MLB Playoff Schedule 2014: Full TV Info and Key Wild Card Round Storylines

One thing that defines Major League Baseball's postseason is the unpredictable nature of the short series. Even though the regular season is built on three- and four-game series, it's harder to pin down what happens now because the separation between the best and worst teams is minimal. 

Despite what Las Vegas odds will tell you about the World Series favorites (h/t Odds Shark), the Los Angeles Dodgers are not more than twice as likely to win a championship than the Kansas City Royals. Last year, Boston was four outs away from being down 2-0 to Detroit before David Ortiz hit a grand slam to change everything. 

The good news is this gives us plenty to talk about every day for the next month, but for the purposes of this article we are focused specifically on the two Wild Card games taking place Tuesday and Wednesday for the right to play in the Division Series. 

*If needed. Courtesy of MLB.com

Key Wild Card Game Storylines

Postseason Baseball Is Back in Kansas City

There will be plenty of time to talk about the game between the Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Royals before, during and after the game. Instead, let's talk about the great story that is playoff baseball in this city for the first time since 1985. 

From a personal standpoint, having been born in November 1985, this is the first time I will ever see the Royals in the postseason. Coming on the heels of Pittsburgh ending its long playoff drought last year, this is a great time to be a baseball fan. 

Are the Pirates or Royals going to generate the kind of ratings and buzz that teams like the Yankees or Red Sox would? No, of course not. But who cares? I'd rather see new blood in the postseason than sit through another five-hour game between New York and Boston. 

Bob Nightengale of USA Today started the pregame hype with a piece that came out Monday about how many fans were in attendance during the Royals' batting practice session:

When the Royals walked onto the field Monday morning for batting practice, there were 5,000 fans in the stands to greet them, cheer them, even staging an ol' fashioned pep rally normally reserved for Friday night high school football games.

This is their team.

This is their town.

Last year, we saw the passionate Pittsburgh fanbase unleash more than 20 years of frustration in an exuberant game when the Pirates defeated Cincinnati in the National League Wild Card game. It was evident the Reds were out of sorts early because of the crowd, with Johnny Cueto dropping the ball while stepping back on the mound, via MLB Advanced Media:

I don't know if Jon Lester, who has been through plenty of playoff battles in his career, will be overwhelmed by the Royals crowd, but expecting anything less than what the Pittsburgh crowd brought to its game last year would be foolish. 

Win or lose, the Royals and their fans have earned this moment to celebrate an accomplishment that is 29 years in the making. As the great Jack Buck said after Ozzie Smith's walk-off home run in Game 5 of the 1985 National League Championship Series, go crazy, folks!

Oakland's Second-Half Collapse

Is there a playoff team that's harder to figure out than the A's? I will admit that I think they are going to defeat Kansas City on Tuesday night because Lester is the best pitcher either team has and the offense has more firepower than Kansas City's lineup. 

That said, based on what Oakland's lineup has done in the second half of the season (3.93 runs per game), it wouldn't be a surprise to see James Shields throw a complete-game shutout. It's not like Shields is a slouch in the pitching department, either. 

According to Jorge L. Ortiz of USA Today, Oakland's 29-38 record in the second half is the worst ever for a team that made the playoffs. He also noted the lineup hit an American League-worst .233 after the All-Star break. 

Again, though, starting pitching makes all the difference in October. Lester was one of the best in baseball this year, finishing fourth in the AL with a 2.46 ERA and seventh in fielding independent ERA (2.80). As ESPN.com's Tim Kurkjian wrote in his game preview, this is why Billy Beane traded for the left-hander:

"The A's gave up a lot in Cespedes," Kurkjian wrote, "yet they needed to add a No. 1 starter to their rotation, a guy with not just experience in October, but success in October, and Lester has been dominant in October. They couldn't have a better guy pitching an elimination game than Lester."

In a longer series, Oakland's inability to score runs with any consistency will come back to haunt it. In a one-game scenario, though, anything can happen. Don't sell the A's short simply because the year didn't end with the kind of bang it started with. 

Pittsburgh's Potentially Disastrous Mistake

One thing the second wild card has done is put more of a premium on winning the division. That's good news for the teams that do finish atop their division but bad news for teams that are forced to play catchup late in the season. 

Such is the case with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who used Francisco Liriano and Gerrit Cole on Saturday and Sunday trying to catch the St. Louis Cardinals atop the National League Central. If it would've worked, we would be praising Clint Hurdle for firing all the bullets in his chamber. 

Since it didn't work, though, Hurdle is stuck using Edinson Volquez in a winner-take-all situation. This is the same Volquez who is playing on his fourth team since 2011 and walked 71 batters in 192.2 innings this year. 

Oh, and by the way, Madison Bumgarner is starting for San Francisco. So we have a situation where one of the best pitchers in baseball is going against a glorified journeyman in a game that you have to win. Volquez's 3.04 ERA glosses over the fact that he's basically the same pitcher he was from 2011 to 2013.

Mike Petriello of FanGraphs wrote about the enigma that is Volquez and how his numbers this year are all over the place with respect to what he's done the previous three years:

Volquez’ xFIP has been basically constant for the last four years, and his FIP has been the same, basically, since 2012. But his actual runs allowed have been all over the map. Last year, he under-performed his FIP by 1.47 runs/game; this year, he’sout-performing it by 1.11. By FIP-WAR, his 0.3 last year and 0.7 are essentially the same. By RA9-WAR, he’s jumped from -2.4 to 3.0, a massive swing. 

Petriello does note that Pittsburgh is a great place for seemingly over-the-hill pitchers to play as a way to resurrect their careers because the defense is so good. A.J. Burnett went from a burnout in New York to posting a 3.41 ERA with 389 strikeouts in 393.1 innings with the Pirates. 

Burnett left Pittsburgh for Philadelphia last winter and became the version we saw in New York (4.59 ERA, 96 walks). 

Volquez may be the latest beneficiary of the Pirates defense, but nothing in his performance suggests that he's lost more than two runs off the 5.71 ERA he had last year.

There are only so many true No. 1 starters in baseball, but the Pirates are putting their postseason hopes on their fourth-best starting pitcher (Cole, Liriano and Charlie Morton, who had hip surgery and is out for the playoffs). 

The only other time Volquez pitched in the postseason was Game 1 of the 2010 National League Division Series against Philadelphia. That game was notable for featuring Roy Halladay's no-hitter for the Phillies, but Volquez lasted just 1.2 innings and allowed four runs with two walks and no strikeouts. 

If something like that happens against Bumgarner, the Pirates' playoff run is going to be very brief. 

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