The condensed nature of the best-of-three Wild Card Series made Wednesday's Game 2 action a win-or-go-home contest for the Atlanta Braves, Baltimore Orioles, Houston Astros and Milwaukee Brewers. Love it or hate it, it certainly makes for a dramatic, high-stakes way to kick off the MLB postseason. The format here is simple: Four games, eight teams, and a couple quick-hit reactions for each club, focusing on individual performances and bigger picture ramifications for the teams whose offseason begins on Wednesday.
Buckle up for another full day of postseason baseball action! AL Wild Card: Detroit Tigers at Houston Astros AL Wild Card: Kansas City Royals at Baltimore Orioles NL Wild Card: New York Mets at Milwaukee Brewers NL Wild Card: Atlanta Braves at San Diego Padres The Pitching-By-Committee Approach Can Actually Work Teams have been experimenting with openers and bulk relievers for several years now, but we have never seen anything quite like what the Detroit Tigers have been doing for the past few months. Manager A.J.
Hinch has pulled all the right strings with his unique approach to deploying the pitching staff during the Tigers surge into contention with a 3.02 ERA in August (2nd in MLB) and a 2.79 ERA in September (4th in MLB).
The Tigers pitching staff is essentially AL Cy Young front-runner Tarik Skubal and then everyone else, and Hinch made it clear that all 11 other pitchers were in play to see action in Game 2 after their ace tossed a gem in Game 1. To that point.