The Wild Card round of the MLB playoffs has wrapped up and now it is on to the Divisional Round. This season in the MLB has been an exciting one with several teams and players putting on incredible performances.
The Dodgers won eight of 13 games against the Diamondbacks this season, but that might not mean much when the teams open a best-of-five series on Saturday.
The image of Ronald Acuña Jr. stealing second base and then holding the bag above his head in triumphant glory is a signature moment from the Atlanta Braves' season. The steal did more than make Acuña the game's charter member of the 40-70 club. It also set him up to score the go-ahead run in a 6-5 win over the Chicago Cubs on Sept. 27.
The average time of a nine-inning major league game dropped to 2 hours, 40 minutes in the first year of the pitch clock, a 24-minute decrease in a season of change that resulted in a spike in batting average and the most stolen bases in nearly 40 years. Over the objections of the players’ association, MLB instituted a pitch clock set at 15 seconds with the bases empty and 20 seconds with runners on base. “It took some getting used to, but once you get used to it the game’s a lot faster,” Minnesota shortstop Carlos Correa said.
The last time the Braves made a run to the World Series championship, Ronald Acuña Jr. could only watch. Acuña has already established himself as baseball's most thrilling performer, a guy who stormed right on through the 40-40 club — a group occupied by only five players in the history of the game — to set up his own exclusive cliques. “It's one of those numbers that wasn't impossible but seemed impossible,” Acuña said, summing up perfectly the enormity of his accomplishments.