Who's in second?
NL wild card race may come down to who's hot at the end
Posted: Monday August 17, 1998 04:18 PM
ATLANTA (CNN/SI) -- Three teams, none of them exactly the New York Yankees, are
slugging it out to see who will make baseball's playoffs.
No, it's not your traditional pennant race. It's the wild card, where teams
that aren't even good enough to win their division fight to make it to the
postseason.
But we've
covered the wild card and its shortcomings already. So let's just look
at this so-called race, the National League wild card, and see who's got an
edge in the last quarter of the season.
The San Francisco
Giants, currently in third place in the race for the wild card,
probably have done more to try to strengthen their team than any of the
three main teams in it. The Giants have picked up guys like Ellis Burks and
Joe Carter
and, earlier, Shawon
Dunston. The New York
Mets and the Chicago
Cubs, who have been fighting for the top spot in the wild card
standings, have made some moves, but neither did much at the trading
deadline (or since) to make their teams that much better.
Thes teams need all the help they can get because none of them has a
pitching staff that will blow anyone away. With Kerry Wood's tired arm, the
Cubs' aces are now Kevin Tapani
and Steve
Trachsel. The Mets have Rick Reed and Al Leiter. The
Giants, Kirk Reuter, Orel
Hershiser and Shawn Estes.
That's not exactly Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and
Tom Glavine.
"Dusty Baker (left) knows about the postseason and knows what it takes to get there." AP | |
As I see it, the Giants have an edge in this thing for one important
reason: San Francisco manager Dusty Baker knows about the postseason and
knows what it takes to get there. With somewhere around 40 games left,
Baker can have a direct say in, maybe, 15 or so of those games.
The only real thing a manager can do is put his team in the position to win
-- having the right matchups at the end of the game, things like that. He
can't win the game for them, but Baker knows how to get them close. That's
where he earns his money.
With that said, though, this wild card race probably will boil down to
which team gets hot at the right time.
And who knows which team that will be?
The Giants really haven't had a huge hot streak lately. In late May and
early June, they won 11 straight, but they followed that with a five-game
losing streak. Since then, they've won four straight once and three
straight twice, including their current three-game win streak. And they had
a terrible July (10-15). They may be due.
The again, the Mets are due, too. They were only 13-15 in July, and that
was thanks to a late-month six-game win streak.
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"Talking about getting hot, don't count Ken Griffey Jr. out of the home run race just yet. He still has a good home run binge left in him." AP |
The only team among the wild card contenders to have a winning record in
July was the Cubs, who were 19-9. They had a 10-game streak about the same
time the Giants were on their tear, but they've also been really cool since
then. So they may be due, too.
That's the biggest problem with all these teams, and the wild card in
general. They're all just sputtering.
The whole race is almost a wash.
The 6-4-3 with Ozzie Smith: Talking about getting hot, don't count
Ken Griffey
Jr. out of the home run race just yet. He still has a good home run
binge left in him.
If you look at the race, McGwire has had three or four good pushes, and Sammy Sosa had a
great push in June. Griffey has been very cold lately, but he's always been
the kind of hitter who can knock them out in bunches.
And one more note about the home run race: If it's going to go to the guy
who is having the most fun with it, give the title to Sosa already. He's
playing it perfectly. He likes being in second place (even though he tied
McGwire with his 47th homer on Sunday). He knows this whole thing is like
golf -- all the pressure's on the guy who's leading.
Ozzie Smith, a 15-time All-Star, is the baseball analyst for CNN/SI, the
24-hour sports news network from CNN and Sports Illustrated. His column
appears every Monday exclusively on CNNSI.com. To ask Ozzie a question,
click here.
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