What we learned in the MLB wild card round: Game 1 is key, aces are important
There was a lot of good baseball this week. Elite pitching performance. One-run matches. Stars get big hits at big moments.
Thursday night’s Game 3 – New York Mets 4, Milwaukee Brewers 2 – was a true postseason epic. Back-to-back Brewers homers in the seventh inning. Pete Alonso went deep in the ninth to keep his Mets career going a little longer. Then Francisco Lindor sprints for a double play to end it.
October is all about winner-take-all, and the Wild Card round had only one series that went the distance. It did not disappoint. The other three series were sweeps. Which brings us to our first takeaway from the wildcard round…
Game 1 is everything
Wildcard sweeps have been the norm under this playoff format.
During the era of the one-off Wild Card game — which ran from 2012 to 2019 and returned in 2021 — many lamented the brazen unfairness of a stellar season that was washed away in nine innings. Wouldn’t a three-game series be a better solution than a winner-takes-all game?
So far the answer is… not really. Since the league moved to the three-game Wild Card Series in 2022, the winner of Game 1 has won all 12 series. Only two series have even gone to Game 3. That’s a sweep rate of 83 percent.
Counting the 2020 postseason—after the pandemic-shortened season, MLB expanded the playoff field and staged eight three-game wild-card series—only twice in 20 tries does the loser of Game 1 come back to win the series win (A’s and Padres 2020). There have been sixteen sweeps.
This is another small example of series, but it did take some air out of the balloon. The league would like to see each Wild Card series last three games. Instead, almost every series has been decided in Game 1.
And if that’s the case, you better have a Game 1 ace.
Respect the Crown (and the Chaos)
The Detroit Tigers had a winning formula for the Wild Card Series: a Triple Crown winner in Game 1, and what manager AJ Hinch called “pitching chaos” in Game 2. Let the ace set the stage and let everyone else close the curtain .
Whether it was Tarik Skubal for the Tigers, Michael King for the Padres or Cole Ragans for the Royals, three of the four teams that delivered top-level performances in the wild-card opener finished with a win. After Skubal pitched six shutout innings against Houston in Game 1, the Tigers cycled through seven relievers in Game 2. King’s 12-strikeout gem in Game 1 left the Braves reeling and the Padres bullpen fresh to Joe Musgrove’s due to injuries shortened start in Game 2. It was a similar story for the Royals, whose bullpen was up to the task after Seth Lugo was pulled in the fifth inning of Game 2 in Baltimore.
Corbin Burnes also had a top performance in Game 1, allowing one run over eight innings in his final start before free agency, but Bobby Witt Jr. drove in the only point of the game. The O’s scored just one run in the sweep.
Chris Sale, the NL Triple Crown winner, didn’t even make the Braves’ wild-card selection. With Sale suffering from back spasms, the Braves had AJ Smith-Shawver to start Game 1. He only lasted four zeros. The Braves never had a chance. The Houston Astros also fell behind early as star player Framber Valdez continued last year’s postseason woes. Houston was bounced in two games. The most dominant starts in the Brewers-Mets series came not from aces, but from the Game 3 starters, José Quintana and Tobias Myers.
Tarik Skubal takes on the Astros. (Kevin M. Cox / Associated Press)
Home field blues
When we wrote about each contender’s short schedule, we focused a lot on competing for byes and home field advantage in the Wild Card Series. The former? Critically important. (Just ask the Orioles with 91 wins and the Brewers with 93 wins.) The latter? Well, how much do home field matters in this round?
The home team has won just nine of the 20 three-game Wild Card Series since 2020.
If we take 2020 out of the equation, because the ballparks were empty and the playoff field was watered down, the home team fared even worse in the Wild Card Series, losing eight of the twelve series.
There is no logical reason why this would be true. No team would choose to play on the road instead of at home. But perhaps home court matters much less in a three-match series than other factors: like an ace.
That double header made a mess
The Braves’ pitching staff had been in trouble since Spencer Strider’s elbow started barking back in spring training, but it was all over when Hurricane Helene forced a makeup doubleheader on Monday, adding Sale to the long list of injured Braves.
Smith-Shawver starts Game 1 without Austin Riley or Ronald Acuña Jr. in the lineup? That wasn’t the Braves team anyone expected in March. But by the time they were swept, Atlanta was in tatters. The Braves emptied the bullpen to split the doubleheader against the Mets, brought in a spot starter for the first game of the playoffs and then had to provide cover for Max Fried’s two-inning start in the second game.
They were gassed.
The other half of that season-ending doubleheader was the Mets. Luis Severino pitched well enough in Game 1 to give them a fighting chance in the Wild Card Series, hanging on through six innings despite heavy traffic early on. The cracks started to show in Game 3. After Quintana put together six shutout innings, Buttó blew up the deadlock and suddenly closer Edwin Díaz was putting out a fire in the seventh inning. Even fully rested, the Mets bullpen did not have a top-tier bullpen. When they are exhausted, they are more likely to break. It was David Peterson – a starter – who put the Brewers aside by saving Game 3.
The Central is dead (Long live the Central)
A few AL executives were talking earlier this year about how MLB balancing its schedule would help powerful divisions (like the AL East) and hurt weaker divisions (like the AL Central). That was the idea anyway.
But the AL Central has three of the last four teams in the American League (the Royals, Tigers and Guardians), while the East only has the Yankees. The Rays, Red Sox and Blue Jays missed the tournament and the Orioles are already on their way home.
Last season, the AL Central had just one team with a winning record, while the AL East had four.
NL Central was mainly a disappointment this season. The Brewers were their only hope to make postseason noise, but they have now lost their past six playoff series and have gone 2-10 in postseason games since 2019. It seemed for a while on Thursday evening, after Jake Bauers and Sal Frelick left, that half of the remaining playoff teams would come from the middle of the country. Instead, Alonso eliminated NL Central completely.
Pete Alonso after his homer against the Brewers. (Aaron Gash/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Momentum is important
There is a natural instinct to assume that teams that come screaming into the playoffs late in the season will be discovered once the playoffs start. Their shortcomings will be exposed. They were pretenders, after all.
Then come the Tigers and Mets. The Tigers’ playoff chances were 0.2 percent on August 11, and the Mets’ were 13.1 percent on August 28. Neither had entered the season as anything other than a midfield team. In the first half it was about .500 teams. And then scandalous things happened. The Tigers traded their No. 2 starter and a few other vets and couldn’t stop winning. The Mets played with the buttons on their pitching staff, found something offensively and made miracles happen in Game 161.
Neither was exposed in this round. The Tigers kept rolling. Their ace was better than the other guys, and their positioning allowed for timely hits. The Mets’ victory was no fluke. They pitched well, caused chaos and rallied when it mattered, against one of the best pitching staffs – and best closers – in baseball.
We’re lumping the Tigers and Mets together in part because we had them dead last in our postseason pitching core rankings. Not because we thought they were trash, but because a team had to finish last, and because it looked like the smoke and mirrors in the second half might stop working at some point. Not so. Two old sayings are true for these two teams:
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
And no one wants to see these guys in October.
Five teams won at least 16 games in September. Three – the Tigers, Padres and Mets – won a Wild Card Series. A fourth, the Los Angeles Dodgers, earned a bye in the first round. The only wild-card team not to have a winning record in the second half was the Orioles, who went 33-33 and were eliminated in two games – perhaps not good news for the NL favorite Philadelphia Phillies, who were also 33-3 . 33 after the break.
You can’t predict the ball
Some aces were aces, and some stars were stars – you made your families proud, Alonso, Witt and Fernando Tatis Jr. – but in the postseason, not all heroes wear All-Star and Silver Slugger capes. Some are just guys who show up when they are needed most.
The high-profile Padres hit three home runs in their series, and two of them came from No. 9 hitter Kyle Higashioka. The Brewers’ Game 2 comeback started with Rookie of the Year candidate Jackson Chourio, but it was Garrett Mitchell who hit the game-winning home run. Skubal lived up to his expectations for the Tigers, but it was swingman Beau Brieske who closed Game 1 and threw 1 2/3 scoreless innings in Game 2. Which second baseman led the Wild Card round in hits and doubles? Not Jose Altuve. It was Brewers speedster Brice Turang.
Some of the biggest swings in the Wild Card Series came from Andy Ibañez, Jesse Winker and Frelick. Some of the most crucial punchouts were thrown by Will Vest, Nick Mears and Sam Long.
In October, even the most anonymous big leaguer can become a household name.
(Top photos of Kyle Higashioka, left, and Will Vest and Jake Rogers, right: Orlando Ramirez, Alex Stiltz / Getty Images)
