October Madness

This has been the most unusual baseball season in history. Only sixty games played, and playoffs that include sixteen teams, with the final three rounds being played in neutral stadiums. Given all that, I've been fascinated so  far with the post season. Home sick from work on Wednesday, I watched part of eight playoff games, the most ever played on one day.

I've been like Rip Van Winkle with baseball. I hardly watched any at all during the truncated regular season. I'd check the standings every now and then, just to see what was going on, but tuning into the first round of the playoff games I discovered new players, or that the MVP and Cy Young Award winners would be players I'd hardly heard of. The most notable would be Fernando Tatis Jr., who is the exciting shortstop for the San Diego Padres, I remember his father, but I couldn't say for sure I knew he had a son in the majors or what team he played for.

This tournament, which is structured like the NCAA basketball tournament, and thus earned the nicknames "Fall Frenzy" or "October Madness" was a crapshoot. I doubt anyone would have picked the both the Houston Astros, who actually had a losing record in the regular season, beating the Twins and the Miami Marlins, who had about half of their team come down with COVID-19, easily dispatching the Cubs (it should be noted that the Marlins have never lost a playoff series--the only other two times they were in, 1997 and 2003, they won it all, so they are now 7-0 in post-season series). It was almost like putting slips of paper in a fishbowl and drawing them at random.

Not to say that there aren't favorites. The Dodgers certainly look like the team to beat in the National League, while Tampa or the Yankees, who play next, will probably be the AL champs (unfortunately they will not play in the championship series--the ALDS between the two of them should be epic). But ever since MLB expanded its playoffs there has always been a sense that it's a free-for-all, as the Washington Nationals proved last year.

There's been some excellent play so far--great pitching performances by Gerrit Cole and Clayton Kershaw, plus Trevor Bauer in a game he did not win--plus some disappointing results--Bauer's Reds were shutout over 22 innings, and the Cubs and Twins, playing at home, went surprisingly meekly.

So I'm hooked. I expect a Dodgers-Yankees World Series, which I'm sure all the suits want. But how about a Marlins-Rays series played in Arlington, Texas?