Even the commissioner of baseball and the powers that be in MLB have nightmares.
While some of us wake up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m. because we dreamt that we were falling or being chased by monsters, their nightmares involve a short list of contenders making the playoffs.
There a number of reasons why a team would end up on that list, from a lack of local fan support and the size of their market to being without a genuine superstar that even the most casual of baseball fans is familiar with.
Not every division has a nightmare scenario that can play out this season, as some divisional races involve only teams that MLB would love to see in the postseason, but those are few-and-far between. That said, those teams that would cause sleepless nights as division champions would do the same as wild-card teams, so for our purposes, we’ll only look at each individual division.
The only prerequisite for a team to be considered for the nightmare scenario is that they must still be mathematically alive to make the playoffs—that’s it.
So which potential playoff scenarios are keeping the most powerful people in the game up at night?
Take a look…if you dare.
*Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are courtesy of Baseball-Reference and current through games of September 9.
*All attendance figures courtesy of ESPN’s Attendance Report.