The Stupor Bowl

The Impending One-Game Showdown Between the Second and Third Best Teams in Baseball

By: Jeff McDonough

Am I dreaming, or is this really about to happen? Last night the St. Louis Cardinals downed the Pittsburgh Pirates and won their 100^th game to clinch the National League Central division title. This was not a particularly surprising fate for the redbirds, seeing as they have been leading the division for months and hold the best record in the majors. The takeaway from them locking up the Central lies not with the Cardinals themselves, but with the two teams that trail St. Louis in the standings. With two more victories, the Pirates will reach 98 wins — a W-L record that would’ve been good enough for best in the MLB the last three seasons. In 2015, it’s not even good enough to win their division. We’ve seen two really good teams in the same division before though — the Red Sox and Yankees were doing it for years. In 2001, the 102-win Athletics had to settle for the wild card after Seattle won an MLB-record 116 games. The real story here is the emergence of a third NL Central team, the Chicago Cubs.

Everyone knew the Cubs were going to be better, but I don’t think many saw this coming. Entering year four of the Theo Epstein era in Chicago, the Cubs finally had some buzz after three consecutive last place finishes in the division. Manager Joe Maddon was brought in after a freak sequence of events allowed him to opt out of his contract with the Tampa Bay Rays. The young core Epstein had assembled also looked poised for progress, but the progress came instantly. The Cubs, who have 93 wins with four games remaining, currently sit at not only third place in their division but third place in all of baseball. That’s right, the third place Cubs have a better record than the leader of every other division in baseball. In the race for the second wild card, no team is within 10 games of them. Yet they still trail the Pirates by 2.5 games, and will likely lose out on any home field advantage. If the Cubs can keep their hold on the #3 spot over the Blue Jays and Royals for the next four days, the 2015 NL Central will become the first division in history to have the majors’ three best teams. And need I remind you that there used to be only two divisions, not three, and that the NL Central used to have six teams, not five. So it’s only gotten more difficult, which makes it all the more impressive.

So last night, the Cardinals made official what we’ve known was coming for months. This Wednesday, October 7 at 8 p.m. on TBS — preempting a rerun of Seinfeld, I presume — the Pirates and Cubs will duke it out in a winner-take-all Wild Card Game, with the winner going onto the Division Series to face the Cardinals and the loser going home. The march towards this inevitability has felt like a daze. Is this actually happening? How is the NL Central so good? Is this new format awesome or awful? Are we seriously about to watch a 95-win team go home after one game? And how crazy of an environment will that game have with stakes this high? Well, most of those answers are apparent now. It was a pretty listless race to get to this point though. There was a clear hierarchy in the standings. The Cardinals were better than the Pirates, the Pirates were better than the Cubs and the Cubs were better than everybody else. But now that we’ve reached this point, and we know it’s actually going down, it’s abundantly clear that this game is about as huge a deal as games get.

In the old days, the only postseason was the World Series, where the two pennant-winners faced off and everyone else left for vacation. In 1969, the East and West divisions were created in each league and four teams could reach the postseason, which now began with the League Championship Series. The LCS was originally a best-of-five series, shorter than the World Series’ best-of-seven structure, but was expanded to best-of-seven as well in 1985. In 1994, the playoffs were further enlarged as a Central division, Wild Card and best-of-five Division Series round were created. Now we had three division winners and a wild card in each league, making way for a three-round, eight-team tournament. Some purists hated the wild card. After all, baseball was about the grind of the 162-game season, the dog days of summer, the pennant race and winning your division. It wasn’t gimmicky like those “other” sports. Well, those old fogies must be rolling over in the graves now.

In 2012, the MLB decided to augment the postseason even further, but this time in a much clunkier way.  When the second wild card was added, it brought the new number of playoff teams to 10. For those of you skilled in basic math, 10 does not make a very simple bracket. Baseball higher-ups felt they need for a larger postseason, though. The obvious financial gains factored in, but the decision-makers had fairness in mind as well. The MLB grew to its current number of 30 teams in 1998, yet the postseason only admitted 26.67% of its teams. Compared to the other major sports that is a paltry figure. The NBA and NHL, both made up of 30 teams as well, have had 16-team playoff formats since 1980 and 1984 respectively — even when the leagues were made up of as few as 21 and 23 teams. The NFL has had 12 playoff teams since 1990, and the league has had 28 to 32 teams over that span. So even after baseball’s latest expansion, they continue to lag behind the other leagues in terms of postseason admittance.

The old structures of two, four and eight worked perfectly for baseball. Sixteen is an even tournament as well. Even a bracket of 12 only requires a little configuring — four teams get byes, the remaining eight teams face in Round 1 and then the four winners face the bye teams and we’re back even. Ten teams is rough though. You essentially need six byes and two play-in games, which diminishes the value of the first round with so many teams sitting out. The baseball postseason is also predicated on series — your pitching staff, the adjustments, playing in both ballparks. Even during the regular season the games are played in series, unlike the other sports. It’s not designed for single-elimination. The MLB decided to soldier on anyway and we got our current setup. There are three division winners and two wild cards in each league. The wild card teams face in a one-game winner-take-all round, with the winner facing the 1-seed in the Division Series — and then the previous layout applies from there. But one game? In baseball? You’re going to play a 162 game season, earn your playoff spot and have it all come down to one game? “Uh-huh,” smirked Bud Selig.

It wasn’t all bad. This gave an opportunity to more teams to get into the postseason and the idea of a one-game showdown was rousing. Baseball had already seen a taste of this excitement after there was a one-game playoff tiebreaker three straight seasons at the end of the aughts. For those of you unfamiliar, baseball is rare in that they break a tie in the standings at season’s end with an actual game, as opposed to just going off of head-to-head record or goal differential. They figured, “Why not make this an annual thing?” And the excitement has continued. Look no further than last year’s AL Wild Card Game and the thrilling 12-inning comeback victory by the Royals. In 2012, when the Orioles made their long-awaited return to the playoffs in the Wild Card Game, I had a bunch of friends over to my apartment and it was one of the most fun baseball experiences of my life. Whether the game itself is exciting, however, is not necessarily indicative of whether this is the best way to conduct a tournament to crown the champion of your sport.

Let me make no bones about it: having a 162-season come down to a one-game “series” is insane. For a frame of reference, proportionally this would be like if after the 16-game NFL season the first round of the playoffs consisted of football games that were six minutes in length. Uhhh… The historic nature of the three teams this year makes it even worse, but that isn’t something that could be avoided in football either. If the three best teams in the NFL came from the same division — let’s say they went 15-1, 14-2 and 13-3 respectively — this same thing would happen. Teams with 13 and 14 wins would have to open the postseason on the road vs. a division winner, and even if they won, one would just face their division champion in the next round, just like the Pirates-Cubs winner will. The best course of action if they wanted to expand was probably to have this Wild Card round contested as a best-of-three series. It adds a couple more days to the season, yes. Big whoop. Start the season at the end of March or very beginning of April — instead of the fifth like this year — and then you’ll be playing a week into November. Again, BFD. That still gives you all plenty of time to baste your turkeys and ingest pumpkin spice intravenously.

While that seems to be the fairest option, it doesn’t sound as exciting. We already have the abbreviated series in the Division round. These Wild Card Games have truly added a special element that baseball rarely has outside of a Game 7. This year should be particularly special, not just because of how much better these teams are than the typical wild card competitors, but because of their backstories. Everyone knows the Cubs haven’t won a World Series in 106 years, but they have droughts all over the board. This is their first trip to the postseason since 2008. They were swept in the NLDS their last two appearances, so they haven’t actually won a playoff game since going up 3-1 in the 2003 NLCS vs. the Marlins — ya know, before that whole Steve Bartman collapse happened. They beat the Braves in the NLDS that year and that, along with their back-to-back World Series victories in 1907 and 1908, are their only postseason series wins as a franchise. They have only been to the postseason an unlucky thirteen times as a franchise before this season. Lastly, they haven’t even been to the World Series since 1945. The Red Sox had made four World Series between that time and when they reversed their own 85-year World Series curse in 2004. So it’s not just the 106 number and the Curse of the Billy Goat hanging over the Cubs’ heads. Any progress would be nice. The Cubs and Cardinals — the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry of the National League — have never met in the postseason. It’s about we make that happen after 113 years of postseason baseball.

The Pirates have now made the playoffs the last three years after 20 straight losing seasons before that. It’s nice to have good baseball back in Pittsburgh, and this will be the third straight year they’ve hosted this NL Wild Card Game if they can keep the Cubs at bay — Chicago is two back in the loss column with four games to play, and they own the head-to-head tiebreaker if the teams finish tied. In 2012, Pittsburgh ousted the Reds before falling to the Cardinals in five games in the NLDS. Last season, they lost 8-0 when they ran into the buzzsaw that is Madison Bumgarner on his way to a historic postseason and World Series MVP. The Pirates have been gracious hosts in shepherding this new era of the Wild Card round, but they have larger goals. They haven’t won a multi-game playoff series since they came back from down three-games-to-one to beat the Orioles in the 1979 World Series. Unfortunately for them and their aspirations for a deep playoff run, they might be running into Bumgarner 2.0 this year.

The Cubs’ newfound ace Jake Arrieta has a major league leading 21 wins and is second in the majors with a 1.68 ERA. After being a top prospect and Opening Day starter with the Orioles, he began to struggle mightily with his control. At the 2013 trade deadline, the birds traded him to the cubbies, along with reliever Pedro Strop, for three months of Scott Feldman and a fourth place finish in the division. Yeah, that one doesn’t look so great at the moment, there Danny. Arrieta showed massive improvements last year, but this year he’s vaulted into one of the very best pitchers in the sport. He recently no-hit the NL West Champion Dodgers in LA. He’s allowed only four runs in his 11 starts in August and September. The dude is unstoppable at the moment. Well, really he’s been unstoppable for a while. Since July, the Cubs are 16-1 when Arrieta pitches. The benefit of being in the Wild Card Game — for the Cubs anyhow — is you get to ride with your top horse. That appears to be very bad news for the Pirates. Pittsburgh does have Gerrit Cole, who is second to Arrieta with 19 wins this season, to be fair. Cole just isn’t the pitcher Arrieta is, or at least what he has been the last three months. Arrieta has been like MVP Justin Verlander or MVP Clayton Kershaw on… ya know, I feel like using the expression “on steroids” won’t have the desired effect I planned for in this context for some reason.

These are two fun teams that have gotten their fanbases buzzing. I already mentioned how nice it was to have great baseball back in Western PA. Former NL MVP Andrew McCutchen has turned the buccos into a consistent winner and has them ready to go Wednesday. Young players like Starling Marte and Josh Harrison are a blast to watch. The Cubs are truly the ones with the youth movement, however. Position players Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Starlin Castro, Kyle Schwarber, Jorge Soler, Addison Russell, Javier Baez and Tommy La Stella are all key contributors for Chicago at age 26 or younger. Six of them are either rookies or in their second season. It’s been an amazing ride to see how quickly these guys are coming along. It’s a far cry from the hot takes in April concerning star rookie Kris Bryant spending two weeks in the minors.

For me personally, the stakes are even higher. Many of you know I’ve been a big Cubs fan since I was a young child. I ride for the local teams in all sports, but after that, the city of Chicago has always had my heart. I don’t really know how it started. Maybe it was that as a kid my favorite movies were Home Alone and Space Jam which took place there — I feel the caveat “non-Disney film” is necessary here. Sammy Sosa was my favorite athlete in elementary school. The joy and passion with which he played the game had me transfixed. Come 1998, and his epic home run chase with Mark McGwire, I was hooked. Since high school though — when my mom accepted a job with a home office in Chicago — I have been able to visit the city several times and have fallen even further for it. As far as the Orioles, I have easily managed to be a diehard for both clubs. The year it has any confliction will be if they ever meet in the World Series, and I’ll cross that amazing bridge when we come to it. And as those playoff numbers I outlined suggest, I’m not exactly front-running here. Adding the loveable losers to my fandom has only increased my sports fan misery. Experiencing the Steve Bartman collapse as a 12 year-old is still the most crushing sports defeat I’ve had. As for the Pirates, I don’t have tons of ill will towards them. The city they play in, however, has very much drawn my ire. As a Ravens and Capitals fan, the Steelers and Penguins are two of my most hated sports franchises. The Pirates are their only other pro team. It’s the same fans wearing all that stupid back and yellow — okay, the color coordination is pretty sweet, not gonna lie. So if the Cubs season ends in Pittsburgh after all of this, it will leave an extra sour taste in my mouth.

With these two talented clubs running over the non-Cardinals competition pretty much since the All-Star Break, this game has had a dragged-out, Star Wars: Episode VII-esque buildup. I’m ready for this to finally commence. Don’t go thinking that whoever wins this game has a short walk to the gallows courtesy of the Cardinals though. Partly due to some major injuries, the Cardinals are only 14-13 since September 1, whereas the Pirates and Cubs have been red-hot the last couple weeks. Also, it’s worth noting that last year’s World Series combatants both came out of this Wild Card round. Instead of dwelling on the one-game nature, don’t forget that Cubs wouldn’t have even made the playoffs in the old format. How awful would that have been? We should all just be thanking our lucky stars we get to seem these perennial-losers-turned-powerhouses duke it out for the right to come at the king in the next round.

The advice I give you — and that I will heed myself — is shake off your stupor. Stop questioning why we’re here and whether we should even be doing this at all. I don’t know what to think either. I don’t know if this is the best thing to happen to America’s pastime or the worst. What I do know is come next week we’re going to see two phenomenal baseball teams put it all on the line for one night, where the winner will likely emerge as the World Series favorite. Even for sports fans that don’t follow baseball, this has to be intriguing. For baseball fans, this has elements of the first day of March Madness, the Super Bowl and a Game 7 all rolled into one. It’s going to be bonkers.