Three teams in the National League won at least 101 games. None of the three will be playing for a chance to make the World Series. The beautiful (and flawed) Tournament of Variance claimed the best team in baseball and the reigning World Series champs on Saturday, as the Dodgers and the Braves went down to the upstart Padres and Phillies. The Astros did move on with an ALDS sweep, but it took 18 innings to dispose of a pesky Mariners club that will be around for many years to come.
That leaves us with just one Division Series left standing, as the Guardians have the chance to knock off the team with the second-best record in the American League on Sunday night after walking off the Yankees on Saturday. The unexpected sequence of events in the ninth inning may have the Bronx Bombers on the brink, but they’re also sending out Gerrit Cole in tonight’s must-have matchup.
It is admittedly hard to un-blur the lines between fandom and objective observer. That is especially true when your team is in the playoffs doing some really special things. The SB Nation Pinstripe Alley blog called the Guardians a “bunch of slap-hitting shit goblins”. A buddy (Yankees fan) texted me as the ninth was unfolding that it was the “cheapest f*cking inning he’s ever seen”. That was before Oscar Gonzalez’s fine piece of hitting shot a single to center that easily plated the tying and go-ahead runs.
Sometimes baseball just can’t really be explained. Sometimes the duck snort falls in and the 100 mph rocket finds a glove. It is the beauty and the frustration, the unbelievable and the spectacular of the game that so many of us love. It doesn’t make it fun for betting and really doesn’t make it fun if you end up on the wrong side of a bet. But, it almost always tends to be front and center come playoff time. It’s why no dog is a dead one and why no favorite is a sure thing.