The baseball playoffs are here! Super exciting! I’m sure you already know the schedule, but just in case, here you go with the starting pitchers, the network where you can see them, and a very quick preview (all times Eastern):
2 p.m. Philadelphia (Jesús Luzardo) at Atlanta (Chris Sale), NBC
We’ll see how healthy Luzardo is. He hasn’t started since pitching a shutout back on September 7 because of shoulder inflammation.
He will likely have to be very good because (1) the Phillies have had a heck of a time scoring runs and (2) Chris Sale quietly had another remarkable season on his way to Cooperstown. My favorite Chris Sale stat is this: He currently has the highest strikeout-to-walk ratio in baseball history at 5.36-to-1. This year was typical: He struck out 200 and walked 31.
Actually, my favorite Chris Sale stat might be this: Over his career, he has a sub-3.00 ERA (2.95) AND a sub-3.00 FIP (2.84). The only two starters (min. 2,000 innings) in the last fifty years to finish their careers with sub-3.00 ERAs and FIPs were Clayton Kershaw and Pedro Martinez. And Sale’s FIP is lower than both of theirs.
5 p.m. Chicago White Sox (Hagen Smith) at Houston (AJ Blubaugh), Peacock
It’s hard to even know what to say about this one. The White Sox lost 121 games just two years ago, yet somehow made it to the playoffs this year, and they’re starting a 22-year-old lefty named Hagen Smith who will be making his second big-league start.
The Astros made their own history this year by winning a division with an 81-81 record, and they’ll be starting a relief pitcher and Bond villain named AJ Blubaugh, who will be making his first start all season.
The guy to watch, of course, is Houston’s designated hitter Yordan Álvarez, who was the one guy in baseball who seemed immune to the offensive woes that surrounded him. He led baseball in batting average by five points(.316), on-base percentage by 42 points (.432), and slugging percentage by 41 points (.601). Nobody was in his hemisphere. I imagine the White Sox will do all they can to avoid him.
8 p.m. Boston (Payton Tolle) at New York Yankees (Cam Schlittler), NBC
This is, of course, the marquee matchup of the day, not only because it’s Red Sox-Yankees, but also because it pits the utterly delightful Payton Tolle against the utterly defiant Cam Schlittler. Tolle, when asked about how he feels making tonight’s big start with so little big-league experience, went on an utterly splendid soliloquy about how some jobs require five years of experience, but sometimes you don’t have five years of experience, and he was once on LinkedIn, but it was for a college class, and various other nonsequiturs that, of course, made everyone smile because that’s what that guy does.
Schlittler, meanwhile, admits that he sees what his hometown New England fans have been saying about him ever since he shut out the Red Sox in the postseason last year, and that his family has been harassed, and that he is “keeping receipts.” “They just picked the wrong guy to do it to,” he says, and he’s right. Schlittler gave up one or fewer runs in twenty-five of his starts this season. He faced Boston four times this year, and he gave up just two earned runs. He might turn into the Hulk tonight.
Molly Knight and I will be having a live video conversation during this game over at The Joy of Baseball. More on that below.
10 p.m. Chicago Cubs (Matthew Boyd) at San Diego (Michael King), Peacock
No team played better ball than the Padres as the season came to an end. They won 17 of their last 20. Fernando Tatis Jr. went nuclear — he hit .355/.437/.658 with six homers and seven steals. And Jackson Merrill was red hot too — he hit .368/.388/.632 with 10 extra-base hits. The Padres have talent and a terminator in the ninth inning in Mason Miller, so, yeah, they’re a scary matchup.
The Cubs, starring Pete Crow-Armstrong, have the best offense in baseball. They scored the most runs and posted the highest slugging percentage. PCA was so absurdly good that he overshadowed a pretty balanced lineup — it’s no fun trying to navigate through a lineup with PCA, Alex Bregman, Seiya Suzuki, Michael Busch, Ian Happ, etc. This has the chance to be a classic series.
As I mentioned above, to celebrate our new podcast The Joy of Baseball — and we have an incredible one coming out today — Molly and I are planning on doing live video chats throughout the playoffs for our Joy of Baseball subscribers. Tonight’s video chat will start at 8 p.m. Eastern to coincide with the start of the Yankees-Red Sox game, and we’re making it free for everyone. Expect a lot of Payton Tolle gushing.
If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up for free here, and you’ll get notified when we go live. And if you like what it, of course, we’d love for you to become a full subscriber so you can join us for all the chats throughout October … and we will keep them going throughout the offseason too, no matter how long that offseason goes.
The White Sox/Astros pitching "match-up" is an embarrassment to post-season baseball.
I know it’s probably just random luck that it worked out this way, but it’s wild that the Rays reward for having the best AL record will be to play the AL’s 2nd or 3rd best record (and the AL’s 1st and 3rd teams in run differential).
Meanwhile Cleveland, who has a +11 run differential gets a bye, and could end up playing a team with a -32 run differential (Houston).
The top three teams in the AL are all smooshed into one half of the AL bracket.