wild-card Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
NFL Playoff Capsules
NFL Playoff Capsules,Los Angeles Rams (12-5) at Carolina Panthers (8-9),Saturday, 4:30 p.m. ET,FanDuel odds: Rams -10.5, Total 45.5,Series Rewind: The Panthers have won seven of the past 10 meetings with the most important being the 31-28 home triumph over the Rams in Week 13. Mike Jackson had a pic...
Guardians explode with five-run 8th to force Game 3
CLEVELAND -- Brayan Rocchio belted a go-ahead solo homer and Bo Naylor had a three-run shot as part of a five-run eighth inning, giving the Cleveland Guardians a 6-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers in Game 2 of their American League wild-card series Wednesday afternoon.,The Central Division champion...
Guardians explode in 8th inning to force Game 3 vs. Tigers
CLEVELAND -- Brayan Rocchio belted a go-ahead solo homer and Bo Naylor had a three-run shot as part of a five-run eighth inning, giving the Cleveland Guardians a 6-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers in Game 2 of their American League wild-card series Wednesday afternoon.,The Central Division champion...
High-priced arms take ball as Red Sox-Yankees rivalry crashes wild-card round
NEW YORK -- Max Fried and Garrett Crochet lived up to expectations in sparkling debut seasons as No. 1 starters for the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.,Now it gets real. ,Crochet (Red Sox) and Fried (Yankees) delivered after being acquired in the offseason to become staff aces at the center of ...
Islanders visit Panthers, go for eight consecutive win
The surging New York Islanders will go for their eighth straight win when they visit the Florida Panthers on Sunday.,New York continued its push for an Eastern Conference wild-card spot when it beat Tampa Bay 3-2 in overtime on Saturday, moving within three points of the Lightning for the second wil...
NFL's wild-card ratings tumble amid blowouts
The NFL wild-card round over the past week saw a decline in TV viewership compared to last year, including the weekend's most competitive contest, according to figures released Wednesday.,The overall drop-off from the same round of games a year ago was 9.3 percent.,The Washington Commanders' 23-20 w...
The last year each MLB team reached the World Series
Baseball’s World Series has seen everything, from the breaking of curses to cheating scandals, to huge wins and dynasties, it has also seen almost every team. Here is the last time every team has been in the championship game. ...
The Tampa Bay Rays-Texas Rangers series winner will advance to the World Series
Here’s your de facto American League Championship Series. Sorry to those in Baltimore, your luck will run out despite being undervalued the entire season. Postseason baseball is a different juggernaut. The Toronto Blue Jays and Minnesota Twins just don’t have the firepower to keep up. And Houston co...
MLB's final 10 days in the American League will be pure chaos
Entering the penultimate weekend of baseball’s regular season, so much is in flux. The calming part is the National League. Every division race is wrapped up and the Wild Card will become a matter of which pair of teams are the odd ones out between the Arizona Diamondbacks, Chicago Cubs, Miami Marli...
Behold, the magic of the Blue Jays' face-plant!
It’s been a wonky season for the Toronto Blue Jays. It was supposed to be the one where they leaped from just a playoff team to AL East titan. Didn’t work out. Part of it is that Alek Manoah started throwing wiffle balls. Another part is that Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s power went to the zoo for most of...
MLB scheduling change making it easier for American League East to assert its dominance
Six months or so after the NFC East was the best division in football, the American League East has overtaken MLB. No team is below .500 as of Friday morning/early afternoon, and the fives clubs are a combined 105-56 against opponents outside the division. The Tampa Bay Rays (37-15) and Baltimore Or...
How many wins do the Angels need at the deadline to keep Shohei Ohtani?
If the Los Angeles Angels don’t make the playoffs this season then there’s no question that Shohei Ohtani is gone. Now in his sixth MLB season and heading into free agency, he has yet to reach the postseason and has said that winning is the most important thing to him....
Derek Carr wasn’t that ‘mothaf*cker’ and now he’s not the Raiders’ starting quarterback
Getting suplexed by the lowly Steelers and Kenny Pickett on Sunday Night Football finally broke the spell Derek Carr has on the Raiders. On Wednesday, Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels decided to bench the Raiders’ starting quarterback of the last nine years for the final two weeks of the regular se...
Should a player’s legacy be defined by postseason results?
Justin Verlander has a great shot at winning the American League Cy Young award this year. He pieced together a dominant season — at age 39 — after recovering from Tommy John surgery and helped lead the Houston Astros to another World Series. ...
Rob Manfred strikes again!
MLB entered its last series of the season on Monday, and there wasn’t a game on the schedule worth watching. Wild-card seeding doesn’t really get the blood going, y’know....
If expanding MLB playoffs was about keeping people interested, why does no one care?
The concepts of “parity” and “fairness” in sports were exposed as fig leaves long ago. The idea that fans would care more, i.e. buy more tickets and watch more games on TV, if more teams had a chance at playoff berths and championships was never as important to owners. What was important was not bei...
This is Aaron Judge’s year, but if Yankees win a title, Giancarlo Stanton will be the reason
Make no mistake about it, this season belongs to Aaron Judge and his historic run through MLB America....
Should the Rays, Jays, and Mariners race to the bottom?
We knew the new baseball playoff system, with the addition of a third wildcard team, would create quirks. In a vacuum, it works because all division winners are considered equal. But in reality, where people play the games, they very much are not. Teams are hard to judge on just their record, becaus...
Deadspin Fixes: the MLB playoff format
I noticed Dodgers fans were already bitching to protect themselves even before first pitch about the unfairness of the playoff system that saw their team win 106 games yet faced with the indignity of having to play in the Wild-Card Game. Followed nicely with Yankees fans complaining last night, beca...
No wild-card chaos
Most seasons, on the last day, we hope for some kind of chaos to hit MLB’s playoff system. I think, deep down, it’s because people want to see the wild-card sham proven to be just that. Because having teams play a game just to play a game to get into the playoffs after 162 games and six months is pr...