The Wild Card Saved September – Will It Kill Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge’s October?

Let’s start with the obvious, this would have been an awful baseball September without the Wild card, Shohei Ohtani aside of course. In the American League, the Baltimore Orioles gave the Yankees a battle in the East through the entire summer but have wilted a bit coming down the stretch. In the Central, Cleveland pulled away on Kansas City and Minnesota and it’s been awhile now since the always division winning Houston Astros wiped out a rather sizeable early season lead of Seattle’s.

In the National League, The Phillies and Brewers ran away with the East and Central a long time ago and while the Dodgers squandered a solid position mid summer amidst a rash of debilitating injuries, they have righted the ship, leaving the Padres and Diamondbacks to fight over the scraps.

But it’s been those scraps that have joined Ohtani’s rocket to 50/50 that have created the September interest in MLB. The wildcardless past would have produced but a yawn and a snore. Instead the daily oncoming train of the Tigers have threatened the season long easy post season position of the Twins and Royals in the American League while the Padres, Diamondbacks, Braves and Mets slug it out for 3 spots in the National.

Last year was the first year with expanded wild cards and it proved to be devastating to the winningest teams in the game. The Astros were the only one of the six division winners to advance to the league championship series including all three 100 win teams – The Braves (104-58), The Orioles (101-61) and the Dodgers (100-62).

Some blamed the rest between series that was afforded the top teams as the lower ones battled it out for a chance to advance beyond round one. Fox’s Ken Rosenthal wrote:

“I was inside the Phillies clubhouse [in spring training] when the Phillies learned of Brian Snitker’s comments about the affect of the five-day layoff before the division series. Snitker said that he doesn’t like the playoff system explaining, ‘It’s hard to hit velocity when you haven’t seen anything in five days,’

“A number of Phillies took offense. They believe Snitker was making excuses and demeaning their back-to-back triumphs as a Wild Card over the Braves in the DS.”@Ken_Rosenthal talks about how the Phillies felt about the comments made in the spring by the Braves manager pic.twitter.com/F8DbUmap2s

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) September 20, 2024

Well if the Braves make it this time, it’ll be the Phillies with the pre playoff rest. And no matter what, we will still be dealing with a small sample size, but if it plays out the same way, the best teams will have to have a look at how they handle the layoff and baseball will want to find a way to keep their best alive longer.