Game Picks - Friday: October 5, 2012

Bud Selig's dream comes true today as the two wild card games are set to be played. The "one and done" format means do or die for each of the four teams as the losers will go home and the winners will go on to play the best teams in each league for the division series.

And whether or not you are a fan of the new proceedings, the games should be filled with drama and exciting to watch. Of course, they could end up being blowouts but let's hope that does not happen.

The picks:

• The Braves over the Cardinals: The Cardinals have certainly been in this position before and used the wild card finish last year to go all the way to the World Series title. But their task is difficult here as the Braves get the home field and the hottest pitcher on the planet in Kris Medlen. If the Braves can get the early lead, their bulllpen can lock it down like no other team in baseball. But the Cardinals do have their good luck charm on the mound. Kyle Lohse had a wonderful run this season and finished with a 16-3 record. And his record was no fluke as he had an excellent earned run average and just a 1.09 WHIP. The two starting pitchers had a combined win-loss record of 26-4! Holy cow! But somebody has to win the game.
• The Rangers over the Orioles: The Rangers get home field, but they have to be coming into this game shell-shocked by how the season ended. That said, they have their best pitcher on the mound in Yu Darvish. If Darvish is on, he will mow the Orioles down. But Darvish will have a clunker of a start now and then and that's what the Orioles have to hope for. The Orioles will start Joe Saunders. At first glance, that choice would make the average fan snicker. But heck, the Orioles have not chosen unwisely all season and somehow it always seems to work. One thing is certain, Ron Washington will not out-manage Buck Showalter. The pick comes down to the simple thought that Darvish should do better than Saunders.

Wednesday: 5-10  Not a good end to the season!

Week: 31-30

Month: 21-24

Season: 1333-1066

Playoffs!? You're asking about the playoffs!?

Ah! That Coach Mora line will never get old, will it? But it does introduce the topic of this post, and that is: If a team is one of the two wild card teams, does that mean the teams made it to the playoffs? Oh, the realization is that the one game play-in or game-in, or whatever they are calling it, will be considered the post season. The stats sites will include those two games in a player's post season stats and not the regular season stats. But is it really making the playoffs?

Yes, this is all semantics, no doubt. We can call anything by whatever name we want to call it. But here is the problem: The one game is fought for the right to go to the division series. In other words, the two wild card teams are playing for the right to compete as one of the four playoff teams. So that makes the event not quite a playoff and yet the post season. 

And it is easy to see why MLB set it up this way. Calling it the 163rd game of the season gets messy. Should a guy who finishes by a few percentage points for the batting title after the 162nd game be penalized if he goes without a hit in that 163rd game? But there is already precedent for that. The 1978 season gave us a one game play-in, or whatever, between the Red Sox and the Yankees--the famous Bucky Dent game. But that was not a post season game. That was the 163rd game for each team.

And that precedent might happen again this season if say, the Rays and the A's finished the season in a tie for the final wild card spot. That would be each team's 163rd game, not a playoff game...not a post season game.

This way--and this is why MLB is smarter than us--more teams are fighting for a playoff spot. Yes, a playoff spot. That's what they call it. They did not say that on September 15, sixteen teams were still in the hunt to play an extra game at the end of the season. They said that sixteen teams were in the playoff hunt. And yet, it is not. It is a game to determine which team gets into the playoffs.

Again, this is semantics, sure. Despite its little semantics chicanery, even MLB could not quite go as far as it wanted to. Even they did not call the one game a playoff game. They called it a game-in, or whatever that term is they have been using.

For this observer, if the Yankees or the Orioles or the Rays or the Angels or the A's have to play each other as the two wild card teams, the loser of that game did not make it to the playoffs. Statistically speaking, the team will have made it to the post season. But the team did not. Not really. The team that wins that one game? Yes, then they will be a playoff team.