Dodgers have eyes on scorching Padres, more takeaways from first night of Wild Card round

The results are in from the first night of the Wild Card gauntlet: the Atlanta Braves, Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees, and San Diego Padres lead the Philadelphia Phillies, Houston Astros, Boston Red Sox, and Chicago Cubs 1-0, respectively.

The only real excitement came from the Braves-Phillies' rivalry matchup. It was a back-and-forth affair with Philadelphia up one run in the seventh, before Austin Riley put Atlanta in the win column with a massive three-run homer off of feared closer Jhoan Duran.

The White Sox and Astros put up a comparable score (6-3), but Houston looked outmatched the entire time and resorted to using eight different relievers in the first opener-on-opener game we've ever seen in the postseason.

Then there were the blowouts. The Yankees and Cam Schlittler shut out the Red Sox and tacked on nine runs for themselves, capped off by a Ben Rice grand slam off of Brayan Bello. The Padres came out the gate scorching against the Cubs, with a first-pitch homer for Fernando Tatis Jr. Manny Machado was close behind him with another. The Yankees took Game 1 9-0, the Padres 8-0.

No doubt the Los Angeles Dodgers were watching all of these games and taking notes. Their most immediate threat is the winner of Braves-Phillies, but they could see any number of these en route to their third World Series championship in as many years.

What Dodgers fans should be on the lookout for during the Wild Card round

The biggest threat coming out of Game 1, unfortunately, appears to be the Padres, who were clearly feeling themselves throughout their entire rout of the Cubs. Starter Michael King took a no-hitter into the seventh before a hit for Nico Hoerner (that probably should've been ruled an error on Machado).

San Diego was up there with the Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers as the hottest team in baseball coming out of the regular season, and they're still riding that wave. Tatis, Machado, Xander Bogaerts, and Jackson Merrill went a combined 8-for-12.

To cap it all off, they welcomed back Joe Musgrove after two years of inactivity due to injury. He came in to close things out to the kind of roar that might've registered as a small earthquake on the Richter scale. He loaded the bases but got out of the inning unscathed.

If the Padres wrap it up on Wednesday night, they'll have the Brewers to deal with before the Dodgers have to worry about them. But it was an undeniably effective tone-setter for the rest of their month.

Wild Card Game 1 winners have gone on to win the entire thing 88% of the time, so it's more likely than not that the Dodgers will see the Braves this weekend. Unlike the Padres, they weren't scorching hot going into the postseason, but the Phillies needed all 162 games to secure their place.

Atlanta labored a little too much against a surely fatigued Philly team, and Riley's homer, while miraculous, isn't a guarantee of success; especially when it comes to LA's superior pitching staff.

There's a very good chance that the Braves, White Sox, Yankees, and Padres all wrap this thing up tonight and can treat themselves to an extra day off ahead of their respective division series. The Dodgers' scouting reports will get a second influx of information in just a few hours time, but Tuesday night's Game 1s were already telling.

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