Division Series Game 1: Near-No-No in the Bronx, Dodgers Roll, Brewers Escape

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2026 — October baseball opened its second act with a statement Saturday: four Game 1s, four winners, and not a single comfortable favorite among them. In the Bronx, Drew Rasmussen carried a no-hitter into the eighth inning of a 1-0 pitchers’ duel. In Los Angeles, the Dodgers’ deadline prize looked every bit the ace. In Milwaukee, a 406-foot blast and a ball off a ballpark roof decided it. And in Cleveland, the White Sox won a playoff game for the first time in five years. The Division Series is officially underway — and it is already weird.

AL Division Series · Game 1Rays 1, Yankees 0 — Rasmussen flirts with history

Drew Rasmussen was untouchable. The Rays’ right-hander carried a no-hitter into the eighth inning at Yankee Stadium, finishing with 7.2 hitless innings and 10 strikeouts in one of the great postseason pitching performances in franchise history. The Yankees — the best offense in the American League for long stretches of the summer — looked utterly helpless, flailing at a fastball they could not square up and a breaking ball they could not lay off.

The game’s only run came on Jonathan Aranda’s go-ahead home run, and even that nearly wasn’t enough. In the ninth, the Yankees mounted one last threat, only to have Austin Wells thrown out at third base to end the game — Harrison Bader’s relay to Junior Caminero cutting down the tying run in a bang-bang play that will be argued about in the Bronx all winter if the Yankees don’t rally. Tampa Bay, the team nobody wanted to face, took a 1-0 series lead with a 1-0 win. The Yankees were swept in the regular-season series by these Rays, and Saturday suggested that was no fluke.

NL Division Series · Game 1Dodgers 5, Braves 3 — The deadline ace delivers

The Dodgers paid a fortune at the deadline for Tarik Skubal, and on Saturday they got exactly what they paid for: six innings, seven strikeouts, one run, and a 5-3 win over the Braves that never felt as close as the score. Skubal attacked Atlanta’s lineup with the arsenal that made him the most coveted arm on the market, and the Braves — a team built to punish mistakes — barely made him make any.

Los Angeles broke it open with back-to-back home runs from Teoscar Hernández and Kyle Tucker, then got insurance from Max Muncy, whose blast gave the Dodgers the breathing room their bullpen needed. The win keeps the Dodgers’ three-peat bid on track, and it sends a message to the rest of the National League: the rich got richer in July, and they are spending it in October.

NL Division Series · Game 1Brewers 3, Padres 2 — 406 feet and a roof

William Contreras hit a baseball 406 feet, and that sentence barely does it justice. The Brewers’ catcher turned on a pitch in the seventh inning and sent it deep into the Milwaukee night for the go-ahead home run in a 3-2 win over the Padres — a swing that may have saved the Brewers’ season before it could slip away. Jackson Chourio added his fifth career postseason home run, a franchise record, continuing a October résumé that defies his age.

But the play everyone will remember came in the ninth. With two outs, San Diego’s Ty France launched a ball that struck a roof panel and bounced back — ruled a ground-rule double instead of the game-tying extra-base hit it might have been. The Padres’ dugout erupted; the call stood. Milwaukee escaped, and a series that promised chaos delivered it in Game 1. Only in October does a ballpark’s architecture become a character in the drama.

AL Division Series · Game 1White Sox 3, Guardians 0 — Shutout in Cleveland

Munenori Murakami picked quite a time for his first career postseason home run. The White Sox slugger’s blast powered a 3-0 shutout of the Guardians in Cleveland, giving Chicago its first playoff win since 2021 and stunning a home crowd that expected October to be a coronation. The White Sox pitching staff made the three runs stand up with a clinical, drama-free shutout — the kind of win that announces a team nobody scouted properly.

For Cleveland, the shutout extended an ugly October trend: the Guardians have now gone 26 consecutive postseason innings without scoring a run, a drought stretching back to the 2024 ALCS. That is not a slump; that is a haunting. The Guardians’ offense, so reliable in the regular season, has completely vanished when it matters most — and now they trail a series they were favored to win.

What’s nextSunday’s Game 2s

Four games, four home teams that did not win comfortably — and in two cases, did not win at all. The Yankees and Guardians, the AL’s establishment, both trail. The Dodgers look every bit the three-peat machine. And the Brewers and Padres look headed for a series that could go the distance and then some.

Game 2s go Sunday. If Game 1 was any indication, clear your schedule.