Monday Quickie - State of the season

With about two weeks to go (the last games are on Wed Oct 5) we're in crunch time.  Let's assume a 5 game deficit for a team. 

At 30 games, it's in your hands.  They might go say... 17-13 so if you bear down and do great, 22-8 in this case, you can make it up all by yourself. That's a very strong run but good teams make those type of runs once or twice a year. You can do it. The real key is that they aren't likely to make it impossible for you.  The 26-4 run to make that necessary would be the best run of any team in any year.

At 20 games you start to need help.  If the team you are chasing plays as they should they'll be like 11-9 or 12-8.  That means you have to go 16-4 or 17-3 to make up the games. On one hand it's easier to have shorter bursts of great play. On the other hand the ask becomes much bigger. It's about a push in terms of your team making that happen. But the 16-4 that the team your chasing needs to do to make it impossible? Well it's not likely but it isn't crazy - you are just saying your own team has to do that.  You have to hope they don't get hot, and it would be helpful it they stumble a bit.

At 10 games you need help, no doubts about it.  The team you are chasing simply can go 6-4, as they probably should, and end it for you. And that's if you can go 10-0. Even a great finish of 8-2 would need the team you are chasing to fall flat at 3-7 to produce a tie.  It takes two to make up a moderate deficit at this point. 

We're at 15+ games left now so we are moving away from "you can do it yourself" and into "they gotta help you"  For what it's worth I put "We need to be awesome. They need to be terrible" in the "likely over" category. Because it likely is! You remember the once every 5 years that it happens but forget the like 19 other times in that time frame it did not.  Let's see what the contests stand! 

AL East : Yankees up by 5.5 and 6.0 games over Tor and Tampa respectively. 

There's still a chance for a huge finish to do it without the Yankees doing too poorly, especially for Toronto who still has 3 H2H games left, but it could pretty much be over with a good series by the Yanks and bad ones by these two

AL Central : Cleveland up by 3.5 over Chicago, 6 over Minnesota

Fun times as Minnesota finishes their 5 game series with Cleveland tonight (Cleveland up 3-1) and needs a win or you can probably write them off. Chicago faces Cleveland after that and Cleveland could put it away with a sweep or Chicago could set up a furious finish. 

AL West : Houston up 15 on Seattle 

Well that's over. 

AL Wild Card: Toronto +2, Tampa +1.5, Seattle, [Cleveland -1.5], Baltimore -4, White Sox -5. 

Basically runs need to start NOW for Baltimore and Chicago. Seattle and the others just have to hold on. Again it could be over by the weekend with the right breaks for the teams in the lead

NL East : Mets up by 1 over Atlanta

IT AIN'T OVA.  The one sure bet to be interesting this weekend, even under the worst case scenario for the trailing team. 

NL Central : St Louis up 8 over Milaukee. 

That's pretty much over as the Brewers are in need help territory and should be more concerned with the Wild Card

NL West : Dodgers up 21 on San Diego 

Yeah

NL Wild Card : Atlanta +11, San Diego +0.5, Philly, Milwaukee -2 

A good chance this ends up interesting but there's a chance Philly and San Diego could separate enough from Milwaukee to make it uninteresting after this week. Because there are multiple moving parts it seems like it'll end fun but it all depends right now on the Brewers at least being ok.

 

What to Watch this week 

Tonight specifically : 

Twins @ Guardians - Twins NEED this win. Simple as that. 

Mets @ Brewers : Two teams that need to win. 

Early this week : 

Guardians @ White Sox : starts off as the premier series but if Cleveland wins early games makes it less interesting.

Mets @ Brewers (cont'd) : Both teams will still needs these games

Blue Jays @ Phillies: assuming the Orioles are doing the job against the Tigers, no AL team can be completely safe yet. Phillies need to win and hold on

Cardinals @ Padres : Padres need to hold on too, but the Cards would like to finish off the Central as soon as possible.

Pirates @ Yankees : Well the Judge at bats anyway, until he gets to 62

Late this week into Weekend : 

Blue Jays @ Rays : Likely to be a weird position battle where #2 would be ok losing if they can drop past Seattle bc it puts you up against the Central winner.  But if they can't you'd want to win to get home field.  Probably too hard to triangulate at this point so expect both just to try to win. 

Braves @ Phillies : Both could help their cause while hurting a rival. The most fun outside of actually knocking eachother out. 

Cards @ Dodgers : Two good teams who might be playing the last series they really try. You don't want to slow up too early.

Any exciting H2Hs left? 

Probably only the Mets @ Braves going into last weekend of the season. 

 If somehow things break crazily Tampa @ Cleveland, Yankees @ Toronto, Cardinals @ Brewers, White Sox @ Twins early next week; or White Sox @ Padres late next week into weekend could be fun. But it's more likely things are pretty set. Hopefully one of these pans out. 

At the very end of the season Blue Jays @ Orioles and Twins @ White Sox sit there with "loser is out" potential but it'll take work to get there.