The once-singular nature of Major League Baseball’s regular season has been diluted by regular expansions of the playoff field — first from two to four teams in 1969, then to eight teams beginning in 1995, to 10 teams in 2012 and now to 12 teams beginning this season.
But once in a while, the fates of teams can still be determined by the finishing kick they produce on the final weekend of a regular season that’s already been as successful as it is exhaustive.
The playoffs basically begin tonight for the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, who are opening a three-game series in Atlanta that will likely determine the winner of the National League East.
The Mets (98-58) are one game ahead of the Braves (97-59).
This marks the first time in 10 years that the first- and second-place teams in a division are meeting on the final weekend of the season while separated by one game or fewer. The Oakland Athletics trailed the Texas Rangers by one game in the AL West heading into the final series of the 2012 season, which the Athletics swept to win the division for the first time since 2006.
The NL East winner will earn a first-round bye and the opportunity to align its rotation for a best-of-five NL Division Series starting Oct. 11, as well as the not-so-ancillary benefit of avoiding the titanic Los Angeles Dodgers until the NL Championship Series.
The runner-up will begin the playoffs as the no. 4 seed in the best-of-three wild card series, slated to start next Friday, and will likely have to utilize its best starters just to win the first round and advance to a Division Series against the Dodgers.
“It’s going to be huge, honestly,” Mets reliever Drew Smith said Wednesday night. “It’s pretty much deciding the division. I’ve never been part of the playoffs and I’m sure it’s going to be as close to a playoff atmosphere as you can get without actually being (there).”
The urgency of this weekend is reflected in the pitching matchups — three ace vs. ace duels.
Two-time Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom goes for the Mets tonight against Max Fried, who won the decisive Game 6 of the World Series last season. Three-time Cy Young Award winner and future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer takes the mound Saturday against the Braves’ Kyle Wright, the majors’ lone 20-game winner this season. Chris Bassitt is slated to start Sunday for New York against another savvy veteran — Atlanta’s Charlie Morton, who won Game 7 of the 2017 World Series for the Houston Astros and Game 7 of the 2020 ALCS for the Tampa Bay Rays.
“It’s going to be fun,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said Wednesday night. “Just two really good teams, obviously, going at it. See what happens.”
The rare duel for the division on the final weekend will also crystallize each team’s focus by providing the rare opportunity to control its own fate. Scoreboard watching is a late-season tradition unlike any other for participants and observers alike, but for three days, neither club has to hope for a non-contender to give it a helping hand — or has to worry about being on the other side of a late-season upset that isn’t really an upset to anyone who recognizes that the marathon nature of the season.
“I have to intentionally not look, OK?” Mets manager Buck Showalter said about scoreboard watching. “It takes a lot of discipline. But maybe it’s just whistling in the graveyard for me, I don’t know.”
The Miami Marlins and Washington Nationals wrecked various amounts of havoc in the NL East race this week. The Marlins earned a 6-3 win in Tuesday’s opener of a two-game series against the Mets and raced out to a 4-0 lead Wednesday before Eduardo Escobar collected all five of his RBIs after the seventh inning to give New York a 5-4, 10-inning win. Francisco Lindor scored the game-winning run less than half an hour after the Braves fell out of their tie for first place by losing to the Nationals, 3-2, in 10 innings.
Hours earlier, Marlins manager Don Mattingly recalled the classic 1985 AL East race, when Mattingly’s Yankees began an eight-game losing streak in September by dropping the final three games of a four-game set against the division-leading Toronto Blue Jays. The Blue Jays lost eight of their next 15 games, all against non-contenders, before finishing 99-62, two games ahead of the Yankees,
“We (went) somewhere to a club we should beat and lose,” Mattingly said, referring to the final five losses to Cleveland, Detroit and Baltimore. “They go somewhere and lost two (to the Boston Red Sox) and we would have made that ground right up. It kind of taught me about how this thing takes a lot of time to get to — and it’s hard to win games down the stretch. It really is.”
Sometime over the next five days — after the Mets and Braves end the regular season with potentially dangerous three-game series against the Nationals and Marlins, respectively — one of the NL East contenders is going to get a reminder of just how hard the 162-game season really is and how one of the finest seasons in team history wasn’t initially enough.
“This is a grind unlike any other sport that exists on the planet, professionally,” Mets reliever Trevor May said this week.
Whomever finishes second will become the ninth wild card team with 95 or more wins since 2012. It’s also likely both teams will finish with at least 100 wins, which would mark the third time in the last four years — but just the sixth time since divisional play began in 1969 — that two teams in the same division reached the century mark.
This season has proven last year’s championship run wasn’t a fluke for the Braves, who didn’t get over .500 until Aug. 6 and finished with the 12th-best record in baseball before winning the World Series. And this is the Mets’ most impressive one-year turnaround since Gil Hodges oversaw the transformation from perennial losers to World Series champions in 1969.
Beginning tonight, we find out for whom that’s enough to win the NL East — and then the fun, and the tallest task of all, really begins.
“We know how good they are and we’ve got an opportunity just like they do,” Showalter said. “And it’s great for baseball and it’s good for our sport that we all love. It’s an honor to be a part of it. See where everything takes us. But we’re going to get an opportunity in October to play in the playoffs. We’ll see when.”
“Up until this year, I’ve always been aware of where we are in the season,” said May, who has been limited to 23 appearances due to a triceps injury and a bout with COVID. “And this could be because I missed a bunch in the middle and I don’t feel the grind has gotten me like it has. But I look at the date and say ‘There’s no way it’s that day this late in the season.’
“We’re going to wake up next Wednesday and be like, well, I guess we’re going.”
