Tarik Skubal, Cole Ragans, Michael King Steal the Show and MLB Wild Card Takeaways
And just like that, the 2024 Major League Baseball postseason is alive, well and very much underway.
Tuesday marked the beginning of the Wild Card Series, with not one, not two, not three, but four Game 1s in a pair of best-of-three sets in the American League and National League brackets.
It was an eventful day, and we kept on top of it all with immediate post-game takeaways.
The format here is simple: Four games meant eight teams, and each team got some reaction. Most ultimately focused on Tuesday's brilliant pitching, but attention was also granted to the day's star hitters.
And as a special bonus, the big story of the day also got a more general reaction.
Wild Card Game 1 Results
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AL Wild Card: Detroit Tigers vs. Houston Astros
- Result: Tigers 3, Astros 1
- Status: Tigers lead 1-0
AL Wild Card: Kansas City Royals at Baltimore Orioles
- Result: Royals 1, Orioles 0
- Status: Royals lead 1-0
NL Wild Card: New York Mets at Milwaukee Brewers
- Result: Mets 8, Brewers 4
- Status: Mets lead 1-0
NL Wild Card: Atlanta Braves at San Diego Padres
- Result: Padres 4, Braves 0
- Status: Padres lead 1-0
Detroit Tigers Game 1 Takeaways
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The Bigger Stage Suited Tarik Skubal Just Fine
Line Score: 6 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 6 K
Skubal tore his way through AL hitters in the regular season, going 18-4 with a 2.39 ERA and 229 strikeouts to win the triple crown. He's going to be the AL Cy Young Award winner.
It sure looks like he also wants to be a World Series winner.
Whatever the lefty felt during his first playoff start, it clearly wasn't fazed. He threw 64 of his 88 pitches for strikes and touched 100 mph with his fastball. All four hits he allowed were singles.
Consider it a reminder that, while the Tigers remain an underdog in the abstract, they're very much the overdog when they have their ace on the mound. For the year, they're now 22-10 in games that Skubal has started.
This Lineup Still Doesn't Belong to Any One Guy
The closest thing the Tigers have to a "That Guy" in their offense is left fielder Riley Greene, and he went 1-for-5 with a meaningless double on Tuesday.
That they won anyway is...well, it's very Tigers.
They got hits from seven hitters, and their three runs came via successive hits by the No. 8, No. 9 and No. 1 hitters in the second inning. All three were ripped up the middle off Framber Valdez, providing a less-than-subtle hint of Detroit's book on the Astros sinker-baller.
The Tigers didn't have much offense down the stretch of the regular season, but this is typical of how they got it. In August and September, 19 hitters drove in at least one run for them, the second-most in MLB after only the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Houston Astros Game 1 Takeaways
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Framber Valdez's Playoff Slump Continues
Line Score: 4.1 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 3 K
To be fair to Valdez, for just a second, he came into the playoffs as hot as any pitcher left standing. His last 20 starts of the regular season yielded a 2.38 ERA.
But the Tigers? They gave him fits.
They only got one extra-base hit off Valdez, but four of the six singles he gave up registered at least 100 mph off the bat. And as previously noted, Detroit hitters brilliantly looked to go up the middle in lieu of attempting to hook Valdez's stuff toward the Crawford Boxes.
The Astros may yet dig themselves out of their 1-0 hole, but Valdez will have to redeem himself if they do. He now has an 8.39 ERA for his last four playoff starts dating back to last October.
At Least Yordan Alvarez Is Functional
The Astros didn't come alive offensively until the bottom of the ninth when they scored their lone run and ultimately left the bases loaded.
Still, it's apparent that Alvarez's sprained right knee won't necessarily keep him from doing what he does best: hit the daylights out of the ball.
With a 114.1 mph single off Skubal in the fourth and a 99.7 mph double off Jason Foley in the ninth, Alvarez had two of the hardest-hit balls of the game. Bat speed-wise, he also took three of the six fastest swings of the contest.
Alvarez is going to have to be careful with that knee when running the bases, which didn't look at all like a comfortable experience as he was rounding first on his ninth-inning double. It'll do for a good sign, though, that the Astros can still count on his bat as they seek to even the series on Wednesday.
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Kansas City Royals Game 1 Takeaways
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Cole Ragans Gave a Dominant Performance. And a Slight Scare.
Line Score: 6 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 8 K
As brilliant as Skubal was in his turn against Houston, it wasn't long before another left-hander making his playoff debut outdid him.
Take a bow, Cole Ragans.
Ragans, who finished just five strikeouts behind Skubal for the AL lead in the regular season, threw 60 of his 80 pitches for strikes and regularly touched the high 90s with his fastball. In all, he got 15 whiffs on 49 swings.
As much as it felt like a coming-out party, the truth is that Ragans has been one of baseball's top pitchers for a while now. Specifically, only Skubal has been more valuable among AL hurlers since Ragans made his Royals debut on July 15, 2023.
It's a bummer, of course, that Ragans had to come out of the game with cramping in his left calf. It doesn't sound serious, but the Royals should cross their fingers just to be safe.
Yes, This Royals Bullpen Really Is That Good
You could vaguely feel air seeping out of the Royals' good vibes when Ragans came out of the game, but the bullpen did well to plug the leak.
Ultimately, Sam Long, Kris Bubic and Lucas Erceg handled the final three innings and allowed nothing on just one hit and two walks.
Kansas City's bullpen was a weakness for a good chunk of the regular season, but that might as well be forever ago. It ended as one of the best in the business, posting a 2.77 ERA and allowing only a .196 average in September.
The Royals will take as much of this dominance as they can get. While a win is a win, this one doesn't quite erase the questions that were hanging over the offense as it struggled down the stretch of the regular season.
Baltimore Orioles Game 1 Takeaways
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The Orioles Wasted an Excellent Corbin Burnes Performance
Line Score: 8 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 3 K
This, that, the other thing and seemingly still more things went wrong for Baltimore's pitching throughout the regular season, but Burnes was the one constant the whole way.
And so it went on Tuesday.
The 2021 NL Cy Young Award winner only had six swings and misses out of his 84 pitches, but that wasn't too out of the ordinary relative to how he pitched this year. Electricity for effectiveness is a fair trade for any pitcher, though Burnes perhaps got lucky in allowing nine of the 10 hardest-hit balls of the game.
What ultimately matters, though, is that Burnes' fine work in Game 1 went toward a loss for the Orioles. It's a brutal outcome, especially considering it's unlikely they'll be able to hide their beleaguered bullpen in Game 2 and/or Game 3.
Questions Remain About Baltimore's Offense
It's only fair to grant that Orioles hitters were up against it in Game 1. Right now, to go up against Ragans and this bullpen is a tough assignment.
All the same, that goose egg in the runs column might feel a little too familiar for Orioles fans.
This was a good offense overall during the regular season, but it peaked early and was basically league-average by the end of the year. The O's scored 4.1 runs per game after August 20, compared to 5.1 before then.
Nobody was colder than Adley Rutschman, but Gunnar Henderson and Anthony Santander were also cool amid that stretch. And as such, them going 0-for-11 in Game 1 wasn't quite a step in the right direction.
New York Mets Game 1 Takeaways
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The Offense Is Still Clicking
Just how much did pitching dominate the first two games of Tuesday's schedule?
Well, put it this way: The Mets scored as many runs in their half of the fifth inning against the Brewers as were scored in the 36 total half-innings of the first two contests.
The Mets did this without the benefit of a home run, opting instead to overwhelm Freddy Peralta, Joel Payamps and Aaron Ashby with baserunners and timely hits. Mark Vientos, Jesse Winker and J.D. Martinez each drove in two runs.
This is how the Mets have operated since June 12, otherwise known as "The Grimace Game." From that day through the end of the regular season, only two other clubs scored more runs than they did.
The warning, as such, is this: If the Brewers want to keep the Mets at bay, they need to do better than the separate leads of two and one runs that they had in Game 1.
Luis Severino Provided a Gutsy Performance
Line Score: 6.0 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 3 K
This was hardly the prettiest performance of Severino's career. In addition to the eight hits and two walks he served up, he also hit Rhys Hoskins to drive in a run in the first.
But dare I say he pitched better than his line score indicates?
Severino may not have been sharp, but he limited the damage by not giving Milwaukee hitters anything they could square up. Of the 22 balls in play off him, only three reached the hard-hit threshold of 95 mph off the bat.
Aesthetics notwithstanding, it was just what the Mets needed after following a critical double-header on Monday with a flight from Atlanta to Milwaukee.
Milwaukee Brewers Game 1 Takeaways
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One of Milwaukee's Flaws Got Exposed
The Brewers have a pretty good pitching staff. Their 3.65 ERA ranked them second in the National League.
Yet here's a question: Who is their ace supposed to be?
Since he was their starter for Game 1 on Tuesday, Freddy Peralta is nominally the answer. But he had more of a good regular season than a great one, and the same is broadly true of a Brewers rotation that managed only 8.6 WAR for the regular season.
This is not to suggest that whoever the Brewers started was doomed for a short outing like the one Peralta had, as he lasted only four innings before getting the hook. The issue is more that they don't really have a guy who's sure to rise above that standard.
If that didn't look like an issue before, it does now.
A Nice Introduction to Jackson Chourio
In all likelihood, Chourio will only finish third in the NL Rookie of the Year voting behind Paul Skenes and Jackson Merrill.
But if nothing else, he'll always be able to say he was the quickest of the three to make an impact in the playoffs.
Though Chourio did misplay a fly ball by Tyrone Taylor in the fifth inning, that was moments after he made a leaping catch at the wall. Moments before that, he had come through with a game-tying hit in the bottom of the fourth.
Chourio wasn't exactly off the national radar before all this. Starting right around the time Christian Yelich was lost for the year in June, he got hot and performed like one of the top five position players in the National League the rest of the way.
All the same, he's certainly closer to the center of the radar than he was beforehand.
San Diego Padres Game 1 Takeaways
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This Win Brought to You by the Juan Soto Trade
Michael King's Line Score: 7.0 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 12 K
Shortly after it went down, Michael King aired a hot take on who really stood to win the Juan Soto trade between the Padres and New York Yankees.
"I continue to praise [Padres general manager] A.J. Preller and be confident in saying I feel like the Padres won the trade," said the right-hander, who went to San Diego in the deal.
After posting a 2.95 ERA over 173.2 innings in the regular season, Tuesday was merely the latest case of King walking the walk. Notably, he authored only the second start with at least 12 strikeouts, no walks and no runs in playoff history.
Also involved in the Soto deal was King's battery mate, Kyle Higashioka. He contributed two of the Padres' four runs with a sac fly in the second and a solo homer in the eighth.
This, of course, is not proof positive that the Padres have definitively won the Soto trade. But you at least have to admit they wouldn't be on their way to winning this series without it.
Fernando Tatis Jr. Is on One of His Heaters
Though King gradually nudged everyone else off center stage as he settled into a rhythm Tuesday, there was a moment when Tatis had it all to himself.
Namely, the moment when he put the Padres in front with a soaring 415-foot two-run homer in the first inning.
This is Tatis at his best, and he's indeed been at his best for a while now. Shortly after he came off a long stay on the injured list on September 2, he went on a season-ending run in which he launched seven homers in 16 games.
On value alone, Tatis was only San Diego's fourth-best hitter in the regular season. But the two-time All-Star is perhaps the best of the lot when he's hot, and he sure is that right now.
Atlanta Braves Game 1 Takeaways
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Chris Sale Is Missed
The Braves' loss in Game 1 had at least one silver lining: After AJ Smith-Shawver lasted only 1.1 innings, the bullpen shoved in permitting San Diego just one run the rest of the way.
It is nonetheless hard not to wonder what would be different for Atlanta if Sale hadn't been sidelined with back spasms, and especially in the context of this note from MLB.com's Mark Bowman:
The good news is that the Braves can still start Max Fried in Game 2 and, presumably, Reynaldo López in Game 3. They had a 2.70 ERA over 310 innings in the regular season.
But should they fail to widen Atlanta's now constricted margin for error, the book on Sale's year will close without him getting a chance to build on his brilliant, triple crown-winning season.
Last Year's Offense Is Also Missed
The Braves offense was so good in 2023 that it's shocking they were shut out even once, much less three times combined in the regular season and postseason.
As for 2024, well, let's just say it's not surprising that Tuesday's loss marked the Braves' 12th shutout of the season.
It's not the same offense, and it's not even all because Ronald Acuña Jr. and Austin Riley are out of the picture with season-ending injuries. Only Marcell Ozuna has stuck to the standard of his 2023 performance, with the offense experiencing unrivaled losses in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
It's just nothing special, in other words.
That sure looks like a problem now, as the Braves are up against a pitching staff that was very special. In the second half of the year, it posted the lowest ERA in the National League.
It Was a Really Good Day for Starting Pitching
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Anyone who dipped their toe into the MLB news cycle for even half a minute during the regular season might have caught wind of a certain crisis within the sport.
This, in essence, is that the starting pitcher is dying.
Much was written on the topic, including several pieces by yours truly. The gist is that more and more starters are getting injured, while their collective workload continues to trend down. The average start in 2024 only lasted 5.2 innings.
However, anyone who just tuned in on Tuesday would have no idea this was the case.
Half of the eight starters who toed the rubber logged quality starts, and we're talking high-quality starts. Mash their pitching lines together, and Tarik Skubal, Cole Ragans, Corbin Burnes and Michael King allowed just one run over 27 innings, with 29 strikeouts against 18 hits and only two walks.
To be clear, one good day by four really good pitchers will not solve the aforementioned crisis. The only thing that will be is a top-to-bottom cultural shift on what makes good pitching, well, good pitching. Teams have gotten less holistic in this regard, generally reducing pitching to a simple matter of MPHs and RPMs.
Though there was plenty of that on display Tuesday, there was also more to it.
The extent to which Skubal, Ragans, Burnes and King pounded the strike zone is part of it, and likewise for their intent when they expanded the zone. And the four generally favored deception over power, with only Ragans relying primarily on his four-seam fastball.
Now, that. That's good pitching. And even if its special appearance on Tuesday solves nothing, it sure is nice to know such a thing still exists.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
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