MLB: Previewing the Wild Card match-ups
By Brad Rowland
Major League Baseball is wholly unique in that its regular season provides the “truest” test for each of its 30 teams. Over a 162-game schedule, the 25 (active) players on each roster are put to the test on a near-daily basis, and because of the daily grind coupled with the shear volume of outcomes, “great” MLB teams are able to separate themselves from the also-rans in a meaningful, decisive way. However, Bud Selig and company have decided to take that “marathon not a sprint” concept and flip it at a 180-degree angle with regard to the one-game “series” that is the Wild Card game.
For the San Francisco Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League as well as the Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Royals in the American League, the 2014 MLB season comes down to a singular game. It will, undoubtedly, be extremely captivating and engaging to the more “casual” fan, but as a diehard fan of any of the quartet of teams, this week’s face-off could be a cruel and unusual test of the mind’s will power.
At any rate, we are here to break down the two match-ups in full, and without further ado, let’s get to the games.
Oakland Athletics at Kansas City Royals
Tuesday, September 30th – 8:07 pm ET – TBS
Pitching probables: Jon Lester (OAK) vs. James Shields (KC)
When the Oakland Athletics acquired Jon Lester in a mid-season trade from the Boston Red Sox, Billy Beane and company could not have been planning on a Wild Card match-up. The A’s held a sizable lead in the AL West while simultaneously holding the best record in all of baseball, and frankly, Oakland is only here because of a marginal “collapse”. However, the A’s do possess a true “number one” starter to deploy in this must-win spot, while Kansas City also answers with the guy that they banked on in a huge way with the infamous trade that sent Wil Myers to Tampa Bay prior to the 2013 season.
In short, this is a heck of a pitching match-up.
The 30-year-old Lester has been lights out from start to finish during the 2014 season, posting a 2.46 cumulative ERA with a 2.52 mark in Boston and a 2.35 mark in Oakland. The left-hander has struck out more than a batter per inning while walking less than 2 per 9 innings, and by any objective measure, he has been one of the top ten pitchers in baseball this season in what has been somewhat of a renaissance campaign.
On the other hand, Shields has not been quite as dominant, but it is impossible to overstate his importance to Kansas City’s rotation. The big right-hander posted “only” a 3.21 ERA for the season, ranking him 11th in the American League, but 2014 was the fourth consecutive season in which Shields eclipsed 225 innings pitched (the last two with the Royals), and his general presence as a “safety valve” has been huge for a team that basically had not employed competent pitching in a number of years.
To be objective, Lester likely garners a slight edge in a one-game scenario, but on the side of offense, virtually anything can happen here, and that matters a great deal. For the season, Oakland holds a significant advantage in runs scored (3rd in the AL against 9th for KC) and OPS (8th against 10th), but if we evaluate the current state of the A’s offense, things are a bit more dicey.
Since the All-Star break, the A’s have been a mess offensively, posting just a .658 team OPS (against .729 before the break) and they have virtually produced an identical offensive performance to Kansas City since that point in the season. In a vacuum, a slightly better starting pitcher and an identical offense would seemingly be an advantage for Oakland, but Kansas City is generally considered to be the best defensive team in the AL (if not all of MLB), and in a single-game sample, it is difficult to overstate the value of sound defense in preventing runs.
“Predicting” the outcome of a one-game sample that features two very similar teams is likely a fraudulent exercise, and as such, I won’t even attempt to do so. This a very compelling match-up between two teams with demons, but even in the post-“Moneyball” era in which the A’s are a well-known commodity, no one will be rooting for Oakland in this spot, simply because the Kansas City Royals have not appeared in the playoffs since before I was born.
At the very least, this will be fun.
San Francisco Giants at Pittsburgh Pirates
Wednesday, October 1st – 8:00 pm ET – ESPN
Pitching probables: Madison Bumgarner (SF) vs. Edinson Volquez (PIT)
Any attempt to “predict” what will happen in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night is directly tied to how one feels about Pirates starting pitcher Edinson Volquez. On one hand, the 31-year-old right-hander has been absolutely electric this season, posting a 3.04 ERA with a career-best walk rate (3.32 BB/9) and 192.2 innings of generally productive baseball. On the other hand, Volquez is a pitcher with a career ERA mark of 4.44 over more than 1,000 MLB innings, and prior to this season, he had become a punchline in several baseball circles.
With a gun to my head, I choose to believe that Volquez is closer to “punchline” than “dominant ace”, but again, because we are dealing in a one-game sample, anything is possible.
Edinson Volquez has been absolutely dominant in the recent past, and in his last 10 starts, Pittsburgh’s right-hander has rivaled even Clayton Kershaw in terms of effectiveness with a 1.36 ERA over 66 innings. Of course, Volquez’s season-long numbers are vastly skewed by this performance (even with a FIP more than a full run higher than his cumulative ERA), but if he simply operates as the pitcher we’ve seen in August and September, the Pirates are in great shape.
San Francisco will send its “ace” to the mound in Madison Bumgarner, and unlike Pittsburgh in the case of Volquez, the Giants know what they are getting. In four full seasons as a member of the Giants, the left-hander has never posted an ERA greater than 3.37 or completed less than 200 innings, and in terms of overall performance, his 3.o8 ERA over the past four seasons ranks 12th in the Major Leagues among pitchers with more than 500 total innings. In short, he has been very, very good, and the Giants are more than willing to place the fate of their 2014 season in his capable hands.
Offensively, this is somewhat of a dead heat. The Pirates (4th) and Giants (5th) are side-by-side in terms of runs scored among NL teams, and even Pittsburgh’s OPS advantage (.734 to .699) isn’t a decisive one when examining the full season. Regardless, the Pirates and Giants are both heavily reliant on stars (Andrew McCutchen and Josh Harrison for Pittsburgh, Buster Posey and Hunter Pence for San Francisco), it would be aggressive to give either side a real “advantage” from a pure batting perspective.
Because of the relative lack of trust in Volquez, the Giants would have a theoretical advantage here, but the venue (PNC Park) and factor of a one-game scenario certainly level the playing field. The Giants are “usually” dominant in even-numbered years (insert laughter here), but the Pirates still possess a lot of goodwill, and as such, I am relatively confident that they will be the national “darlings” here.
It’s playoff time. No one knows anything.
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