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By Ben Watanabe
Contributing Sports Writer
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For much of the season, members of the Boston Red Sox brass were licking their lips in anticipation of Alex Bregman's homecoming to Fenway Park.
Bregman had played so poorly, and cheaper third base replacement Caleb Durbin had played so well, the Boston front office couldn't wait to get them both on the same field. A 1-to-1 comparison showed advantage: Red Sox.
Things have certainly changed. While Durbin indeed is far cheaper and younger, Bregman has outplayed his hot corner counterpart across the board. At 32, Bregman is having arguably his finest season since 2019, when he was 25 years old and finished second in American League MVP voting. Durbin, meanwhile has been perfectly fine. His defense has been stellar, which makes his low-.700s OPS palatable, and he doesn't do anything to actively lose games.
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So when the teams take the field at Fenway Park to close the regular season at the end of September, the Bregman-Durbin debate might be settled. There could be another reason for the series to be must-watch TV, though.
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When the Red Sox and Cubs face off Sept. 25-27, the result could have massive MLB postseason implications. They wouldn't meet in the playoffs until the World Series, obviously, but they can still influence each other's playoff fates.
The Cubs are battling the Philadelphia Phillies for the No. 1 NL Wild Card seed, which comes with home-field advantage throughout the three-game series in the opening round. The friendly confines of Wrigley Field would naturally be the Cubs' preferred venue, particularly considering how tough Citizens Bank Park is to visitors.
For the Red Sox's part, they are locked in their own conflict with the New York Yankees for the top AL Wild Card spot.
In both teams' cases, home-field advantage if pivotal, but for different reasons. The NL playoffs will be a gauntlet, so the fewer hostile environments the Cubs need to endure, the better their odds of coming out alive. The AL playoffs, by contrast, look remarkably thin on true contenders, which means something as simple as an easier travel schedule in the wild card round could give a team like the Red Sox an edge.
The domino effect of baseball could change the circumstances dramatically, of course. Rather than jostling for seeding, both teams could be content to merely cruise through the series to set up their postseason pitching rotation. At the moment, however, if you had this season-culminating series circled, leave it that way. There still might be plenty of excitement to come.
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