CHICAGO — The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will get prime-time exposure in Major League Baseball’s Wild Card Series.
All three potential games in the AL first-round matchup that begins Tuesday will start at about 8 p.m. EDT and be televised by NBC, MLB said Sunday.
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Atlanta’s series hosting Philadelphia will have 2 p.m. games televised on NBC, and the Chicago White Sox series at Houston will start at 5 p.m. EDT, with games televised by NBCSN.
The Chicago Cubs’ series at San Diego will have 10 p.m. EDT games and be televised by NBCSN.
All games also will be streamed on Peacock in the first year of a contract with MLB that replaced ESPN as the Wild Card Series network.
Games will be televised with Spanish-language commentary on Universo and Univision.
Padres will have home-field advantage in wild-card rematch with Cubs
The San Diego Padres have earned a wild-card rematch with the Chicago Cubs, and this time it will be at home in packed and raucous Petco Park.
Manny Machado and the Padres beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 10-7 on Saturday to wrap up the No. 4 seed in the National League playoffs. They’ll host every game in a best-of-three Wild Card Series against the fifth-seeded Cubs beginning Tuesday. The winner will face the NL Central champion Milwaukee Brewers in a best-of-five Division Series.
The Cubs beat the Padres 2-1 in a Wild Card Series last year at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
The Cubs took two of three games at Petco Park in late April and swept a three-game series in Chicago in late June and early July.
This will be the third postseason matchup between the Padres and Cubs.
In the 1984 National League Championship Series, the Cubs routed Tony Gwynn and the Padres in the first two games at Wrigley Field before San Diego rallied to win all three home games at Jack Murphy Stadium and take the best-of-five matchup 3-2.
The highlight for San Diego was Steve Garvey’s walk-off, two-run homer in Game 4. The Padres won the next afternoon to reach their first World Series, where they lost in five games to the Detroit Tigers.
Astros to host White Sox after winning AL West with 81-81 record, worst for first-place team
T
he Houston Astros won their fifth AL West title in six years despite finishing with the worst record for a first-place team, beating the Athletics 9-0 Sunday behind Lucas Spence’s two-run triple to finish at 81-81.
Nick Allen had just doubled leading off the eighth with the Astros leading by eight runs when Texas lost at Minnesota, assuring the Astros of their ninth postseason trip in 10 years after missing out in 2025.
Houston will host the Chicago White Sox in a best-of-three Wild Card Series starting Tuesday. The Astros finished one game ahead of Texas (80-82) but would have earned the division title even with a defeat because they held the tiebreaker.
Houston had the lowest winning percentage for a team reaching the postseason in a non-shortened year, breaking the mark set when the 2005 San Diego Padres went 82-20.
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