Finally, October is here, and that means playoff baseball will be here shortly. Soon Wild Card teams will be duking it out in one-game playoffs to see who will go home and who will still have a chance to make it to the World Series. Fans will be louder than ever, and rally rags will be of all sorts of colors. Finally, by the end of the month, someone will raise a golden trophy and a 2015 World Series Championship Banner.
But which teams are going to be in the 2015 Major League Baseball postseason? Many of the teams that will be in the 2015 playoffs have already clinched their places. They include the Toronto Blue Jays and the Kansas City Royals in the American League. In The National League, the New York Mets, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Cubs, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers all have their spots.
Representing the American League, the Blue Jays and Royals have not just clinched playoff spots but have also secured their division titles. The teams fighting for the three remaining spots are all American League West teams. The Texas Rangers, who are currently in first place in the West, are the top pick to win the division. The other teams are most likely fighting for Wild Card spots but could trump the Rangers if the Rangers have a meltdown at the end of the season. It certainly would not be the first time an upset happened. At the moment, it seems like there is one spot left in the Wild Card, and the Angels and Astros will be fighting over it because the Yankees have a three game lead over both for the first Wild Card spot.
Once the playoffs begin, the Kansas City Royals will be the toughest team to beat in the American League. Their offense, led by the young Eric Hosmer, will not let last season repeat itself when they lost to the Giants in the World Series. They have a young and energetic lineup that can hit for power, hit for average and steal bases. Even with pitcher Greg Holland shut down for the postseason, the Royals still have a powerful bullpen filled with young arms that throw very hard. In October baseball, hard throwing relief pitchers have always had success.
In the National League, the playoffs are set. The Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates will battle in a one game Wild Card playoff. The last time the Cubs made a run in the playoffs, Chicago fan Steve Bartman was terrorized after he made a game (and history) altering catch and went into hiding. So who knows what will happen this time around. Lead by aces John Lester and Jake Arrieta, the Cubs have the pitching and the talent to beat any National League team. Garret Cole, Pittsburgh’s best pitcher, and the Pirates will have to compete with their tough rivals. But seeing how Cole was unable to participate in last year’s playoffs, he will be ready and fired up for what will be an amazing one game playoff between the two Central Division teams.
Everyone is going to make the argument that the St. Louis Cardinals are the best team in the National League, which is why I will not. Rather I will propose a team that can beat them. If you watched the All-Star game last summer, the first thing you remember was Jacob Degrom’s ten pitch inning where he made the American League lineup look like a team of tee-ballers. The New York Mets, guided by their trio of young aces, Degrom, Harvey and Syndergaard, will defeat the Cardinals in the NLCS and ultimately win the World Series because of great pitching and timely hitting by players like David Wright and Yoenis Cespedes. •
