And Just like that, The Pittsburgh Pirates’ season is over. The Pirates built onto an impressive franchise turnaround over the past few seasons, finishing 2015 with baseball’s second best record (98-64),and the general consensus is that Pittsburgh’s wins are more impressive when factoring in the Pirates accomplishing this feat in baseball’s toughest division. The first, second, and third best records in baseball all came from the NL Central this year, and now, after seven months of hard work, win streaks, long road stretches, injuries, and maneuvering, the Pirates are out of the post-season after one loss.
The additional wild card spot adds a new level of excitement to the game, as too often in the past, great teams barely miss the wild card cut after putting together fantastic seasons. The 1993 San Francisco Giants won one-hundred and three games and missed the playoffs. This conundrum is opposite of the NBA problem, where teams at or below .500 squeak into playoff contention with extremely weak teams.
While adding a second wild card spot vindicates the annual baseball snubs, determining the winner after one game goes against everything baseball stands for. One-hundred and sixty-two games in a season; three and four game series throughout the regular season, five and seven game series in the post-season. The amount of games in an MLB season seems tedious to the outsider, but it stands for a reason. Any team can beat any team on a single day. Law of averages ensures the best teams prevail. The Cincinnati Reds, thirty-six games back from first place in the NL Central, could beat the Pirates or Cubs in a single game. Because of the 2015 Pittsburgh Pirates’ dud in the finale, the MLB needs to tweak the wild card game to a best of three series.
Three game is what the typical series in during the season, a team can’t sweep a series in one game. After high tensions and hit batters Wednesday night, stemming from a long season of competition and tough games between two great teams, it felt like the power cord had been pulled, and all the mounting excitement of a division rivalry just shut-off abruptly.
Though the Pirates deserved a shot to complete a full series, the bitter truth is, the Chicago Cubs had Pittsburgh’s number in 2015. Out of nineteen meetings between the two teams, the Cubs won eleven games, outscoring the Pirates by ten runs (81-71) in the season’s series. To some, the Cubs seemed like a hot team with exciting young players at the beginning of the season, destined to fail. Now, Chicago is an exciting young team with a solid rotation, obnoxiously supportive fan-base, impressive young sluggers in Kris Bryant and Kyle Schwarber, and a battle-tested manager in Joe Maddon, Chicago is here to stay. When the season is over, Joe Maddon deserves Manager of The Year. Period. Maddon has turned the 2014 Iowa Cubs and Tennessee Smokies into legitimate playoff contenders.
After beating the Pirates a convincing 4-0 on Wednesday night, the Cubs will be tested yet again against MLB’s best team, the NL Central dominant St. Louis Cardinals. The division rivalry between Chicago and St. Louis is one of the oldest in baseball, and unfortunately for Chicago, recent history leans in favor of the Cardinals, baseball’s only one-hundred win team of 2015. The Cardinals are the only team in the NL Central the Cubs do not have a winning record against. It’s an uphill battle for Chicago, as St. Louis routinely rips the hearts and livers from division rivals and their fans over the past decade.
If the series was one game, The Chicago Cubs might stand a chance.