Philadelphia’s Bryce Harper (3) celebrates his home run with J.T. Realmuto (10) during the sixth inning of the Phillies’ game against the Washington Nationals on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Washington. The sixth-inning homer was Harper’s second of the contest. AP Photo/Nick Wass
In a normal MLB season, Game 58 arrives in the first week of June. The weather has turned warmer, all-star balloting has begun, and teams have started to form conclusions as to what they have on their rosters and what they still need. Nearly two-thirds of the regular season remains to be played.
But in this star-crossed, schedule-shredding, pandemic-shortened, may-we-never-go-through-this-again 2020 season, Game 58 brings us to the schedule’s final weekend — an arrival that feels both premature and miraculous, given all the sport has endured to get here. The weather is turning cooler, signaling the approach of the postseason. Amid the playoff races still to be determined, desperation has set in.
While the ad hoc, 16-team playoff format put into place this year has all but eliminated drama at the top of the standings — with all eight qualifiers from each league guaranteed a three-game series in the opening round — it has succeeded in turning the bottom of the wild-card races into a free-for-all, at least on the National League half of the bracket.
Entering Wednesday, six teams — the St. Louis Cardinals (27-25), Miami Marlins (28-27), Cincinnati Reds (28-28), Milwaukee Brewers (27-27), San Francisco Giants (27-27) and Philadelphia Phillies (27-29) — were bunched within two games of each other for the four remaining spots in the lower half of the NL bracket, ensuring a dramatic final weekend. Even the defending World Series champion Washington Nationals, at 23-32, were still mathematically alive entering Wednesday.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves have already clinched their divisions, while the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres have clinched playoff berths.
Meantime, barring a miracle, all that is left in the American League — where the Tampa Bay Rays, Chicago White Sox, Oakland A’s, Minnesota Twins, New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians have all clinched, and the Houston Astros and Toronto Blue Jays are closing in on berths — is seeding.
Seeding, however, is no small matter this year, with all eight first-round series taking place at the home stadium of the better-seeded team, over three consecutive days. The AL first-round series are scheduled to begin Sept. 29, and the NL series on Sept. 30.
Here is how the seeding works this year: The top three seeds in each league go to the winners of each division, in order of record. The fourth seed, with its benefit of home-field advantage, goes to the second-place team with the best record. The fifth and sixth seeds go to the remaining second-place teams, and the seventh and eighth seeds to the teams with the next-best records, regardless of division.
The quirks of the seeding system mean, for example, the 1 vs. 8 series in the NL could see the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers, whose 39-16 record entering Wednesday translates to a 115-win pace over 162 games, having to face a first-round matchup with a dangerous Cincinnati Reds team that could start Trevor Bauer, Luis Castillo and Sonny Gray (combined ERA: 2.73) in those three games.
Another, important twist in the format this year: Ties atop the standings will not be settled with a one-game playoff (or Game 163, as it has come to be known). Instead, all ties will be settled mathematically, beginning with head-to-head records, where applicable. Otherwise, ties will be broken by intradivisional records. (Three-way ties would be settled in the same fashion, beginning with head-to-head records among the three teams, then defaulting to intradivisional records.)
One other, potentially chaotic contingency hangs over the NL half of the bracket: under the current schedule, the Cardinals would play only 58 games, two fewer than every other contender — owing to their two-week hiatus in the wake of a coronavirus outbreak earlier this season, and the dwindling number of days in which to make up the lost games with doubleheaders.
Should the Cardinals qualify for the postseason (on the basis of winning percentage), those two games would not be made up simply for the sake of seeding; in that case, the Cardinals’ seed would be determined by winning percentage. However, if those two outstanding games mean the difference between the Cardinals securing (or losing) a playoff berth, they would be forced to play one or both ends of a doubleheader at Detroit on Sept. 28, the day after the end of the season.
That scenario, with its potential to affect seeding throughout that half of the bracket, could result in none of the NL playoff teams knowing where they will play in the first round until Monday.
That leaves this weekend’s Cardinals-Brewers series in St. Louis — actually a five-game series, starting Thursday and including a doubleheader on Friday — as the linchpin for a possibly wild finish to the regular season.
After everything that has happened to baseball in 2020, it would be only fitting.
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