The perfect storylines for Recreation 1 of every Wild Card Collection – MLB.com

Will Leitch
Eventually, we’ve got playoff baseball. (It has been 335 days, or precisely 11 months, since our final MLB postseason sport. That’s too many days!) In a month or so, we’ll know the 2025 World Collection champion, however we’ve got an entire bunch of video games to go earlier than then. And people video games begin at the moment.
All through this postseason, I’ll be previewing every day’s motion, sport by sport, with the main storyline from each. We couldn’t kick it off any higher, with 4 video games at the moment and 4 extra on Wednesday … and hey, you by no means know, perhaps even 4 extra on Thursday.
Tigers at Guardians
1:08 p.m. ET, ESPN
SP: Tarik Skubal (DET) vs. Gavin Williams (CLE)
Can Skubal win this one by himself?
The Tigers have endured a completely depressing few months, going from a group that appeared like one of the best in baseball at instances within the first half to 1 that coughed up a 14-game division lead (to not point out a 15 1/2-game edge over Cleveland). Even worse, these Guardians are actually the opponent they should face within the Wild Card Collection … on the highway, no much less.
The Tigers, truthful to say, haven’t appeared like a lot of a postseason juggernaut for fairly some time now, with one moderately notable exception: After they have Skubal on the mound. The seemingly back-to-back AL Cy Younger Award winner has arguably loved a greater season in 2025 than he did final 12 months — the underlying metrics clearly say he has — and he’s one of the best purpose to be optimistic about Detroit’s possibilities.
Tigers supervisor A.J. Hinch certain seems to be like he’s going to should depend on final 12 months’s “Skubal And Pitching Chaos” technique, which goes to be tougher on days when Skubal doesn’t pitch, as a result of the bullpen has been a large number for some time. However Skubal is pitching at the moment. That, instantly, makes the Tigers, for at the moment, among the best groups in baseball. They completely should win each sport he begins — beginning with this one.
Padres at Cubs
3:08 p.m. ET, ABC
SP: Nick Pivetta (SD) vs. Matthew Boyd (CHC)
We’ve bought postseason video games at Wrigley Area once more!
The final playoff sport on the historic ballpark got here in 2020, and if ever there have been any stadium that simply doesn’t really feel proper with out followers, it’s Wrigley Area. So the final true Cubs playoff house sport got here on Oct. 2, 2018, a 13-inning marathon Wild Card Recreation that was so way back that:
• It was a Wild Card Recreation.
• Within the lineup for the Cubs had been Ben Zobrist, Kyle Schwarber, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Báez (who batted fourth).
• It featured the Colorado Rockies.
So yeah, it’s been some time. It’s so lengthy, in truth, that the Cubs are in a wholly completely different incarnation, having famously dismantled most of that 2016 World Collection-winning group.
The Cubs have a variety of questions heading into the postseason — Kyle Tucker’s health foremost among them — however for one afternoon, seeing these two groups play within the sunshine of the Pleasant Confines can be superb, simply on basic precept. If solely they’d put on the identical uniforms they wore for the 1984 NLCS.
Pink Sox at Yankees
6:08 p.m. ET, ESPN
SP: Garrett Crochet (BOS) vs. Max Fried (NYY)
Can Crochet be sufficient of a bonus on his personal?
As thrilling as this rivalry has been traditionally, these two groups are elsewhere proper now. The Pink Sox are younger and on the rise — even when some of those key up-and-coming players are currently hurt — and will have their finest years forward of them. The Yankees are a veteran group now, with the stress of 15 consecutive seasons and not using a World Collection title (and final 12 months’s World Collection flop) weighing on them each night time, each pitch, each at-bat. (It must also be famous that the Pink Sox have gained two World Collection for the reason that Yankees final gained one in 2009.)
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This collection clearly means one thing to the Sox, who haven’t been within the playoffs since 2021. However it might, in a right away sense, imply extra to the Yankees. Which is why it must be notably terrifying to face Crochet in Recreation 1. Crochet has been the second-best pitcher within the AL this 12 months, and he has been notably wonderful towards the Yankees, with the Yanks dropping all 4 of his begins.
Crochet additionally has executed nicely towards Decide, hanging him out 11 of the 15 instances they’ve confronted one another. (To be truthful, Decide does have two homers off him, together with a particularly memorable game-tying blast within the ninth inning on June 13.) The Yankees appear like the higher group on this collection. Nevertheless it’s a very brief collection, and a type of video games in that brief collection is being began by Garrett Crochet.
Reds at Dodgers
9:08 p.m. ET, ESPN
SP: Hunter Greene (CIN) vs. Blake Snell (LAD)
Do the Reds have a puncher’s likelihood?
This collection, for an entire bunch of causes, seems to be like a mismatch. The Reds haven’t gained a postseason collection in 30 years. (Although, it needs to be famous, that 1995 collection was towards Los Angeles.) The Dodgers are the defending champs. The Reds snuck into the playoffs thanks partly to the Mets’ collapse down the stretch. The Dodgers have been mainly simply tweaking their postseason roster since, nicely, Opening Day, actually. The Reds are tremendous, tremendous joyful to be right here. The Dodgers are, uh, the Dodgers.
However one of the best hope for the Reds right here is to lean on their main power: their beginning pitching. Greene is an excellent man to have beginning Recreation 1. He’s been terrific all season — solely Yoshinobu Yamamoto has a greater ERA than him on the Dodgers’ employees — and he’s 2-0 with a 2.64 ERA in September. The difficulty is that the Reds might have him to pitch all 9 innings, which, contemplating he’s going through the Dodgers, is gonna be powerful. The Reds want the whole lot to fall proper to win this collection. That begins with Greene … he might actually be their finest — even perhaps solely — hope.

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