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Sometimes you have to go with a bullpen game. It isn’t exciting, but it’s just the reality of modern baseball. With the White Sox and Astros each battling right to the end of the season for their respective division titles, it set up a Game 1 matchup of poorly-rested pitching staffs without full, conventional rotations. Both managers looked at the starters they had available on full rest (nobody), looked at the starters they’d already used on short rest in the last week (plenty), and each settled on a bullpen game. And that’s how we ended up with a lengthy, disjointed contest where the outcome felt decided in the first hour.

Will Venable and the White Sox pitching staff put their best foot forward to open Game 1. Hagen Smith might get a playoffs-opening start as a full-time starter before his career is over; the fifth overall pick in the 2024 draft, he ripped through the minors and looked amazing in a multi-inning relief role down the stretch. When people talk about playoff pitching as nine innings of closer-level stuff, they’re imagining guys like Smith handling short stints. He came out fully gassed up, throwing a tick and a half faster than he had all season and ripping off electric sliders at the drop of a hat. He max-efforted his way through three innings of work. Perhaps most impressive, he went after Yordan Alvarez both times he faced him, including with a runner in scoring position, and won both confrontations.

The Astros went a different way with their own bullpen game planning. Instead of bringing in a high-octane young prospect and asking him to cover multiple innings, they dug into their bag of middle relievers (they’re a little light on high-octane young starting prospects, in their defense). Unfortunately for them, they don’t really have any good middle relievers, and AJ Blubaugh, who drew the start, has been melting down in slow motion for about a month now. Not much of a bat-misser in the best of times, he’d been particularly cold of late, with as many walks as strikeouts in the last month of play.