4 MLB Teams Are Facing Elimination On Wednesday
The Wild Card round in MLB started on Tuesday, with an action-packed day in four different venues.
In the first game of the day, the Texas Rangers blanked the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field, in front of the lowest attendance for a playoff game in decades.
The Minnesota Twins finally earned their first postseason victory since 2004 by dispatching Kevin Gausman and the Toronto Blue Jays, 3-1.
Later, in the evening, the Arizona Diamondbacks overcame a mediocre start from rookie Brandon Pfaadt and beat Corbin Burnes and the Milwaukee Brewers, 6-3.
The night ended with a 4-1 Philadelphia Phillies victory over the Miami Marlins.
Codify Baseball is here to remind us all a harsh reality for the four squads that lost on Tuesday: they are facing elimination on Wednesday.
It’s true. Four MLB teams could be eliminated today.
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) October 4, 2023
That’s the nature of the Wild Card round: it’s a best-of-three series, which means that teams can slip once, but not twice.
It’s, at least, more forgiving than the previous single-elimination format of the Wild Card Game.
However, if the Rays, Blue Jays, Brewers, or Marlins lose on Wednesday, all their effort over the 162-game season will go to waste.
Of course, if they win, they would force a winner-takes-all tilt on Thursday.
Let’s see what the day has in store for us, but chances are that at least one squad will be saying goodbye.
If that’s the case, it would be a heartbreaking scenario for the players who fought so hard since April.
It’s the nature of the game, though: there is only one winner, and the format is the same for everybody.