The AL postseason race is chaotic and contrived

Through 125 games of play, the American League pack is neck and neck. It’s six wide — maybe seven! — coming around the turn, entering the home stretch. They’re limping, they’re laboring, they’re bucking and biting and looking around befuddled. The first five finishers are in, alright, but everyone awaits the madcap mushing. Someone has to finish sixth. There are still stakes to this mess.

As of Tuesday morning, there are three teams tied for the third and final AL wild card spot at 61-64, three more within one game, and two other teams (including the AL West-leading Astros) bracketing the mess within 2 games for good measure.

With less than 40 games to go, the Orioles, Rangers, Tigers, Twins, Blue Jays and Guardians are set for a sprint, maybe the Mariners, too, which might be more compelling if they were even .500 teams, or if they were behaving like they were aware there was a race going on. Two of these teams decidedly sold off stars at the trade deadline not three weeks ago, one did nothing, one repositioned itself for competing in 2027, and two added middle-of-the-roster types to make an attempt at winning this year.

The Tigers, who traded away the best player moved at said deadline, are probably the best team in the bunch — their run differential says they should be a top three team in the league. The Blue Jays, the defending pennant winners who hedged their bets, might be the second-strongest on paper even as time ticks past a year since Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a regular season home run in Toronto. FanGraphs’ playoff odds still give the Mariners a better chance than any of them.

These teams are “racing” like the babies released and beckoned across the hardwood in a basketball halftime show are racing.

Someone will win entry into MLB’s postseason, and the not-insignificant chance at glory that comes with a ticket to the tournament. Which means however middling it looks right now, this busted mess of a race might actually turn out to be compelling, or at least important, by this time next month. Because whoever wins it might wind up in the World Series.

The World Series is The Thing, has been The Thing for 120-ish years. I’m a regular season person, maybe you are, too. I’d be just as interested in baseball, maybe more interested, if MLB used a European soccer model where the most important team achievement is being the best regular season club. Alas, that’s not a majority opinion, or even a minority opinion with enough support to get a say.

The people have voted with their eyeballs, the TV networks and advertisers have counted and translated those eyeballs into dollar figures. Fans respond to playoffs, so sports keep adding more and more playoffs, which relocates the focus of the majority of the season from the best teams to the ones closest to the borderline, a line that keeps getting lowered.

MLB’s prerogative is to manufacture more ~inventory~ that resembles the World Series, or at least has easily understood ties to it, a la Netflix (allegedly) instructing filmmakers to reiterate key plot points for distracted viewers. The best thing for the baseball business today is to create more compressed series, more brackets, more elimination games, more winner-take-all moments. More stakes.

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In his dark gonzo dispatch from the 1970 Kentucky Derby, Hunter S. Thompson calls America’s most famous stakes race “a very saleable ‘tradition.’”