We have a mere 17 days left in the MLB season, which means we are fully enmeshed in If The Season Ended Today madness, those timely projections of the standings. Without question, if the season ended today, we would all be very confused, and one suspects there would be considerable protests.
The fun part of If The Season Ended Today projections is imagining those matchups. When baseball teams play each other as many times as they do in a postseason series, you learn all sorts of new information about both teams. They can bring out the best and the worst in each other. So today, we look at the If The Season Today Projections and preview the series that would result … even if they may turn out to be imaginary.
American League
Wild Card Game, Oct. 2: Rays at A’s. The two lower-payroll upstarts battling it out for the opportunity to face the hated Yankees; no matter who wins this, most of the country will be cheering for them in the American League Division Series. Expect all sorts of “small market upstarts in the Wild Card Game! What about the poor television networks?” stories resulting from a Tampa Bay-Oakland matchup, but you don’t care about that: You’re a baseball fan! These are two young, exciting teams who will vie for the opportunity to be America’s Team in a playoff against the hated Yankees. And anything that gives a national stage to Matt Chapman, Austin Meadows, Tommy Pham and Marcus Semien is aces in our book. Also: Whatever your thoughts about that stadium, it'll be a gas to see “Ricky Henderson Field” on a national stage. And the world needs to see the college football game that goes on in those bleachers.
ALDS: Wild Card winner vs. Yankees. The Rays have never faced the Yankees in the postseason, but the A’s know them all too well: In four different playoff series against them (counting Wild Card Games), they’re 0-4.
ALDS: Twins vs. Astros
The Twins, having held off the Indians, would be pleased to avoid the Yankees; they've famously lost five straight postseason series against them, and 10 postseason games. (The Twins have actually lost their last 13 postseason games. Their last postseason victory was Oct. 5, 2004, over the Yankees; Johan Santana threw seven shutout innings, and Jacque Jones homered off Mike Mussina.)
The Astros are one of baseball's most successful franchises over the last three seasons and are about to win 100 games for the third straight season -- something no team has done since the 2002-04 Yankees. You could expect many, many homers from this series, though the Astros' rotation would seem to vastly outpace the Twins'. The Astros are a tough out for anyone, but honestly, the Twins are just happy they're not looking at pinstripes again.
National League
Second Wild Card Tiebreaker Game, Sept. 30: Cubs at Brewers. Yes! Tiebreaker game! Tiebreaker games are the best. It’s in fact the second consecutive year the Brewers and the Cubs are playing in a tiebreaker game, though it was for the NL Central last year and for the second Wild Card spot this time. The Brewers won the season series 10-9, so they get the right to host this game. Cubs fans are infamous for heading up I-94 to try to take over Miller Park for these games, but can you imagine how thrilled the (notoriously underrated) Brewers are going to be for this team, which will have clawed its way into the postseason despite losing Christian Yelich with three weeks left in the season? It’s sort of difficult not to cheer for this game to happen.
Wild Card Game, Oct. 1: Cubs/Brewers at Nationals. If the Brewers win the tiebreaker game, they will have an exhausting, albeit directionally convenient, three days of travel: They will have played in Denver on Sunday, in Chicago on Monday and then in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. (If they win, they then get to travel to Los Angeles for a game Thursday.) The reward for that tiebreaker game is a date with Max Scherzer. The Nationals lost to their Cubs in their last playoff appearance but have never played the Brewers in the postseason. If the Brewers made it to this game, it would be the first Wild Card Game appearance for both teams; it would leave the Dodgers, the Marlins, the Phillies and the Padres as the only National League teams who have never played in one.
NLDS: Wild Card Winner vs. Dodgers. The Dodgers have taken all three of their potential opponents in the last three years, the Nationals in 2016, the Cubs in ‘17 and the Brewers in ‘18. (They lost to the Cubs in the 2016 NLCS.) The Dodgers will have the advantage over any team they play, but this Cubs team looks a lot lighter, particularly in the rotation and the bullpen, than the one the Dodgers lost to in 2016. And needless to say, the Brewers look a lot different without Yelich than they did in the 2018 NLCS. (At least he and Manny Machado won’t be fighting this time.) The Nationals’ rotation is one of the few that can match up to the Dodgers’. If the Cubs win the Wild Card Game, this series would assure that either the Cubs, the Dodgers or the Cardinals will have been in the NLCS every season since 2010.
NLDS: Braves vs. Cardinals. This is pretty much assured, if it happens, to be known as the Infield Fly series. Braves fans are still furious with how the infield fly was called in the 2012 Wild Card Game, snuffing out a potential Braves rally in what was Chipper Jones' last game. It is worth remembering, as MLB Network's Harold Reynolds pointed out at the time, that the umpires did make the correct call.
Suffice it to say, that explanation has not assuaged the fury of Braves fans. You'll see that highlight over and over this whole series if it happens.
The Cardinals and Braves have met four times in the postseason: That Wild Card Game in 2012, in the 2000 NLDS (which the Cardinals swept; the first game of that series was the Rick Ankiel wild pitch game), the 1996 NLCS (in which the Braves came back from a 3-1 deficit to win, in Tony La Russa's first season as Cardinals manager) and in the 1982 NLCS (which the Cardinals swept, beating Braves manager Joe Torre and Braves pitching coach Bob Gibson).