Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – Rookie pitcher Cam Schlittler made a spectacular post-season debut, striking out 12 in eight scoreless innings to carry the New York Yankees to a 4-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox and into the second round of the Major League Baseball playoffs on Thursday. Schlittler gave up just five hits and retired the last nine batters he faced — aided in the eighth inning by third baseman Ryan McMahon’s stellar catch somersaulting into the Red Sox dugout. The Yankees completed a 2-1 wild card series win over their archrivals to book a best-of-five American League division series clash with the Toronto Blue Jays starting Saturday.
“Win or go home situation, just happy to be able to help the team and get the win and go to Toronto,” Schlittler said after the Yankees, who lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in last year’s World Series, sealed the win. Four runs in the seventh inning were all the support the 24-year-old hurler needed. Cody Bellinger led off the frame with a double that multiple Red Sox players failed to field. Amed Rosario drove in the game’s first run with a single to left, and Anthony Volpe’s bases-loaded single to right scored another run. Austin Wells then chopped a ball to first that was mishandled by Nathaniel Lowe, scoring two more to put New York up 4-0 and end the night of Boston’s rookie starting pitcher Connelly Early.
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The Detroit Tigers and Chicago Cubs came out in the day’s two other deciding game threes. Dillon Dingler hit a go-ahead home run and Javier Baez sparked a four-run seventh inning as the Tigers beat the Cleveland Guardians 6-3. The Tigers turned the tables on the Guardians, extending a topsy-turvy season in which they led Cleveland by a massive 15-and-a-half game margin in July only for the Guardians to pip them for the American League Central division title. The Tigers’ epic mid-season collapse helped Cleveland author the biggest regular-season comeback in baseball history. But it’s the Tigers, who won game one but lost game two of the best-of-three wild card series in Cleveland, who will face the American League West champion Seattle Mariners in a best-of-five AL division series.
“It was very satisfying,” said Dingler, who grew up in Ohio. “You know, we played this team way too many times in the later part of the season.” Designated hitter Kerry Carpenter gave Detroit a 1-0 lead with a third-inning double. Cleveland tied it up in the fourth, but Dingler’s solo homer put Detroit up 2-1 in the sixth. Baez then led off the seventh with a double and reached third on a bunt by Parker Meadows. Wenceel Perez smacked a single that scored them both before Spencer Torkelson and Riley Green added run-scoring singles to push Detroit’s lead to 6-1. Cleveland clawed back two runs in the bottom of the eighth but couldn’t conjure more comeback magic.
The Chicago Cubs, in the playoffs for the first time since 2020, beat the San Diego Padres 3-1 to advance to a National League division series meeting with the top-seeded Milwaukee Brewers. The Cubs chased Padres starting pitcher Yu Darvish in the second inning, loading the bases with nobody out and scoring two runs on a Pete Crow-Armstrong single and a walk by Dansby Swanson. Michael Busch belted a solo home run off reliever Robert Suarez to push Chicago’s lead to 3-0 in the seventh and Chicago survived a nervy top of the ninth which San Diego’s Jackson Merrill led off with a solo home run.
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