In the seven-year history of the current Major League Baseball playoff format, Tuesday night just might be the oddest Wild Card Game of the bunch. The Chicago Cubs will host the Colorado Rockies at Wrigley Field in the National League Wild Card Game (8 p.m. ET, ESPN, Watch ESPN), adding to what will be a long week for the winner.
As of Monday morning, the day after the regular season was supposed to end, neither the Cubs nor Rockies knew where they would open their playoffs. There was still the matter of deciding both the NL Central and NL West, with a pair of tiebreaker games on Monday. The Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers won, advancing to the NL Division Series, which banished Chicago and Colorado to the single-elimination Wild Card Game just one night later.
NL Wild Card Game info, TV & streaming
- Teams: Rockies (91-72) vs. Cubs (95-68)
- Location: Wrigley Field, Chicago
- Time: 8 p.m. ET
- TV: ESPN
- Online: Watch ESPN
Needing to account for an extra day taxed both pitching staffs, such that Kyle Freeland is starting on three days rest for the first time for Colorado. Freeland had arguably the best pitching season in Rockies franchise history, posting a club-record 2.85 ERA in his 33 starts, including an unfathomable 2.40 ERA at Coors Field. He threw 96 pitches in six innings in his last start, on Friday, winning his 17th game of the season.
“I’ve done everything I could to get my arm feeling good from my last start, and it feels good right now,” Freeland told Kyle Newman of the Denver Post. “I’m ready to go, and I’m not too worried about being on short rest.”
The Cubs will turn to Jon Lester, with one of the best postseason resumes in the game. Lester has a 2.55 ERA in 21 career playoff starts and has been a part of three World Series winners. His only Wild Card Game start was in 2014 with the A’s, when he took a 5-3 lead into the eighth inning before the Royals started their magical October run with a three-run rally off Lester.
The Rockies and Cubs split six games during the regular season, with Colorado winning two of three games at Wrigley Field in April. Freeland took the only Rockies loss in that series at Wrigley Field, on Apr. 30, though he allowed just three runs in seven innings.
ESPN will televise the NL Wild Card Game, with the usual ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ crew of Matt Vasgersian, Jessica Mendoza, Alex Rodriguez and Buster Olney on the call. Online streaming is available through Watch ESPN.
Rockies vs. Cubs NL Wild Card Game Live Results
Want to read the live blog from the beginning? Scroll down to the “1st inning” marker and work your way back up!
2nd inning: The Rockies are afraid people don’t know much about them, so they took care of that with some Twitter posting:
Ian Desmond was real bad in 2018, but less bad than in 2017, so he had that going for him. He just flew out to center before I could describe to you the breadth and depth of his badness, but don’t worry, he’ll be at the plate a couple more times tonight.
David Dahl swings early and nearly sends the ball out of the park to put the Rockies up 2-0, but nope, a leaping catch at the ivy by Albert Almora registers the second out. Backstop Chris Iannetta put up a little more of a fight, but Lester gets out of the second inning unscathed, 1-2-3.
Almora kicks off the bottom of the second with a hard-hit single, but Daniel Murphy grounds to Desmond, who gets the lead runner. No one covered at first so Murphy is charged with a Fielder’s Choice, with the Cubs avoiding what should have been a double play.
1st inning: Hello baseball fans, and welcome to the official kickoff of the 2018 MLB postseason. Please disregard the thing where MLB’s website was saying that the Game 163s on Monday were part of the postseason: those wins counted as regular season wins, the stats as regular season stats, and MLB was just lying to you for attention. The nerve.
Tonight, though, we’ve got the losers of Monday’s Game 163s, with the Cubs hosting the Rockies in Chicago. The Rockies lost last season’s NL Wild Card Game to the Diamondbacks, whereas the Cubs were, once again, in the National League Championship Series. So if you’re looking to root for the team with the least recent success, it’s the Rockies.
Hey, it’s been almost two years since the Cubs won the World Series, you’ve had time to get used to your new reality. You know, the one in which the Rockies have never won the World Series — they’ll take their first step toward changing that on Tuesday. Or, you know, maintain the status quo and force more Cubs’ postseason baseball on the rest of us. Whichever.
This is Marc now, by the way, Eric wrote the stuff about the Cubs that isn’t making Cubs fans annoyed right now. Don’t yell at him for my beliefs. Even though he probably shares them.
Jon Lester is on the mound for the Cubs — he pitched that nightmare Wild Card Game in 2014 for the A’s. In a related story, here’s a walk to open the game, to Charlie Blackmon. That brings up D.J LeMahieu, who shows bunt when up in the count 3-1 for some reason. A graphic just showed up saying Lester had the most full counts in MLB this season — that is probably not a positive! Despite that cycle of potential self-owns, though, Lester had a great season, with a 129 ERA+, the sixth-best in his 13-year career.
We’ve already got some Wrigley-specific drama, as LeMahieu hit a ball to the outfield that got stuck in the ivy, so the runners had to hold at second and third. Nolan Arenado hits a sacrifice fly right away to drive Blackmon in, so it’s 1-0 Rockies, with LeMahieu now at third.
Trevor Story looked pretty bad on a curve way outside, and Lester gets his second out. The Cubs’ lefty is nearly out with minimal-ish damage. He’ll have to get past Matt Holliday, Rockies legend and midseason pickup, before we can say that for sure, though. And another K! See, I told you Lester worked through the potential self-owns.
And here’s Lester’s counterpart, Rockies’ lefty Kyle Freeland. He’s a big fastball guy, as this graphic and Jessica Mendoza explanation tell us, who also utilizes a slider about one-third of the time, and a changeup for a third offering. Freeland had a 164 ERA+ this year, in just over 200 innings — neither of those are figures you see very often from Rockies’ starters.
Zobrist rewards Freeland for those accomplishments by opening the bottom of the first with a single, bringing up Kris Bryant. Bryant had a ho-hum season for him, one that still saw him be well, well above-average, but you can blame injuries for that. Down goes Bryant on a swinging strikeout.
Oh wow! Zobrist got caught at first base on a pickoff. It’s “wow” in part because Freeland hasn’t had a pickoff all season long, despite his left-handedness. The call is being challenged by the Cubs, and they might have a point. The umps agree! Call overturned, Zobrist remains at first, but there are still two outs (Anthony Rizzo flew out) and Javier Báez at the plate.
Báez strikes out on a pitch that was low low low, and the first inning ends with the Rockies still up, 1-0.
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