Get ready for a 4-game day, with 3 clinches possible

We’re living the dream on Saturday: Four games. There’s actually a possibility we could have four more on Sunday, though that will require some teams to win elimination games.

But yes. Four games. Do not leave your couch, it’s all right in front of you, you don’t have to move.

Here’s a look at the primary storyline for each team in each game.

Braves at Phillies (Phillies up 2-1)
Charlie Morton vs. Noah Syndergaard
2:07 p.m. ET, FS1

Braves: Can Morton get them back home?
All told, the Braves should probably consider themselves pretty fortunate. If it hadn’t have been for that sixth-inning breakthrough against Zack Wheeler in Game 2 (a rally that involved a couple of hits), this series would already be over. So there’s something positive in the wake of a truly nightmare Game 3 loss. The good news is that, even with Morton’s relatively down year, they’ve got a huge pitching matchup advantage in Game 4 unless Syndergaard can recapture the form from his Mets heyday by science or magic. The Braves, who just agreed to a $20 million contract extension with Morton for 2023, clearly still believe he’s a high-quality starter.

If they can win Game 4, the Braves would seem to be huge favorites in a Game 5 at home, with Max Fried lined up on full rest and eager to overcome all that went wrong in Game 1. But they’ve got to get there first.

There’s a reason no team has repeated as World Series champion in more than 20 years: It’s super hard. The Braves know that better than ever, at this exact moment, right now.

Phillies: Is Bryce back? Fully back?
Bryce Harper has been hampered with injuries all season, but he was particularly miserable after he returned from his broken wrist: He hit .196 with three homers in September and October in the regular season and looked mostly helpless against any sort of high velocity. But the curveball Miles Mikolas threw him in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series, one that he launched deep into the Busch Stadium night, seems to have unlocked something.

Harper is now hitting fastballs again, including a 92 mph fastball from Dylan Lee in Game 3 of the NLDS that he sent into a riotous Citizens Bank Park crowd. One of the most impressive things about the Phillies’ season is how they kept it together after their best player went down.

That best player is, and remains, Bryce Harper. He has the sort of otherworldly talent that can carry a team in October. He might be doing that right now.

Astros at Mariners (Astros up 2-0)
Lance McCullers Jr. vs. George Kirby
4:07 p.m. ET, TBS

Astros: Can they finish this off and line up their rotation perfectly for the ALCS?
Do you know when the ALCS begins? It begins Wednesday. If the Astros can win this game, they will have three full days off before Game 1 -- a Game 1 that will be at Minute Maid Park -- which is enough time to essentially rest every pitcher but McCullers, who of course wasn’t going to start an ALCS Game 1 anyway.

Some might consider this too much rest -- a sweep would mean the Astros played a total of three games over the span of 13 days -- especially when you account for how Yordan Alvarez is hitting right now. (You want him to take every at-bat on earth at this point.) But rest is rest, particularly heading into the gauntlet that is the rest of the postseason.

Look, teams have lost when they’ve held 2-0 leads in the Division Series, though it hasn’t happened since 2017, when Cleveland blew a 2-0 lead to the Yankees.

But these Astros are perfectly situated right now. Might as well get this over with sooner rather than later.

Mariners: Will the crowd carry them?
It’s going to be unbelievable at T-Mobile Park on Saturday. No one could have imagined, on Oct. 18, 2001, when the Yankees beat the Mariners 3-2 behind Mike Mussina, that there wouldn’t be another postseason game in Seattle until almost exactly 21 years later, but here we are. This is one of baseball’s great fanbases, and they’re going to have that place levitating. They have earned this.

And the Mariners are gonna need it. They lost the first two games of this series in the most brutal possible fashion: A walk-off three-run shot in Game 1 and another blown late-inning lead in Game 2, with Alvarez delivering the decisive home run in both games. Those are crushing blows for any team to have to deal with, and surely would send plenty of teams to a mild, quiet, polite Game 3 loss. But it’s difficult to imagine this crowd, which has been waiting _so long_, allowing that to happen.

The Mariners, after those first two games, need a big huge bear hug. They’re about to get 47,000+ of them.

Yankees at Guardians (Series tied 1-1)
Luis Severino vs. Triston McKenzie
7:37 p.m. ET, TBS

Yankees: Uh, Aaron Judge is gonna get going soon, right?
Fun fact! Roger Maris hit .105 in the 1961 World Series, going 2-for-19 in a five-game victory over the Reds. Just the sort of thing that might seem worth mentioning now that Judge -- who, you may have heard, hit one more homer than Maris did that year -- is 0-for-8 with seven strikeouts in this series. For much of the latter half of this season, the Yankees offense was Judge and eight other guys you could pitch to instead of Judge, if you wanted to.

Now Judge has suddenly, out of nowhere, started striking out nearly every at-bat. He’s going to break out of it at some point, obviously. He’s Aaron Judge. But the Yankees would like it to happen ASAP.

Guardians: When can Emmanuel Clase pitch again?
Clase was a lifesaver for the Guardians on Friday, like he has been all season: 2 1/3 innings pitched, two strikeouts, two baserunners, zero runs. He’s the primary reason they won this game. He also threw 33 pitches, by far the most pitches he has thrown in an appearance all season (10 more than the 23 he threw in an outing on July 3). Teams can stretch out relievers in the postseason more than they can the rest of the year -- and they should -- but Clase has been handled with kid gloves for months.

You can’t expect him to start throwing that many pitches every night and not see some dip in quality. You’d have to think he will not be available for Game 3, or, if manager Terry Francona pushes him, he won’t look the way he usually does.

If they were to get a lead, can the Guardians hang onto it until the end without Clase? Because there are no more days off in this series: The time for rest is over.

Dodgers at Padres (Padres lead 2-1)
Tyler Anderson vs. Joe Musgrove
9:37 p.m. ET, FS1

Dodgers: They’re not gonna disappoint again … are they?
It is 100% not fair that the Dodgers are not considered a dynasty. They’re so good! They’ve won nine of the last 10 NL West titles (and the one they didn’t win was in a season they won 105 games). They are deep and absolutely stacked with talent and are seen as a model of player development. And yet, and yet, and yet … the whole question of this whole postseason was whether the Dodgers, who just won 111 games, would be able to overcome the narrative that this run of dominance has been somehow disappointing, with their lone World Series title of this era coming in 2020, the shortened-by-Covid-and-played-with-no-fans season.

And now, look at them, just one game away from being eliminated in the NLDS, a round earlier than they were eliminated just last year, against their NL West foes.

The Dodgers are incredible. But they’re always incredible, and, um, they keep not winning World Series. The Dodgers deserve better than having San Diego fans chanting “Beat LA!” at them after every pitch. But this is the postseason: Deserve has got nothing to do with it. If they lose on Saturday, no one is going to care about those 111 wins and record-setting regular-season numbers. Again.

Padres: Is it the goose?
Look. These sort of playoff superstitions, these brief eccentricities, are a bit silly. The Angels' Rally Monkey of 2002. The Cardinals' Rally Squirrel of 2011. They don’t affect play on the field, they are in many ways just a marketing gimmick, they have no real connection to reality. But. But! Eventually these things start becoming self-sustaining: If the players believe the Rally Goose is real, then, well, it might as well be real.

And it remains undeniable that the Padres have yet to be trailing at the end of an inning since the Rally Goose made its appearance in Game 2. And that’s the sort of kismet that legitimately starts to matter to fans and, really, players. This is a game of confidence, after all.

It’s also a game of dominant starters pitching in front of their hometown crowds, which is what Joe Musgrove is. The first guy to throw a Padres no-hitter, taking the mound in front of a roaring crowd that has been waiting for this for years, against their hated Southern California rivals, with a chance to reach the NLCS for the first time in 24 years.

The Padres don’t need the Rally Goose. But they’ll take the Rally Goose.