The 2026 Major League Baseball postseason began on September 29 with four Wild Card Series openers, and by the end of the night three of the four higher seeds were a single win from the division series. Two of those wins were shutouts.
The Wild Card round is best-of-three, with every game at the higher seed's ballpark. That format is unforgiving: a team that loses the opener has no margin left, and three of the eight clubs now face elimination on Wednesday.
Yankees 9, Red Sox 0
New York's rookie right-hander Cam Schlittler delivered the performance of the night: 6⅓ scoreless innings, 10 strikeouts, 117 pitches. Boston managed three hits all game.
Ben Rice supplied the offense, hitting two home runs — one of them a grand slam — and driving in six runs. Austin Wells had opened the scoring with a two-out single in the second, Rice made it 2-0 with a solo shot in the fifth, and the Yankees then put up seven in the eighth to turn a tight game into a rout.
The Yankees did it without Aaron Judge, who was left off the Wild Card roster with a calf injury.
Padres 8, Cubs 0
Michael King came within four outs of a no-hitter. He went seven innings, struck out eight, walked three and allowed a single hit — an infield single by Nico Hoerner with two outs in the seventh.
San Diego did not wait to hit. Fernando Tatis Jr. homered on the very first pitch the Padres saw. Manny Machado also went deep in the first and added an RBI double in the third; Xander Bogaerts hit a 399-foot home run in the fourth after an eight-pitch at-bat; Jackson Merrill drove in two with a fifth-inning single.
Braves 5, Phillies 3
The one genuinely close game. Austin Riley turned it with a three-run home run in the eighth off Philadelphia closer Jhoan Duran — 385 feet, 104.6 mph off the bat — which swung Atlanta's win probability from about 29% to 93% in a single swing.
Riley has now homered in three of his last four postseason games against the Phillies, a run that is becoming its own subplot in a rivalry that has produced October meetings with some regularity.
White Sox 6, Astros 3
The upset. Chicago, the sixth seed, scored in the first and added two in the second, and every player in their lineup had reached base by the fifth. Five of the nine starters reached multiple times and four drove in a run. Houston, seeded third, never found an answer in the bullpen exchange that followed.
It is a continuation of the season's strangest story: the White Sox reached the postseason on the final day after a turnaround few in the sport had priced in.
Game 2, Wednesday
All four series resume on September 30, with the same home fields:
- Phillies at Braves, 2 p.m. ET
- White Sox at Astros, 5 p.m. ET
- Red Sox at Yankees, 8 p.m. ET
- Cubs at Padres, 10 p.m. ET
Any series that goes the distance plays Game 3 on Thursday.
Reporting from CBS Sports, NBC Sports, Bleacher Report and Sports Illustrated.
