MLB’s Pennant Races: Suddenly Interesting, Again

As we await Sunday's baseball action, the results of five games on Saturday made the wild card races tight again; five teams stand within 2½ games of the lead for the two wild card berths. Four of those teams have four games remaining, and the Red Sox have five -- they'll play a split doubleheader at Yankee Stadium on Sunday.

That's after Boston lost 9-1 to the Yankees on Saturday, giving both the Rays and Angels a chance to make up ground on them. And both teams did; the Angels put their 4-2 win over the Athletics away with a sixth-inning Torii Hunter home run to pull within 2½ games of Boston. And in Tampa, the Rays spotted the Blue Jays a two-run first inning lead but tied the game in a bizarre bottom of the first which featured two Toronto errors, a wild pitch and a ball that three Jays fielders allowed to drop between them for a run-scoring double. The Rays went on to win 6-2 and are now just 1½ games behind. If Tampa Bay can win Sunday afternoon and the Red Sox get swept by the Yankees, the teams will be tied with three games remaining.

After the Cardinals were defeated by the Cubs Friday night -- and eliminated from the NL Central race as a result -- things looked bleak for them. They entered the bottom of the ninth inning Saturday trailing the Cubs 1-0, but Cubs closer Carlos Marmol had a memorable meltdown, walking three straight hitters after a single to force in the tying run, then wild-pitching in the winning run. When the Braves lost not long after that to the Nationals, St. Louis closed the wild-card gap in the NL to two games. (Later Saturday, the Diamondbacks crushed the Giants 15-2, eliminating San Francisco from playoff contention and assuring that there will not be a repeat World Series champion this season.)

That's still a big hill to climb with four games remaining; the Cardinals will face the Cubs again on Sunday, while Atlanta wraps up their series in Washington. After that, the schedule would appear to favor St. Louis; they will travel to Houston to face the woeful Astros (they're 8-4 against them so far this year), while the Braves will host the Phillies. Philadelphia has the best record in baseball, but has lost eight straight going into Sunday's action. The Phillies lead the season series against the Braves 9-6.

Four regular seaosn days to go, and we still have two playoff spots yet to be determined -- plus playoff positioning between the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds in each league. One game separates both the Diamondbacks and Brewers in the NL and the Tigers and Rangers in the AL. Head-to-head records will be the tiebreaker; the nods in that case go to Detroit and Arizona. We also still have the chance of a three-way American League tie for the wild card, in which case Bud Selig's carefully-planned postseason schedule could be thrown out the window.