MLB Playoffs 2024: Storylines to Watch
The MLB Playoffs begin Tuesday, October 1 with the AL & NL Wild Cards.
The 162-game regular season has come to a close, and baseball has treated us to newsworthy final month, complete with an ultra close NL Wild Card race between the Mets, Braves and Diamondbacks. Even for teams we don’t see in the playoff bracket, we saw Oakland, California wish its final sports franchise away, Paul Skenes finish an unreal rookie season, and the White Sox end up making baseball history on the wrong side.
12 teams are ready to continue their season and make a run for the Commissioner’s Trophy, and there are some fabulous stories to watch as the postseason begins.
AJ Hinch faces off against former team
AJ Hinch did not get ejected throughout the entirety of the regular season. That is what everyone would have thought with two outs remaining in that regular season, but in the bottom of the ninth of their final game of the 162-game stretch, Hinch’s Tigers were down 9-5 against the Chicago White Sox, a relatively meaningless game for Chicago, who’d already lost 121 this season, and Detroit, who’ve already clinched their postseason birth, their first in a decade.
With one final side to play, Enyel De Los Santos delivered a 2-2 pitch, hit deep to right field by Zach McKinstry, bobbled by Dominic Fletcher as he worked towards the warning track and the wall. Immediately, Finch challenged, a near guarantee they’d win and try to rally four runs to beat the struggling ‘Sox.
When he didn’t win the challenge, he went to chat with the umpires, resulting in his first ejection of the regular season, with two outs to spare.
If anything, Hinch sparked some fire for his Detroit team, who went 18-8 in September to earn their sixth-place spot in the playoff bracket. The team, led by Matt Vierling, Tarik Skubal and rookie Colt Keith, already has a ‘shock everyone’ mentality, but the incident, about as close to the end of the regular season as you can get, certainly provides some attitude with their postseason mentality.
To add some extra juice, Hinch is managing his first playoff series against the team that fired him in 2019, the Houston Astros. At the time, the ‘Sign Stealing Scandal’ was leading headlines in the sports world, and the Houston management was hit with the brunt of the MLB repercussions, a controversial decision by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to not penalize the players. Hinch was issued a year-long suspension, the longest for a manager for in-game conduct in baseball history.
With a year-long suspension, Houston had to make a change to have a manager for the season, so they fired Hinch and turned to Dusty Baker. After a one-year abscense from the game, Hinch was hired in Detroit, which leads Hinch to a rare club ahead of the wild card series between the two clubs.
Hinch joins Terry Francona and Billy Martin as the only three managers in history to face a team in a postseason series that they previously led to a World Series title. Francona did it in 2016 with the Indians (now Guardians) against the Red Sox, and Martin was the first to do it in 1981 against the Yankees with his Oakland A’s.
“Baseball is going to take you places,” Hinch said with a grin in his press conference on Sunday. “Sometimes, it’s going to take you where you’ve been.”
Hinch delivered some passionate statements on the team’s mentality, and he assured everyone that the mission is clear.
“We’re trying to go win a series to bring a home playoff game to Comerica.”
OPINION
Yankees get playoff bye, tasked with roster moves before ALDS series
With the regular season concluded, the Yankees have gotten plenty large enough of a sample size to determine what to do with roster moves before the 2024 postseason, a postseason that they find themselves as the AL’s #1 seeded team.
Specifically, the questions come on near opposite ends of the field - left field and first base - as the positions have seen multiple different faces throughout the season.
In left field, the Yankees can take a big chance on Jasson Dominguez, the switch-hitting, highly anticipated prospect who started all final five regular season games in left to get acclimated, a potential sign from Aaron Boone and the Yankees that he may be in that position for some impending big games.
In those final five, Dominguez had just two hits in 15 at-bats in series’ against Baltimore and Oakland. Baltimore, who allowed one single from Dominguez, could be the Yankees’ first playoff opponent, as they take on Kansas City in the Wild Card Round, winner goes to The Bronx.
The Yankees used to boo Alex Verdugo in left field. In fact, in 2021, Yankees fans threw a baseball that hit Verdugo, but that was when he was he was wearing navy blue and red for the Red Sox, and now, in typical Yankee fashion, he’s been welcomed into the Pinstripes with valuable contributions to the team since his arrival before this season.
Verdugo has seen 559 at-bats this year, compiling 130 hits and 61 RBIs, a viable candidate to start in left field, at least to begin the ALDS series.
Sure, it would be a huge confidence boost to give Dominguez a shot in a big way, but the win now mentality has to apply in this circumstance. The Yankees are the best seed in the AL playoffs for the first time since 2012, despite memorable seasons in 2017 and 2019 that both ended in losses to Houston in the ALCS. It’s a huge opportunity to seize a World Series title that fans in New York - and across the globe - have waited to seize since 2009.
Verdugo isn’t a no-brainer, but he’s the reliable option in left field, a position the Yankees need to stick with experience in. The errors made in the position since the retirement of Brett Gardner have been clear, and Verdugo brings a little bit more to the table.
As for the first base side, it’s a little bit more tricky. Anthony Rizzo is dealing with fractured fingers that put his health into question for the ALDS, perhaps forcing the Yankees to go with another rookie, Ben Rice, to fill the first base corner for the time being.
Rice is a natural catcher, but he holds more experience at first base than the third alternative, Oswaldo Cabrera, and his offensive production is promising, leading many fans and media to lean towards Rice getting the nod to start the postseason after being called back up to the big leagues from the AAA affiliate, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, just last week, a strategic move by New York to make him available for the postseason.
Mets and Braves deliver October baseball one day short
The phrase “October Baseball” has become synonymous with electricity, high stakes, all-on-the-line baseball, and we were treated to an appetizer on Monday with the down-to-the-wire doubleheader between division rivals in New York and Atlanta.
Going into the doubleheader, the situation was clear. If the Braves swept, then they’d make the postseason along with last year’s World Series runner-ups, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and vice versa for a Mets sweep. If the two teams split their doubleheader one apiece, they’d both go to the postseason, kicking out Arizona, and that’s the situation that played out.
The unfortunate circumstance for Arizona made more baseball history, as both teams from last year’s World Series matchup missed this year’s playoffs for the first time since 2007.
The result didn’t happen without drama, though, as the first game between the two ended in an 8-7 Mets win, one of the best and most exciting games in Mets history.
Atlanta led 2-0 early off an Ozzie Albies homer in the bottom of the third, a lead they’d extend to 3-0 much later in the bottom of the sixth. The Mets were scoreless until the eighth, but they made up for it with a six-run eighth inning, claiming their first lead, 6-3.
The Braves didn’t take it lightly, answering with four runs of their own in the bottom half of the eighth, seizing their lead back, 7-6.
Fransisco Lindor, a seasoned veteran, and part of the Cleveland Indians’ 2016 World Series runner-up team launched a 413-foot homer, grabbing a Mets 8-7 lead, which is where Edwin Diaz shut down the Braves in the bottom of the inning and earning the Mets trip back to the playoffs after a 2023 absence.
The Mets look to make it past the NL Wild Card round for the first time since their 2015 World Series loss to Kansas City.
Not to disappoint anyone looking to double the thrill, but game two of the doubleheader was relatively uneventful, as the Braves gained a lead in the second inning and never surrendered it, shutting out New York 3-0 to earn a trip to the postseason and shutting out Arizona from continuing their season.
Luke Brown is a 2024 graudate of Camp Hill high school and first-year student at Rowan University, studying Sports Communication. With bylines in PennLive, NJ.com and various media outlets, this is his forum to create sports content on the side. Subscribe today!