As the teams approach the three-quarters pole in the race for the playoffs, only one of them is sprinting so far ahead of the others that it is virtually guaranteed an October spot.
The Angels of Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga (younger readers, ask your parents) are racing far ahead of the field and should have no trouble winning the American League West championship. In fact, before games of Aug. 5, their so-called magic number was 39. Any combination of Angels victories and Rangers losses totaling 39 would end that race.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Magic, or division-clinching, numbers are for next month. When the Angels clinch a playoff spot, though, there will be nothing magic about it. The Angels clearly have the best team in the A.L. and will be the team to beat to get to the World Series.
Borrowing a cliché from other sports, the A.L. road to the World Series goes through Anaheim (if you try to go through Los Angeles, you’ll get lost).
Baseball’s post-season, of course, offers no guarantees. The best won-lost record during the season doesn’t give a team a free pass to the World Series. The Yankees had the best record in the American League in 2004 and again in 2006, but they were unable to repeat their 2003 World Series appearance, which they made after having had the league’s best record.
The Yankees have not occupied such a lofty perch this season. Five teams entered Wednesday’s games with better records than the Yankees. Two of the teams are in the same division as the Yankees, a scenario that promises to produce the most tantalizing race of all of the divisions.
In recent years, the Yankees and the Red Sox have dominated the makeup of the division series. Four of the last five years, one of the teams has been the division winner and the other the A.L.’s wild card entry. This season, though, Tampa Bay has intruded on their party.
The A.L. East can have two representatives in the playoffs but not three. Three into two doesn’t work. One of those teams is not going to make the post-season.
Based on their play in the first four months of the season, the Yankees would seem to be the likely odd team out. But after they reached the nadir (that’s nadir, not Nady) of their season, falling nine games from first, the Yankees won 13 of 16 games, and showed enough life to warrant inclusion in the race the rest of the way.
Just as it seemed at the start of the season, the Yankees can go as far as their pitching will allow. Theirs is not a starting rotation that inspires confidence. Questions remain even with the starters who have pitched well:
Will Mike Mussina have enough left to finish the season as he pitched in the first four months?
Which Andy Pettitte will show up every fifth game?
Can 22-year-old Joba Chamberlain endure the pressure of being the de facto ace of the staff, not to mention stand up under the physical burden?
Is Sidney Ponson more than a mirage?
The Red Sox, who have won two of the last four World Series, have questions of their own. What effect, for example, will the absence of Manny Ramirez have on David Ortiz specifically and the team’s offense generally? What is to be made of their pitching?
Josh Beckett, with a 5.75 earned run average in five July starts, has not been a consistent staff leader this season. Clay Buchholz has a 5.94 e.r.a. in 13 starts this season but worse, he has a 6.59 e.r.a. in five starts since returning from a combined two-month visit to the disabled list and the minors.
The primary question facing the Rays, who have already won more games than they did all of last season, is can they maintain their balance in their first race ever. The Rays prior to this season were so bad they were never invited to compete in the potato sack races at family picnics.
When they lost the last seven games before the All-Star break, the Rays looked as though they might be exiting the race. But 12 victories in the first 18 games after the break restored the Rays to the race in good standing and their division lead from half a game to three games. Their pitching, the feeling is here, has been good enough to keep them from a race-ending collapse.
Only two of these teams can make the playoffs, but it’s possible that only one team will make it. The Twins and the White Sox are in a scrappy fight for first in the A.L. Central, and the loser of that fight could be the wild card. Francisco Liriano’s return to sound health and the majors could tilt the race in the Twins’ favor.
That leaves five teams in the running for three playoff spots, six if you throw in the Rangers, who of late have poked their bats into the wild card race.
The National League has eight candidates for four spots, and none has put in an irrevocable claim to one of them.
The Cubs keep looking like a division winner, sporting that appearance most vividly with a recent four-game sweep of the Brewers, who began the series only one game behind the Cubs. But they have squandered too many opportunities to put the race to bed to concede the N.L. Central title to them now.
The Brewers and the Cardinals are close enough and have too many games left with the Cubs (Cardinals 9, Brewers 6) to write them off. Still, the Cubs have been in first place for three months and don’t look like they want to leave.
Possession of first place, on the other hand, might mean nothing in the N.L. West. The Diamondbacks have been in first every day of the season since the first week but have recently teetered on the brink of tumbling into second place.
The Dodgers struggled for two months to get back to .500, and their success in getting there coincided with the arrival of reinforcements – Manny Ramirez and Casey Blake. The new Dodgers, especially Ramirez, could make the difference in the division.
The loser’s record won’t be good enough for the wild card, leaving that spot for one of the contenders from the East or Central.
Of the three East contenders, the Marlins have been the most surprising, the Mets the most disappointing and the Phillies the most true to their expectations.
It’s difficult to see the Marlins lasting in the race, but they have made it this far and deserve credit for joining the Rays in making Florida the fountain of renaissance baseball.
The Phillies have proved themselves to be the same resilient team that won the East last year. The Mets? I picked them at the start of the season and more recently said they would win the division title if they won 12 games in a 15-game stretch. They did precisely that but quickly squandered the position into which that streak catapulted them.
I won’t give up on them now, but it becomes more and more difficult watching them play.