Guardians clinch MLB Playoffs, look to win AL Central with win Sunday

There is a reason that the MLB season is 162 games long, and the Cleveland Guardians needed nearly every single one to punch their ticket to the MLB Playoffs. After the Detroit Tigers took down the Boston Red Sox earlier in the day the Guardians were in control of their own destiny. Win and they were in.

Morale was a little low heading in to Saturday night's contest having dropped back-to-back games to Detroit and Texas, after their miracle sprint to leapfrog Detroit in the AL Central standings it suddenly looked as though the Guardsmobile had run out of gas. In true Guardiac Kids fashion however, the team waited until there was two outs in the 9th to lock up their postseason berth (their 8th in the last 13 years).

A 9th inning miracle, starting with Jonathon Rodriguez (who earlier in the game got Cleveland on the board with a rwo-run homer), drew a two out walk. He would be pinch ran for by speedster Petey Halpin who would scamper to third on the ensuing Kyle Manzardo bloop single.

Texas would then make what would prove to be their critical mistake intentionally walking Gabriel Arias to load the bases. On the very next pitch rookie C.J. Kayfus would be plunked scoring Halpin to complete the Guardians September comeback, and punch their ticket to the dance.

Previously, no team had secured a playoff spot, while being 11.5 games out of first place as of the beginning of September. As we all know by now, the Guardians had just a meager 2.9% chance of even making the playoffs on September 4th. Now that they are in, what comes next?

After taking 2 out of 3 games from the Tigers earlier this week the Guardians will win the AL Central with a win over Texas on Sunday in game 162 regardless of whatever else may happen.

The Guardians will likely send Logan Allen to the mound tomorrow against Patrick Corbin for Texas. Their Wild Card matchup will either be Detroit or Boston depending on what happens Sunday. Given the pitching matchup that will mean that Gavin Williams, who has developed into a true ace in September will start Game 1 Tuesday.

A few things need to be cleaned up and the offense needs to wake up if Cleveland wants to cap a miraculous September run with a trip to the World Series. As they showed on the broadcast tonight Cleveland hitters not named Jose Ramirez and Steven Kwan are hitting just .210 that simply will not get it done in October.

What does aid in Cleveland's favor is that they have essentially been playing playoff games since September 1st. Usually, as we have seen, the team that has to play meaningful baseball in a pressure cooker situation is able to surprise a few teams and make a deep run.

"We're going to keep fighting every single day until we're either popping champagne or we're out of it," manager Stephen Vogt said. "Thats who we are."

The Guardians have kept that mentality up through the entirety of September and will need to keep it up through at least a few more weeks as the #GuardiWins look to be the first Cleveland team to bring the Commissioner's Trophy back to the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.