Bryce Bounces Back And 3 Teams Advance: 4 Takeaways From MLB Wild Card Action

Eight teams entered the wild-card round on Tuesday. Three are already heading home Wednesday. That’s playoff baseball for you. The Red Sox, Astros and Cubs didn’t get to technically play October baseball. But the Yankees, White Sox and Padres made sure to keep their hopes of a deep run alive. That just leaves us one more wild-card matchup (Phillies vs. Braves) to settle. Here are our takeaways from Wednesday’s action: Rowan Kavner: The repercussions of two San Francisco Giants trades threatened to end the Phillies’ season Wednesday afternoon at Truist Park. ‘On Aug. 2, the Giants sent starter Tyler Mahle to Atlanta. The move garnered little attention at the time, but Mahle would become the most consequential player to switch teams at the deadline. On Aug. 3, the Giants traded Luis Arraez to the Phillies, who then reshuffled their defensive alignment to accommodate the infielder. One of those moves, shifting Bryce Harper from first base to right field, nearly had ruinous consequences in Game 2 of the wild-card series. Mahle delivered seven innings of one-run ball on Wednesday to put Atlanta in prime position to move on to the National League Division Series. Arraez, meanwhile, didn’t make the Phillies’ wild-card roster after spraining his ankle a week ago. Harper, however, remained in right field for the first two games of the playoffs. That decision backfired in the seventh inning Wednesday when Harper misplayed a fly ball from Drake Baldwin, allowing the go-ahead run to score. A sacrifice fly followed, adding an insurance run for the Braves, ending Cristopher Sánchez’s day and endangering the Phillies’ season. “It doesn’t matter what you did the at-bat before, the inning before,” Harper said. “It’s what you do in that moment.” An inning later, the moment found Harper again. And this time, he delivered in a 4-3 comeback win to keep the Phillies’ season alive. Braves reliever Dylan Lee hadn’t allowed a home run to a left-handed hitter all year before Kyle Schwarber and Harper started the eighth inning with back-to-back shots to tie the game, erasing Mahle’s superb work. Mahle, who stepped up with a 1.99 ERA over nine second-half starts to lessen the Braves’ rotation concerns, aced his first playoff test in Atlanta, outdueling a Cy Young contender in Sánchez before handing the ball to one of the best bullpens in baseball. But his gem was not rewarded. Lee blew the lead, Andrew Painter provided three vital innings of relief for Philadelphia to keep the game tied, and Alec Bohm delivered the deciding blow in the 10th inning with a solo shot off Didier Fuentes to keep the Phillies’ season going in a back-and-forth battle. An elimination Game 3 will take place Thursday in Atlanta. “I really, really don’t want this year to end,” Bohm said. Deesha Thosar: With one decisive swing, Chase Meidroth sucked all the air out of Houston. For Chicago, call it the franchise’s biggest hit of the past five years. The White Sox were hanging onto a miniscule one-run lead when Meidroth’s three-run home run off Astros reliever Bryan Abreu in the sixth inning broke the game open. As the South Siders charged ahead to a 7-3 lead that they would never relinquish, Meidroth and his flowing brown locks rounded the bases in unbridled joy. The 25-year-old second baseman joined the White Sox from Boston as part of the Garrett Crochet trade in 2024. It was, by far, the most memorable and clutch hit of Meidroth’s budding career. “There’s no better feeling than coming through for the guys,” he said. Moments before Meidroth’s deafening shot, none other than Astros homegrown legend Jose Altuve had the perfect opportunity to put his team in front. The Astros, trailing 4-3, had loaded the bases for Altuve, who had already hit a solo shot in the fourth inning. All he needed was a hit, something he had done 120 times in 107 playoff games for Houston. But Altuve flew out to right field, and with him, the Astros’ dreams of making something out of an otherwise disappointing season went down the drain. After all, the Astros were the team with the worst record (81-81) ever to win a division. Given how the year unfolded, it was always going to be a longshot for Houston to suddenly resemble a serious playoff team. One of their only hopes was slugger Yordan Alvarez, the AL MVP favorite after crushing 42 home runs in a full, healthy season for the Astros. But the White Sox pitching staff kept Alvarez in the ballpark throughout the series. He went 1-for-8 with his lone hit being a single in Tuesday’s 6-3 loss. “They made sure they came in with the objective of not letting Yordan beat them,” Astros manager Joe Espada said. “If I’m on the other side, I would have come in here with the same game plan, not letting Yordan beat you. But I thought they executed really well. We couldn’t get our bats going. We had some opportunities but just couldn’t get that big hit.” Preseason projection systems had this year’s White Sox team penciled in to lose close to 100 games. Instead, they went 84-78, and were this close to grabbing the division title from the Guardians. Chicago’s successful season was built from a band of misfits, including Savannah Banana to AL All-Star, Tristan Peters, and Nippon Professional Baseball slugger to 35-homer AL All-Star, Munetaka Murakami. They believed, since the club came together at spring training, that they had the right blend of players to prove the world wrong. The White Sox, after recording three consecutive 100-loss seasons from 2023-2025, now advance to the ALDS to face the Guardians. They will look for their first ALDS victory since 2021 and after that, they hope, their first trip back to the World Series since they won it all in 2005. Thosar: The Red Sox knew that facing the Yankees’ elite rotation was going to be the toughest uphill battle in a season full of them. What they didn’t expect, what they couldn’t have known, was how much of a force the Yankees offense would suddenly become while their best hitter sat on the bench trying to make his way back from injury. Aaron Judge, idling in the dugout wearing a sweatshirt with the hoodie pulled over his head, watched as the Yankees embarrassed the Red Sox for a second consecutive day, ending Boston’s season on a balmy night in the Bronx. There was action up and down New York’s lineup in its 9-2 series-clinching win on Wednesday — something the Bombers have struggled to consistently provide throughout most of the season without their key sluggers. Giancarlo Stanton, who hasn’t played since April 24, was actually activated and included on the Yankees’ wild-card series roster against the Red Sox, unlike Judge. But the Yankees never needed either of their big bats to dispose of their longtime division rivals and advance to the ALDS against the Rays. Throughout Game 2, the Yankees were in cruise control. Left-hander Max Fried kept Boston’s bats at bay with six innings of one-run ball, and New York provided plenty of run support with 14 hits, including at least one hit from each of its nine starters. “Being able to celebrate with your teammates after a playoff series win, it doesn’t get old,” Fried said. “This is what we start practicing in February for. This is where we want to be. So just about playing our game, having fun and hopefully we’ve got a couple more of these that we can do.” The Red Sox failed to generate enough offense to be a real threat to the Yankees at any point during the wild card series. They were without Roman Anthony for the majority of Game 1 and all of Game 2 after the outfielder went down with a hand injury. That left catcher Adley Rutschman and first baseman Willson Contreras as the only bats who could realistically do some damage. Contreras, at least, snapped Boston’s 26 ⅔ scoreless innings streak in the postseason with a solo shot in the sixth. But that was never going to be enough against a 93-win Yankees team that relied on its elite starting pitching staff to get it to this point. Plus, Chad Tracy’s moves backfired. The Red Sox manager deployed southpaw Garrett Crochet in the sixth inning — his first time pitching since April after being sidelined all season with a shoulder and lat injury — only for the Yankees to pulverize him. Crochet faced four batters and coughed up four runs while failing to record an out. He was booed off the mound by the Bronx faithful. In the same inning, Tracy and the Red Sox opted to intentionally walk the red-hot Ben Rice in favor of facing Cody Bellinger. It backfired. On the second pitch of the at-bat, Bellinger slugged a three-run home run to right field, increased New York’s lead to 8-1, and buried the Red Sox for good. “Regardless of all the special things that happened this summer, and there were quite a few, the goal is to win the World Series, and that ended for us tonight,” Tracy said. “So it’s frustrating. And there’s a lot of things you can say, but in the moment, right now, I think the guys only care that we lost. And it’s going to take some time to get over that.” Kavner: In Game 1, the Padres’ offensive stars dazzled. In Game 2, their bullpen arms dominated. And after two nights of quieting the highest-scoring lineup in the sport, stymying the National League MVP favorite, dissecting a depleted Cubs pitching staff, exploiting one of MLB’s most electrifying home-field advantages and dominating in every way imaginable, the Padres are moving on to the NLDS, where they’ll face the Brewers in a matchup of baseball’s two best teams since the All-Star break. “I can’t speak for anyone else,” Padres third baseman Manny Machado told me, “but playing here, tonight, these last two days, I’ve never felt anything like it. I never have.” The Padres demonstrated why they went 51-30 at home this year. A raucous crowd, featuring 47,000-plus screaming fans twirling yellow towels both nights, seemed to help smother a Cubs offense that led MLB this year in OPS and scoring. The Cubs got outscored 12-1 in the series, with standouts Pete Crow-Armstrong and Alex Bregman finishing a combined 0-for-15 with eight strikeouts. “Those were the two guys we marked as, ‘We don’t want those guys to beat us in this series,’” said Padres manager Craig Stammen. “We tried our best to set up our pitching to handle them.” In Game 1, it was starter Michael King who shut down the star duo. In Game 2, it was Nick Pivetta and a well-rested, fearsome bullpen. Bradgley Rodriguez, Jason Adam, Adrian Morejon and Mason Miller combined to allow just two hits over 5.2 scoreless innings to finish off the sweep. And after their offensive stars powered them forward at the plate in Game 1, with Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill combining for six hits, five RBI and five runs scored, it was the depth of the lineup that shined in Game 2. Ty France doubled and scored. Xander Bogaerts had two hits, including an RBI single off Kevin Gausman to start the scoring Wednesday night. And Gavin Sheets, behind a chorus of “Ho-ly Sheets” chants, came off the bench and parked a two-run homer to right field to break the game open. San Diego’s shutdown bullpen took it from there. A Nico Hoerner double was the only extra-base hit the Padres surrendered all series. And now, the hottest team in baseball will move on to face its best, the 103-win Brewers, in the NLDS. “We’re playing as a group, playing as a whole,” Machado told me. “Everyone’s pulling by the same rope. Wherever you have that going, it’s impressive to see. It’s impressive to be a part of. Never seen anything like it.”