One hundred and sixty-two.
That’s how many games it took for the Philadelphia Phillies to make the post-season and it’s also the number of games played by Bryce Harper — the first time in his career he’s gone wire to wire, coming on the heels of suggestions last winter from Phillies president David Dombrowski that Harper was no longer an ‘elite’ player. Pure coincidence, of course.
“I probably should have taken a couple days off here and there, but there’s days where I thought I would talk one off and I’d go in and have two hits or hit a double and a homer or something would happen,” Harper said Monday in Atlanta, on the eve of the best-of-three National League wild-card series against the Braves. “I think as a team, as an organization, you should want to play every day. To say I did … it is a cool feeling.”
Since Major League Baseball adopted a wild-card format in 1995, no less than 16 wild-card teams have advanced to the World Series and eight of them have managed to win; the thought often being that the momentum created by the necessity of sprinting to the finish naturally carries over to the post-season. Momentum is, of course, bunk and wholly dependent on the next day’s starting pitcher and in this series the Phillies are going to put that to the test: they were 10-14 in September, lost four of their last five and are planning to run out Jesus Luzardo as their Game 1 starter.
Luzardo threw four — count ‘em — pitches on Sunday in his first outing since developing shoulder inflammation on Sept. 7. Yep: the team of Zach Wheeler and Christopher Sanchez is going with an opener to start a three-game series. “Bullpen games haven’t gone great for us this year,” said Phillies manager Don Mattingly. “But that’s where we’re at.” They’re also at a place where Sanchez, who will get the ball in regular rest in Game 2, is 0-5 lifetime against the Braves.
This is the third time in five years that these two NL East rivals have met in the post-season and both are full of veterans with a great deal of familiarity. Harper, now 34, has 760 regular-season career at-bats against the Braves — more than any opponent — and another 36 plate appearances in the post-season, with 14 hits and five home runs. He is owned by Braves Game 1 starter Chris Sale. Conversely, he lives rent-free in the head of Braves reliever Raisel Iglesias, with four homers in 13 late-inning at-bats.
Harper, who is still searching for his first World Series, says he’s always loved playing in Atlanta, even appreciating the tongue-in-cheek treatment he gets from the organist, going back to the days of Turner Field. He hit a home run after hearing The Imperial March played for him and said the playing of New York, New York when he was rumoured to be leaving the Washington Nationals in free agency made him smile.
Harper spoke Monday about the playoffs and about “understanding that we’ve been here five years in a row, that I’ve played in nine post-seasons in the 15 years I’ve played.”
“It’s funny to look back on a lot of post-seasons in baseball history,” said Harper. “Not many of the superstar players play to their ability. It’s always that hush-hush guy down the lineup that helps you win the game.”
The Phillies may need to find that hush-hush guy, since Harper and Kyle Schwarber combined to go 10-for-53 in the final week of the regular season and are 4-for-46 lifetime against Braves Game 1 starter Chris Sale. That sound you hear is a window of opportunity closing. Maybe even slamming shut for good.
The other NL wild-card series will see the San Diego Padres play host to the Chicago Cubs. The Padres are the flip-side of the Phillies, going 18-6 in their September sprint to the post-season and rattling off eight wins in their last 10 games. The Padres-Cubs series is a repeat of last year, when the Cubs beat the Padres 2-1 at Wrigley Field, and is destined to be the most entertaining and best-played of the wild-card series.
With that in mind, here are six players who will make a difference in the NL wild-card series:
Catch all the 2026 MLB post-season action on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+, and view the full schedule here.
• Ronald Acuna Jr., RF, Braves: So now that we’ve buried Bryce Harper … well, how about his counterpart in right field? You can make the case that Michael Harris III and Matt Olson have surpassed Acuna Jr. as offensive engines for the Braves but Acuna Jr., had nine multi-hit games in 19 leading up to the Braves clinching the NL East title and he’s started to crush velocity once again, hitting .433 with four homers against pitches of 95 m.p.h.-plus since Aug. 28., and he still turned in a 20-20 season in just 107 games, capping off the year by posting an OPS of .950 in September. The post-season hasn’t been friendly even when he’s healthy — he has one RBI in his last 17 games and he was injured in 2021 during the Braves' memorable World Series run. Note for Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: earlier this season, Acuna sent a late-night text to Braves coach Eddie Perez saying he wanted to make a change to his stance and asked if Perez could show up early for extra batting practice. Perez suggested he move back off the plate and close his stance slightly, much like he did in 2023 when he was named NL MVP. It worked … and Acuna is due.
• Pete Crow-Armstrong, CF, Cubs: Probably the easiest non-Shohei/non-Trout MVP choice we’ve seen; PCA’s defensive and offensive excellence mirrors that of the Cubs in general. This is how you play the game the right way, which is good because their pitching is, well, you know. PCA was the best show in the Majors — Misiorowski loves company — posting the seventh 40-40 season in history and a 10.6 fWAR rating, leading the Majors in fielding run average and outs above average, but you already know this, right? Of greater significance, perhaps, is the fact he has walked multiple times in 17 games after doing so just twice before in his entire career. His 59 walks going back to June 17 are the fourth-most in the Majors and that could be telling considering he struck out in almost half his 27 at-bats last post-season.
• Alex Bregman, 3B, Cubs: This is why you go out and get Bregman in the first place, right? To give you that hard-to-quantify post-season ‘it’ factor. To take a ball off the face while standing in the on-deck circle and club two home runs in your second game back from multiple fractures in your cheek. Like Bregman did on Sunday. The question now is whether Cubs manager Craig Counsell stays with him as a designated hitter or lets him return to third base. Bregman isn’t some kind of aging hood ornament: he finished tied with Fernando Tatis Jr. for second-half fWAR just behind PCA. He is the first position player to make the playoffs in 10 consecutive seasons with multiple teams, was third in the Majors in defensive runs saved at third and posted an OPS of better than 1.000 with runners in scoring position in the second half.
• Tyler Mahle, SP, Braves: Tarik Skubal, Tarik Skubal, Tarik Skubal blah blah blah. Since the trade deadline, it is Mahle who leads the Majors in ERA, WHIP, quality starts, strikeouts per base on balls, losing out to Skubal only on a couple of fancy, alphabet statistics. The Braves upped his split-finger fastball usage, pared down his cutter frequency and presto: Mahle, acquired at the deadline from the San Francisco Giants for Anthony Molina, pitched to a 1.99 ERA over nine starts, struck out 48 and walked nine and will get the ball in Game 2 after Chris Sale takes it in Game 1. This after having a 5.18 ERA in 18 games with the Giants. Mahle stumbled in his final tune-up start, giving up five runs in five innings, or his numbers would have been even better. “On the surface you look at the ERA and say ‘well,’ … but obviously we’re trying to dig a little deeper. We still think there’s some room for improvement with some tweaks,” Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos said at the time of the trade, responding later in the season with a ‘hell, no,’ when asked in a radio interview whether he expected Mahle to deliver in the manner he did. With Martin Perez going on the IL with a back issue late in the season, the acquisition has assumed even greater significance.
• Mason Miller, RP, Padres: Padres relievers led the Majors with 753 pitches of 100 m.p.h. or more, with Miller accounting for 518 of them in a season in which he set career highs for innings pitched and appearances, although the Padres bullpen depth and stress-free September run have left him well-rested. The Padres are 74-16 in all games he appears in since being acquired at last year's trade deadline. He allowed three hits in his last outing of the regular season … after allowing a total of 34 in his previous 69 innings. Most famously, Miller struck out seven consecutive Cubs in last year's wild-card series. No wonder it was suggested that the Cubs might be a destination at the deadline if the Padres decided to punt. That would be the same Cubs team that had 14 different pitchers record saves this season.
• Fernando Tatis Jr., RF, Padres: At the start of the season, it was a three-way race between Tatis Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Cal Raleigh to see who might be the biggest flop in 2026. After the games of May 30, Guerrero was hitting .305 with three homers and nine doubles, while Tatis had just hit his first homer of the season to go with six doubles, a triple and a .271 average. Yikes. You know how it all turned out, of course: Guerrero sat out the final game of the regular season after being booed and finishing with one homer at Rogers Centre to go with eight on the road. Tatis posted a .996 OPS after the all-star break with 35 extra-base hits (including 20 homers) and ranked first during that time in wRC-plus and second in total bases. On Sept. 20, he became the first player in MLB history to hit 25 home runs after going homerless through his first 50 games, part of a run in which he reached base safely in his final 20 regular-season games. It’s the second time since June 1 that he’s had a streak of 20 games reaching base. The Padres have had a difficult time scoring in their recent playoff appearances. Don’t be surprised if Tatis consigns to the garbage bin last year’s 1-for-12 snoozer in a wild-card loss to the Cubs.
JEFF BLAIR’S PICKS: Braves defeat Phillies 2-0; Padres defeat Cubs 2-1.
