A Tale of Two Divisions in the National League
As the regular season winds toward its conclusion, almost a third of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams officially have nothing to play for. Playing out the string is going to be the order of the day from Minnesota to Miami, from Baltimore to San Diego, and a few other points in between.
And while I confidently asserted two months ago the American League would have no playoff drama this year, I was sort of correct. I didn’t see Oakland taking over the second wild-card spot from the Seattle Mariners. Otherwise who’s in and who’s out is pretty clear in the Junior Circuit.
But the National League is anything but settled. Two of its three divisions are as tight as they can be—each having three teams in a playoff scrum over the next 21 days. However, the two divisions find themselves in opposite circumstances as the remaining sands pass through the hourglass of this 2018 season. (And yes, I did watch Days of Our Lives at one point.)
Let’s start with the NL Central. The Cubs’ lead over Milwaukee stands at just two games—and three games in the all-important loss column.
Hopefully nobody reading this needs an explanation, but just in case here goes. A loss can only be made up when the team ahead of you loses. If the Brewers were to win a game—and thus cut a two-game lead to a one and a half—the Cubs would need to take the field and lose three straight games in order to force a divisional tie. That could happen, of course. But expecting a team with the best record in the NL to lose three games seems pretty far-fetched. For the team that loves Flying the W, the L column is actually their best friend right now.
The Cardinals are in third place in the division, two and a half games behind the Brewers and four and a half behind the Cubs. By virtue of their overall record, they are presently in line to hit the road for a one-game playoff with the Brewers in Milwaukee.
The NL West, like the Central, has three teams locked in a tight divisional race. However, the margins are even thinner with only a half-game separating the Rockies and the defending NL champion Dodgers. With the Diamondbacks just two and a half games off the pace, every game will be magnified from here until the end of the season on September 30.
If the season were to end today—and I’ll readily admit that it does not—only the Rockies would be playing into October. The two top records of the NL’s also-rans presently belong to teams in the Central division, rather than to those in the West.
Could a third-place Cardinals team edge out a second-place Dodgers team, thus denying the reigning league champions another shot at the pennant? That’s how the rules are currently set up.
The best thing for these six teams (and the Phillies, who aren’t yet out of the wild-card picture) to do is to win, as often as they can, over the next three weeks. Two teams will win their respective divisions, two more will play in the sudden-death wild card game to begin the postseason. The rest will be left to complain about a system that will keep them at home until Spring Training begins next year.
Here’s hoping that the final days of this year’s regular season won’t be lacking in suspense.
