Photo by: Henoc Kivuye
There are 2,430 games in the Major League Baseball regular season. To decide this year’s postseason, it is going to take every single one.
As the regular season comes to a close, the furious shuffle of teams to fill the last remaining playoff slots has begun. With such a high number of teams staying alive in the race, this season might come down to Sunday night.
The MLB postseason is determined by selecting 10 teams at the end of the season. Each league’s division winners are granted an automatic bid to the postseason, accounting for three of the entries from each side.
The format for the remaining teams, known as the Wild Card teams, changed beginning in the 2012 season. The MLB altered its previous allowance of one outright wild card team from each league to the current system that admits two teams from each league. This new system matches the two teams against one another in a one-game elimination showdown to continue as the lone Wild Card representative for the respective leagues.
The National League is the more stable of the two leagues, with the vast majority of the playoff spots either claimed or relatively firm in hand of the respective teams.
The tightest division in the National League is the NL Central, whose current throne is occupied by the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals, who have already clinched a spot in the playoffs but have yet to solidify a division crown, are largely represented in the Oklahoma Christian University population, as exemplified by junior Luke Sandoval.
“I feel really good about our chances this postseason,” Sandoval said. “The Cards always find a way in and always seem to make it interesting.”
The NL Central is arguably the deepest division in all of baseball, as it currently stands to send three of its teams into the postseason. Three games behind St. Louis stand the Pittsburgh Pirates, coming onto the scene in a major way this season after being a non-contender for several years.
While the Pirates’ fan base is considerably smaller on the campus of Oklahoma Christian, it is not necessarily quieter. Professor of Language and Literature Willie Steele is an outspoken fan of the Pirates, and has waited a long time to see the Pirates in the postseason.
“The last time that [the Pirates] were in the playoffs I was a sophomore in college,” Steele said. “This has been a painful 21 years but it’s over, this is the year – but I don’t want to jinx it.”
The remaining piece of the strong NL Central is the Cincinnati Reds, whose 90-69 record has all-but-earned them the last remaining Wild Card spot in the National League. The only conceivable competitor for the final spot is the Washington Nationals, who require a small miracle to mount a comeback from six games back.
Representing the NL East as the division winners are the Atlanta Braves, who smoked the competition and earned the crown last Sunday for the first time since 2005. Assistant Professor of Communication Josh Watson backs the Braves comparably to Steele’s loyalty for the Pirates.
“It’s pretty cool because they weren’t expected to win,” Watson said. “Everybody thought they might get the Wild Card again because the Washington Nationals were supposed to be so strong, but the Nationals have not done that well so it’s nice to see the Braves do well.”
The Los Angeles Dodgers fill out the remaining NL West spot. The Dodgers, who were behind the Arizona Diamondbacks on July 21, exploded in the late part of the season and are approaching the end of the season 11.5 games up on their former pacesetters.
In the American League the race is significantly hotter, and the shuffle for the final Wild Card spots in the playoffs could go in any direction.
Atop the AL East are the Boston Red Sox, who broke their tie with the Tampa Bay Rays on Aug. 24th and have widened their lead ever since.
The AL East endured a scuffle at the top for much of the season, with the Red Sox, Rays and New York Yankees all claiming the top spot for significant portions of the season.
Not necessarily lost in the shuffle, however, are the Tampa Bay Rays who, according to MLB.com, hold a 96.8 percent chance of representing the American League as the first of its two Wild Card teams.
The AL Central sent the American League’s third and final division representative on Wednesday when the Detroit Tigers defeated the Minnesota Twins 1-0.
This past Sunday the Oakland Athletics laid claim to the AL West title, marking their second consecutive division title.
Their contenders in both circumstances have been the Texas Rangers, who conceded their lead to the A’s in the final game of the 2012 season and surrendered the title with an extra-innings loss to the Royals last Sunday.
The Rangers, however, are not down-and-out just yet. Their implosion in the final weeks of this season has not sent them past the breaking point, as they stand one game back of a Wild Card spot in the American League.
Rangers fans, who rival Cardinals fans on campus at Oklahoma Christian in number, are rooting for their team to pull out all the stops in a push for that Wild Card spot, according to senior Dave Kittrell.
“Despite the Rangers’ plummet recently, I don’t have any doubts that they will catch back up and grab that final Wild Card spot,” Kittrell said. “The Rangers just belong in the playoffs, and when they get Nelly [Cruz] back, they’ll be back to their old selves.”
The Rangers host the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim this weekend for the final three games of the regular season. If the Rangers are going to make a final push for the final Wild Card spot, it will have to happen now.
As the regular season comes to a close and the postseason gets underway, Steele offered his best summary of baseball in October and November.
“It’s the playoffs man, anything can happen.”
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