Nine games over three days were enough to knock off one-third of the playoff field. The wild-card round was full of standout performances as dominant Game 1 starts set the tone for three series sweeps, and dramatic late-inning home runs changed the course of the only series to last all three games. It was a frantic few days of October baseball.
With one round down and three to go, these have been the best playoff performers so far: our All Wild Card Team. The wild card actually had some of the game’s biggest-name catchers, but it was relatively unheralded Higashioka who homered twice — once in each game — and got a congratulatory guitar from Tom Delonge . That’s hard to beat.
Similarly under-the-radar Jake Rogers had three hits for the Tigers , while Salvador Perez went 2-for-7, William Contreras was 2-for-12, and Adley Rutschman was 1-for-8, continuing to struggle after a rough second half. It doesn’t matter that he was 1-for-8 before that final at-bat on Thursday, because Alonso delivered the biggest hit of the round to send the Mets into the division series and keep his Mets tenure alive for at least another week. There really weren’t any other standout first basemen in the wild-card round.
Before Alonso went deep, our choice might have been Brewers bench player Jake Bauers , also because of one (seemingly) massive home run. Coming off a bad second half (.564 OPS), Turang delivered a bounce-back performance in the wild card, much more reminiscent of his strong .
