Three Game 1s, three teams that were supposed to be the guest at somebody else's party, and the common thread in all of it was relief pitching. If you want the short version of the MLB playoff Game 1 results: the starters set the table, and the bullpens ate.
Chicago shut out Cleveland 3-0. Tampa Bay one-hit New York 1-0. Milwaukee outlasted San Diego 3-2 on a night that ended with a baseball bouncing off a roof. Nobody scored more than three runs. In October, that is not a coincidence. That is the sport telling you what it values this month.
MLB playoff Game 1 results: the three finals
| Game 1 | Final | The swing | The arm |
|---|---|---|---|
| White Sox at Guardians | 3-0 CHW | Murakami, 1 HR, 2 RBI | Taylor, 4 IP, 0 H, 0 ER |
| Yankees at Rays | 1-0 TB | Aranda, 1 HR, 1 RBI | Rasmussen, 8 IP, 1 H, 10 K |
| Padres at Brewers | 3-2 MIL | Contreras, 1 HR, 2 RBI | bullpen holds the 9th |
What happened in White Sox vs Guardians Game 1
Five Chicago pitchers combined on a three-hit shutout, which is a sentence that would have gotten you laughed out of a Cleveland bar two years ago. Munetaka Murakami supplied the damage with a two-RBI homer. But the thing I keep rewinding is Grant Taylor finishing the game with four innings, no hits, no runs, and 34 strikes in 42 pitches.
That is an 81 percent strike rate over a four-inning outing in a playoff game. Closers do not do that. Closers get three outs, blow a kiss, and go ice their elbow. Taylor went out there and wrote a short story.
checked the almanac: the last time a reliever rewrote his own job description in October like that, it was Madison Bumgarner throwing five innings on two days' rest in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. Different stakes, same genre. A manager deciding the best arm in the building does not punch a clock.
Drew Rasmussen one-hitter: how Tampa Bay beat the Yankees 1-0
Eight innings, one hit, ten strikeouts, zero runs. Jonathan Aranda hit a solo shot and that was the entire offensive output of the evening for either side. Bryan Baker got the last three outs.
The word out of Tampa this morning is that the Yankees did not just lose, they never got comfortable, and I buy it. A one-hit night in a short series does something to a lineup that a 9-2 loss does not. You can shrug off a blowout. You cannot shrug off a night where you did not even get to feel the bat.
New York has been here before and come out the other side. But they go to the Monday night game needing to prove the at-bats are fixable, not just unlucky.
Brewers vs Padres: the ball that hit the roof
William Contreras put Milwaukee ahead with the go-ahead homer. Then, in the ninth, Ty France hit a ball that by every normal law of this sport was a game-tying home run. It clanked off the roof at American Family Field and came down in Jackson Chourio's glove.
I have watched baseball long enough to know that a closed roof is a defensive player, and nobody ever credits it. Chourio gets the putout and the clean fielding line. The architect gets nothing. Brutal, cosmic luck for San Diego, and the kind of thing a losing clubhouse will be chewing on for a while.
What comes next
San Diego gets its answer fast: the Padres are back at American Family Field on Sunday at 4 ET, with the series lead already in Milwaukee's pocket. Monday brings the other two, the White Sox and Guardians at 5:10 ET in Cleveland, and the Yankees and Rays at 8 ET in Tampa.
What I'm watching: whether Cleveland can get Chicago's bullpen into a fourth and fifth arm early, because the Guardians lost Game 1 to pitchers they barely touched. And whether Taylor is available at all after 42 pitches, because the most interesting question in this series is how far a manager will push the thing that just worked.