What the baseball postseason would look like if the MLB season ended today

Last year at the All-Star break, the A’s had the best record in baseball, and the Royals were just two games over .500. The Brewers were in first place, but the Reds were close behind. The Mariners were close enough to a wild card berth that they could taste it, except wild card berths taste like the back of Bud Selig’s neck, which distracted the Mariners, and they never recovered. You don’t want to know what interleague play tastes like*.

The point is that the standings at the break are completely misleading, and you shouldn’t pay too much attention to them. With that out of the way, let’s pay too much attention to the standings at the All-Star break.

*_{the front of Bud Selig’s neck}

Houston Astros at Minnesota Twins (Wild Card Game)
Wild card winner at Kansas City Royals
Los Angeles Angels at New York Yankees

Stare for a moment at that Wild Card Game. I was bullish on the Astros before the season, but still figured they were at least a season away. I was bearish on the Twins before the season, and the bear was emaciated and crawling with ticks. The thought of an Astros/Twins matchup before the season was as plausible as a Phillies/Seahawks matchup in the ALCS, yet here we are. There’s still a lot of season left, but can you imagine?

In 2012, Company Flow reunited for a show at Coachella, and music nerds everywhere went bonkers at the idea. It was one of the biggest, bestest reasons to spend hundreds of dollars and spend your weekend in a sweaty, crowded hellscape dotted with portable toilets, and everyone was just so excited. The performance was played in front of about 200 people in a mostly empty tent. The music nerds were smitten. The rest of the world didn’t care.

That’s a Twins/Astros Wild Card Game. It would thrill baseball nerds. It would be a tribute to the unlikeliness of baseball, of how your expectations can change with one hot April. And nobody would care. They’d all be at the Gotye concert or some crap (looking at you, Yankees/Angels).

But we’d appreciate it, dang it. We’d appreciate a Twins/Astros Wild Card Game.

The Yankees should be almost as surprising as the Astros, except I’m tired of calling the Yankees surprising. Before the season, I picked the Yankees last, but I also predicted them to have the MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year, as a winking admission that, ha ha, the Yankees were going to pull some serious crap out of a hat. And they did. Last year’s most disappointing lineup added two starters, and both of them have been major disappointments. So of course the lineup is fixed. Of course Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira are hitting. Of course the rotation is solid even though CC Sabathia might be the worst pitcher in either league.

It’s not even worth being mad about at this point. Just laugh and give the Yankees a big ol’ thumbs-up. I give up. You should too.

Chicago Cubs at Pittsburgh Pirates (Wild Card Game)
Wild card winner at St. Louis Cardinals
Washington Nationals at Los Angeles Dodgers

It seems redundant to suggest that these would all be good matchups. “Wow, can you believe that permutations of the five-best teams in the National League would result in postseason series that we would want to watch?” Still, just looking at that list makes me wish the season were already over. Well, that list, and the 100,000 different trade rumor tweets we’re about to gorge on. A Nationals/Dodgers series would be very, very good theater. The thought of an NL Central elimina-thon would be very, very, very good theater.

The most interesting aspect of this grouping might be the Wild Card Game. Do the Cubs go with Jake Arrieta or Jon Lester? The former has been clearly better this year, but the latter is a more established ace, and he has the experience.

Pffft, yeah, the experience of losing a Wild Card Game.

Quiet, you. The Pirates obviously go with Gerrit Cole, except both teams might be fighting for their lives just to make the game, and that would lead to some weird Travis Wood/Charlie Morton matchup. Still, it’s impossible to mix and match these teams without getting giddy about the postseason.

If the season ended today, that is. You’ll go out for the mail one day and come back to a dumb Giants/Cardinals matchup that you’ve already seen three times. Baseball has it in for you.

No offense, Twins fans, but ... you get it, right? It’s a Mike Pelfrey tax.

That is, the teams from last year who didn’t make it back. The Giants, Orioles, and Tigers have a shot. The A’s probably do not. There’s a very realistic chance, actually, that this year’s postseason will be exactly the same as last year’s, just with the Astros subbed in for the A’s. That wouldn’t be so bad if the first rounds were all lined up differently, I suppose, but it would be just a touch boring.

No offense, Twins fans, but ... you get it right? It’s another version of the Mike Pelfrey tax.

The good news for Twins fans is that it doesn’t matter what logic thinks. Logic is a fidgety nerd that baseball likes to shove into a locker.

Severe. Consider the thought of a Wild Card Game, in which they have to face Gerrit Cole. Then they would move on to face the Cardinals, and you know what the baseball gods would do to that matchup. And if the baseball gods were strung out on heroin or something and somehow allowed the Cubs to beat the Cardinals, they would move on to face either the Dodgers or Nationals, two of the strongest teams in baseball. And then?

Then they would face the Twins, and Mike Pelfrey would dominate them. My goodness, the Cubs are really going to mess with us this year, aren’t they?

Welcome to the postseason if the season ended at the All-Star break. Just note that it will all be broken by October.