It’s the last day of the regular season–perhaps–and the only thing we know for sure in the American League is that the Tigers have won the Central. If the Yankees win tonight they’ll be the champs of the AL East and own the best record in the league. If they lose and the Orioles lose, they’ll still win the East. If they lose and the Orioles win the regular season will be extended one day and the two teams will play for the East title tomorrow in Baltimore. If the A’s beat the Rangers tonight the A’s will win the AL West and the Rangers will be the wildcard.
Got that?
It’s foggy in New York this morning and we’ve got all day to wait, wonder…
…and hope.
[Picture Credit: Andrew Moore, from The World’s Best Ever via This Isn’t Happiness]
I forgot to mention last night, Girardi did some decent button pushing in the late innings. Almost worthy of praise, until you remember he filled out a lineup card that put the best hitter fifth. If Cano had batted behind Arod, the Yanks might have won a blowout.
Yeah, Cano will be hitting fourth tonight, right? If not third.
Cano is left-handed!
I think you guys must be blind or dyslexic. Hello? Jon Lester, lefty? Duh.
Now, against the gyroball, all bets are off.
So glad I can kill this last can of Ebisu Cream Stout and hit the sack, then wake up for baseball! Waiting all day would be nerve wracking..how could anyone concentrate on work?
Still happy to see Cervelli score the winner last game :)
Hafta watch every pitch of the game of course, and DVR that other thing that's going on tonight... something something presidential something
I DVR'd the game remotely and should have set it up to record the program after on MLB. (Usually it gives a 6 hr window) The recording ended just after Ibanez jack and tied the game. I guess it would have been worse if it ended prior?
The new playoff format certainly has problems with scheduling. (Which I believe they will work out for next year). This format was thrown together rather abruptly.
I think the extra wild card has made things very exciting this year, and I wouldn't necessarily say that we are seeing a lot of parity, but this is a very exciting end to the regular season that we haven't seen in a while.
Let's go Yankees!!! Take the last game of the season and finish strong. Celebrate a great season by kicking more sand in the Sox faces.
[6] I prefer the wild card play-in to the old wild card format. But a couple of things:
Game 162:
http://tinyurl.com/5wltnqv
Game 162:
http://tinyurl.com/3czvm4d
and
Game 162:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2342113/
And if we were using the old format, one of the A's, Yanks, Rangers and Orioles would be facing elimination in these final three games, so there would be even more on the line for one of them. And we wouldn't know which one that was yet.
So the new format isn't adding any net excitement I don't think. It's just shifting when and where the excitement is placed. In the future it could go either way, of course.
(7)Certainly valid points Jon.
It could just be my gut feeling. (Which certainly could be off) but I felt that more teams were going for it, and not folding before the trading deadline this year.
A win or go home game is great, and I guess we will see who ends up in the wild card game. That is more or less going to be a given going forward, that 2 teams will duke it out at the end of the season to see who gets by the wild card round.
I am not sure how I feel about a 1 game playoff, but I do feel that if you win your division you should have an advantage over a team in your division that may have a much worse record.
The problem I have with the divison winner is when their record is not as good as the wild card. At least the AL west will have 5 teams like everyone else next year. (That always pissed me off.)
13 out of 17 American League wild card winners came out of the AL East. I thought this year they might get both spots.
Scheduling is certainly a flawed system, and is likely to continue.
[8] Good points about the number of teams going for it. That was a welcome addition.