MLB Playoff Picture: Six Games Left and Nobody Wants to Make This Easy
By Kevin Gibson, Sports Fugitive
The Major League Baseball season has reached its final week, which means it is time for standings, scoreboard watching, tiebreaker calculations and grown adults pretending they completely understand every postseason scenario.
Most teams have six games remaining. Several races are settled. Others are about as organized as a family argument over the thermostat.
In the American League East, Tampa Bay has already clinched a playoff berth and sits comfortably on top at 95–60. The Yankees have also clinched a postseason spot at 89–66.
Boston is 84–72 and currently holds the second wild-card position. The Red Sox have not secured it, but they possess a four-game cushion and would require an impressive combination of collapse and chaos to miss.
Naturally, baseball specializes in both.
The final American League wild-card position currently belongs to the Chicago White Sox at 80–76. Chicago is also only one game behind Cleveland in the AL Central, so the White Sox could still win the division, take a wild card or create sufficient confusion to force everyone to open three different standings pages.
Cleveland leads the Central at 81–75 after winning five consecutive games. Texas leads the AL West at 78–78, apparently determined to prove that .500 baseball can still earn a division championship if everyone else cooperates.
Houston and Toronto are both three games behind Chicago for the final wild card. The Astros are 77–79, while the Blue Jays are also 77–79 following Sunday’s victory.
Toronto is not eliminated, but the Jays have reached the part of the season where winning their own games is merely the opening requirement. They also need help from other teams, favourable results elsewhere and possibly a small administrative error.
The good news is that three games can disappear quickly.
The bad news is that six games can disappear even faster.
Toronto’s run differential is minus-42, so this has not exactly been a season of quiet dominance. The Blue Jays are attempting to reach October through the side door, after losing the key to the main entrance sometime around July.
Still, they remain alive. At this stage, alive is enough.
The National League is considerably clearer.
Atlanta has clinched the East, Milwaukee has clinched the Central and Los Angeles has clinched the West. Milwaukee owns baseball’s best record at 98–58, while the Dodgers sit at 96–60 and Atlanta is 92–64.
Philadelphia occupies the first National League wild-card spot at 86–70. The Cubs and Padres are both 87–69, giving the league three strong wild-card clubs and creating the unusual situation where teams with better records than Philadelphia sit behind the Phillies because baseball enjoys explaining its playoff format almost as much as it enjoys changing it.
Arizona is still lurking at 82–74, four games behind the final wild-card position. The Diamondbacks need an excellent final week and a collapse ahead of them. In other words, they are not dead, but someone has begun measuring them for the coffin.
The Mets are 71–85 and officially out, which should come as a tremendous relief to anyone still performing mathematical gymnastics on their behalf.
Sunday helped clarify the picture. Philadelphia beat New York 7–2, the Cubs hammered Cincinnati 9–1 and Pittsburgh edged Kansas City 4–3. The Cubs have won two straight, San Diego has won five consecutive games and Milwaukee continues behaving like a team with no interest in making October comfortable for anyone.
The final week now comes down to three questions.
Can Cleveland hold off Chicago in the AL Central?
Can Texas stagger across the AL West finish line before Houston catches it?
And can Toronto somehow erase a three-game deficit in six days?
The Blue Jays still have a path. It is narrow, crowded and filled with teams they need to lose immediately, but it exists.
Baseball has spent six months sorting everyone into contenders and pretenders. Now it gets six days to produce absolute chaos.
Exactly as intended.
You Called Down the Thunder.