Best-of-three series are weird, huh? The postseason just started yesterday and already there are four teams that could be eliminated today. To think that you battle and slog through a six-month, 162-game season to make the playoffs, and then it could be over in the blink of an eye. Or two blinks of an eye, I guess. Baseball is an unforgiving game.
Day 1 brought few surprises, as the team with the better record won all four games (including the White Sox, who were three games better than Houston despite being the road team in this series). The Yankees/Red Sox and Cubs/Padres games were particularly uncompetitive. Of the four teams with their backs against the wall, can any of them find a spark to keep their season alive?
Phillies at Braves, 2:00 ET (NBC/Peacock) — ATL leads 1-0
LHP Cristopher Sánchez (PHI) vs. RHP Tyler Mahle (ATL)
I was today years old when I learned that Tyler Mahle was on the Braves. Maybe I should have been paying more attention, considering that the veteran has been outstanding since joining Atlanta in a trade-deadline deal with the Giants. Mahle had a 1.99 ERA in nine regular-season starts with the Braves, averaging less than one baserunner per inning, and he’ll be facing an opponent he’s particularly dominant against. Mahle has pitched against the Phillies four times this year — twice as a Giant in May, and twice as a Brave in September — and has posted a 2.28 ERA against them, with his team winning three. It’s not the ideal opponent for the Phillies, whose offense went into a deep freeze down the stretch.
At least the Phils have the right guy on the mound to try to stave off elimination. Sánchez, last year’s NL Cy Young runner-up to Paul Skenes, just finished his second consecutive brilliant season. The 29-year-old lefty had a 2.91 ERA and a league-leading 18 wins, and earlier this season he strung together a 50.2 scoreless innings streak, the longest in the Phillies’ 144-year history. For the second straight year, Sánchez led the league with an 8.1 bWAR, though he’ll probably finish second place in the Cy vote again, this time to Jacob Misiorowski.
Of course, it won’t matter how well Sánchez pitches today if the Phillies’ beleaguered bullpen can’t hold a lead. Closer Jhoan Duran coughed up the game-losing three-run homer to Austin Riley yesterday and threw 27 pitches in doing so. The Phillies need to find one or two reliable relievers or they’re cooked.
White Sox at Astros, 5:00 ET (NBCSN/Peacock) — CWS leads 1-0
RHP Sean Burke (CHW) vs. RHP Hunter Brown (HOU)
I think it’d be a joke for a .500 team to advance far in the playoffs (unless that team were the Orioles, of course), and the fact that it’s the already unlikeable Astros makes it easy to root against them. So yesterday’s result, with the scrappy White Sox pulling out the victory while Houston fans booed their own team, was delicious.
I’ll also be rooting for University of Maryland alum Sean Burke to close out this series for the White Sox. The righty had a fine year, with a 3.34 ERA and better than a strikeout per inning in 27 starts and five bulk-relief appearances. If he can hold down (or pitch around) MVP front-runner Yordan Alvarez, who was 1-for-4 in Game 1, then Burke can get the job done.
But the Astros seem to have the pitching advantage here, sending ace Hunter Brown to the mound needing a win to survive. Brown missed two months with injury but was his usual excellent self when healthy, racking up 10.4 K/9 and posting a 3.19 ERA. In eight career postseason appearances, mostly in relief, Brown has allowed only two earned runs in 16.1 innings.
Red Sox at Yankees, 8:00 ET (NBC/Peacock) — NYY leads 1-0
RHP Sonny Gray (BOS) vs. LHP Max Fried (NYY)
Boston’s unlikely comeback this season, rallying from 14 games under .500 in June to 12 games over by the end of the year, could reach a swift end today. It certainly will if their offense doesn’t put up a more competent performance than in Game 1, when AL Cy Young favorite Cam Schlittler and two relievers combined to shut them out. The Sox managed just three hits and struck out 11 times. Old friend Adley Rutschman had a single and fanned twice. But the job doesn’t get any easier in Game 2 against three-time All-Star Max Fried, who had a 2.80 ERA and 0.994 WHIP in 20 starts.
It wasn’t just the Red Sox offense that stunk in Game 1. So too did their pitching, which gave up nine runs. The soft underbelly of Boston’s bullpen gave up eight runs, including guys I’ve never heard of like Alec Gamboa and Wyatt Olds. (“Wyatt Olds”? Come on, am I supposed to believe that’s a real person?) It’ll be up to Sonny Gray, who had an excellent first season in Boston with a league-leading 18 wins and a 2.72 ERA, to force a Game 3. He faced the Yankees twice this season and delivered two quality starts, with the Sox winning both. Gray has now made the postseason four times in his career, each at least four seasons apart and with four different teams (with the 2013 Athletics, 2017 Yankees, and 2023 Twins before this).
Cubs at Padres, 10:00 ET (NBCSN/Peacock) — SD leads 1-0
RHP Kevin Gausman (CHC) vs. RHP Nick Pivetta (SD)
You’d never know that the Cubs had the most potent offense in baseball this season. They had no answer for Padres pitching in Game 1, an 8-0 shutout loss. Like the Red Sox, the Cubs had only three hits in the game, and presumptive NL MVP Pete Crow-Armstrong went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts. Combined with last year’s 5-for-27 playoff performance, Crow-Armstrong is not exactly building a sterling postseason career so far.
Veteran Nick Pivetta, who was limited to eight starts this season due to a right flexor strain, will take the mound for San Diego, hoping to follow up on Michael King’s seven scoreless innings in Game 1. Pivetta faced the Cubs in last year’s NL Wild Card Series and struck out nine in five innings, but gave up two runs to take the loss.
Another old friend, Kevin Gausman, starts for the Cubs. Acquired from Toronto at the deadline, Gausman didn’t have a great regular season in Chicago, posting a 4.83 ERA and giving up 11 home runs in nine games. This will be Gausman’s 15th career playoff game — including three relief appearances with the Orioles in 2014 — and while he struggled for most of his postseason career, he was brilliant last year during the Blue Jays’ World Series run, with a 2.93 ERA in six games.
