The Houston Astros and the New York Yankees on Wednesday booked places in the MLB’s post-season division series as the Los Angeles Dodgers opened their playoff campaign with a victory over the Milwaukee Brewers.
The scandal-tainted Astros secured a meeting against either the Oakland Athletics or the Chicago White Sox in their American League (AL) divisional round matchup after completing a 2-0 wild-card series win over the Minnesota Twins at Target Field.
The Astros are the villains of baseball’s abbreviated 60-game campaign this year following the explosive sign-stealing cheating scandal which engulfed the franchise during the close season.
Photo: AFP
A tense Game 2 was broken open in the seventh inning when Carlos Correa belted a homer to give Houston the lead, before Kyle Tucker added an insurance run with a single in the top of the ninth.
“People are mad, people don’t want to see us here,” a jubilant Correa said afterward. “What are they going to say now? We’re a solid team, we won a series on the road in Minnesota. So what are they going to say now.”
The defeat was a crushing end to the season for Minnesota, who had not suffered consecutive home defeats this year before Houston’s back-to-back playoff victories.
It also extended the Twins’ tale of post-season woe to a remarkable 18 straight losses, the worst playoff run of any team, in any major professional league in any sport in North America.
The Astros were joined in the AL Division Series round by the Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays.
The Yankees prevailed in a thrilling weather-disrupted game in Cleveland against the Indians, winning a wild game 10-9 to take the best-of-three series 2-0.
The Yankees will face the top-seeded Rays in the AL Division Series. Tampa Bay advanced after completing a 2-0 series win over the Toronto Blue Jays, romping to an 8-2 win at Tropicana Field.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, the Los Angeles Dodgers began their latest bid for World Series glory with a 4-2 win over the Brewers at Dodger Stadium, while the Atlanta Braves took a 1-0 lead in their National League wild-card series against the Cincinnati Reds after a record low-scoring 13-inning battle.
The game had made baseball history as the first ever post-season game to go scoreless through 12 innings before Freeman’s winning single.
In other games on Wednesday, it was:
A’s 5, White Sox 3
Marlins 5, Cubs 1
Cardinals 7, Padres 4
Additional reporting by Reuters
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