Six players to watch in American League Wild Card Series

Welcome to — what is it now, our fourth, fifth or sixth annual referendum on Aaron Judge?

Let’s take a look at his resumé highlights: two- and possibly three-time Most Valuable Player. Masher of 368 regular-season home runs. Career .205 post-season hitter. Butcher of a routine fly ball that opened the door to a Los Angeles Dodgers rally from a 5-0 deficit in the 2024 World Series clincher.

Inheritor of almost everything left for him by Derek Jeter. Except the rings.

All rise. You first, Alex Cora.

“Early in the season I was watching him and thinking like, ‘Man, this is tremendous,’” Cora, the Boston Red Sox manager, said Monday ahead of the best-of-three American League Wild Card Series between the teams. “You know, this is eye-opening, just because of the fact that Juan (Soto) went to the Mets, and people were like, ‘Well, you know, they’re going to pitch around him. He’s not going to get pitches to hit.’ Whatever. No, he’s that good.”

Soto and the under-achieving New York Mets aren’t in the post-season this year. Judge is, once again, for the second time in his career in a multi-game series against the Red Sox. He went 6-for-18 with two homers in a 3-1 series loss in the 2018 ALDS, one of his best post-season showings. (The Red Sox also won a one-game wild-card playoff in 2021 in which Judge went 1-for-4).

The Toronto Blue Jays will face the winner in the AL Division Series and the guess here is manager John Schneider must be wishing this was a best-of-five so the teams could afflict maximum damage on each other. In fact, baseball in general probably wouldn’t mind a best-of-five to see whether some life can be breathed into a rivalry that really hasn’t been all that of late. Yankees-Red Sox used to be a deal even in spring training. Now, it pales in comparison to the Los Angeles Dodgers-San Francisco Giants-San Diego Padres triangle of hate. Hell, you can see better fights in the stands of NL Central games.

I don’t know if three games will be enough to re-ignite things. The fact they’re all at Yankee Stadium removes the usual Fenway Park shenanigans from the equation. In fact, given the sloppiness exhibited this season by the Yankees — plus the fact they haven’t won a damned thing since 2009 and have been forced to resort to this wild-card nonsense in the first place — there’s a world in which just as much bitterness will be directed at the home team.

The Red Sox were 9-4 against the Yankees this season, winning eight in a row. They’ve won five of six series at Yankee Stadium since the start of the 2023 season.

True, the Red Sox led the majors in errors with 116. But the Yankees’ middle infield of Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm Jr. gets a routine dose of happy hands. These are two teams that sometimes get in their own way, which means this series has a chance to be more of a hot mess than anything, which, of course, would suit the Blue Jays just fine.

So, yeah, beat the history angle if you must. I’m more interested in the history at stake in the other wild-card series, where the Detroit Tigers get a chance at redemption after becoming the first team in the divisional era to blow a September lead of more than seven-and-a-half games. Teams that cough up leads like that usually need to sit and stew through the off-season until they show up at spring training, often with a new manager and new players. But these Tigers get a chance to erase the memory just days after ceding the AL Central title to the Cleveland Guardians. The baseball gods are not usually that forgiving.

The Yankees and Red Sox start their series Tuesday evening (Sportsnet / Sportsnet+, 6 p.m. ET / 3 p.m. PT) while Game 1 between the Tigers and Guardians goes Tuesday afternoon (Sportsnet / Sportsnet+, 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT).

Here are six players to watch in the AL Wild Card Series:

David Bednar, reliever, Yankees

If the Red Sox have a pronounced advantage in this series, it’s at the back end of the bullpen, an area of focus for the Yankees at the trade deadline which saw them import Bednar from the Pittsburgh Pirates. Bednar recorded 10 saves in 13 opportunities with New York, and while he’ll never be mistaken for Mariano Rivera, he did at least offer a degree of stability that allowed Devin Williams to move into a set-up role and saved manager Aaron Boone a little bit of nightly grief. It wasn’t all smooth — Bednar blew two saves just after his acquisition as he and fellow trade acquisitions Jake Bird and Camilo Doval endured rocky initiations. No other post-season team has a worse bullpen ERA than the Yankees, but Bednar was solid down the stretch with a 1.59 ERA and 0.88 WHIP in September.

Cody Bellinger, OF, Yankees

Of course it’s going to be all about Judge. Of course, it will be intriguing to see whether the same Giancarlo Stanton that hit seven homers in the 2024 post-season (four en route to winning ALCS MVP) while posting a 1.048 OPS with 14 RBIs shows up in 2025. Because the Yankees’ modus operandi is clear: hit homers (they had seven players with at least 20, including Bellinger with 29) to make up for dumb fielding, bad base-running and sometimes-shaky relief. Bellinger’s platoon-neutral lefty bat (.353 against lefty pitchers with 20 extra-base hits) and superb defence have helped Boone’s late-game decision-making, given the need to maximize defence and ensure the health of Judge and Stanton. His personality has been form-fitted for the team and stadium, too.

Alex Bregman, 3B, Red Sox

The secret is out, I guess: the Red Sox’s young core has positioned this team nicely for an extended run in the AL East. But is 2025 a bridge too far? Bregman’s post-season experience — he is the only player to appear in each post-season from 2017-2025 — already revealed itself this month, according to Cora. Tuesday’s game will mark Bregman’s 100th post-season appearance, and he has 19 home runs and a .789 OPS in those games. Yankee Stadium has been a mixed bag for Bregman, but his contact skills remain elite and given the issues created for the Red Sox’s lineup by Roman Anthony’s injury, they’ll need every edge they can find. The moment shouldn’t be too big for him.

Garrett Crochet, SP, Red Sox

Crochet’s status as Game 1 starter was a no-brainer, but his importance increased Monday when the Red Sox announced that Lucas Giolito’s sore elbow meant he was going to be left off the wild-card series roster. The Red Sox have cover for Giolito and the kind of bullpen depth that will allow Cora to piece things together in a third game, if necessary, but a strong start by Crochet will alleviate a great deal of unexpected tension. Crochet led the majors in strikeouts (255) and was sixth in ERA (2.59) as he became the first left-handed pitcher to finish a season with 250-plus strikeouts and an ERA below 2.75 since Madison Bumgarner in 2016. Most impressive, perhaps, was his strong finishing kick: six runs in 27 innings over his last four starts. He made four starts against the Yankees this season, including two at Yankee Stadium where he held the Bombers to a .229 average. Judge is 2-for-13 this season against Crochet with a whopping 10 strikeouts. Both hits were solo homers, including one in a 6-4 Red Sox win on Sept. 14. Is Crochet worried about familiarity? “I have a lot of at-bats to cite, but at the end of the day, for me it’s what I’m most comfortable with in the moment,” he said. “It could be a pitch I haven’t thrown to a guy all year, but if I see an opening for it, I’m going to take it.”

Tarik Skubal, SP, Tigers

In the world of bad sportswriter pseudo-psychology, we keep the idea of a ‘reset’ on a shelf next to ‘momentum.’ But my goodness: few teams in recent memory needed the regular season to give way to the playoffs like these Tigers, who had an ugly last-month winning percentage of .291. And who better to turn the page/write a new chapter/insert your favourite cliché here than the best pitcher in the league? Skubal allowed just four runs (two unearned) in 28 innings over four starts against the Guardians, but he’s had issues at Progressive Field, including his last start Tuesday where he was bunted to death and hit David Fry in the face with a 99 m.p.h. fastball. And don’t forget last year’s post-season, when he served up a grand slam to Lane Thomas. Skubal ended up visiting Fry in hospital, and Tigers manager A.J. Hinch isn’t worried about his ace’s frame of mind: “I think he did an incredible job of switching to being a human being that night,” Hinch said. “He went and visited (Fry) in hospital and was able to connect with him and get some peace that he was going to be OK.” They say momentum is only as good as the next day’s starter, but if Skubal doesn’t win Game 1, all the pitching chaos in the world won’t prevent this from being a sweep.

Cade Smith, reliever, Guardians

Let’s get a little parochial here, shall we? If you’re Canadian, you have a rooting interest in the Guardians. Catcher Bo Naylor, part of the First Family of Canadian Baseball, is from Mississauga, Ont., and has emerged as a clutch offensive performer, with 14 RBIs down the stretch as the Guardians grabbed first place. Edmonton reliever Erik Sabrowski has appeared in 33 games and held left-handed hitters to a .391 OPS (take note, Kerry Carpenter) and, well, then there’s Smith. All the 26-year-old Abbotsford, B.C., native did is replace the suspended Emmanuel Clase as closer and set a career high in strikeouts, ranking in the 96th percentile in whiff percentage. Smith has been one of the best relievers in the majors the past two years — the best by fWAR at 5.3, ahead of San Diego’s Mason Miller (4.3). He’s also seen a lot of the Tigers, who are 10-for-47 (.213) against him with 20 strikeouts and three walks.

Blair’s picks

Yankees def. Red Sox 2-1
Guardians def. Tigers 2-1

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