Wednesday night was the final curtain for several teams with playoff hopes. The Yankees lost to Tampa Bay 8-3 and, when coupled with the Indians’ win over Chicago, were eliminated from post season play for only the second time in nineteen years. This also signaled the end of the Mariano Rivera era and his significant contribution to success over his career. Kansas City lost and its hopes ended as well. We will see more of this fine, young team next year. Both Pittsburgh and Cincinnati lost, setting the stage for the three games they play each other in Cincinnati this weekend. Pittsburgh has a one game lead over Cincinnati, so, if Cincinnati wins the series, it has home field advantage based on the record between the two teams this season where they are tied 8-8 at this time. Regardless, these two teams will play for the wild card on October 1.

In the American League, Texas remains one game behind Cleveland for the second wild card slot. Tampa Bay leads Cleveland by one as well. An interesting note here is that the inter-league, unbalanced schedule means that Texas has played seventy-eight games against +.500 teams and the Rays have played 100+.500 teams. A large part of the difference is that Texas is 17-2 against Houston. That is reality. Cleveland plays at Minnesota and the Twins play well at home and have played well there against Cleveland, Texas plays at home against the Angels who need two wins to finish at  .500, a significant achievement for them, and Tampa Bay plays at Toronto. What this means is that these three teams will play intensely to finish and win. Just think that if Toronto sweeps Tampa Bay, the Rangers win two of three with the Angels and Cleveland loses two of three in Minnesota, all teams will be at 89-72, a three team tie. This is highly unlikely, but it is baseball, so is possible. We will worry about that on Sunday.

The wild card games will be played October 1 for the NL and October 2 for the AL. The games will be played, if I am to hazard a guess, in Cincinnati and Tampa Bay. We’ll see.