Wednesday is the cruelest day on the baseball calendar. Four teams take the field one loss from having their season end, and the best-of-three format gives them nowhere to hide.
The Yankees, White Sox, Padres and Braves all won Game 1. That means Boston, Houston, Chicago’s Cubs and Philadelphia are playing to stay alive.
The Format Is Doing Exactly What It Was Designed To Do
A best-of-three series punishes a bad night more harshly than any other round. In a seven-game series, a Game 1 loss is an inconvenience. Here it converts the next game into a coin flip with your whole season on it.
All four Game 1 winners took care of business in different ways, and three of them did it by a wide margin. The Yankees won 9-0. The Padres won 8-0. The White Sox won 6-3 on the road. Only Atlanta needed late heroics, and Austin Riley provided them.
Boston Is In The Worst Shape
The Red Sox were shut out by Cam Schlittler and now must produce against a Yankees staff that has their number. Boston hit .219 as a team in September and scored three runs a game. Nothing about the matchup suggests a reversal.
Houston is a better bet. The Astros lost Game 1 but they have the deepest October track record of any team facing elimination, and they are at home. A veteran club with that much postseason history usually gets one good response game.
The Cubs Have The Hardest Road
Chicago managed one hit against Michael King. Now the Cubs need two straight wins at Petco Park, where San Diego has been a nightmare for visiting teams all year.
Philadelphia at least showed a pulse, scoring twice in the seventh before Riley’s homer ended it. The Phillies have the talent to win two in Atlanta. Whether Turner, Schwarber and Harper snap out of a 1-for-10 stretch in one night is a different question.
My Picks
I have Houston and Philadelphia forcing Game 3, and Boston and the Cubs going home Wednesday night.
The reasoning is simple. Houston and Philadelphia lost Game 1 while playing reasonably well in stretches. Boston and Chicago lost while being thoroughly outclassed, managing two hits and one hit respectively. Teams that get shut out in the opener rarely find an offense overnight.
By Thursday morning, at least two of these four clubs will be cleaning out lockers. The wild card round does not do mercy.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.