In his postseason debut, Shohei Ohtani helped lead the Los Angeles Dodgers to a comeback win over the San Diego Padres. The New York Mets continued their late-inning comeback magic. The New York Yankees topped the Kansas City Royals in a back-and-forth, unconventional October classic, while a Cleveland Guardians’ offensive-outburst helped them take the early advantage in the battle of the Central.
Pitching chaos became a pitching catastrophe when the Guardians used a five-run outburst in the first to disrupt the Tigers’ unconventional strategy. Detroit’s opener Tyler Holton and bulk guy Reese Olson combined to surrender five runs before recording an out. The lead allowed Guardians starter Tanner Bibee and the lights-out bullpen to cruise.
Zack Wheeler was at his best, but the Phillies’ bullpen was at its worst. The Mets didn’t have an extra-base hit, but they timed eight singles extremely well, scoring five runs in the eighth inning and tacking on an insurance run in the ninth. Kodai Senga’s return was encouraging, and the Mets’ bullpen kept the Phillies down.
In a postseason first, there were five lead changes between the Royals and Yankees. [Insert Jayson Stark voice: Because baseball!] But, New York ultimately landed on the right side of a controversial replay-review ruling right before unlikely hero Alex Verdugo hit the game-winning single.
The Padres jumped out to an early 3-0 lead in the first with Manny Machado hitting a booming home run, but with two on and two outs, Shohei Ohtani came up. Everyone in the ballpark was thinking about a home run, and he hit a no-doubter so hard that he might have thrown his bat away at a higher exit velocity than the ball. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was shaky, allowing five runs in three innings, but the Dodgers bullpen was scoreless after that, despite Padres threats in the eighth and ninth.
Verdugo began his night getting booed by Yankees fans. He finished as the Game 1 hero. The left-fielder hit the seventh-inning RBI single that drove in the winning run, capping off his 2-for-3 night that included a walk, two runs and two tidy defensive plays. Verdugo, coming off a down offensive season, wasn’t expected to start Game 1 over rookie Jasson Domínguez, but manager Aaron Boone said it was a “fairly” easy decision to go with Verdugo’s experience. His gut instinct paid off.
The standard baseball game is nine innings, and teams are allowed to score runs in any of them. The Mets don’t care. They prefer to score their runs late, and they prefer to score them in bunches. Only two teams in baseball scored more runs in the eighth and ninth inning during the regular season, and after scoring four runs in the ninth inning to steal the series against the Brewers, they scored five runs in the eighth inning to steal Game 1 against the Phillies. It’s hard to win a championship without gobs of late-inning offense from your lineup, and the Mets seem especially confident in that respect right now.
Shohei Ohtani played in his first postseason game on Saturday, as you might have heard. He could have gone 1-for-4 with a single, or 0-4 with a couple of strikeouts, while talking after the game about how he’s taking things one day at a time. Instead, he hit a ball so hard, so perfectly timed, that he lost his mind and so did the entirety of Dodger Stadium. The Padres took a three-run lead in the first inning, continuing the momentum from their series against the Braves, while the Dodgers hadn’t played in a week. The longer the deficit lingered, the heavier it would weigh on a Dodgers lineup looking for momentum of their own. Instead, Ohtani tied it with one swing, and it made the Dodgers remember that they were supposed to be the bullies. Momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher, but it’s still pretty good when you can find some.
The Tigers’ “pitching chaos” has been a successful strategy, helping them make an unlikely run to the ALDS. But after Holton, their opener, and Reese, their bulk guy, gave up five runs to the Guardians before recording an out, it makes one wonder how much better off the Tigers would be positioned if they had another traditional starter at the disposal to pair with ace Tarik Skubal. Maybe — oh I don’t know — someone like Jack Flaherty, scheduled to start Game 2 for the Dodgers in the NLDS on Sunday. (Reminder: The Tigers indeed traded Flaherty to the Dodgers at the deadline before resurrecting their season, and we’ll see if it comes back to haunt them).
The Phillies’ bullpen was supposed to be a strength, and it still might be for the rest of the postseason. For Game 1, though, it was a disaster. Jeff Hoffman didn’t retire any of the three batters he faced. Matt Strahm faced a combined 79 batters in August and September, allowing two earned runs. He faced three batters in Game 1 and allowed two earned runs. The result was a five-run eighth inning from the Mets, and the Phillies couldn’t recover. So it goes for teams that think they have a shutdown bullpen. They do, until they don’t. October is cruel and unusual like that.
Cue the MLB-New York bias controversy. The Royals had their chances to pull off the upset in Game 1, but a controversial call may have ultimately cost them. After leading off the seventh with a single, Jazz Chisholm Jr. took off for second. Salvador Perez’s throw was high and Chisholm was ruled safe. But the Royals requested a review. A camera angle shown on the TBS broadcast appeared to show Bobby Witt Jr. applying the tag in time. But the safe call stood and Chisholm would score the winning run on Verdugo’s single. After the loss, Royals manager Matt Quatraro said he got a good look at the play and “I think we did have a really good argument that that should have been overturned.” Conversely, Chisholm said, “I knew I was in there.”
