Ok so we're down to the last leg of the race for the a playoff spot and well needless to say we have all three of the teams in varying positions. The Blue Jays are 100% out of the running and have been playing worse as the days go by, so much as to lose to Houston the other day, the Orioles are holding on but are nearing the back of the pack for the wild card in the AL and the Cardinals are so far ahead of the rest of the wild card teams that they've nearly got a guaranteed spot, it just comes down to whether they can steal the NL Central from the Pirates or not because if they can't they'll have to play that dreaded 1 game playoff agains the other wild card team (likely the Reds). So for the interest of time I'm not even going to mention the Jays as they've been playing awful, so there isn't much reason the mention them and as a Jays fan it just hurts to look at how bad they are currently.
The Orioles:
Alright so the Orioles here have been sitting anywhere in the top 3 spots of the AL East all season, flopping anywhere from 1st to 3rd, now there is still hope for them to win the division as they are only 4.5 games especially since they have played 3 games less than the Red Sox. Recently however the Orioles haven't been playing terribly well as they've begun to slump back into playing games that they win or lose by only 1 or 2 runs and considering that their closer Jim Johnson has begun to have a bit of a bad luck streak and they overall don't have the same sort of close game winning finesse that they did last year it is entirely possible that they may come up a bit short in the run for a playoff spot especially with the Rays playing as well as they have been not to mention getting back Matt Moore and Alex Cobb, two of the teams biggest starters. Now the rest of Baltimore's schedule is quite difficult as all but 3 of their series for the remainder of the year are against teams that are a fair bit over .500 and have been playing solidly over the last month or so but whether that is a positive or negative all depends on how you look at it because 3 of those remaining 10 series are against Boston or Tampa, the teams they need to get a leg up on in order to make the playoffs as the AL East champs so those games are worth even more to the Orioles down the stretch in addition another 4 of those series are against teams who are just ahead or behind them in the wild card standings so nearly all of them are worth a great deal. On the other hand however the under .500 teams the Orioles are facing have been seen to show a bit of a fight every now and then (specifically the Jays) so if they closer and bullpen struggles continue it may be more difficult for them to gain ground when they should be. All in all it's likely going to be pretty tight as there are 5 teams vying for the 2 wild cards in the AL and all of them within 4 games of each other.
The Cardinals:
Ok so the Cardinals, unlike the Orioles are in a pretty interesting position as 3 of the teams in their division, including themselves, have dominated the playoff spots and are pretty much a lock for the playoffs as the closest team to any of them is still 7 games out and the Diamondbacks unfortunately haven't really shown any signs of a potential winning surge coming up anytime soon. Now if we look at those 3 teams, the Pirates, the Reds and the Cardinals, we notice that they are all within 3.5 games of each other meaning this is going to come down the wire. Now of course I don't mean that in terms of securing a playoff spots I mean it in the sense that obviously the team wants to win the division so they don't have to risk that extra playoff series against the other wild card team. Now when we look at the schedules for these teams we notice that the Cardinals are actually in the best shape and thats because they have 2 series against these other two competitive NL Central teams then their remaining games are against under .500 NL opponents that should honestly make for some pretty easy wins down the stretch. Now what makes their schedule more favourable than that of the Reds and the Pirates is that despite the Reds/Pirates also having series against these weaker teams as well they face each other in 2 series during September excluding any series they have against the Cardinals. So what this means is that as the Cardinals are beating up on weak teams like the Mets or the Brewers the Reds and Pirates are going to be knocking each other around making it a little easier for the Cardinals to sneak into first place in the NL Central. Overall it should be interesting to see what happens with this interesting clump of teams in the NL Central as it has historically been thought of as one of the weakest divisions in the MLB.
Ok so thats all for the remainder of this week but I'm going to be doing a major award prediction post sometime next week and likely also a post in regards to my thoughts on the potentially playoff bound teams.
-Eric
No comments:
Post a Comment