MLB Pennant Race 2021: Down to the Wire

This is it. We are down to the final seven days of this chaotic baseball season. Here's a look at the remaining races:

AL Wild Card: A paradigm shift took place in the American League's Wild Card race, as the New York Yankees went to Fenway Park and swept the Boston Red Sox in a three-game weekend series. The Yankees have won six straight games, and this series sweep has moved the team past the Red Sox in the Wild Card race. The Yankees are now in the #1 Wild Card position; ahead of Boston by one game. With the Tampa Bay Rays officially clinching the American League East this past weekend, that position is very important. The Yankees need to finish ahead of the Red Sox, because a tie would give homefield in the AL Wild Card Game to Boston--due to the Boston winning the season series 10-9.

The Toronto Blue Jays are still on the outside looking in, as they sit one game behind the Red Sox entering the final week. The Seattle Mariners and the Oakland Athletics still have a shot, but their hopes are fading, and they have a head-to-head series coming up this week. The Yankees will head to Toronto for three against the Blue Jays, with a series sweep placing the Bronx Bombers in the postseason.

NL East: The National League East is still up for grabs, though the Philadelphia Phillies are losing their chance at the division. The Braves are 2.5 games ahead of the Phillies in the division, and they have a key series against Philly coming up this week. Atlanta's magic number to clinch the NL East is five, so a series sweep will give them the division and set up a Division Series matchup with the Milwaukee Brewers, who (finally) wrapped up the NL Central this weekend.

NL West: The San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in an interesting division race that contains a lot of scoreboard watching, as the season series has been closed for weeks. Entering the final week, the Giants are two games ahead of the defending champion Dodgers, and with each team winning at least 100 games, we will see a 100-win Wild Card for the first time since 2018. The runner-up will host, most likely, the St. Louis Cardinals, who have won sixteen straight games--which is a franchise record! The division winner will most likely wrap up homefield throughout the entire postseason.

In any event, if the West runner-up wins the Wild Card Game, we will see the first ever postseason series between the Giants and Dodgers. Their rivalry has spanned three different centuries, but in all that time, they have never faced each other in the postseason. This is mainly due to how the league had been structured for so long; the teams were in a bunched up National League from the 1890s until Divisional Play began in 1969--11 years after the teams relocated from New York to California. They have co-existed in the NL West ever since, but from 1969-1993, only the division winners qualified for postseason play. The debut of the Division Series in 1995 only allowed divisional foes to face each other in the League Championship Series, though the Giants and Dodgers hardly made the postseason in the same season during that stretch.

Which brings me to my favorite subject: Game 163. "Game 163" is one of many names for tiebreaker games that are needed in case 162 games don't settle things. In the early years, tiebreakers were for pennants, with the National League using a best-of-three series, while the American League used a single game. Since 1969, it's been a single game regardless of league, and in recent years, the tiebreaker has been used to determine division winners or the 2nd Wild Card. 2018 was the last season to feature Game 163, and the first and only season to feature two games--one for the NL Central and the other for the NL West.

Head-to-head usually determines homefield, and in the case of the NL West, it would be the Giants having homefield if it comes to that. Regarding the AL Wild Card, the Red Sox would get in a potential tiebreaker with the Blue Jays, or even the Yankees if both teams are passed over. The Jays would get homefield in a possible tiebreaker with the Yankees due to winning the season series.

Overall, we are in for a spectacular final week! Nothing else to do but enjoy the proverbial wild ride, as the postseason draws closer!

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