Take a look at the Major League Baseball standings. With nearly two weeks left to play, four of the six divisions are already either officially locked up essentially locked up. The other two (the NL Central and AL East) are close enough to keep an eye on, but not close enough to sweat over. Both of the top Wild Card teams have some healthy cushions, as well.
The only real races are between deeply flawed 80-something-win teams duking it out for the right to play a one-game playoff on the road. Who will prevail? Will it be the Twins or the Angels? The Rockies or the Brewers? Welcome to September! Feel the excitement!
The best way to illustrate how unexciting this stretch run is shaping up to be is to look at FanGraphs’ playoff odds, which factor in not only current records but also projections and underlying performance. As it stands, eight teams are at 97.7 percent or better to make the postseason, followed by the Rockies at 86.5 percent and the Twins at 69.2 percent. That leaves only one other team, the Angels, with even a 10 percent shot. The AL Wild Card race that looked so crazy not long ago? All but Minnesota and L.A. have dropped below 3 percent.
By comparison, let’s look back at Sept. 18, 2016. On that day, the division races were almost (but not quite) as lopsided as they are now, but the AL had between five and seven teams battling for two Wild Card spots, and the NL featured two squads angling for the league’s two spots. On Sept. 18, 2015, the AL West and AL Wild Cards were close, even with the NL largely determined. On Sept. 18, 2014, we had two good divisional races and another jammed AL Wild Card field.
In fact, to find a pennant chase as anticlimactic as the current one, you have to go back to at least 2009, when seven of the eight playoff spots were more or less locked down by mid-September. But even then, at least some of the divisional races were close enough to dream on. Not since 1998 (when current Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers was just shy of his second birthday) have we seen a set of division leads as huge as the ones we’ve got now.
To be clear: This is not an indictment of MLB’s double Wild Card system. Under the old playoff format, these races would be even less exciting, with all eight spots more or less wrapped up. Sure, things might be more dramatic in the old-school two-division format, but we’re so far past that that there’s no reason to really compare. Any model will crank out a dry pennant chase sometimes. This year just happens to be one of those times.
So, barring something dramatic, there won’t be too much scoreboard watching over the next two weeks. Luckily, we baseball fans can follow other storylines through the rest of September. Can Giancarlo Stanton get to 60 home runs? Who will with the two MVP awards? What about the Cy Youngs? Will the Astros or the Indians claim the top seed in the AL? Will Bryce Harper come back? Is Corey Kluber a human being?
And then at the end of it all, the playoffs. Of course, October doesn’t care what happened in September. In fact, the presence of so many league-crushing juggernauts could make for a fascinating postseason. Sure the Astros and Indians overpowered their respective divisions, but can they overpower each other? The flip side of having few races is having lots of great teams, and the Dodgers, Nationals, Indians, Astros and maybe Cubs and Red Sox fit the bill. Next month should be a lot of fun.
In fact, maybe this slow September will wind up being a blessing. As fans in Minnesota and Denver sweat out the final weeks a bit, the rest of us can take a deep breath, catch up with our families and prepare for the postseason.
