September Madness: MLB stages 8 playoff games in 1 day

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Shortly after noon in Atlanta, Nick Senzel of the Cincinnati Reds slapped the first pitch from Max Fried to right field for a single, starting a day of baseball unlike any that had come before.

Eight postseason games, all set to start in a span of around 10 hours.

“This is like September Madness,” Houston manager Dusty Baker said. “It’s going to be mad.”

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Wednesday indeed had a bit of an NCAA Tournament feel, with a smorgasbord of playoff games starting early in the afternoon and scheduled to last long into the night. For much of the 20th century, baseball had a maximum of seven games in any single postseason. Wednesday’s schedule alone included more than that, the result of an expanded postseason for 2020 that includes 16 teams after a regular-season shortened to 60 games by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our country needs it, it’s very therapeutic,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before his team's night game against Milwaukee. “It’s a diversion.”

There’s no telling when or if the sport will have a day like this again. It won’t happen this year — when the Astros beat Minnesota 3-1, they eliminated the Twins and ensured that Thursday’s postseason slate won’t be completely full.

The Reds were ready when they came to the plate against Atlanta. They swung at the game’s first three pitches, hitting two singles to put men on first and third with nobody out.

Then the Braves escaped the jam with no scoring, setting the tone for the day.

It took a while for anyone anywhere to score. When the first run came, it was in Houston’s game at Minnesota, which started about an hour after the Braves and Reds. Kyle Tucker drove in a run for the Astros with a fourth-inning single.

That was around the time the Miami Marlins and Chicago Cubs were getting started. In a season when ballparks have been off-limits to fans, this at least was a feast of baseball on television.

“It’s cool. I’ve been in my office a lot, kind of getting ready, with the games on, flipping back and forth and seeing what’s going on in the league,” New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone said prior to his team’s night game at Cleveland. “One of the things of this expanded playoffs this year, I’m sure the real baseball fans are in a little bit of heaven today, getting to see all these games.”

Atlanta and Cincinnati remained scoreless into extra innings, which meant at one point, five games were in progress simultaneously. In addition to Braves-Reds, Astros-Twins and Cubs-Marlins, the Chicago White Sox were playing at Oakland, and Tampa Bay was hosting Toronto.

The first game to end was Houston’s victory over the Twins — Minnesota’s 18th consecutive postseason loss. The Braves finally beat the Reds a little while later, when Freddie Freeman singled in the 13th inning to bring home the game’s only run.

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That was the first postseason game to be scoreless after 11 innings, and Cincinnati’s Trevor Bauer became the first pitcher in postseason history to strike out 12 batters while allowing no runs, no walks and two or fewer hits.

The next game to end was Miami’s 5-1 victory. The Marlins have never lost a postseason series. They memorably won the final two games of the 2003 NL Championship Series at Wrigley Field, and they began this best-of-three series with the Cubs in similar fashion.

The White Sox are also facing elimination after Oakland's 5-3 victory forced Game 3 of that series. It will be another winner-take-all game for the Athletics, who since 2000 have gone 0-6 in Game 5 of the Division Series and 0-3 in wild-card games.