27 August 2015

Pick: Red Sox over Padres in World Series

Take a trip back to April 1, 2015. If some prankster had that day whispered in your ear that he had bet the house that the Red Sox, Tigers, A's, Nationals and Padres would all win their divisions; that the NL Central would be a stinking cesspool of mediocrity; and that the Yankees, Blue Jays, Royals, Twins, Astros, Mets, Cubs, Pirates and Giants would all be selling off at the trade deadline; you wouldn't have thought it an April Fools gag.

Those results were totally plausible...and exactly wrong. All the presumed division winners other than the Nationals have been eliminated from contention, if not literally than practically, and the Nats' hopes hang on a very fragile thread.

Meanwhile, it appears that five of the seven presumed also-rans are playoff locks, with only the defending champs keeping hope alive for a post-season berth.

As things currently stand, only the Cardinals and Dodgers would repeat their division titles, though L.A. would secure its position mostly by the scuffling of its division rivals. 

Part of the magic of baseball is that even its unpredictability is unpredictable, but this is unusual even for the National Pastime. Houston, which has 71 wins with a quarter of the season to play, hadn't tallied 71 in a full season for six years. The Mets had lost more games than they've won every season since '08, when Johan Santan, Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes led the club. Toronto's last meaningful October skirmishes pre-date email, the nation of Serbia and the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

And the Cubs, well, they've been the Cubs since they got Bartmanned by the Marlins more than a decade hence. Their time seemed anon, but not this anon. Who's Kyle Schwarber again?

It's making for quite a fun campaign, particularly for fans of several woebegone franchises. It'd be fun to see any one of the upstarts win it all.

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