Coming In Second Like Kissing Your Girlfriend

The first-place Red Sox and Phillies won today. 

The second place Yankees and Braves lost.

These two statements are:

a) closely related

b) bad news for the NY and Atlanta clubs

c) suggestive of who will square off in the World Series

The correct answer is: d) none of the above.

Living in Charleston, SC, the Braves are my "hometown" team. I hear their broadcasters regularly scoreboard-watch Phillie games and remind listeners of the growing or narrowing gap between Philadelphia and Atlanta. I'm guessing they do the same on the other three team broadcasts.

Anyone paying attention realizes, however, that the Braves aren't chasing the Phils and the Yankees aren't chasing the Red Sox. The point of the regular season is to make the playoffs, period. The penalty for not winning the division -- ostensibly playing a more difficult opponent and losing the tiny home field Game 7 advantage -- is a mere flea bite compared to considerations like getting players healthy and the pitching rotation lined up. 

In that respect, the Yankees, now six games clear of the fading Rays, are in the same cruise mode as their hated rivals. Atlanta has a five game cushion on their Wild Card competition, which is currently led by Arizona, but the Dbacks, Cards, Brewers, et. al. would be tilting at Wild Card windmills. While the frontrunners want to continue to play well for the remaining 60 games and punch their playoff tickets, the managers of all four clubs have to begin considering how they can position their teams for best results in the post-season.

There are significant distinctions between the 162-game schedule and three seven-game playoff series. Roster depth that can carry a team to a division title is nearly irrelevant in short series. Deep pitching rotations that are critical to the daily grind of the long spring and summer play no role in the fall. A team that thrives in summer's dog days might wilt in the frigid nights of October, and vice versa. (This is why more playoff teams is an increasingly bad idea: it makes the World Series more of a lottery and reduces the odds that the best teams will play for the title.)

Terry Francona, Charlie Manuel, Joe Girardi and Freddi Gonzalez would all be well-advised to begin cultivating a plan to ensure that their best players are rested and healthy come October, and that they know who suffers most from playing in the kinds of adverse conditions that torment post-season games. The same can be said for Ron Washington and Bruce Bochy, for there's no one in the two league's western divisions capable of mounting a charge at Texas or San Francisco. Having re-crowned six of last year's incumbents, that leaves the two Central Division battles to play out over the last 40% of the season. Let's hope those, at least, go down to the wire.

Unrelated: read about baseball's nerd among men.

b