will the Guardians, Yankees and Padres go against the odds and complete their comeback attempts?
Throughout this postseason, I’ll be previewing the next day’s action, game by game, with the major storyline from each one. One thing is clear as we head into Thursday: Three teams’ seasons are going to end today. This is as stressful — and as good — as it gets.
Are the Tigers going to take advantage of their opportunities?
Neither one of these AL Central teams has hit much this year, with the Guardians, in particular, standing out for having the lowest OBP of any team to ever make it to the postseason. But it doesn’t really matter what your OBP is if you can’t get anybody home. The Tigers had all sorts of traffic in Game 2 and did nothing with it, going 1-for-15 with runners in scoring position and leaving 15 runners on base – just one shy of the postseason record for a nine-inning game. They even had a runner thrown out at third, costing them a run by a fraction of a second.
Meanwhile, the Guardians had just two hits for the first seven innings against a variety of Tigers pitchers, not really threatening in any way other than George Valera’s first-inning homer. But when they finally did get runners on in the eighth, they very much broke through. We can talk all we want about the Guardians’ OBP issues, but in the postseason, winning and losing often comes down to sequencing. The Guardians, who actually had MLB’s top offense in high-leverage situations this season, are doing a lot better than the Tigers in that department.
The Guardians, with their big regular-season comeback and people actually saying the phrase “Rocchtober,” have all the vibes right now. Tigers fans, with all their missed opportunities, are banging their heads against the wall. If the Tigers can just take advantage of one or two chances, they can make all of Wednesday’s frustration go away. Or, if they don’t, they can bang their heads against that wall all winter.
Which bullpen can outlast the other?
The Padres might have the deepest bullpen in baseball, and the Cubs’ bullpen has been solid for a while now, too. But they both have to be tired. Padres relievers have covered 8 1/3 innings so far, while their Cubs counterparts have logged 9 2/3. (That number counts Game 2 opener Andrew Kittredge in the “reliever” category, rather than typical starter Shota Imanaga, who followed Kittredge and went four innings.) Both bullpens have been excellent, giving up just one run apiece. But they’re going to be called upon for even more heavy lifting in Game 3.
Darvish is starting for the Padres, but he has thrown six innings or more only three times all season, averaging less than five. And after using Colin Rea (a potential Game 3 starter) for 1 2/3 innings on Wednesday, the Cubs will be throwing every arm they have to get through this one, beginning with Taillon. It is understandable, the way that postseason baseball is played today, that both of these managers are yanking pitchers left and right in high-leverage situations; it’s a bullpen-centric sport at this point.
But the problem is that when you rely on the bullpen this much in a three-game series with no days off — a problem that’s specific to the Wild Card Series — you start asking your relievers to do things that, during the regular season, they do not do. The Cubs have used Kittredge twice already, and the Padres have used both Mason Miller (who has been otherworldly) and Adrian Morejon twice. Does that mean they’re out for Game 3? Not if they’re needed. You’ve got to pull out all the stops in a short series like this. But eventually, you’re gonna run out of stops.
Wow, look at these kids starting a Yankees-Red Sox clincher
There has been much talk of how the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, as thrilling as these games have been, does not quite have the same juice as it did during the A-Rod/Pedro/Zimmer/Dave Roberts/Aaron Boone heyday of the mid-aughts. But that seems more a generational thing than any sort of Northeast Corridor armistice: These kids just gotta see what this is all about! They’re about to.
Schlittler was born in February 2001; Early was born in April 2002. Schlittler made his MLB debut on July 9; Early made his Sept. 9. They are now set to become only the second pair of rookie pitchers to start a winner-take-all postseason game, joining Dustin May (Dodgers) and Ian Anderson (Braves) in the 2020 NLCS. They also are about to become a permanent part of Red Sox-Yankees lore.
It’s not like either starter is going to pitch that deep into the game, but then again, both of these bullpens are exhausted. That the whole season is on the line, and resting on the shoulders of these kids, speaks to a certain desperation on both teams’ parts. It will be tough for either youngster to win this game on his own. But either could certainly lose it. This would be a terrifying assignment for the most grizzled veteran; to ask someone with mere months of MLB experience to have this sort of spotlight shone on them is absurd. But here we are. One way or another, Red Sox and Yankees fans will be talking about Early and Schlittler forever, and neither one of them is yet old enough to rent a car. Good luck, you two.
