▪ Lefthanded reliever Josh Taylor was activated from the injured list after being sidelined for the end of the season with a lower-back strain. The Sox added four players to their roster who had not been with the team at the end of the regular season. Red Sox AL Wild Card Game roster - 6:50 p.m. What to make of it? Read Alex Speier’s full story here.Īnd Chad Finn looks at what we thought once might be impossible: That baseball could make itself interesting enough to steal the NFL’s thunder. (The 2020 postseason featured an expanded playoff pool with the first-round featuring best-of-three series between the eight playoff teams.) The Sox are one of nine teams that has never experienced one – until now.
Twenty-one teams have experienced the Wild Card Game in the eight postseasons, from 2012-19, during which it’s been around. It has also created a tremendously intense, often wildly entertaining game for wild-card teams at the start of their postseason paths.
That format significantly increases the appeal of winning a division. In so doing, the league went from awarding one wild-card team direct passage to the League Division Series to a one-game, win-or-go-home showdown between the two wild-card teams. In 2012, MLB expanded the playoffs from four to five teams in each league, adding a second wild-card team in each league. This wild-card format is working - 7:03 p.m.
