MLB Playoffs: Wild Card Series playoff schedule released, including Chicago Cubs at Padres and White Sox at Astros on Tuesday

CHICAGO– The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will receive prime time exposure in Major League Baseball’s Wild Card Series.

All three potential AL first-round games that begin Tuesday will begin around 7 p.m. CT and will be televised by NBC, MLB announced Sunday.

The Atlanta series hosting Philadelphia or Arizona will have games at 1 p.m. CT televised on NBC, and the Chicago White Sox series will begin at 4 p.m. CT in Houston, with games televised by NBCSN.

The Chicago Cubs series at San Diego will have games at 9 p.m. CT and will be televised by NBCSN.

All games will also be broadcast on Peacock in the first year of an MLB deal that replaced ESPN as the Wild Card Series network.

The matches will be televised with Spanish commentary on Universo and Univision.

Padres will have home-field advantage in rematch with Cubs

The San Diego Padres won a rematch with the Chicago Cubs, and this time it will be at home in a crowded and noisy Petco Park.

Manny Machado and the Padres beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 10-7 on Saturday to claim the fourth spot in the National League playoffs. They will host all games of a three-game Wild Card series against the fifth-seeded Cubs starting Tuesday. The winner will face the NL Central champion Milwaukee Brewers in a best-of-five division series.

The Cubs beat the Padres 2-1 in a Wild Card series last year at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

The Cubs won two of three games at Petco Park in late April and swept a three-game series in Chicago in late June and early July.

This will be the third playoff game between the Padres and Cubs.

In the 1984 National League Championship Series, the Cubs routed Tony Gwynn and the Padres in the first two games at Wrigley Field before San Diego rallied to win all three games at home at Jack Murphy Stadium and won the best of five games 3-2.

San Diego’s highlight was Steve Garvey’s two-run homer in Game 4. The Padres won the next afternoon to reach their first World Series, where they lost in five games to the Detroit Tigers.