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Race for AL home-field advantage still burning
- Updated: September 24, 2016
While the three American League divisional races seem to be more or less settled — Texas won the AL West on Friday, while Boston and Cleveland each have leads of at least 5 1/2 games — that doesn’t mean that those clubs no longer have anything to play for. Since all three teams have either 63 or 64 losses, the race for home-field advantage in the playoffs is still on.
Perhaps as importantly, there’s still a big open question about which two of those division leaders have to play one another, and which gets to welcome the winner of the AL Wild Card Game. Depending on how the final week of the season plays out, it could be only a series of tiebreakers that determines who goes on the road to face the No. 2 seed and who stays home to face the fourth or fifth best team in the league.
Obviously, all three clubs want to face the Wild Card and start off at home, so perhaps it’s less about finishing first than it is about not finishing third, therefore being the only division winner without home field in the first round. Let’s look at all three teams and see why, beyond the obvious reasons, they’d be well-served to keep going for it despite having a playoff spot wrapped up.
: Texas: Because one-run magic works a lot better in the bottom of the ninth.
Without question, the story of the Rangers’ season is “success in one-run games,” which you might also call, depending on your perspective, “lucky,” or “clutch.” It was clear as far back as June that the Rangers were winning by coming up big in the most important situations; since they’ve now managed to keep it up all year, their 36-11 record in one-run games is now borderline historic. (This, despite the fact that they’ve outscored their opponents by just 14 runs, about the same as the 73-81 Colorado Rockies.)
We can argue all winter long about whether that kind of success is sustainable beyond a single year, but if that’s how this team has managed to challenge for the best record in the league, then so be it. It’s just that if you’re going to rely so heavily on one-run …
