There are eight MLB Playoff games scheduled for this weekend, but only a handful of storylines you need to get invested in.
After a full season of baseball — and some bonus games — the MLB Postseason is finally here. Both World Series representatives from last season are back, but there’s a whole host of new faces that are worth getting deeply invested in should your team not be a part of the action.
Rooting for the Houston Astros to repeat is a fine thing to invest in, as is the Dodgers finally getting over the hump and winning a World Series for the first time since the Reagan administration. But baseball is moving forward and the future is well represented this October.
The Postseason is a long grind, but this weekend — the Best Sports Weekend of the Year — features everything you should love about baseball before it gets broken. No one will get eliminated and all of the fun things you’ll want to see and experience are there for the plucking.
It’s a choose-your-own-adventure sort of situation, so grab one of these narratives and use it to guide your Postseason experience this weekend.
Christian Yelich is Must-See TV
If you haven’t heard by now, Christian Yelich is unbelievably good. He’s playing on God Mode right now and is a big reason why the Milwaukee Brewers went 20-7 in September, caught the Cubs, and have the top seed in the National League. The Brewers landed Yelich during Miami’s fire sale this past winter and seem to have pulled off one of the biggest heists in baseball’s recent history. There’s an incredibly solid case for Yelich to win NL MVP this year and he only barely missed the Triple Crown. He’s only going to get better, which is saying a lot considering he just posted the best season in the Majors by hitting .326/.402/.598 with a career-best 36 home runs.
A popular thing for teams to do in this age of baseball is shift fielders to control where hitters can put the ball. But Yelich is unshiftable, he puts the ball anywhere he wants no matter what. Yelich has been great all season, but he’s white-hot entering October, hitting 21-for-43 with six home runs, five doubles and two triples over his last 13 games.
He’s Must-See TV right now.
Meet the Baby Braves
A few years ago the Chicago Cubs arrived earlier than many expected them to. They lost the 2015 NLCS to the New York Mets but returned the next season to win the franchise’s first World Series in 108-years. The Atlanta Braves don’t have that kind of history staring them in the face, but they appear to be on a similar trajectory to that championship Cubs team.
The Baby Braves are a blend of young prospects arriving ahead of schedule in the Majors, and talented veterans helping to steer the ship both on the field and in the locker room. No prospects other than Vlad Gurerro Jr was more hyped that Ronald Acuna. Despite losing a portion of his season to injury, there’s a case to be made that Acuna is the Rookie of the Year by what he did in fewer games than more of his competitors played. His rookie stat line is unreal: 26 home runs, .259 ISO, and .552 slugging percentage this season, while boasting a 4.1bWAR — which means he made the Braves much better with him in the lineup. He’s the headliner of a roster that still features superstar Freddie Freeman, Nick Markakis, Ozhaino Albies and a host of others you’re about to get very familiar with.
Bronx Bombers in Boston
It was very fitting that New York’s blowout win over the A’s was bookended by homers by Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. Despite slumps throughout the year by both — including a recent injury to Judge that made us all wonder if he’d even healthy for the postseason — the Bronx Bombers are back.
Not only are Judge and Stanton showing signs that they’ll be hitting the long ball plenty in October but they’re hitting it hard. Both home runs in the AL Wild Card game had exit velocities of over 115 mph, a trend that isn’t recent. New York had the hardest hits in the Majors this year, with 32 hits clocking in at over 116 mph; the next closest team was Texas with six.
Last year, the bullpen was all the rage in New York. Bullpenning got the Yankees a game away from a wholly unexpected World Series berth, which is probably the only time we’ll be able to say that for a very long time. That bullpen is shakier than it was last October, but even the pen is slightly less stable it’s still coming out in support of what could be the loudest offense in baseball right now. New York boom-roasted the A’s on Wednesday scoring 7-runs, and Red Sox pitchers had best start game planning on how to deal with the entire lineup of hard hitters, not just the Bombers leading the charge.