As the hunt for October begins to gain steam, it’s time to take a look at some of the problems still facing MLB postseason contenders.
Now, some of the problems might be minor ones, but in a one-game playoff or five-game series, anything can happen in baseball. We saw what happened last season when two wild-card teams made it all the way to the World Series. All it takes is for a team to get hot at the right time and the dreams of a Fall Classic can quickly slip away.
Some teams have just about locked up a playoff berth—as long as they can avoid an epic collapse, especially in the National League. The American League has quite the wild-card race on its hands, however, and two divisions that are still up for grabs.
The following slides will take a look at the teams that can realistically make the playoffs, what problems the teams may have and how they might be able to fix them. The list is in order of the current wild-card standings as of Tuesday night, starting with the American League.
Excluded from the list are the Cleveland Indians and the Tampa Bay Rays, who both sit three games below .500. The Indians are still a little too young, and the Rays have too many games remaining against other AL East teams.
The San Francisco Giants and the Washington Nationals have also been left off the list after some brutal losses of late.
The Giants lost seven straight entering the month before finally picking up a win on Sept. 5, and they are nine games back of the wild card.
The Nats have blown leads in their last four losses, including three straight 5-3 advantages that led to 8-5 losses. Most recently, Washington blew a 7-1 lead to lose 8-7 to the New York Mets on Tuesday night, which placed them six games back in the NL East. Brutal.
With that, let’s get started before Matt Harvey reaches his innings limit.