Baseball isn’t about to eliminate its divisions, so this is the kind of thing that’s going to happen all too often.
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Yes, the Toronto Blue Jays, led by the trio of Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista, and Edwin Encarnacion bashed their way to the top of these rankings.
Mitchell also said he’s been a New York Yankees fan since 1996 or 1997. They include two-time All-Star and MVP candidate Anthony Rizzo and likely N.L. Rookie of the Year Kris Bryant. The Amazin’s open up against the Dodgers (92-70) in Los Angeles Friday. And the difference in this year’s club versus last year is that all of a sudden, they’re not just a, you know, a paper-cut team offensively.
In that battle, the Cubs scored first at the top of the third.
Pitching for the Cubs will be Jake Arrieta, who has had an unreal second half of the season. The Cubs were trying to hang on by their fingernails to a shred of wild-card contention. Even the College World Series is double elimination. I’m just going to go out and do my best. And for the Pirates, Gerrit Cole will be an excellent matchup for him. We as fans want to see the best teams playing deep into October. And if they can get by Masahiro Tanaka, then the Astros have a legitimate shot of winning the American League pennant. Instead of being the “Lovable Losers” that they have been tagged as for decades, they are now just lovable.
The Mets (90-72) had a tremendous surprise season, but they have the worst record out of any of the NL playoff teams.
However, their postseason run lasted all of one game.
The Cubs posted a 19-9 record in September and come to Busch looking for their 10th straight win. Not that seven games really tells us who the best team is, either, but it’s certainly more illustrative than one game. The Cardinals went 11-8 against the Cubs this season, but the Cubs won four of the last six games, and claimed the final two series after a four-game split in July. An obvious takeaway is that an ace is extremely valuable in the Wild Card round, which, sure, but aces have always been valuable. Here are two iconic franchises who haven’t faced each other in the World Series since 1938.
The Cubs-Pirates game drew a 5.5 overnight rating nationally on TBS, according to sportsmediawatch.com, which marked a 34 percent increase from 2014’s NL wild-card game between the Giants and Pirates on ESPN and up 45 percent over the AL wild-card game between the Royals and Athletics on TBS in 2014. Yeah, they let off the gas in Atlanta after the clinch in Pittsburgh, but failing to score three runs in the last three games is concerning no matter how you slice it.
Two teams with divergent styles.
“The loss tonight doesn’t define this year that we had”, center fielder Andrew McCutchen said. The Dodgers will win their first title since 1988 …
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