We still have seven games left against the Astros, which makes for some interesting math as far as Division Championship vs Wild Card goes, especially with the Astros showing signs of their own wobble, but...this team has not yet convinced me that it would make that much a difference except math...maybe I'm being a bit old-school about "earning" your place in the post-season meaning anything more than, ok, your W-L record is all you need to have earned anything, but...so be it. Like I said earlier, just playing meaningful baseball in September is gift - and surprise - enough for me. Have not really followed the NL that much this year, but it seems to me that the AL this season has largely been a living example of that most awful of sports realities, "parity". Royals very close, but otherwise, not team with a .600 or better winning percentage and A's aside, no team with less than a .479 (for the sake of bitching, let's call it .480) one. So that's just a lot of..."good" and ""not so good" teams, right? Some years are easier to be enthusiastic about than others. When I was a kid, these "out of nowhere" things were exciting. Nowadays, they're just as likely to be annoying as anything, the whole "I'd rather be lucky than good" thing is just so...childish. At some point, dreams need to become goals, and goals take more than just luck to achieve. At some point, hell yeah, you got to be good. And then be good some more. I'm old enough to remember pre-divisional baseball, never mind throwing in a Wild Card team, never mind now having a play-in game for that Wild Card spot. At some point, jesus, you play 162 games. I that's not enough to determine who's for real and who's just getting lucky, screw it, don't have a 162 season, just set up a six month tournament and laissez les bons temps rouler, you know what I'm saying? Now, having said that...I'm not yet crank enough to say the same thing about "I'd rather be lucky than bad".