Talk about anti-climatic. Just over half way through the regular season, the baseball playoffs in the American League would already seem to be a done deal.
In the East, the Bosox and Yanks continue to slug it out for superiority. One will win it, and the other is a shoo-in as a wild card. The nearest team to either are the Tampa Bay Rays, some 15 games back of both.
In the Central, the Cleveland Indians are far and away the class of an otherwise pitiful weak division. They're up by 11 games and that lead will no doubt get much larger as the season wears on. Between the Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins, and KC Royals -- forget any wild card. They're collectively terrible.
Out West, the Houston Astros have some serious competition in the Seattle Mariners. Who would have thought the defending world champs would be challenged by the team that has a long history of developing super-stars but can't hang on to them when free agency rears its ugly head? (See small-market, AKA El Cheapo). But the Mariners appear to be for real. Will they fold down the stretch? Maybe. But when a team is 24 games over the .500 mark at a little past mid-season -- they must be doing a whole lot of things right.
One of them will win the division, and the other will be the second wild card.
Poor Mike Trout. The best overall player in the entire Major Leagues will spend yet another futile year with the LA Angels. He's putting up MVP numbers again, but his only participation in this year's post-season will be watching it on TV. Ya gotta feel for the guy.
True, he's making over $30 mill a year, hardly chump change, but the Angels own his butt until the year 2021, when he'll be 30 years old. Such are the up and down sides to signing a long-term contract with an otherwise mediocre team. Lots of dough, but no shot at post-season glory.
At that, barring injury, and Trout seems to one of those hard-playing indestructible guys like Pete Rose, when America welcomes in what is most likely going to be a new President in 2021, it will likely also see the highest bidding free agency battle in the history of sports.
Thirty years old is the peak of most baseball players. Trout will no doubt have suitors with very deep pockets courting him every which way. And one of them will probably be dumb enough to offer him something like a ten-year contract for a bazillion dollars.
How'd that work out with Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers? Dude can't even stay healthy enough to play, let alone effectively, but he's still making $76,000 a day, EVERY day, for doing nothing. Worse, the Tigers are on the hook for another three years of this lunacy.
Boston, NYY, Cleveland, Houston, and Seattle. A mighty fine playoff field it will be.
Pity we have to slog through another dreary three months of the season to finally get to the games that will matter.
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