by Matt Barr

When your team is served best if you lose

David Pinto brings attention to the fact that the Cardinals get the Astros for two games this week, and it's in the Cardinals' best interest -- they've already clinched home field throughout the NL playoffs -- that the Astros win and become the NL Wild Card. St. Louis, as the first seed, will play the Wild Card team in the Division Series, unless the Wild Card is from their division (which the Astros are); in that case, they'll play the division winner with the third best record, which will probably be the Padres, who may end up with a sub-.500 record. If Houston loses out to, say, the Phillies, whom they lead by a game going into the final week, the Cards would host the Phillies and the Braves (probably) would get the Padres.

The Padres are currently 77-78, the Phillies 84-72, and there are all sorts of peripheral ways of demonstrating that the Phillies are the better team. It's in the Cardinals' interest for the Astros to win this week.

The pat answer has something to do with sportsmanship and professionalism, but no one seems to blink when teams that have wrapped up their playoff position rest their regulars and play their bench players late in the season. The Cards will certainly do that (though, as one of David's commenters notes, they are running Matt Morris and Chris Carpenter, two very fine starting pitchers, out there against Houston).

Should Tony LaRussa try his hardest against the Astros? I don't think anyone seriously argues that, unless they do happen to think resting regulars is bad form. Should he ease up? Is he being an irresponsible manager if he does everything he can to beat the Astros, when the Astros' winning accrues to his team's benefit?

It's an interesting problem.

Less interesting but bugs me anyway is the idea that the high seed shouldn't play a team from its division in the first round. I can't prove this (or, am unwilling to research it, I should say), but I'll bet you $5 this silly rule has to do with making sure the Yankees and Red Sox are able to meet in the AL Championship Series. Kind of a dumb reason to have a rule, and we may be seeing why this week. Setting aside the Cards-Astros, if the Indians get the AL Wild Card and the White Sox the AL Central, what principled reason is there for separating the two in the first round?

In that case, if the standings end up looking like they do now at this time next week, both the White Sox and Indians get a break, if you measure quality of opponent by record (which the playoff seeding formula does). The White Sox don't have to play the team with the second-best record, as they normally would by rule, they get the team with the fourth-best record. The Indians don't have to play the team with the best record, they get the third-best. Which -- sprooiinnnnggggg! -- is probably how the seeding should work to begin with. But if you're going to seed the Wild Card fourth, then seed the Wild Card fourth. A Yankees-Red Sox exception could end up being bad for baseball. (No way!)

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