Now that both trade deadlines are over and everyone who’s going to be traded has been traded, we can survey the aftermath. There’s a month left to go in the season, the standings are as crazy as ever. There are a few teams with virtual locks on their respective divisions (Dodgers, Astros, Nationals), and a few divisions that are going to go right down to the wire (NL Central, AL East), but the wild card race in both leagues are as interesting as they’ve been all season.
There’s a month left in the season and the wild card is a mess
In Saturday’s Say Hey, Baseball, we take a look at the insane wild card race, Justin Verlander’s goodbye to Detroit, and the heist of a Fox Sports Ohio microphone.
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Over in the NL, the Diamondbacks and Rockies have been at the top of the wild card standings for months. The D-backs have pulled away a little bit (4.5 games), but it’s still pretty close. With the Rockies starting to fade a little, it’s opened the door for the Brewers, who are just 1.5 games out of that second spot. But they’re not alone — the Cardinals are 2.5 games behind them, and closing fast. And there’s a surpising contender, too. On the back of Giancarlo Stanton’s monster August, the Marlins are within striking distance, just six games back. A bad series or two could mean that any of these teams has a chance.
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The AL wild card makes al that look like child’s play. Because the AL wild card is, right now, insane. The Yankees have that first spot, but they’re ahead by a whopping one game, with the Twins (!!!) just behind them. And clustered behind those two teams are another SIX with a realistic chance of making it — the Orioles, Angels, Rays, Rangers, Mariners, and Royals are all separated by two games or less. That’s a total of eight teams clustered together over a five game spread. And of the teams barely outside of the wild card, two have a record that’s under .500, two have a .500 record exactly, and two are just above .500. The AL has a chance to send some really surprising teams to the playoffs this year.
With the standings looking this way with a month still left to go, the final month of the season has the potential to be crazy. With so many teams so close together (especially in the AL), there is a decent chance this year that in addition to a wild card play-in game, we could even get to see something incredibly rare: game 163, which is played when the regular season ends in a tie. That seems like the best case scenario — who wouldn’t want to see more baseball?
- C.C. Sabathia has just come back from a knee injury and didn’t like that Eduardo Nuñez and the Red Sox made him field a bunt. So Grant Brisbee dove into the complicated unwritten rules of “doing it right.”
- Jay Jaffe over at Sports Illustrated took a look at all the major storylines that will rule the last month of the season, from wild-card to injury recovery and he even added a dash of Giancarlo Stanton.
- It’s rare for MLB to admit they screwed up, but they did it on Friday. The replay umpire royally messed up Brandon Crawford home run call on Thursday night, and MLB is super sorry!
- No managers have been fired in 2017, but that doesn’t mean everything is hunky dory. Jon Heyman has identified at least a few managers who are in trouble.
- Justin Verlander couldn’t leave Detroit without saying goodbye, so he posted a heartfelt video to Instagram that’s sure to make Tigers fans shout “NO I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING.”
- Did you know that Bernie Williams is a classically trained guitarist? He is! And he and his guitar totally jammed through the National Anthem at Yankee Stadium on Friday.
- Clayton Kershaw made his triumphant return from the disabled list on Friday night, and “triumphant” isn’t an exaggeration. He went six innings ahd gave up just two hits, striking out seven in a 1-0 win over the Padres.
- The Indians pulled a heist on a the microphone of a Fox Sports Ohio reporter and then Carlos Carrasco narrated part of the game and everything about this is so incredibly awesome and it should happen all the time.
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