MLB’s Rare October Day: Four Playoff Games, Four Possible Clinchers

Major League Baseball’s final postseason quadrupleheader of the season Wednesday could also be a historic one for the sport.

The league will play four division series games over the course of the day, starting with the Mariners and Tigers from Detroit’s Comerica Park at 3:08 p.m. ET, and concluding with the Dodgers and Phillies from Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles at 9:08 p.m. ET. In between will be the Brewers and Cubs from Chicago’s Wrigley Field at 5:08 p.m. ET, and the Blue Jays and Yankees at New York’s Yankee Stadium at 7:08 p.m. ET.

It will be the last such day of playoff games before the schedule staggers and the postseason competition narrows toward the championship series and World Series.

Four Tickets Punched on Same Day?

The jam-packed schedule also presents an unusual confluence of clinching opportunities as the Mariners, Blue Jays, Brewers, and Dodgers are each one game away from advancing to the championship series round. If all four of those teams win Wednesday, that will represent the first time MLB’s four division series ended on the same day since 1996, and just the second such occurrence since this playoff round began in 1995. 

The high drama is likely to be a further boon to television viewership that already has been on an upswing for MLB. After seeing across-the-board increases during the regular season and then unprecedented viewership in the wild-card round, Fox said late Tuesday that the early days of the American League Division Series have produced a 14% viewership increase from last year. The Blue Jays–Yankees series has been similarly strong on Sportsnet in Canada.

TNT Sports said its coverage on Oct. 4 of the start of the National League Division Series averaged 3.4 million viewers, up 30% from its comparable coverage last year of the ALDS and up 16% from its initial day of the NLDS in 2023. 

“The wild-card round gave us a start to the playoffs that could not have been better,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said this week on the Phillies Radio Network. “Our ratings were phenomenal. Obviously, you get a New York–Boston matchup [to start], it just gets everybody engaged sooner.”

Playoff exits by the Yankees and Phillies, should they happen, would be particularly bitter pills for the teams with the No. 3 and No. 4 luxury-tax payrolls, respectively, this year.

Big Stars, Big Moments

The initial games of the division series, meanwhile, have produced a new set of signature moments from some of its biggest stars. The latest exploits include a game-tying home run Tuesday by Yankees superstar Aaron Judge to help New York hold off elimination by Toronto, and Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts and third baseman Max Muncy successfully executing a ninth-inning wheel play on Monday to cut down a late Phillies rally. 

“It was a best-player-in-the-game type of performance,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said of Judge’s Game 3 exploits. “It was special when, obviously and needless to say, we’re backs-against-the-wall.”