{"id":170234,"date":"2025-09-26T11:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T11:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/170234\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T11:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T11:12:08","slug":"on-mlbs-final-weekend-its-all-chaos-and-confusion-until-the-playoff-field-is-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/170234\/","title":{"rendered":"On MLB\u2019s final weekend, it\u2019s all chaos and confusion until the playoff field is set"},"content":{"rendered":"

They play almost every day for six months, and then at the end, it all happens so fast. It\u2019s not enough to merely follow one game at a time. There\u2019s too many people making too many problems. It\u2019s a land of confusion<\/a> \u2014 and not many spots to go around.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re calling the game and because of MLB.TV, we have iPads all over,\u201d said Eduardo P\u00e9rez, describing the scene in the booth at Wrigley Field on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re calling the Chicago game, but we\u2019re watching what\u2019s going on in Cincinnati, we\u2019re watching what\u2019s going on in New York. We\u2019re watching what\u2019s starting in Arizona. We were watching the game in Seattle with the Dumper<\/a>. We have no idea where we\u2019re going (next week), so we haven\u2019t made any flight plans at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight teams have qualified for the postseason: the Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres in the National League, and the Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees and Seattle Mariners in the American League. That leaves four spots \u2014 one in the NL and three in the AL \u2014 available with three games remaining.<\/p>\n

For now, those spots belong to the New York Mets in the NL and the Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Guardians and Detroit Tigers in the AL. Three other teams are still alive: the Cincinnati Reds and Arizona Diamondbacks in the NL and the Houston Astros in the AL.<\/p>\n

No team clinched a spot Thursday, but the Dodgers secured the NL West title with their 8-0 win in Arizona. The Dodgers are also the only playoff-bound team certain of its seed, as they are currently No. 3 in the NL and will host a best-of-three wild-card series in Los Angeles next week.<\/p>\n

The Brewers and Phillies will have first-round byes in the NL, and the AL East winner and the Mariners will have byes in the AL. Those seedings are still in play, though Milwaukee\u2019s magic number is one to clinch the NL\u2019s top seed and home-field advantage through the World Series.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays and Yankees are tied atop the AL East at 91-68, with Toronto holding the tiebreaker. One of those teams will get a bye, and the other will host a wild-card series.<\/p>\n

The AL Central is also even, with Detroit and Cleveland at 86-73, and the Guardians holding the tiebreaker.<\/p>\n

The Cubs and Padres know they\u2019ll meet in an NL wild-card series, and the Cubs have a magic number of two to host it. If they finish even, the tiebreaker will come down to the intradivision record.<\/p>\n

(Here\u2019s the official breakdown<\/a> from MLB.com with all the scenarios and tiebreakers.)<\/p>\n

Only four series this weekend \u2014 Chicago White Sox\/Washington Nationals, Pittsburgh Pirates\/Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Royals\/Athletics and Colorado Rockies\/San Francisco Giants \u2014 have no possible impact on the field or matchups. Eleven series could make a difference in what we\u2019re watching next week.<\/p>\n

Ticket orders, TV schedules, travel plans \u2014 everything is on hold until the players sort it out on the field. Even front offices, ever-growing in size and influence, are all but powerless to help their rosters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe might be able to tap into our minor league depth,\u201d said Jerry Dipoto, the Mariners president of baseball operations, as he watched his team play in Philadelphia last month. \u201cBut by and large, I guess as Gene Hackman said in \u2018Hoosiers\u2019<\/a>: \u2018Our team is on the floor.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mariners were stumbling then, losing seven of nine on an East Coast trip. They nearly repeated that futility on another long trip soon after \u2014 and then, just like that, they forgot how to lose.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s happened before. In 1995, the Mariners trailed the California Angels by 13 games in early August, then erupted down the stretch to win the division in a one-game playoff. P\u00e9rez, a September call-up for the Angels, made the second-to-last out against Randy Johnson in a roaring Kingdome.<\/p>\n

For teams that swoon down the stretch \u2014 like the Tigers and Mets, whose once-certain playoff spots are in peril \u2014 the pennant race can be torture.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody looks around trying to figure out how we\u2019re gonna get out of this, and the moment that something goes south in the next game, you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh crap, here we go again,\u2019\u201d P\u00e9rez said. \u201cSo you try not to lose instead of trying to win. You\u2019re trying not to make mistakes, and little things just happen that you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh jeez.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For struggling contenders, Thursday was a chance for catharsis. The Reds, who had lost twice at home to Pittsburgh, got a game-saving catch in the ninth inning by right fielder Noelvi Marte. (He channeled Glenn Braggs<\/a>, right down to the inning, opponent and score.)<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays, who had lost six of seven games, thumped the Red Sox, 6-1. The Mets, who had lost 12 of 17, outlasted the Cubs 8-5. The Tigers snapped an eight-game slide by stifling Cleveland 4-2 behind five relievers and a rookie starter, Troy Melton, who didn\u2019t seem to mind being pulled in the fourth.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was singing \u2018All The Small Things\u2019 by Blink-182<\/a>, that they were playing in the ballpark as he was leaving the mound in the middle of this high-tension moment!\u201d said an incredulous Jason Benetti on the Tigers\u2019 telecast.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou talk about being prepared to do your job, he became Tom DeLonge on the way off the mound, and then he\u2019s just yukking it up with Tarik Skubal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Few in Cleveland could have expected to put such a scare into the Tigers, not after trailing by 15 1\/2 games in early July. But P\u00e9rez can relate to the Guardians\u2019 late-summer surprise. He was 13 years old in 1983 when his father, Tony, played for the Phillies. After losing nine of 10 in August, the Phillies stood just one game over .500<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were in uniform all summer, and we go back to school in Puerto Rico thinking, \u2018OK, my dad\u2019s coming back soon,\u2019\u201d P\u00e9rez said. \u201cThen all of a sudden \u2014 we followed every game and we\u2019re going, \u2018Oh, my God! Now we\u2019re going to the postseason!\u2019 And I missed a lot of school because of that postseason run.\u201d<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez got a different kind of education, dressing for the World Series as a bat boy just six weeks after giving up hope. That\u2019s the power of the pennant race.<\/p>\n

(Top photo of the New York Mets celebrating after Thursday\u2019s win in Chicago: David Banks-Imagn Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They play almost every day for six months, and then at the end, it all happens so fast.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-170234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}