The most entertaining race in baseball right now is a four-team scramble for a spot that nobody seems to want to grab.
Cleveland currently holds the final American League wild card position while hovering barely above .500. Toronto, Texas and Baltimore are all jostling just below, and with roughly two weeks left, none of them has been able to separate.
Why It Is This Messy
Normally by mid-September the field has sorted itself. Teams that are going to collapse have collapsed, teams that are going to surge have surged, and the wild card picture clarifies. Not this year.
All four of these clubs have obvious flaws. Cleveland can pitch but cannot score consistently. Toronto has the talent and has been maddeningly uneven. Texas is stuck in a fight for the AL West that is draining resources, trailing Houston by a single game with the Astros holding the tiebreaker. Baltimore has Pete Alonso and a lineup that can beat anyone, along with pitching that can lose to anyone.
When nobody is good enough to pull away, you get exactly this.
The Rangers Have the Hardest Path
Texas is trying to win a division and secure a wild card at the same time, which sounds like a nice position but is actually the most stressful of the four. Every game they lose is a game that hurts twice.
Houston holding the tiebreaker means the Rangers essentially need to finish a full game ahead to take the West. Falling short there drops them into the wild card fight with no margin at all.
Baltimore Has the Most Dangerous Lineup
The Orioles are the team nobody in the AL wants to see in a one-game or three-game format. Alonso just hit his 300th career home run and has been producing all season after signing a five-year, $155 million deal last December.
A lineup with that kind of power can win a short series against a better team, and Baltimore has enough of it to be scary if they sneak in.
Cleveland’s Advantage Is Position
Holding the spot matters. The Guardians control their own fate, which means they do not need help. Every other team in this race needs Cleveland to lose games they cannot influence.
Cleveland also has the pitching depth to run out quality starters down the stretch, and in a race decided by two or three games, that is often the difference.
The Prediction
Whoever gets in from this group is going to face Tampa Bay or New York and probably lose. That is the uncomfortable reality of the AL bracket this year.
But the next 14 days are going to be enormously fun to watch, because four flawed teams playing meaningful September baseball is better television than one great team coasting.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.