October, finally.

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Sometimes, the biggest advantage for a team is location.

If you are in the AL Central you are living the good life. Three teams from the AL Central have made the watered-down MLB playoffs, division-winning Cleveland, and wild cards Kansas City and Detroit.

Good for them. From my vantage point all three teams tried to bring some baseball back to baseball, which is a good thing. There are other factors in their success, too, and now they have made it to October, finally. The Tigers last made the playoffs 10 years ago. The Royals last made the playoffs in 2015 when they beat the Mets to win the World Series.

Both teams played the hand they were dealt. The Royals and Tigers need to send thank-you notes to the sad sack White Sox.

That bumbling team with the most losses in modern-day history, 121, helped tip the playoff scales. The White Sox were so bad the Royals went 12-1 against them – while the Tigers clinched a wild card spot on Friday, winning their 10^th game in 11 tries against the Sad Sox.

The Tigers have become a fun story because management traded away key players at the deadline but then the Tigers got rolling after calling up the kids, including former Yankee prospect Trey Sweeney at shortstop.

The Tigers play with energy when so many other teams go through the motions.

“In spring training, we thought we were going to be good,’’ catcher Jake Rogers said Saturday on the Tigers broadcast. “We didn’t do well enough to keep some guys at the deadline, so they traded them away and after that it was like, ‘Man, we got nothing to lose, let’s go out and have some fun and just play ball’ and that is kind of the mentality that we’ve had. We play great baseball and a lot of this youth movement; it has brought a lot of energy. We preach taking that extra 90 feet because 90 feet is sacred, man.’’

Going first to third is a team energizer.

Nice to hear baseball talk.

If you really want to know how much the Twins stink, consider this: Minnesota compiled a 12-1 record against the White Sox and are 70-77 against the rest of baseball, going into Saturday. The Twins didn’t deserve to make the postseason and maybe this was a little bit of payback for getting rid of hard-working scouts like Billy Milos, who scoured the independent leagues like no one else to find major league talent for so many years.

Twins management may be the most overrated management in baseball – and that’s saying something considering the Nerds in charge of losing teams rarely get any heat these days. Chaim Bloom, who made one of the worst trades in baseball history with the dumping of Mookie Betts for the Red Sox, resurfaced this year as an advisor with the going-nowhere Cardinals and is about to have a much bigger baseball leadership role for that organization.

Failing upward is a real thing in both politics and MLB.

If you have been following along here at BallNine you know I have been criticizing the Cardinals for quite some time for abandoning the Cardinal Way under Teflon John Mozeliak. Like so many other failing organizations they got rid of good baseball people and now the answer is to add more analytics.

Good luck, Cardinals.

And the Cardinals, much like the Royals and Tigers, have been gifted a Central Division address. There is no one as bad as the White Sox in the NL Central, but as I pointed out earlier this week, the Pirates and Reds are two Septic Tank organizations. Still, with all that in their favor, not to mention the best fans in baseball coming to Busch Stadium III, the Cardinals will miss out on the postseason for the second straight season and have not won a playoff series since 2019.

And all the while Rob (Nero) Manfred fiddles while the A’s burn and may someday play in Las Vegas, bringing the MLB betting game right to the ballpark in Sin City. 

By the way, the Red Sox are still trying to recover from the Bloom Experience and missed out on the postseason for the third straight year. Yes, Boston’s owners are a major problem, but owners are a problem for many teams – just look at the mess the A’s have become under John Fisher and the Pirates and Reds and others – like the pitiful White Sox under owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

I’m looking at the A’s situation as Revenge of the Moneyball Nerds. Just a reminder: The A’s have not been to the World Series since 1990, that was the last of three straight World Series appearances for them and who knows if the A’s will ever make it back to the World Series.

I believe the A’s should fully embrace their new minor league status. They are scheduled to play in AAA-Sacramento the next three seasons at Sutter Health Park, which has only about 11,000 permanent seats. That fits for their level of recent accomplishments. Over the last three seasons the A’s have finished, 18 games out in the AL West, 40 games out and 46 games out.

Nice.

Now, even though the 2024 A’s were almost respectable, they don’t even have a real major league ballpark to play in under Fisher after screwing the fans of Oakland year after year. The Oakland Coliseum had its final A’s game this week and it was another terrible day for baseball. I’ve been to that ballpark for A’s games many, many times and Raiders games, too, and it was a unique experience. Let me tell you, there is no parking lot like the Coliseum parking lot hours after a Raiders game with the liquor bottles stacked like cord wood. I even went to a Raiders game with CC Sabathia as a fun assignment because CC grew up a Raiders fan and remains a huge fan of the team.

In a way, this entire A’s Lost Coliseum Show is a thing of beauty because of the way the fans responded and tried to fight back in losing their team, and all the while Rob (Nero) Manfred fiddles while the A’s burn and may someday play in Las Vegas, bringing the MLB betting game right to the ballpark in Sin City. You can’t make it up with what is happening in baseball these days from clueless players abandoning third base for no reason to the A’s abandoning Oakland.

Considering all that, I will repeat that I believe the A’s should embrace their minor league status and steal as much as they can from the Savannah Bananas act. Fans love the Bananas. What’s not to love? Here at BallNine we put the Bananas on the baseball radar with a story in September of 2020 when the world was locked away at home.

The Bananas are fun. Now the A’s can’t just change the rules like the Bananas have done with such maneuvers as making a walk a race to second base, but they can pick up on some other crowd favorites like introducing the Banana Baby or the Baby Race.

And Fisher Man, if you are going to turn your team into a minor league team, go for for the gold. What have you got to lose? The White Sox should do this as well; they completely stink so they might as well bring Banana Ball to the Southside of Chicago. Hire Jesse Cole, Bananas’ owner known as “the guy in the yellow tuxedo,’’ as an advisor and let it rip.

The White Sox fans should have some fun for spending their hard-earned money.

And the A’s already are yellow – kind of – in their white, green and gold color scheme, so it’s a natural fit. The A’s were 38-43 this season at home and the previous two years they were a combined 55-106 at home. The White Sox are a beyond embarrassing 24-58 at home this season.

It’s all pretty much a joke anyway and next season looks as bad as this season for the White Sox so why not go all the way and turn the game into a joke?

Maybe MLB can come up with some cool betting angles like who will win the baby race or how many seconds will the baby be held up at home plate.

Utilize the pitch clock as a baby clock for those entertaining moments.

The possibilities are endless.

Getting back to the Red Sox and John Henry, he had to be happy the Savannah Bananas sold out Fenway Park on June 8th of this year. The Boston crowd went from pink hats to yellow hats in no time.

Yes, I know, it’s all a bit ridiculous, but so is baseball as it gets away from baseball things like hustle and grit and working the count and putting the ball in play and baserunning and defense and contact hitting in favor of iPad Ball. And not just in the majors, what they have done to the minors is excruciating, players are not being taught the game and that is a big part of the reason you have so many dumb mistakes at the major league level.

The biggest recent mistake John Henry and Tom Werner made was hiring Bloom in the first place and thinking he would be the analytical answer to their problems.

Now the Cardinals’ Bill DeWiitt Jr. is following the Henry-Werner Plan. Much like the Twins debacle, this will be interesting to watch.

Next week the playoffs begin and with the likes of Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, the level of play should be much better. Here are my seven keys to winning in the postseason:

Don’t be a dumbass.

Hustle at all times.

Pitchers must command their pitches.

Hitters, put the ball in play.

Steal as many bases as possible with the new rules and the inept insistence that catchers remain one knee down behind the plate, 90 feet is sacred.

Emphasize defense.

Manage the moment, like Bruce Bochy did all last October, and not in the Nerd meeting that takes place hours before the game. That also means listening to real advance scouts.

There you have it. Keep it simple. Take what is given to you, like the Royals and Tigers did in making the postseason by slaughtering the White Sox.

A number of teams are capable of winning the whole thing, much like last year when no one expected the Rangers and Diamondbacks to meet in the World Series.

This feels like a World Series where the Yankees and the Dodgers are destined for a Super Bowl-like showdown as in decades past. Each big city team has dual superstars, Ohtani and Betts for the Dodgers and Judge and Juan Soto for the Yankees.

This final weekend the NL wild card situation remains up in the air because of the double postponement in Atlanta between the Mets and Braves. If they play a doubleheader on Monday, the final day of September, what a week of baseball is in front of us. Fans have paid their dues this season having to suffer through some terrible, idiotic baseball in the regular season. Here is hoping MLB gets its act together.

Baseball and Manfred owe the fans that much. Slop season is over.

It is October, finally.