VEB Open Thread – Wild Card Wednesday, 10/06/21

Good morning! The day is finally here. Wild Card Wednesday! In yesterday’s American League Wild Card Game, the Red Sox defeated the Yankees by a 6-2 final score. Yankees starter Gerrit Cole pitched into the third inning but was pulled in the inning after a leadoff blast from Kyle Schwarber, followed by a walk and a base hit. Cole’s final line: 2 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 3K. On the other side, Nathan Eovaldi turned in 5 ¹⁄₃ innings of one-run ball, punching out eight along the way. One of Eovaldi’s only mistakes of the night being an Anthony Rizzo solo homer.

The Cardinals are in Los Angeles to take on the Dodgers in the National League Wild Card Game tonight, at 7:00 PM Central time. The Cardinals were a 90-win team in the 2021 regular season, padded by their historic 17-game winning streak. On the other side, the Dodgers went 106-56, and fell one game shy of the 107-win Giants for the NL West crown. In the seven-game season series, the Dodgers bested the Cardinals, 4-3. Their last meeting — a four-game set at Busch Stadium the week of Labor Day — featured a split; the Dodgers won the first two, and the Cardinals took the back two. Looking back, those two wins really seemed to be a start of St. Louis’s dominant run for the remainder of the month.

It’ll be a starting pitching matchup of two right-handers who have done about everything the game has to offer: Max Scherzer, the Dodgers’ big deadline acquisition and a candidate for the Cy Young Award, opposite of Adam Wainwright, St. Louis’s most consistent and best performing hurler of the last two years.

In a story for Fox Sports, Jake Mintz detailed ‘possible outcomes’ for tonight’s big game. Of course, the majority of the outcomes include positive notes for those in Dodger blue. However, I think you’ll all enjoy this outcome — the final listed in the article.

Have a great day everyone! Good luck thinking about anything other than the Wild Card Game.