A wild and wacky wild-card race
AL teams defy logic in quest for two spots
This, undoubtedly, is the zaniest, most ridiculous, nuttiest wild-card race the game of baseball has ever witnessed.
Where else would a team set a franchise record with 43 consecutive scoreless innings, getting pummeled 32-0 over the last four games, and still be sitting three games out of a wild-card spot?
Say hello to the Kansas City Royals.
Where would you find a team whose front office surrendered, trading away its closer at the deadline and veteran starter six days after acquiring him, only to be sitting in the No. 2 wild-card chair?
Give it up for the Minnesota Twins.
Where could you find a team that traded one of its top pitchers to the best team in baseball, calling it a season, only to infuriate the Houston Astros by telling them they can’t switch home dates in light of Hurricane Harvey because they intend to be in the wild-card race the final week of the season?
Meet the Texas Rangers. And, yes, name a team that can make five errors in an inning — the most by a team in 40 years — get outscored by 24 runs this season and still be two games out of a wild-card berth.
Take a bow, Seattle Mariners. You might need to whip out your solar eclipse sunglasses to scoreboard watch these days, with eight teams passing one another back and forth and six teams within three games of the second American League wildcard spot.
“It’s so hard to figure out,” Tampa Bay Rays starting pitcher Jake Odorizzi said. “When you win, it feels like four teams have to lose to just gain a half-game. And you lose, it feels like everyone else wins.”
You know the game can be cruel when the Twins can trade for veteran starter Jaime Garcia from the Atlanta Braves, have him win his lone start, lose their next three games in a row and trade him to the New York Yankees. Oh, and just in case they had any notions of still contending for a playoff spot, they dumped AllStar closer Brandon Kintzler seconds before the trade deadline to the Washington Nationals.
So, the Twins win 15 of 22 games since Aug. 6 and woke up Tuesday trailing the Yankees by three games for the top wild-card spot and leading the Los Angeles Angels, Baltimore Orioles, Mari-
ners, Rays, Royals and Rangers for the No. 2 spot.
“You think you’re done and over with,” Odorizzi says, “and just the opposite happens. For those teams that thought they were out of it, maybe the pressure was eased a little bit when they traded away guys. It allowed them to start playing more freely. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but hey, baseball never does.”
The Rays were poised a month ago to take over the AL East, sitting two games in back of the Boston Red Sox. Rays management, believing this could be their year, then went out and did something completely crazy.
For the first time, they spent money at the trade deadline. They grabbed Adeiny Hechavarria in June, taking on the rest of his $3.5 million salary. They traded for New York Mets first base-
man Lucas Duda. Then refurbished their bullpen by acquiring Steve Chisek from the Mariners, Dan Jennings from the Chicago White Sox and Sergio Romo from the Los Angeles Dodgers.
When you add up the expenses, the Rays increased their payroll by $7.5 million, a massive hike for an impoverished team whose season-opening $69.9 million payroll ranked third to last.
“This is the first year in my career where we made multiple significant additions to the team,” says Rays third baseman Evan Longoria, the team’s longest-tenured veteran, drafted in 2006. “In the past, when we’ve had a really good team during the year, we’ve just added pieces from the farm system to help us late in the year. But this is the first year they really went out to help us, putting us in position to win. It brought such a spark to the clubhouse at the deadline.”
So what happens? The Rays promptly lose 12 of 15 games beginning Aug. 4, with the offense averaging 1.7 runs per game.
“It sucked for us because we were in great position,” Odorizzi says, “then we have a tough weekand-a-half, and suddenly we’re chasing five teams. We finally go all-in, which is such a rare thing here because of our financial standpoint, and that’s what happens. But we still believe we can do it.”
The beauty of the AL wild-card race is that every team is flawed, all enduring a downward spiral from which it looked as if it would never recover. The Mariners, who have the longest playoff drought in baseball, were outscored 52-9 in an eight-game span. The Yankees, who lost seven in a row in June, are 32-37 since June 9. The Orioles, whose pitching staff has the third-worst ERA in the majors, gave up 10 or more runs six times in a twoweek span. The Angels played two months without Mike Trout.
It’s so screwy that the Rays, who pulled off the deals to establish one of the most vaunted bullpens in the game, also happened to dump the guy who has put the Orioles into contention. The Rays decided former No. 1 pick Tim Beckham no longer had a role with the team, sent him to the Orioles on July 31 and watched in horror as Beckham has hit .395 with six homers and 18 RBI since his departure.
“Hey, we’re just thankful the front office gave us this opportunity,” Rays veteran starter Alex Cobb said. “This is the first time since I’ve been here that we’ve made such an impactful acquisition of guys, where they saw a weakness and fixed it.”
Certainly, it won’t be easy for the Rays, who have a brutal schedule. They have 19 games left against the Red Sox, Yankees and Orioles. Yet if they can survive and just reach that wild-card game with ace Chris Archer on the mound, they’ll take their chances against anyone.
“Being the underdog has always helped fuel us,” Archer says. “People don’t really watch us, and even when we had that crazy run and had playoff teams, nobody really rooted for us. We want to do the same thing again, just sneak up on everybody, and if we get in, we can be dangerous.”