The wild card round ended on Oct 4 with all series ending in a sweep and the Phillies, Diamondbacks, Rangers, and Twins all advanced and will play in the LDS ( League Division Series) a best of 5 series. The Phillies will go on to play the Braves in Atlanta to start off the series. The Diamondbacks will start on the road in LA against the Dodgers. The Rangers will go on to face the one seed in Baltimore, where the Orioles start out in Camden Yards. Mainly I will talk about 2 series between the Twins vs Jays and the Phillies vs Marlins.
Game 1 between the Blue Jays and Twins was projected to be a pitcher’s duel as the starting pitching battle was between Kevin Gausman for the Blue Jays and Pablo Lopez for the Twins. The fireworks got started quickly as rookie phenom Royce Lewis hit a homer in his first playoff at-bat of his career, scoring 2 and making it 2-0 after one inning. Then in the third Royce Lewis came back up and hit another homer to give the Twins some comfort and eventually ended up winning 3-1. Royce Lewis had a career day, obviously winning the player of the game. Now on the Blue Jays side, they were heavily favored to win this game and the series but they don’t have good pitching only getting two pitchers this past offseason and not spending the big bucks on big names. For the hitting side, they have some superstars in Vladimir Guerrero Jr. son of former MLB player and Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero. They also have Matt Chapman, George Springer, Bo Bichette, and many more that did not produce in this game. With all of their hitters going a measly 6-32 and only scoring one run. Only signed 2 players for the offense Brandon Belt and Kevin Kiermaier who don’t even start most of the time.
For the Twins their pitching looked great and their offense looked even better. The starter Pablo Lopez went a good 5.2 innings only allowing 1 run and the bullpen shut it down only allowing one hit for the rest of the game. As Hudson Biller (10) had a comment on this “ I was expecting for the Blue Jays to come in and roll right through the Twins but their pitching imploded and the Twins pitching looked really good in this series and could be great moving forward”. Royce Lewis set a record for two homers in his first two at-bats in the playoffs being the only player to do so. The Twin’s pitching looked great and their offense could be a scary one in the later rounds and a team that you shouldn’t sleep on. The Twin’s offense was too good for the Blue Jays to keep up with.
Game 2 was more of the same as game 1 the Twins kept dominating but this time there were very few fireworks. It was scoreless until the 4th when the Blue Jays manager, John Schneider made a horrendous decision to take out Jose Berrios who had only given up 1 run, and then pulled him for Yusei Kikuchi who gave up another run and the score would stay that way ultimately ending up 2-0 in the Twins favor. The Twins would end up moving on for the first time in over 20 years. The Blue Jays sold this series and they sold it hard, they were heavily favored to win this series but couldn’t get anything going at all. Whenever they could manage to get some guys on base they would get out, for example in the 4th inning of game 2 they had bases loaded but then Vladimir Guerrero Jr. got picked off at 2nd base, slipping the momentum into the Twin’s hands and in that same inning the Twins scored two and the Jays couldn’t answer back. This victory was a good one to soak in since before this series the Twins have lost 18 playoff games in a row. The Twins had had an 18-game postseason losing streak and the last time the Twins won a playoff game was on October 25 2004 Royce Lewis, the hero of this series, was three. The Blue Jays could not keep up with the Twins offense having a really bad bullpen and the offense was kept quiet after the Twins would score. “ The Twins offense looked good and when a team rallies and the fans get into it, the stadium gets loud and puts pressure on the players to see who can come up in the clutch and who can’t,” Cameron Morris (9) said on having home field advantage. The Twins will face the reigning World Series Champions Astros in the ALDS, starting on October 7.
Now for the NL side of things, the Phillies and Marlins faced off in Philadelphia. In game 1 the Phillies threw Zack Wheeler and the Marlins threw Jesus Luzardo. This was a very lopsided game from the start as the Marlins just can’t keep up with the Phillies they don’t have the power guys on their team. The Marlins are more of a contact-first team, as they are 22nd in all of baseball in homers hit in the regular season. The scoring got started in the 3rd with the Phillies scoring one and then scored two in the next inning, never looking back, ending up with a score of 4-1.
The Phillies have really good pitching overall with the 1-2 punch of Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola and then have Ranger Suarez, Micheal Lorenzen, and Tiajuan Walker rounding out the starting rotation and what is in my opinion one of if not the best bullpen in baseball. Their lineup is even more impressive with the addition of Trea Turner in free agency along with superstars like Bryce Harper;
, Nick Castellanos, Bryson Stott, and many more stars in that loaded lineup. Tyler Woodring (12) had an opinion on the Phillies “ The Phillies look unstoppable right now. I personally believe that no one can beat them in their own house. Their fans are amazing energetic and loud. No one would want to come here and not be a little shaken by their fans alone”.
In game 2 the Phillies rolled with Aaron Nola and the Marlins came out with Braxton Garrett to try and keep their dreams alive. It was a scoreless battle until Kyle Schwarber doubled in the 3rd to bring home Christian Pache and in the next at-bat Trea Turner would drive Schwarber in with a single making the score 2-0. It would stay like that until in the bottom of the 6th with the bases loaded Bryson Stott would hit a grand slam to put the game away, putting this game to rest. The final score would be 7-1 and the Phillies would advance and play the Braves in Atlanta starting on October 8th in the NLDS.
The Phillies are always looked over but last year they only won 87 games out of 162, but managed to make it to the World Series but fell short to the Astros in 6 games. You don’t want to be behind this Phillies team or even play them at all because they have one of the best rotations in baseball along with a top 5 bullpen, and could easily shut you out any day of the week. If you are playing this Phillies team, good luck, this team has some of the best players in the game and you will have to run through them if you want to be the best of the best.