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In the National League East, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Atlanta Braves are like two high stakes Texas Hold’em poker players heading for heads up action as the rest of the final table players slip to the wayside. It looks like everything will be settled on the last hand or their case the last home stand of the Atlanta Braves. That three game show-down should decide who will win the pennant and who may be a wildcard or just a spectator in the post season.
Not only are the Braves trailing the Phillies by the slimmest of margins they are also trying to hold off a trio of National League West teams for the wildcard. Unlike the two team race in the East, a recent 10 game win streak by the Colorado Rockies has them nipping at the heels of the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants. With three teams heading to the finish line, at first blush it looks like there will be no ultimate end of season showdown the Phillies and Braves will enjoy, but that’s not entirely true.
Not only is there still plenty of time for the trio to beat up on each other, the Giants and Padres do wrap up the season going head to head. Right now the Rockies and Padres are about to start a series with San Diego with the potential to go from dead to rights into first place. San Diego once sat on a six and a half game lead in the division but have gone 4 - 13 since. Part of that lead evaporated at the hands and the bats of the Giants who took three out of four games against the Padres over that stretch.
Over that same period the Colorado Rockies were 11 games out of first. They are currently on a 10 game winning streak. Before that they went 6 - 4 to get warmed up. Now, the 11 has become 1 games. The Rockies have done this before, in fact, the heating up the pennant race at the end of the season is often due to the Rockies streaking toward the finish line the last couple of years.
In 2009, the Rockies were 12 games under .500. At the close of the season, they had won enough to seal up a wild card and race into the playoffs. Nobody was hotter. In 2007, all they did was win an incredible 14 out of 15 games to qualify for the playoffs.
Considering, all five of these teams are within hailing distance of one another the National League will get a whole lot murkier before the playoff picture clarifies. The Braves have nine games left with the Phillies and currently hold a 7-5 season record with them. Lucky for them, the rest of their schedule is bottom feeders and none of their challengers in the NL West.
In the American League, the races are slightly less juicy. In the East, the New York Yankees have only a half game lead on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The last two representatives of the AL in the World Series, the Devil Rays lost to the Phillies while the Yankees beat them, both want to pip the other for the pennant. While it’s likely the loser of the race will still wrap a wild-card seed the undesirable on the road for every series status of this year’s American League Wild Card is something both teams want to avoid.
Their mutual World Series opponent, the Phillies have the best record in baseball since the All Star break but are surprisingly one of the most banged up teams. They also have a habit of making a late run, twice catching the Mets in recent years, and this year is no different. As things stand, it looks like the Phillies might win a fifth straight National League East crown, and the Braves may have to settle for the wildcard. The NL West teams may do all the damage to each other for the Braves to get in even if they fail in their crucial all-in showdown with Philadelphia in their season-ending home stand.
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