Hello,
I love this time of year when the baseball races are heating up. I love all the intrigue and how it feels like every game is even that more important. The pennant races are an exciting several week experience. I love getting home from work and flipping to ESPN or the MLB network and see what games they have on.
This year the tension and excitement should be even more with both leagues adding a second wild card. Although I think the way they are doing the second wild card is very lame. The best MLB could come up with is to have the two wild card teams play a one game series to decide who advances? Really? That feels very anticlimactic after a 162 game grind of a regular season.
That being said, the Wild Card does increase excitement in such cities as Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, LA, Detroit, Oakland and Baltimore. Of course it also increases the pressure for those teams to actually make the playoffs.
We already know that the NL team that gets to the World Series will be the host team. Thanks to the NL winning the All-Star game.
Obviously Boston and the Cubs are out of the playoff race. It does make me laugh that Boston seems to be playing better now that the pressure is off. But are they really going to keep David Ortiz? And please don't tell me that Bobby Valentine might actually come back. Ortiz's body continues to break down and Valentine hasn't seem to be a fit in Boston at all. Hey and Daisuke played and actually earned a win! Things are looking up in Boston!
And for Chicago, well there's always next year. But with the way things are going the Dodgers and Pirates could also be on the outside looking in. Out of all my teams that would only leave only Atlanta with a good chance at making the playoffs, although they've struggled of late.
I was less than inspired with the Dodgers 10-0 shellacking at the hands of the Rockies, the team with the worst record in the NL West. Colorado the team that now is 23 games below .500. Colorado, other than pride, that has nothing to play for. The Dodgers were the team that played like they were just playing out the string. In the 9 player blockbuster trade between the Red Sox and the Dodgers, I expected Josh Beckett to be the weakest link in the deal for LA. Last night, in his first Dodger start, he didn't do anything to make me change my mind. He pitched a game very similar to his starts for the Red Sox. The first player he pitched to as a Dodger, Tyler Colvin, promptly hit the ball 457 feet to the second deck of Coors Field. Um Josh that's not a good omen for your Dodgers career.
Beckett pitched 5.2 innings, gave up 7 hits, 3 runs, 3 BB. He also did have 6 strikeouts in the loss. I don't know the exact stat, but he's won something like 1 of his last 14 starts. And obviously the Dodgers offense was very unproductive. Even in the thin Colorado air, the Dodgers weren't able to score one run. They also didn't do a very good job of stopping the Rockies from scoring runs. Perhaps that's one of the reasons the Dodgers have only won 4 of 10 games.
The Dodgers trail the Giants by 2.5 games in the average NL West. They also trail St. Louis by 2.5 games in the NL Wild Card. I'm not quite yet to put a fork in them, but I think they are getting close to that point.
Meanwhile the Pirates aren't tearing up Major League Baseball either. They've only won 3 of their last 10 games and two in a row. Yesterday they started a crucial 3 game series against St. Louis at PNC Park. Unfortunately they lost this game 4-3. Even if the Pirates win the next two games, that still won't save their season. That would just give them a little more hope. AJ Burnett had a rare misstep for the Pirates, he drops to 15-5 on the season.
At 68-60 the Pirates perilously close to .500. I thought until the last couple of days that they would at least finish above .500 this season. If they don't pull out of this downward spiral, they just may not. That being said at least and finally the Pirates are going in the right direction now. It looks like this season won't be their first playoff appearance in the last 20 years. Pittsburgh is trailing St. Louis by 3 games in both the Wild Card and the NL Central. Obviously if they win their next two games that would put them within 1 game of those pesky Cardinals.
I'm hoping that Chipper Jones playing in his final season will be an inspiration to the Braves. The Braves went to San Diego and lost to the second worse team in the NL West, the San Diego Padres. And like the Dodgers, they were also shut out. The terrible Padres shut out Atlanta 3-0. The Braves have only won 3 of their last 10 games, are you noticing a trend here, and seem to be faltering like they did at the end of last season. I'm not trying to jinx them, although I'm sure they are thinking too much about last season's collapse.
Still Atlanta is 73-56 and leads the NL Wild Card. Atlanta needs to get a Wild Card berth, they'll never catch the surprising Nationals. According to espn.com, Atlanta has a 89.6% chance of making the playoffs. If the playoffs started today, Atlanta would host St. Louis in the wild card. But those pesky Cardinals are only 1.5 games back from hosting that Wild Card game. Of course there are still about 35 games left in the season, so a lot can and will still happen.
Go Dodgers, Pirates and Braves for this season. Meanwhile Boston and Chicago continue to build for next season and the seasons after that.
themusicaddict
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