Throughout the past three weeks, the baseball world has looked at the same standings, the same playoff races with the same wide margin between playoff teams and those in pursuit. Wake up today on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and we can turn to meaningful baseball for some timely reprieve from this morning’s ceremonies at Ground Zero. There’s some serious races going on across the country. I watched much of the Yankees-Angels game last night with a bunch of friends as Dan Haren outpitched CC Sabathia and the consensus around the room is that the Los Angelos Angels are very dangerous and more importantly just 1.5 games out with 17 to play and a 3 game set to finish the regular season against the Rangers at home.
The St Louis Cardinals also beat the Atlanta Braves for the second night in a row to pull within 5.5 in the Wild Card. The Braves are just 3-7 in their last ten and have serious injuries to the rotation (Tommy Hanson is set to throw a second bullpen today and Jair Jurrjens doesn’t look like he’ll pitch again this year if I had to guess). Today’s game pits Tim Hudson against Jake Westbrook as the Cards look to move within 4.5 after having won 7 of their last 10. As we’re talking about the Cards we should mention they moved within 6.0 of the suddenly struggling Brewers who have lost 5 in a row and 7 of 11.
Things change quickly this time of year and the AL Wild Card race is suddenly a race again. The Boston Red Sox are backing into the playoffs to say the least. John Lackey is simply not a good major league pitcher anymore and he showed it again last night as he lost to the Rays who are now just 4.5 games out. Big Game James Shields pitches today against the Kevin Youkilis-less Red Sox. These two teams play another 4 game set next weekend and there’s serious potential for the Sox to play themselves out of the playoffs in just a week.
Elsewhere the Diamondbacks Magic Number has shrunk to 8 as they moved 9.5 games ahead of the punchless Giants.
There’s some hot teams right now (Rays, Diamondbacks, Cardinals, and Angels) and there’s some teams starting to feel the pressure of playoff baseball (Brewers, Braves, and Boston). It all makes for what we like: meaningful, suspenseful, intense September baseball and I can’t wait for the next three weeks to play out.
Picture of the Day:
Link of the Day: A Letter was found from Arte Moreno addressed to Albert Pujols. It’s weird because we at Off The Bench had found this letter from Albert to the Cardinal’s organization.
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