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Baseball stole the NFL’s thunder on Sunday. A compelling and potentially chaotic MLB playoffs await.
Beginning Tuesday, there will be more craziness, more unpredictability, from the wild cards right through the final out of the Fall Classic.
So this was unusual for an early autumn Sunday: I didn’t watch a snap of the afternoon NFL games.
I’m not sure I’ve done that — completely checking out on the afternoon slate — since Don Criqui and Beasley Reece were calling Patriots games for NBC in the early and mid ‘80s. That is, when the broadcasts weren’t blacked out locally. Sometimes it’s hard to believe this is the same franchise.
I did hear a rumor that the Jets won this Sunday, but now that I think about it, that could have been the last bit of misinformation I saw on Facebook before it vaporized at least temporarily Monday.
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It’s not that there was no interest over here in the outcomes of the NFL games that served as the junior varsity opening acts for Sunday night’s hype-validating Patriots-Bucs showdown.
It just happened to be that Major League Baseball, in an epic upset given the NFL’s grip on sports fans in the fall, owned the afternoon.
It required an array of serendipitous circumstances and an uncharacteristically savvy decision by MLB to begin every team’s 162nd game at about the same time, but MLB seized attention that doesn’t often come its way on many NFL Sundays.
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Baseball’s appeal on the final day of its regular season came down to two primary factors:
There were several teams with something significant at stake Sunday, whether it was a division title, a shot at a wild card, or a shot at playing a one-game playoff for a wild card.
The other factor: If you didn’t have a rooting interest, you could at least root for chaos, which is always fun, at least when the consequences don’t affect your team of choice.
In the American League, the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Mariners, and Yankees entered Game 162 with the possibility of a four-way tie for the wild card – or, yes, an outcome of pure chaos.
As it played out, the Red Sox finished off a sweep of the Nationals on a two-run Rafael Devers homer, and don’t you think he’s at that status point now where you expect him to deliver dramatically in those situations even if the day hasn’t gone his way so far? There’s a chance, if a few things break the Red Sox’ way this October, that Devers will finally start getting the national attention he deserves as an offensive force.
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While the Red Sox were finishing the final leg of their winding, bumpy but ultimately fulfilling journey to the postseason by locking up the AL’s top wild-card spot, the Yankees locked down the second and final spot against the division champion Rays when Aaron Judge’s infield roller drove in the game’s lone run.
That meant that the Mariners, who lost, and the Blue Jays, who won but entered the day a game back in the race, had officially taken their final swings of the season. The Blue Jays, with a slugging lineup reminiscent of the 2003-04 Red Sox and strikeout machine fronting the rotation in Robbie Ray, would have been a scary postseason matchup for anyone. But the postseason will play on without them. There must be a loss or two suffered along the way, from Opening Day in April through Sunday’s final innings, that they are lamenting getting away today. Coming up just short in a playoff race always revives the same lousy what-ifs from the long season.
Among those that did make the playoffs, minor quirks and injustices can be found. The Dodgers, winners of 106 games – one less than the wait-how-are-they-this-good? Giants – have to face the 90-win Cardinals in the National League Wild Card Game. The Dodgers would seem the favorite for their season-long excellence, but the Cardinals recently ripped off 17 straight wins and have a habit of being a nuisance this time of year. (They won the ‘06 World Series after winning 83 games in the regular season).
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Perhaps it’s unfair that the Dodgers are a wild card with a tough matchup while the 88-win Braves are a division champion, but that’s not reason enough to abandon the current playoff format or, say, revamp everything and just seed the six playoff teams in each league by record. Winning a division title has to matter. Otherwise you’re playing 162 games for … playoff seeding. I’ll stick with what remnants we have of classic pennant races, thanks.
I suppose I do wish the Wild Card Game was actually a best-of-three to take some degree of luck and chance out of it. I’m not a major fan of the one-gamer in general; it’s a transparent and artificial attempt to annually force the tension of an authentic one-game playoff like the one the Red Sox and Yankees played in ‘78. But MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and his underlings have had worse ideas. Adios for the postseason, extra-innings automatic-baserunner.
It is interesting – and, I’m sure, annoying to fans in smaller markets – that four of MLB’s most decorated (and richest) franchises earned the wild-card berths, with the Yankees, Red Sox, Cards and Dodgers making the cut. But hey, only two of them will get to stay beyond a single game.
Beginning Tuesday, when Nate Eovaldi will do his best to prove he’s no Mike Torrez, there will be more craziness, more unpredictability, from the wild cards right through the final out of the Fall Classic. It’s what makes October baseball so irresistible, at least when your team is on the right side of the chaos. Once in a while, it might even make you look right past the NFL.
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