Here we are. It’s time for the postseason! The Orioles will win as many playoff games this year as they did in either of the previous two years. What a disappointing year this has been. Oh well. We can
start really worrying about that in November when player movement happens and the Orioles can actually start addressing their problems. For today, all there is to do is watch other teams start their journey towards a potential championship.
The Blue Jays, Mariners, Brewers, and Phillies don’t have to play today since they won their divisions and earned byes through the coin flip best-of-three wild card round.
Games of the day
If you are truly dedicated, you will probably be able to watch baseball for 11 consecutive hours, or close to it, today. We all must enjoy this while we can, because soon it will be winter and there will be darkness and no baseball.
Tigers at Guardians, 1:08 Eastern, ESPN
- DET starter: Tarik Skubal
- CLE starter: Gavin Williams
The Guardians offense was incredibly weak this season. They’ll be going up against the reigning Cy Young winner who may well repeat with that award in 2025. Skubal against the Guardians is not an automatic win, however, which is something that Detroit learned last postseason, when Cleveland got to Skubal for five runs in the fifth and final game of the ALDS they had a year ago. Only a best-of-three between these AL Central rivals this year.
Padres at Cubs, 3:08 Eastern, ABC
- SD starter: Nick Pivetta
- CHC starter: Matthew Boyd
It is quite possible that the thing that looks the worst in retrospect about the Orioles offseason was that they decided to lock in Charlie Morton with time to spare in the winter while Pivetta was still dangling out there. Pivetta ultimately signed in mid-February for a four year, $55 million deal where he can opt out after the second year. Pivetta only had a 2025 salary of $1 million in this contract!
Unless he was absolutely, positively, dead set on signing with the Orioles no matter how much they paid him, they could and should have been able to put together a better offer for him than that. I believe the most likely case is that Mike Elias’s fanatical desire to avoid multi-year contracts for pitchers kept him away from ever seriously bidding. That’s probably a 4-5 win swing for the 2025 O’s, and the 2026 rotation would look better now, too. Instead, here we are.
Red Sox at Yankees, 6:08 Eastern, ESPN
- BOS starter: Garrett Crochet
- NYY starter: Max Fried
A Team Meteor series if ever there was one. The consolation prize for me is that at least one of these two teams will be booted from the playoffs by the team their fans like the least by the end of Thursday. That will be funny.
Heck of a matchup of starting pitchers for Game 1 here. That’s true of every one of these series, actually. Go figure, it seems like teams that were good enough to make the postseason are also teams that had at least one really, really good starting pitcher this year to line up at the start of a playoff series. Trevor Rogers would have fit right in with this group (actually, his ERA was even better) if only the rest of the Orioles had been up to snuff.
Reds at Dodgers, 9:08 Eastern, ESPN
- CIN starter: Hunter Greene
- LAD starter: Blake Snell
I feel more ambivalent about this series than any other – even Yankees-Red Sox. The freaking Dodgers just won the title last year. The Reds are in the postseason after backing into it with a mere 83 wins; they wouldn’t have made it if only the Mets hadn’t failed even harder, including on the last day of the season. Blake Snell’s pitching is like, the least aesthetically pleasing of anybody who’s won the Cy Young lately, especially multiple Cys.
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Who are you rooting for today? What are your predictions for these series?
