NL Wild Card race
Now we start to see the adaptable beauty of the big big game. The fight for the wild card spot in the National League is easily the most compelling story this week, but how could you pick just one game to capture it? If the Padres and the Phillies – the two teams that currently have the best chance to claim the wild car spot – were going head-to-head this weekend, then okay, that game would capture it.
But they’re not going head-to-head. So the entire race with all the teams involved – contenders, spoilers and division leaders hoping to hang on - is the Big Big story. And a great one at that – every day there are multiple box scores to check and probabe pitching matchups to ponder, magic numbers and tiebreakers to calculate. There’s also been some hot sauce slathered on the story this fall…Milton Bradley style.
Before we lick the sauce from our fingers, let’s check out the meat beneath it.
The central characters this week are the Padres, Phillies and Rockies – those are the three teams who are playing to extend their season. Your basic fight for survival, us against the world, win or go home deal. You know the drill. San Diego plays two at San Francisco then four with the Brewers; the Phillies host Atlanta for three then Washington for three; Colorado plays three in LA and then is home for its last three against the D-Backs.
The all-star supporing cast includes Arizona, the Mets, Milwaukee, the Cubs and even the lowly Nationals.
The Diamondbacks look comfortable atop the NL West with a three-game lead and a three-game series with the Pirates starting Tuesday, but the D-backs do have a season-ending series with the Rockies. Plus, now might be a good time to figure out just how the hell Arizona is about win the West with a negative run differential.
Not only are the Brewers clinging to a playoff dream that seemed so real just a few short weeks ago, but they also play the Padres on the season’s final weekend. Chances are not good Milwaukee erases the three-game lead the Cubs have built, but they could spoil things for the Padres in a matchup of two teams that just couldn’t stop the losing. Just why and how the Brewers, who were the feel-good story of the season for nearly six months, collapsed is another intriguing side story this week.
The Mets and Cubs look safe for now…but these are the Cubs were talking about. Would a biblical late-season catastrophe shock anyone? I thought not. If it does happen, at least it won’t happen in Wrigley, since the Cubbies travel to Florida and Cincinnati this week. It could happen at Shea, where the Mets are crawling toward the finish line with their current two-game lead over the Phillies and host the Marlins and Nationals to close out the season. Ahh yes, the Nationals, a type-cast spoiler if there ever was one and in perfect position to play the role - when they finish at Shea, where they beat the Mets for the third time in four tries on Monday, they travel to Philly for three games.
Derek Jacques at Baseballprospectus.com (every baseball nerd’s home page) has determined the probablity each team has of making the playoffs, both as wild cards and division leaders, You can see the complete list on si.com here and check out his methodology here, but for our purposes this is what you need to know (all numbers as of Tuesday) - the Phillies have a 43.4 percent chance of winning the wild card and a 4.8 shot at the division; the Padres have a 34.4 percent chance for the wild card and a 9.4 percent chance for the divisio; the Rockies have a 9.7 percent chance at the wild card and and 3.2 percent chance at the division.
Now for the Milton Bradley Hot Sauce (tell me that wouldn’t sell). If the Padres fail to make the playoffs then the torn ACL Bradley suffered when he was taken down by manager Bud Black will immediately enter the tragic injury hall of fame, bizarre wing as the cornerstone exhibit. Bradley was so angry at first-base Mike Winters that Black actually threw Bradley to the ground to try and get his player separated from the umpire, who allegedly baited Bradley, and tears his ACL. You can’t make this stuff up.
This is worse than Joel Zumaya’s Guitar Hero forearm, John Smotlz’s ironing incident or Marty Cordova’s tanning follies. (cbssportsline.com has a top ten bizarre baseball injury list here, though it’s from 2005, so Zumaya didn’t make the cut.) And it couldn’t have come at a worse time – the Padres have lost four straight, Bradley was their best hitter and oh yeah, he also spiked Mike Cameron’s hand after a collision earlier in the game. Two outfielders down in one surreal day. How can you not follow the Padres sad saga of unraveling this week? How I said!
Or, how can you not follow the Rockies’ revival story. The Colorado Rockies. C’mon, you remember them, play way up in that altitude, balls floating around like Lawrence Welk bubbles, you know, the Rockies. Whatever. They’ve won eight straight and are finally, finally relevant again in September, as Thomas Harding of mlb.com writes here.
Finally the Phillies, who have been living under the pressure of Jimmy Rollins’s spring statement that they were the team to beat in the NL East. Truthfully, I like J-Roll and would love to see him go Namath (no, I’m not talking about drooling down Suzy Korber’s blouse) and make the guarantee happen. I don’t see how they have any shot of doing anything in the playoffs with that staff, but that’s not the point this week. This week, it’s just about getting in the door – pushing, shoving and cuts allowed.
Standings as of Tuesday morning
| NATIONAL | W | L | Pct | GB | HOME | ROAD | RS | RA | STRK | L10 |
