Playoff Prospectus

Wild Card Recap: Casually Cruel

by Sam Miller

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There were two trillion possible half-versions of you. And your father, he encountered thousands of women in his life, any of whom could have been your mom, bringing us into the quadrillions of possibilities for you. And there were two trillion possible half-versions of him, and there were thousands of women in his life, all of whom had two trillion possible half-versions and thousands of possible mothers who all had two trillion possible half-versions of themselves, besides, of course, having thousands of possible mothers (who each had two trillion possible half-versions of themselves). This sentence stretches back millions of years, every word of it snapping together in just such a way that of those trillions to the power of trillions of possible outcomes one survived and produced you. You are alive because math finally just gave up and guessed an answer, and the answer was you, and the answer was loved, and the answer loved back, because life is good and sweet heavens are we lucky to be part of it.

And tomorrow, you’ll drive to work and you’ll be one second too late to make the yellow light, and you’ll think, “why can’t I ever catch a break?”

Baseball has a luck problem. Nobody on the field even wants to say the word, hear the word. You try to ask them about their run differential or their BABIP or their FIP and it’s a different kind of blank look than you get when you ask about other nerd stuff—this is the do-not-engage blank look, the let’s-keep-this-grounded look, the keep-me-away-from-your-wrathful-pagan-god-science look. They don’t want to hear that they’ve been lucky, because that implies they’re not so good, and that they’re going to get worse. They don’t want to hear that they’ve been unlucky, because it’s even worse to be cursed than to be bad—the latter at least having a theoretical fix. Or perhaps both of those explanations are wrong, but something about the luck conversation marginalizes what these guys do, turns it from a game of skill (legal in all but five states!) to simple gambling. It is a game of skill. It is absolutely a game of skill, and the Cubs won the National League Wild Card game 4-0 because they were extremely skillful. You could not watch Jake Arrieta throw high cheese and steal second base and not see the skill. It’s also, unfortunately for the Pirates, a game of luck, a million years of gods-sex producing a moment when the bat boy walks through the dugout patting your shoulder and shaking your hand and telling you thanks and you’ll get ‘em next year.

It was bad luck that Bud Selig decided two Wild Cards were better than one. It was bad luck before that that the Mayflower Pilgrims landed in Plymouth Rock, and that the population centers that eventually grew around them were in cold-weather regions where baseball, a sport invented 200 years later and finally lit 100 after that, could be played for only seven months per year, thus forcing Selig to cram his new toy into the only-sized toy box he had. If the first Thanksgiving had been in the Delta, we probably have nine-month seasons right now, and the Wild Card series lasts as long as the Olympics.

It was bad luck that this was the year the Pirates managed to win 98 games, the most they've won in a century. If only they had won 98 games in 2010 (when a Wild Card berth would have granted them entry into an LDS) or 2011 (when 98 would have won them the division) or 2012 (when, yes, they’d have had to play their way in, but against Kyle Lohse, not Jake friggin Arrieta), this magnificent season--Francisco Cervelli and Jung-Ho Kang and J.A. Happ, so much fun, so much magic--wouldn't have ended after just one extra gate.

It was bad luck that the Cardinals had their voodoo magic cranked all the way up to Eye Of Newt this year, clusterlucking past the Pirates despite holding the third-best third-order winning percentage in the group. Heck, it was bad luck that the Cubs didn’t grab a few extra wins and capture that division (with the best third-order record, incidentally)—sure, the Pirates would still have been in the coin-flip game, but against Michael Wacha or John Lackey or certainly something human. It was terrible luck that it had to be Arrieta. It was bad luck that the Orioles traded him to the Cubs of all teams (barely two years ago!) for a couple of lousy future trivia answers. It was bad luck that three months ago a sexy karate lady kidnapped Arrieta and took him to her leader and offered him the blue pill or the red pill. It was bad luck that Arrieta was able to pitch on full rest, which in a sense means it was bad luck that, for whatever reason MLB chose to have the AL Wild Card game go first, MLB chose to have the AL Wild Card game go first. It was bad luck that, when this day came, Arrieta woke up and he had it. Some days they don’t, and he did.

It was bad luck that, when Arrieta left pitches out over the plate, and the Pirates put good swings on them, those balls went right at people—like in the fourth, when Harrison, McCutchen and Marte went fly out to right, line out to right, line out to first—all hit well, or at least square. It was bad luck that, when they took pitches outside the zone, there was an umpire who was looking for reasons to say yes. It was bad luck that, when they smoked a line drive, it went right into Kris Bryant’s glove, and then when it popped out of Kris Bryant’s glove, it somehow went right into his bare hand. It was bad luck that a hard-hit ball with the bases loaded in the sixth was, instead of a double, a double play. And that the same basic thing happened the next inning, except this one was even harder and more double-like (though with only one runner on). It’s not so much that baseball is a game of inches—the 100 meters, after all, is also a game of inches, uncontroversially--but that it’s a game of inches that nobody on the field has the remotest control over.

It’s just a rotten way to go. Last year, when so much was made of the Giants’ ability to leverage Madison Bumgarner’s otherworldliness, by having him throw 33 percent of their postseason innings, like can you even imagine such a thing, 33 percent? But for the Pirates, 100 percent of the postseason was against Jake Arrieta. If you stretched this postseason out on a molecular level so that it lasted forever, there'd always be Jake Arrieta, in the beginning and in the end, the everpresent sun around which the whole Pirates solar system revolved, and it would be an evil sun that burned holes in their umbrellas and vomited sun gas all over their pets.

Just appreciate for a second how lucky we are that we were all born under the good sun.

The Pirates are unlucky that this was what Bud Selig wanted: He wanted a tournament at the end of the year to decide the winner, just like almost every good sport has. Nobody in their right mind would think this is the best way to determine the best team. It’d be like medical schools basing their applications process on how many answers you can get on an old episode of The Weakest Link. It’s arbitrary, and it’s sadistically unfair. You have our sympathies, Pirates: The Cubs didn't deserve worse, but you deserved better. You are the victims of a cruel idea that seems, on nights like tonight, to aspire for nothing more than sad crowd shots of old men in funny pirate hats.

And this might be my favorite part of baseball. Can’t help it: I was born like this.

Sam Miller is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @SamMillerBB
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