When you’re a fan of National League teams that are embroiled in a pyrrhic battle for the post-season, it’s often easy to forget that there’s another league where fan bases have been sweating it out. And until recently, it would have been easy to dismiss those dreams of teams like the Detroit Tigers and Seattle Mariners who may have hoping for meaningful late September baseball as perhaps even more wistful and wishful than those of Cubs faithful, let alone moi who with a fortnight left in the 2024 season see the Mets dead even with Atlanta for a playoff ticket.
But thanks to a surprising Minnesota Twins tailspin which THE ATHLETIC’s Aaron Gleeman obligitorily reported on this morning, those teams’ fan bases are renergized with actual hope:
They had a 70-53 (.569) record on Aug. 17, reaching the high-water mark of the season at 17 games above .500. Since then, the Twins are 9-17 (.346) for the third-worst record in baseball during that span, better than only the Los Angeles Angels (7-19) and Chicago White Sox (5-21).
Still, as Kleeman adds, somehow, the Twins still hold a 2 1/2-game lead for the American League’s third and final wild-card spot. For now.
In Seattle, where the fanbase had all been written off a return trip to a postseason that had been denied to them for 22 consecutive seasons prior to last fall, they’re resorting to fashion statements and new blood to reengerize themselves. As the SEATTLE TIMES’ Ryan Divish reported:
For the first time since he’s been a member of the Mariners, T-Mobile Park was transformed into RandyLand late Saturday evening.
With the Mariners in must-win mode in the final weeks of the season, Randy Arozarena, who earned a reputation for being a clutch performer with the Tampa Bay Rays, delivered in the bottom of the ninth inning of a tie game.
With the bases loaded and one out, Arozarena ripped a sinking line drive to the left side of the infield that couldn’t be gloved by shortstop Josh Smith, allowing Victor Robles to race home for a 5-4 walkoff victory for the Mariners.
The Mariners improved to 14-1 in their City Connect uniforms. That run of success in the uniforms with the black pants led to wearing them on Saturday as they are normally reserved for Friday home games.
At this rate, those pants may have to be peeled off with a trowel by the time this month’s at an end.
Meanwhile, in Detroit the young and gritty Motor City Kitties are well ahead of schedule in their renaissance, also 2 1/2 games behind the Twinkies. But as THE DETROIT NEWS pointed out, their odds for actually making the playoffs are the epitome of longshot: 9.1% after they completed taking a home series from the top wild card team, the Baltimore Orioles.
But history does note that both they and the M’s do have some precedence to inspire them, as Nate Silver wrote for BASEBALL PROSPECTUS in 2007 when the Colorado Rockies railed off an improbable last-minute winning to catapult them into what is to date their only World Series appearance in franchise history (before, ironically, being swept by the Boston Red Sox after a nine-day October layoff).
Team W-L YTP Play% Odds 1934 Cardinals 82-56 15 1.16% 85:1 1964 Cardinals 83-66 13 1.26% 79:1 2007 Rockies 77-72 14 1.82% 54:1 1951 Giants 82-55 20 2.09% 47:1 1908 Cubs 85-53 16 2.21% 44:1 1965 Dodgers 82-64 16 2.88% 34:1 1973 Mets 73-77 11 3.35% 29:1 2004 Astros 85-70 7 3.59% 27:1 1982 Braves 82-70 10 4.80% 20:1 1959 Dodgers 75-63 18 5.76% 16:1 1962 Giants 96-59 10 6.60% 14:1
The 1934 Cardinals were 5.5 games back with 15 games yet to play. Fortunately (for them, if not the hapless New York Giants), they were one of the streakiest teams in history, usually based on the mood and effort of the Brothers Dean. They caught a hot streak at the end, going 13-2 over the season’s final stretch to take the pennant: As for this year’s Rockies, what’s impressive about them is that they came back from the dead essentially three distinct times. On May 21, the Rockies bottomed out at 18-27 and had only a 1.46 percent chance to make the playoffs, almost enough to qualify for the early-season comeback list. They gradually started playing better baseball, but had fallen back down to 1.8 percent just before they began their 14-1 stretch.
I had honestly forgotten exactly how special and unprecedented that Rockies comeback was. At the time, I was trying to finagle a way to be in New York for “business” in October as the Mets were up seven games on the National League East with 17 games to play. But that finagling never did materialize, as the Philadelphia Phillies, themselves a victim of those 1964 Cardinals as noted above, roared back and took full advantage of a flat out Mets collapse to give themselves the division title.
I suppose then, like now, I should have wanted to be distracted by real history. I’m not so sure that’s possible for me. But you should.
Courage…