The Accidental Classic: 2011′s Wild Card War

It wasn’t that long ago that the media was spinning the baseball postseason. Not this season’s postseason, next year’s, when an extra team is added.

It’s not much of a surprise why. At the beginning of the month, each of the races looked wrapped up. The AL West was the only place in baseball where there were less than five games between first and second place (unless you count the East, where whoever finished second looked like a lock for the wild card).

On Sept. 7, Yahoo‘s Jeff Passan wrote: “The division races have dissolved. The jockeying for home field in the playoffs is dull. All of the leftover buzz surrounds individual awards, not team races.”

In the past month, the division races have slowed down, but the wild card races have picked up. Both Boston and Atlanta have had giant collapses and their leads have nearly evaporated. After Monday night, the Rays were able to move into a tie for the AL wild card with two games remaining in the season.

The coverage of Boston’s collapse has been stifling, bordering on the obsessive, especially in light of Atlanta’s coverage. Passan, for example, has written four columns on their collapse. But then, it was completely unexpected. Boston not only led the AL East a month ago, they had done so off and on for most of the season.

Their fortunes have changed in September, especially in their rotation. Jon Lester’s pitching has taken a drop; the Yankees scored six runs off him in two innings on Sunday. John Lackey’s struggled, too: his ERA has risen to 6.41. And Tim Wakefield went nearly two months between career win 199 and 200.

And the way Tampa has surged in September is astounding, too. They’ve won six of seven games against the Red Sox this month alone, had good luck with rookie pitching and are getting timely hitting from Evan Longoria and Johnny Damon. If one believes in momentum, they’ve got it.

Over in the National League, Atlanta has had a similar collapse. A 4-2 loss to Philadelphia on Monday was their 11th in 16 games. True, they’ve been hit hard by injuries to Martin Prado and Brian McCann. But as ESPN‘s Christina Karl pointed out, it’s not injuries that’s killing the Braves, but their offense.

In September, the Braves’ team OPS of .667 is 26th in the Majors, behind teams like Florida, Pittsburgh and Washington – all of whom have been long eliminated from the playoffs. With such little success at the plate, it’s no small wonder they’re 27th in runs scored.

And like Tampa Bay, St. Louis has come on in the season’s final month. At it’s beginning, St. Louis was 10 games out and behind both Atlanta and the Giants for the NL wild card. Now they’re one game out with two to play. They’re fifth in the majors for OPS and fourth in batting average. They’ve won 16 games this month, including a three-game sweep of the Braves.

Now, with a close finish for either league, the stories are being spun again: there’s high drama in Boston, with the team struggling against freefall and even the AP recap of the Phillies’ win on Monday brims with excitement.

This isn’t a case of backtracking. After all it’s hard to write baseball day in and out: 162 games each require 162 recaps, not to mention the columns, weekly recaps and whatever they come up with for off-days.

But there’s something else here too. As the Washington Post pointed out on Sunday, no team has ever blown a nine-game lead they held in September. Forget the hype-powered columns, the talk of the expanded postseason and those who said the season’s finished. This is one for the record books. This is it.