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2020 MLB Season Thread -- Rays v. Dodgers -- Small Payroll v. Large Payroll

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Some interesting things to watch in the next two days.

Cleveland is red-hot right now and has moved into second in the AL Central, tied with the White Sox and only 1GB of the Twins. Cleveland has Pittsburgh, White Sox have the Cubs and Twins face Cincinnati. There's a chance Cleveland ends up winning the Central.

Yankees are back in tailspin mode and are only 1GB ahead of Toronto, with Toronto having the tiebreaker.

Still a battle going on between Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco and Milwaukee for the last two seats at the dance.
 
Don't sleep on the Bravos! Amazing resilience AGAIN to clinch the 2 seed. . Blow the 2 run lead, rallied twice after Sox scored 2 in the 10th and another to start the 11th. Neat FF highlight video to lead out of the commercial break and he walked it off opposite field. Sweet!
 
Send some good karma out to Cali for my Giants. Rebuilding year...but with the condensed 60 game schedule, we actually have a chance to make the playoffs with a win over the Padres today. Who doesn't want to see Giants/Dodgers playoff series????
 
So coming into today, there are 44 different playoff scenarios that could play out between today and Monday. The AL only has the 1 and 6 seeds locked in (though all 8 chairs are spoken for). The NL could end in a five-way tie for four spots.

Granted, the odds of something like this happening over a full 162 are a bit more slim, but I am enjoying this chaos and the season going down to the wire.
 
Well, the Phillies got the help they needed, but couldn't do their part, so the big payroll is sitting home for the playoffs.
 
Hope the Braves starting pitching can hold up and keep the bats hot!
 
Should be some fun first rounds - with all 4 wild card games for the AL on Tuesday and all 4 for the NL on Wednesday. Wednesday will have all 8 games on the schedule.

Would not be surprised to see two AL Central teams in the ALCS - Indians are hot and their pitching will be tough to beat in a short series. On the flip side, there is a very real chance all 4 NL Central teams could lose in the first round. I think the Reds stay hot, but the Cards and Brewers have a tough draw and seeing the Marlins in the playoffs for a Cubs fan is giving me PTSD.
 
DaDeacs said:
Would not be surprised to see two AL Central teams in the ALCS - Indians are hot and their pitching will be tough to beat in a short series. On the flip side, there is a very real chance all 4 NL Central teams could lose in the first round. I think the Reds stay hot, but the Cards and Brewers have a tough draw and seeing the Marlins in the playoffs for a Cubs fan is giving me PTSD.
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Indians have been playing good ball lately and the Yankees Death Star offense...well in the past week, it appears that the Rebel Alliance has once again managed to shut that down for the most part.
 
Indians v. Yankees will likely come down to the epic Bieber v. Cole matchup in Game 1. Doesn't get much better than that.

FWIW, while the Brewers will likely get worked by the Dodgers in the opening round, I had never heard of Brewer reliever Devin Williams heading into the weekend. Then, I looked at his numbers:

4-1 0.33 ERA (wait, it gets better) 27.1 innings pitched 8 hits 9 walks... 53Ks. Those are little league numbers. Also, he has surrendered one run all season, and that came during the 1st week of the season. 20 straight scoreless appearances. He has given up two hits over his last 20 innings. With Williams and Hader, if the Brewers get a lead after 5 innings, game over.
 
Have seen Williams a few times, he is that good. His change-up might be the best in baseball - how that ball moves and where he throws it from make it almost unhittable. The Brewers have Woodruff, but lost their best pitcher in Burnes. I haven't followed the Dodgers much this year, but their usual kryptonite is lefty pitching, which the best the Brewers have as a starter is Brett Anderson, woof.
 
Guessing the Brew Crew start Brent Suter in Game 1. He's a lefty and has three starts in September. They will hope Suter can go 4 innings, and bullpen after that. Even so, agree the Brewers have little chance. Their lineup has been dreadful to the point that they have been batting Dan Vogelbach in the middle of the order, and he was essentially dumped by both the Mariners and Jays this year.
 
Still rooting for Vogelbach. He's hit well since joining the NL. He was blocked from really ever coming up in Chicago, glad to see he's getting another chance after hitting a bunch of bombs last year.
 
Pilchard said:
Indians v. Yankees will likely come down to the epic Bieber v. Cole matchup in Game 1. Doesn't get much better than that.

FWIW, while the Brewers will likely get worked by the Dodgers in the opening round, I had never heard of Brewer reliever Devin Williams heading into the weekend. Then, I looked at his numbers:

4-1 0.33 ERA (wait, it gets better) 27.1 innings pitched 8 hits 9 walks... 53Ks. Those are little league numbers. Also, he has surrendered one run all season, and that came during the 1st week of the season. 20 straight scoreless appearances. He has given up two hits over his last 20 innings. With Williams and Hader, if the Brewers get a lead after 5 innings, game over.
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Williams and Hader were a solid 1-2 combo in my (champion) fantasy team this season - I picked up Williams about halfway through when I saw his WHIP and ERA were tiny and the number of Ks/9 was sky-high.
 
Twins host the Astros to start the MLB 2020 Postseason. The Twins have lost an unfathomable 16 consecutive post-season games. Twins are heavy favorites against the depleted Astros.
 
Does the lower seed have the last at-bat as the nominal home team in Game 2?
 
I'm on the Reds too, but mostly because the odds are favorable, they have been playing well and their crazy BABIP stats. MLB playoffs are almost always random, but with the opening 3 game series, the randomness is completely amped up. At any time in baseball, the worst team can win a 3 game set against the best team. So, with 16 above average to good to maybe one great teams playing 3 game series, anything can happen.

White Sox are 14-0 this year against left handed starters. So, what does rested Oakland do? Start a lefty in Game 1.
 
I hate what it does to the regular season, but the expanded playoffs are going to make the next few days full of a lot of fun baseball
 
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