This is about to get ugly! While the Red Sox are virtually locked into the second AL Wild Card spot and will spend the upcoming week preparing to face the Yankees, the Chicago Cubs — Boston’s opponent this weekend — have major playoff seeding implications on the line.
With just six games to go, the Cubs and Padres are tied with a record of 87-69, just one game ahead of the Phillies, who are 86-70. All three teams are battling for the top Wild Card spot on the NL side of the board, and with it, home field advantage in next week’s Wild Card series. In other words, the Cubs will probably have to play all 162 games before they know where they’ll be situated for their Game 1. And wouldn’t you know it? Amid that uncertainty, here’s comes Mother Nature to inject an entirely new level of chaos.
Below is the overnight run of the EC-AIFS model, and it’s showing (as it has for the last several runs) an intensifying, retrograding nor’easter backing into Boston at the end of the week, and then lasting through the entire weekend.
This is potentially a slow moving, multiday, high wind, heavy rain, coastal flooding event. And no, it’s not some rogue run or outlier solution. The EC-AIFS is one of the best performing models in the business, and some other guidance is actually showing an even stronger storm than this. For instance, here’s what the European and ICON models are showing:
We already went into detail on Saturday here at Over The Monster dissecting why a harsh solution like this was not only possible, but also pretty likely. However, if you want the short version, take a look at the linked up ridging in the image below stretching all the way from the central Atlantic through northern Quebec. This is an enormous blocking pattern, which prevents energy exiting off the east coast from escaping. In time, the trapped energy consolidates, becomes an organized storm, and has no choice but to retrograde back towards the east coast as it builds strength because it’s again blocked by the Canadian High.
Regardless of the details, I can’t stress enough how messy this is going to get for the Red Sox and Cubs if a storm remotely close to what these models are showing materializes.
The Red Sox will have no interest in playing these games at all, particularly with Payton Tolle, Sonny Gray, and Ranger Suarez set to go on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday against Cleveland before the weather moves in. That will serve as their final tune up before the rubber meets the road against the Yankees on Tuesday, September 29th.
The entire National League however is — in all likelihood — desperately going to need these games to be played to untangle their Wild Card puzzle. And if we get a massive wash out, the imbalance of the “give a damn” meters between these two clubs is going to be an enormously bad look for MLB.
The Red Sox will be (rightfully) furious if they have to do something like play a make up double header on Monday the 28th, and the Phillies and Padres are going to be (also rightfully) furious if they lose out on home field and have to go to Wrigley because the Cubs got free wins at the finish against a club that absolutely didn’t care about the games.
Either way, MLB is about to have quite an ordeal on its hands, and they may want to start thinking about backup plans right now to prevent an all out fiasco as the season comes to a close.
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