The Yankees Clinch Twice

Today was the last day of the Major League Baseball regular season and boy was it eventful.

The St. Louis Cardinals shutout Houston while the Atlanta Braves lost in extra innings to Philadelphia giving St. Louis the come-from-behind capture of the National League Wildcard playoff berth. When Milwaukee surged past St. Louis in the standings two months ago it appeared as though the Cardinals season was over, but miracles happen. Atlanta really swooned in September to enable St. Louis' comeback. Surprisingly, this collapse paled in comparison to what occurred in the American League.

In the American League, the Boston Red Sox gave up a 9th inning lead against Baltimore, losing for the first time in 78 such situations. Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay (I still want to call them Devil) Rays knocked off the Yankees 8-7 in 12 innings after having trailed the Yankees 7-0. Boston's collapse was epic -- the worst in Major League Baseball history -- giving up a 9 1/2 game lead they held as late as September 2nd. Relatively, New York's collapse today was nothing!

But there's more to the story. The New York Yankees had clinched the American League East Division title earlier in the week, and had no motivation to beat the Rays. Their primary motivation was to rest their stars for the playoffs which is pretty much the opposite of wanting to win. So no one was surprised when the Yankees fielded a lineup featuring many prospects and back-up players.

But hold on...there's an unwritten rule in Baseball that when the game has playoff implications for the other team you don't mail it in. And that's exactly what New York did. In fact, the winning run in the Ray's clinching game was scored against a tired pitcher, some would even say spent pitcher, that wasn't even on the Yankees' playoff roster. Win or lose, his season was over.

Was this fair? Was this right? Who was hurt -- only the Boston Red Sox and their fans, who just happen to be the nemeses of the Yankees. I'm certain that the Yankees and their die-hard fans are taking particular delight in the fact that Boston was kept from the playoffs. The fact that this was in part orchestrated by the play of the Yankees made the outcome even sweeter.

In the previous series, the Yankees and Red Sox played each other with New York taking two of the three games. New York managed to field semi-competitive teams against Boston -- they played them tough...and then they went through the motions against Tamps Bay.

This was wrong. Plain and simple. The Yankees had a responsibility to make as honest an effort against Tampa as they had against Boston, and they chose to ignore this responsibility out of self-interest. The Yankees are Major League Baseball's juggernauts, nothing they do is really criticized because their success is good for Baseball as a whole, so don't expect to see many headlines or stories like this one. Maybe there won't be any others!

Was this outcome in the best interests of Baseball? Well, it depends who you ask. Boston is a close second to New York in popularity and in garnering high television ratings. Having them miss the playoffs will hurt the networks in that the audiences will be smaller than they could have been. On the other hand, having any team other than New York or Boston in the playoffs helps those that argue that the 'status quo' is good for Baseball; anyone can make the playoffs at any time, not just the big, BIG spenders. By 'status quo' I mean 1) having no salary cap, resulting in a $150,000,000 disparity between the highest and lowest payrolls; 2) having playoff spots determined mainly by divisions; 3) having unbalanced schedules; 4) having inter-league play which no one has ever tried to make balanced.

From where I'm standing, the first position is a matter of fact not opinion so pulling strings to keep Boston out of the playoffs is not in the best interests of Baseball. From where I'm standing, one more season where Boston misses the playoffs changes nothing and does not add weight to the argument in support off the status quo, so again, this was not in the best interests of Baseball. After all, the Yankees have made the playoffs 16 of the last 17 years (winning the World Series 5* times), and Boston has made the playoffs 9 of the last 17 years (winning the World Series 2 times). This data does not make for a significantly better argument than had it been 10 of the last 17 years for Boston.

So, now that we've exposed the wrong doing, what can we do about it. Nothing. Should we? In this case, probably not. The unwritten rules of baseball are never officially enforced -- if they were, they wouldn't be 'unwritten' rules. The closest we get to enforcement is how teams treat each other after a perceived violation. Things like pitchers throwing 98 mph fastballs at or behind your slugger's (or the offending player's) head/shoulder tend to happen in these situations. It really isn't news that the Yankees are a monolithic juggernaut that is completely out of control to the detriment of many cities and many fans -- they've only failed to buy their way into the playoffs once in 17 years! (Of course, they do still have to play their way in each year, but all-star teams are expected to beat normal/traditional teams.) And, while it is true that New York didn't lift a finger to meet their competitive responsibility you can't escape the fact that Boston's record in September was absolutely terrible! More than anything or anyone else, they have to own this failure. Even a sub-mediocre, possibly even bad, performance would have been enough to hold off the Rays and they just couldn't manage to adequately represent themselves. (I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Boston had the worst September record of all 30 teams! That's just not how you shepherd a team into the playoffs, regardless of how big a lead you've amassed!) Further, if Boston had limped into the playoffs, there's no reason to believe that they would have been able to capitalize on the opportunity since so many players played so poorly, particularly the pitching staff. It was so bad that they really didn't have anyone to put on the mound tomorrow had there been a need for a one-game-playoff to decide the Wildcard.

If you're looking for justice, perhaps you can find it in this: the Yankees first playoff appointment is with the Detroit Tigers, the club with the guaranteed Cy Young Award, and possibly MVP Award winner, Justin Verlander. Oh, and if Verlander doesn't win the MVP, first baseman Miguel Cabrera will garner plenty of votes, too. (Yeah, New York's outfielder Curtis Granderson is probably the odds-on favorite for the MVP, but it's no slam dunk.)

So, enjoy the Red Sox-less playoffs, folks. It only happens about every other year.

* Only 16 of the 17 World Series have been decided, New York could conceivably make it 6 of 17.