Visits: 9
Major League Baseball will stage two games on Monday that defy classification. Officially, they will count as regular-season games. At stake will be the championships of the National League Central and West divisions, so they could be called one-game playoffs.
Yet how can they really be one-game playoffs if none of the teams face elimination?
All 10 teams in the 2018 postseason field had been determined before the final Sunday of the regular season. But because N.L. Central and West featured ties at the top — the Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers in the Central, and the Colorado Rockies and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the West — there was lots to be decided.
Status quo would set up a chaotic Monday, and that is just what happened. The Cubs, Brewers, Rockies and Dodgers all won easily, meaning that the division rivals will meet on Monday to settle the standings. The Brewers visit Wrigley Field in Chicago at 1:09 p.m. Eastern, and the Rockies play at Dodger Stadium three hours later.
The winners of those games will advance to the N.L. division series, which start on Thursday, and the losers will meet in the N.L. wild card game on Tuesday. The winner in Chicago will hold the top seed and home-field advantage in the N.L. playoffs, while the loser will host the wild-card game. The winner in Los Angeles will be the No. 2 seed and play the N.L. East champion Atlanta Braves in the division series.
Things were less complicated before 2012, when baseball added a second wild card to each league. From 1995 through 2011, the postseason included only one wild-card winner per league. That team would automatically qualify for a division series, which de-emphasized the importance of finishing first.
The current system keeps more teams alive down the stretch — and, thus, keeps more fans interested in buying tickets and watching telecasts. By staging instant elimination games to start October, baseball tries to launch its showcase season with a high dose of drama.
Monday’s games, though, will surely lack the tense backdrop typical of a one-game playoff: think of the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox in 1978, the California Angels and the Seattle Mariners in 1995, or the San Diego Padres and the Colorado Rockies in 2007. In those cases — and many others — the winner moved on and the loser was finished.
The last one-game playoff took place in 2013, when the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Texas Rangers on the road to capture the second A.L. wild card. (David Price, now with Boston, pitched a complete game for the Rays, belying his reputation for struggling in the clutch.)
But Monday’s games will be the first to settle division titles under the current playoff format — and the first to feature teams that had already clinched a playoff spot.
The Dodgers made certain of that with their victory in San Francisco on Saturday, which eliminated the St. Louis Cardinals from contention. On Sunday in Chicago, the Cardinals held several veterans out of their lineup, including the slugging outfielder Marcell Ozuna and the All-Star catcher Yadier Molina. The Cubs thrashed the Cardinals’ young pitchers en route to a 10-5 victory.
The Rockies also faced a team with an eye on the off-season: the Washington Nationals. Max Scherzer, the Nationals’ ace, could have started with four days’ rest, but Scherzer leads the majors in innings and had reached a career high in strikeouts in his last start, with 300. With the Rockies and the Dodgers both assured of a playoff spot, Nationals Manager Dave Martinez sent a rookie, Erick Fedde, to the mound.
Fedde allowed a pair of two-run homers — including one to Charlie Blackmon, who hit for the cycle — and the Rockies cruised to a 12-0 victory behind Tyler Anderson.
In San Francisco, the Dodgers blanked the Giants by an even wider margin, 15-0, to finish a series sweep. Rich Hill allowed just two hits in seven innings.
The Brewers trounced the Detroit Tigers, 11-0, at Miller Park in Milwaukee, with Gio Gonzalez working the first five innings. Like the Rockies and the Dodgers, the Brewers used the margin of victory to rest their best relievers.
The Cubs’ game was a bit tighter, and Manager Joe Maddon used eight relievers — though he did get by without Jesse Chavez and Justin Wilson.
The Dodgers clinched home-field advantage for Monday’s game by winning their season series from the Rockies, just as the Cubs did by winning theirs from the Brewers. The Cubs will likely start Jose Quintana, who faced Milwaukee six times this season and went 4-1 with a 2.17 earned run average. The Brewers did not name a starter immediately after their game.
The Dodgers will start the rookie Walker Buehler against the Rockies’ German Marquez. Buehler started Los Angeles’ last game against Colorado on Sept. 19, when he struck out 12 in six overpowering innings. The Dodgers swept that series and believed they had settled things.
“Now it’s September and we’re up,” outfielder Yasiel Puig said, “and we’re going to win the West again.”
Now, as October dawns, the teams are tied again. The Dodgers know they will play in the postseason, just like the other teams in action on Monday. They do not know if they will be off on Tuesday — or on the road, in Milwaukee or Chicago, fighting to stay alive.
The American League is as simple as the N.L. is jumbled. The Yankees will host the Oakland Athletics in the wild-card game on Wednesday, with the winner facing the Red Sox in a division series starting Friday. The Houston Astros will meet the Cleveland Indians in the other A.L. division series, also starting Friday.