Here are three things we\u2019ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world throughout the day:<\/p>\n
1. Game 1 winners go for sweep in Wild Card Series:<\/p>\n
The Tigers, Cubs, Red Sox, and Dodgers took home victories in Game 1 of their respective Wild Card series yesterday, and each of those clubs will be going for the sweep today. Casey Mize<\/a> will kick things off at 1:08pm local time today for Detroit, while the Guardians will counter with Tanner Bibee<\/a> with their season on the line. Two hours later (2:08pm local time), the Padres will hang the hopes of their season on Dylan Cease<\/a>. The Cubs will counter with an opener in the form of right-hander Andrew Kittredge<\/a>. Kittredge threw a scoreless inning for Chicago in Game 1 of the series yesterday and is likely to turn things over to lefty Shota Imanaga<\/a> for the bulk of the game. Turning back to the AL, the Yankees will have to overcome Red Sox starter Brayan Bello<\/a> with southpaw Carlos Rodon<\/a> on the mound if they\u2019re going to live to see Game 3, and the Reds\u2019 last stand against the Dodgers will come with Zack Littell<\/a> on the mound against Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a>.<\/p>\n 2. Frustration in the Bronx:<\/p>\n Infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr.<\/a> was not in the lineup for yesterday\u2019s first game of the Wild Card series against the Red Sox, and The Athletic\u2019s Chris Kirschner<\/a> relays that Chisholm made no secret of his displeasure about riding the pine following the game. Chisholm conducted his post-game interview with his back turned to reporters and said he had \u201cnot much\u201d\u00a0conversation with Aaron Boone<\/a> about not playing. A 30-30 player worth more than four wins in 130 games this year according to either version of WAR, Chisholm is one of the league\u2019s most talented second basemen. While his status as a left-handed hitter may not have made him the ideal choice to start against lefty Garrett Crochet<\/a>, his .248\/.322\/.411 against southpaws is hardly a liability \u2014 though it does trail the production of both Amed Rosario<\/a> (.302\/.328\/.491) and Jose Caballero<\/a> (.250\/.361\/.452) versus left-handers.<\/p>\n 3. Toboni to be introduced:<\/p>\n The Nationals are introducing newly minted president of baseball operations Paul Toboni at a press conference that kicked off about 15 minutes ago. Owners Mark Lerner, Ed Cohen, and Robert Tannenbaum are all on hand alongside Toboni. The decision to fire Mike Rizzo and hire Toboni, who had spent years working his way up the ladder in the Red Sox organization prior to being brought in to lead baseball operations in the nation\u2019s capital, is the first change of leadership the Nationals have experienced since Rizzo\u2019s hire all the way back in 2009. With a young team that lost 96 games this year despite steps forward from young players like James Wood<\/a> and CJ Abrams<\/a>, Nationals ownership and their new baseball operations leader will be providing further insight into the team\u2019s direction and what lies ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here are three things we\u2019ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world throughout the day: 1.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-183005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}