As some of you may already know, I am quite a big Major League Baseball fan. Specifically, I'm a Yankees fan, but that's beside the point. The point is, the first full month of the MLB regular season is officially over with the first games being played on March 29 and April coming to a close. As such, as a fun little experiment, I thought I'd take a look at what things would look like in MLB if the regular season, which usually consists of 162 games, were to suddenly just be declared over today and the playoffs were set to begin tomorrow. With the rules set, here we go!

First off, a bit of background (there's going to be a lot of that since I'm assuming that many of you don't know quite as much about MLB as I do). Major League Baseball consists of 30 teams spread out across the United States (and one in Canada) and split into two leagues, the American League (which I'll be focusing on this week) and the National League (which will be the subject of next week's article), each one consisting of 15 teams.

Each league is split into three smaller divisions based on geography, the divisions being the East, the Central, and the West. At the end of the regular season the teams with the best record in each division are considered the "winners" of the division and move on to the playoffs (which I'll get more into later), and those 6 teams are accompanied by the top 2 teams from each league that did not win their divisions (which I will also explain better in a bit). With all of that said, let's get on to our first league. (Please note that all records are current as of May 9 at 11:55 AM)

The American League

Division: Name of team (wins-losses)

American League East: Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees (25-10)

Central: Cleveland Indians (17-18)

West: Houston Astros (23-15)

Wild Cards: The Wild Cards are a bit complicated, so let me explain a little bit. Like I said earlier, the teams with the best win-loss record that did not win their division go on to the playoffs as the first (for the best) and second (for the second-best) Wild Card teams. These teams play a one-game playoff against each other at the home ballpark of the first Wild Card and the winner of that game goes on to face the division winner with the best record in the next round. So, the Wild Card teams right now are:

Name of team (wins-losses, + # of games above the second Wild Card)

Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees (25-10, +4.0); Los Angeles Angels (24-15)

Tie Breaker Game:

Before we can even get started on the playoffs, we have ourselves a bit of an issue with the standings. As of the publishing of this article, the Yankees and Red Sox are tied for first in the American League East, meaning they're both also tied for the first Wild Card. MLB has a set of rules to break the tie in that they have the teams play a tie breaker game. Who gets to host the game is a bit complicated to explain, but I'll do my best to keep it thorough but brief. First off they go by the head-to-head record between the two teams. However, the Yankees and Red Sox have played each other 4 times and both teams each have won 2 games, so that doesn't work. Then it goes to the number of wins each team has against teams in their own division, where the Yankees are 10-8, whereas the Red Sox are 11-3, which means historic Fenway Park in Boston gets to host the game. This game, part of the strongest rivalry in baseball and possibly in all of sports, would be one of the most watched baseball games this century, and with two excellent teams facing off, it'll be a game for the ages. It has to have a winner, though, which I believe would be the Yankees. The Red Sox got started on their hottest streak in decades, winning 17 of their first 19 games, only then to be no-hit by the Oakland Athletics and then go on a streak of 8-7, whereas the Yankees, who started their first 20 with a record of 11-9, have since won another 14 games and have only lost 1, having won 16 of their last 17, a feat they hadn't done since the 1953 season. The Yankees have serious momentum on their side, not to mention what many analysts believe to be the better team overall, so they take this evenly-matched game, potentially even in extras.

in the AWild Card Game:

Like I said above, the Wild Card Game is between the two best teams that didn't win their division (I know I sound like a broken record, please just bear with me). Since the first Wild Card team hosts the game, that means that this Wild Card would be hosted by the Boston Red Sox. Coming off their devastating loss to the Yankees in the AL tie-breaker game, the Red Sox have something to fight for as the winner of this game goes on to face the Yankees in the next round. Hungry for vengeance and armed with the second-best record in baseball, thanks to one of the strongest lineups in the game, the Red Sox are ready to make something happen, especially with this game, like the tie-breaker, being on their home turf.

The Angels are a curioys case as they've somewhat snuck their way into this situation. By no means are they an awful team, they just don't look like a playoff team. They have Albert Pujols, the veteran first baseman who recently made headlines for getting his 3,000th career hit, as well as Japanese phenom Shohei Ohtani, who can do the rare feat of pitch and hit at the major league level, and All-Star third baseman Zack Cozart, who was just signed this past winter. All of that is without mentioning Mike Trout, who many consider to be the best player in all of baseball right now and has drawn comparisons to baseball and Yankee legend Mickey Mantle throughout his career. They got here, though, thanks to their easy competition in a surprisingly-weak AL West, as well as a loss the day before this article went up when they were tied with the Astros for first in the division, their loss meaning they fall to half a game back of Houston in the standings. At least it makes my life a little easier.

So who wins this and faces the Yankees? Well, it's actually quite simple. The Angels have the significant advantage of the morale boost of getting to the playoffs for the first time in 4 years coupled with the Red Sox having already played a game just before this and having lost that game, giving the Angels the momentum going in. However, there's a reason the Red Sox are, in reality, tied with the Yankees for the best record in baseball and the Angels are second in their division. The Red Sox are the Angels' superior in every way, and while there's some margin of error here, there are very few paths that see the Red Sox finishing up after this game. Boston moves on.

ALDS:

The ALDS, short for American League Division Series, features the three division winners and the winner of the Wild Card Game. Seeding is based on standings between the three division winners, so the team with the best win-loss record gets the first seed, the team with the second gets the second, and so one (with the exception of the Wild Card Game winner who is always the fourth seed). So that means our Division Series matchups are the Astros and the Indians, then the Yankees and the Red Sox.

The Indians went to the World Series in 2016 and went to Game 7 against the Cubs, the game tied after the 9 innings of regular play. However, they lost it in the 10th, thus losing their first World Series appearance since 1997. Ready for round 2, the Indians won the AL Central again in 2017 with the best record in the American League, only to lose the ALDS to the Yankees. Based on the standings now, they're back and looking for another chance at redemption from 2016 and 2017. However, they have a formidable foe in the form of the Houston Astros.

The Astros are one of the best teams on baseball right now, at least on paper. Coming off their first ever World Series win, and predicted to be in the hunt for their second this year, Houston was expected to run away with the AL West much like it had in 2017 when the second place Angels went only 80-82 compared to the Astros with the third-best record in baseball, bested only by the team they beat in the Fall Classic, the Los Angeles Dodgers. and the aforementioned Indians. This year so far has been a bit confusing for them, but they're still easily the best team in their division. They have All-Star shortstop Carlos Correa, reigning AL MVP Jose Altuve, veteran ace starting pitcher Justin Verlander, and offseason acquisition Gerrit Cole, who they got by winning a bidding war against the Yankees. Like I said, they should be much better than they are. they just need some luck. However, is luck enough to get them past their first test, a slightly-more aged Indians team?

Well, the short answer is "yes." The Indians are supposed to be good, yet they've struggled out of the gate so far this year, losing 7 of their last 10 games and winning less than half of their games so far this year. In fact, if you don't include the 1994 MLB season since it was ended in August by a players' strike that canceled the Postseason, this would be the first time a team with a losing record ever won the division. On top of all of this, the Indians also have seen skill regression in several of their important players and Andrew Miller, who is generally considered one of the best left-handed pitchers in baseball right now, is currently injured. The Astros aren't burning things up, either, but they have played significantly better, even with their colder-than-expected start. While they may only be in first because the team they were tied with lost on a day off for them, they are still 8 games over .500 and have played better as of recently, winning five of their last ten and winning their last two in a row.

The ALDS is a best-of-5 series so that means that the first team to win 3 games wins the series and moves on to the next round. With everything I've said, I think it's reasonable to believe that the Astros take the series, winning it in 4 games.

The other series is between the two teams that make up what is quite possibly the best rivalry in all of sports. The Yankees-Red Sox rivalry dates back to 1920 when the Red Sox traded star player Babe Ruth to the Yankees. After the trade, the Yankees went on to their first ever World Series in 1921, opening a new ballpark for themselves in 1923, and winning their first-ever World Series that same year, not to mention another 25 on top of that between then and 2000.

The Red Sox, on the other hand, would struggle to do well and, despite occasionally reaching the World Series, they would not win another one until 2007 when they swept the Colorado Rockies. The rivalry dates back even further than Ruth, though, with the Yankees and Red Sox, then the Highlanders and the Americans, tied for first place going into the final three games of the season in 1904. The rules were slightly different back then so instead of all of these rounds in the playoffs and all of these divisions all of the teams were either in the American League or National League and the teams that were in first in the leagues faced each other in the World Series.

The Highlanders and Americans were going to play each other to finish the regular with one game on the second-to-last and two on the last. Whichever team won two of the three games won the American League and would go on to face the New York Giants (baseball, not football) in the World Series. The Americans won the first game but the Highlanders came back to win the second. With the Americans and Highlanders tied in the 9th inning of the third and final game, the Highlanders' pitcher, who was the best pitcher in the American League that year, threw his first and only wild pitch of the regular season, allowing the go-ahead run for the Americans to score. The Americans would hold on in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the game and the League, while the Highlanders would have to wait another 17 years before their next shot at going to the World Series.

But that was over 110 years ago. We want to look at today, so let's look at it! The Red Sox started the year with what was their best start in their entire history and the best for any team in over 30 years. The Yankees, on the other hand, who were expected to do amazingly seemed to be struggling to get things together. Last week, though, that all changed when the Yankees went on an 8-game win streak and have won 12 of their last 15 games, losing one of the two games against the Miami Marlins, then losing the second game out of four against the Toronto Blue Jays, then they swept a four-game series against the Minnesota Twins, then they swept a 3-game series against the Los Angeles Angels, and then lost the first game of the series against the Astros but came back to win the next three games, then proceeding to sweep the Indians in a 3-game set at Yankee Stadium. The Red Sox, in contrast, struggled, going on a 4-game losing streak, which included being no-hit by the Oakland Athletics, and have lost 6 of their last 10 games.

In real life the Yankees and the Red Sox have already played each other this year, the Yankees beating them in one out of the three games, that win, though, being the Red Sox's first loss of the season. Since then, though, the courses have changed and the standings have reflected it. At one point the Red Sox had a solid hold on the division, 5 games ahead of second and 7 ahead of the Yankees, who were stuck at a 50 percent record (in baseball this would be referred to as a .500 record but I'm keeping things simple for now). Since then, the Yankees have risen to 15 games over 50 percent (one of those wins coming against the Red Sox in last night's game) and they're, as we already discussed, tied with the Red Sox. So, what happens in this series?

If you had asked this three weeks ago, the answer would have been very different, but with the way things currently stand, this solidly goes to the Yankees. The Red Sox are good but right now they're idling along and it isn't working, whereas the Yankees are red-hot and ready to pound their arch enemies. The Yankees win this in 4 games.

ALCS:

After the Division Series round of the playoffs, the two series winners go on to face each other in the best-of-7 (first to four wins) Championship Series to decide who will represent the league in the World Series. Under our scenario, the Yankees and the Astros, a rematch of last year's ALCS, which saw the Yankees lose the first two games in Houston, then storm back to win all three games in New York, only to drop the last two games in Houston allowing the Astros to go to the World Series.

So how differently are things going to go here? In my opinion, quite a lot. While the Yankees went out and made some key acquisitions in the offseason, getting the NL MVP Giancarlo Stanton for the already-stacked outfield, promising up-and-comer Brandon Drury for third base, and reliable veteran Neil Walker for second, they've all underwhelmed significantly. To make up for this lack of production, players such as rookies Miguel Andujar, Tyler Austin, and Gleyber Torres, have made up for it. Andujar leads all American League rookies in doubles, Austin leads all rookies in homers, and Torres has had some of the more clutch performances since he was called up just over 2 weeks ago. In fact, in that time, the Yankees have only lost one game. During all of this, too, players like Stanton, who hit two home runs in last night's game, and Neil Walker, who drove in the eventual game-winning run last night, have woken up to make a dangerous lineup downright terrifying.

Compared to the Yankees, the Astros are still a solid team, as we discussed, but the Yankees are much more potent of an offense and pitching staff. This was put on full display recently when the Yankees played four games in Minute Maid Park, home of the Astros, winning three of the four, that loss being their only one in their last 17 games and the only one since Torres became a big leaguer. The Astros are an excellent team, they won the World Series last year after all, but they just aren't the juggernaut the Yankees are right now.

With all of that said, who wins this series? As a Yankee fan I'm very happy to say it I give a strong to the Yankees, who are just burning up the American League and any other opponent that steps in front of the speeding train that is the Bronx Bombers. There's quite literally almost no way to stop them now. They've rolled through the competition as of late and, if the playoffs were to start today, they'd be facing three of the more recent teams they faced (Astros, Indians, and Red Sox), all of whom the Yankees have (so far) crushed (7-1 in the 8 games against them).

World Series:

Since I didn't do the NL one's here I'm going to save the World Series for that article, which should be going up around the same time as this one. Keep an eye out for it and go ahead and read it!

Thank you all for bearing with me. I know that was very long and I promise I won't make them quite as long from now on. Most of this length was to describe how these things work and in future iterations of this I will just refer back to this initial article. Since I don't want to make it too terrible to read I'll just stick to the American League in this article and give you a shorter National League wrap-up in another that will hopefuly be going up at the same time as this. While I understand not everyone fully understands what I've written here, I recommend you watch a few games yourself. SNY, PIX11, YES, and occassionally FOX, FOX Sports, and ESPN have a handful of games so it might be fun to watch them. Hope you enjoyed and play ball!