MLB: Who to Root For This Postseason if Your Team is Eliminated
By Jason Burke
With just two days left in the regular season, we thought it would be fun to take a look at the MLB playoff field and determine which postseason team you should be rooting for if your team is out of it.
The answer that jumps to mind is obviously the Chicago Cubs, who will likely capture the hearts of the people as soon as the playoffs start given their World Series drought that predates the sinking of the Titanic and just a couple of decades between that title, and the year electricity was discovered. 1908 was a long, long time ago and Cubs fans have become the lovable losers in the baseball world. They’ll have plenty of people cheering for them this October, but just in case the North Siders don’t strike your fancy, we’ll run through each playoff team to help you make an informed decision.
Right now the teams that we know will be in the postseason are all division winners, and we already know the playoff bracket in the National League save for which team will face the Cubs.
The Cubs will face the wild card winner in the NLDS, which right now will boil down to either the Mets, Giants or Cardinals, depending on how these last two games shake out. The other NLDS matchup will be the Los Angeles Dodgers taking on the Washington Nationals. As we enter play on Saturday the Nats would have home field advantage in this series and can clinch home field with either a win or a Dodger loss in the final two games.
Over in the American League your division winners are the Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians, with the Rangers owning home field advantage throughout the MLB playoffs. The wild card race is a bit more complicated with the Orioles taking a one game lead over the Blue Jays yesterday for the first wild card spot, the Detroit Tigers a half game back of the Jays and Seattle one game back of the second wild card spot. If needed, the Tigers will make up their game with Cleveland from earlier this week to get rid of that pesky half-game tag.
That is where we stand at the moment, so we’ll go through why you should root for each of the divisional winners, and then compile the wild card hopefuls all into one.