McGrath: Even Buhner may embrace WCGB listing
JOHN MCGRATH; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Like most of you, I check out the major league standings every day. I’ve been doing this since I learned how to read, and count, and grasp the notion that gaining or dropping in the games-behind column is a mathematical premise and does not literally entail half of an actual game.
As baseball statistics have become more sophisticated over the years, the standings are slightly more complex than they used to be, with updates on 10-game trends, streaks, and home/road records.
When newspapers this season began publishing a “WCGB” column in the standings, my first thought was: Aren’t the expanded standings muddled enough without promoting the call letters of a radio station east of the Mississippi River?
OK, I’m fibbing. It took me only a few minutes – no more than 20 – to determine “WCGB” stands for Wild Card Games Behind.
Upon its implementation in 1995, the wild card went unnoticed until late August, and even then the wild-card race was documented in a chart separate from the standings. While fans were ambivalent, those players schooled in baseball tradition saw it as a cheap trick to keep false hopes alive.
Mariners outfielder Jay Buhner had a ballistic reaction when he learned that Mariners management was planning to keep track of the 1995 wild-card standings in the Kingdome. The wild card represented second place, and second place was a rinky-dink compromise. That the Mariners never had finished better than third in the AL West merely emphasized the passion in Buhner’s rant.
But over the years, the wild card has grown from rinky-dink compromise to last-resort vehicle. Where it once was presumed that asterisks would be attached to World Series winners who failed to finish the regular season in first place, we now know it’s those regular-season champions who can’t survive the playoffs that are forgotten.
The Florida Marlins have yet to win a division title, but thanks to the wild card, they own two World Series trophies. The wild card is responsible for Red Sox Nation, growing faster than morning glory weeds on an untended fence. (Boston has advanced four times as second-best team in the AL East, including 2004, the year the franchise won its first world championship in 86 years.)
In 2002, the Angels and Giants both advanced to the World Series on wild-card berths. Purists who initially decried the newfangled playoff system had reason to call the ’02 Series a sham and a shame, but it went seven games, and remains the last riveting Fall Classic of this decade.
Still, it wasn’t until 2009, when the baseball standings recognized WCGB, that the wild-card race was seen as relevant from opening day. It’s not how you get to the playoffs that counts; it’s what you do once you’re there.
This brings us to the Mariners, whose 2-1 victory at Detroit on Thursday concluded a successful 5-2 trip, which followed a terrific 5-2 home stand, which followed a surprising 5-4 road trip. They’ve won 12 of their last 15 series’, and 19 of their last 29 games, and return to Seattle tonight a season-high seven games over .500.
But they’ve been unable to make a dent in the first-place lead of the Angels, who’ve done more than merely keep pace with the Mariners since the All-Star break. They’ve opened up some distance, not that Seattle is their immediate concern. Second-place Texas is in the mix: the Rangers own a two-game edge on the Mariners.
The oppressive summer climate, deep in the heart of Texas, is supposed to drain the Rangers of their pitching depth and, by extension, their will to continue. But they nevertheless continue, having completed a sweep of the Red Sox on Wednesday
That oppressive Texas summer climate can assert itself whenever it wants, but the Rangers are as formidable today as they seemed to be in April. Except more so.
If you’re tethered to old ways of following the standings, you’re concentrating on the frustrating logjam atop the AL West. Here’s a suggestion: break from the old ways.
Don’t confine scoreboard watching to the division rivals. Watch the Red Sox, the Rays, the White Sox, the Twins. At least there’s some movement in the wild-card race. On Thursday morning, for instance, the Mariners were 51/2 games behind the Angels in the AL West, but only 5 games behind the Red Sox for the wild card.
Conventional thinking holds that the wild card will emerge from the AL East, the elite domain of the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays. But the balance of power may have shifted to the AL West, where three teams have legitimate aspirations of approaching 90 victories.
The ticket to the playoffs could be through the wild card, and you can follow the wild card from that weird new WCGB column in the standings.
In 1995, Buhner raged against the tepid and shallow mind-set that would see second-best as good enough, and his profane words turned into a butt-kicking crusade.
Fourteen years later, after the wild card has delivered eight teams to the World Series, I suspect even Buhner has learned to cope with a “pennant race” broken down to WCGB.
It may not roll off the tongue, but WCGB has a quality essential in the best of Jay Buhner rally cries.
Four letters.
john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com
