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Tonight, the Yankees take the field with their season on the line, as they host the Astros in the AL’s Wild Card game. CC Sabathia will not be with the team for the game, or any other game this postseason, because he checked into a rehab clinic for treatment related to alcohol abuse. The full statement that he released to the media.

“Today I am checking myself into an alcohol rehabilitation center to receive the professional care and assistance needed to treat my disease.

“I love baseball and I love my teammates like brothers, and I am also fully aware that I am leaving at a time when we should all be coming together for one last push toward the World Series. It hurts me deeply to do this now, but I owe it to myself and to my family to get myself right. I want to take control of my disease, and I want to be a better man, father and player.

“I want to thank the New York Yankees organization for their encouragement and understanding. Their support gives me great strength and has allowed me to move forward with this decision with a clear mind.

“As difficult as this decision is to share publicly, I don’t want to run and hide. But for now please respect my family’s need for privacy as we work through this challenge together.

“Being an adult means being accountable. Being a baseball player means that others look up to you. I want my kids — and others who may have become fans of mine over the years — to know that I am not too big of a man to ask for help. I want to hold my head up high, have a full heart and be the type of person again that I can be proud of. And that’s exactly what I am going to do.

“I am looking forward to being out on the field with my team next season playing the game that brings me so much happiness.”

For making this decision, Mr. Sabathia, I’m already proud of you.

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If you’ve been reading FanGraphs for a few years, you probably know what’s coming. Since MLB instituted the one-game Wild Card play-in contests, I’ve been a loud advocate for the idea of abandoning the traditional starter/reliever pitching format for these winner-take-all games. After all, relievers are more effective on a per-batter basis than starting pitchers, and most teams don’t have the kinds of starting pitchers who can justify being left in the game a third time through the batting order, especially when their team’s season hangs in the balance.

The National League this year is an exception, though. The Cubs and Pirates both feature legitimate aces, and if you have Jake Arrieta or Gerrit Cole, it is perfectly reasonable to go with a more traditional approach and let them attempt to dominate their opponents. After all, hitters posted a .540 OPS against Jake Arrieta the third time through the order this year; Cole was at .630. Those are the kinds of pitchers that you can comfortably ask to go six or seven innings even in an elimination game without putting your season at risk while a clearly better alternative sits in the bullpen.

But in the AL Wild Card game on Tuesday, the conditions are perfect for both teams to manage their pitching staff in unconventional manners.

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A year ago, I cast an actual ballot for the National League MVP, agreeing with most of my fellow BBWAA members that Clayton Kershaw was the league’s best and most valuable player. The downside of having a ballot was that I couldn’t really talk too much about my thought process in the run-up to to the ballots actually being cast, since the association requests we keep our votes private until after the results are announced.

This year, I’m voting for the NL Cy Young, where choosing a winner is basically an impossible task. So, instead of tying myself in more knots trying to pick a winner in the thing I actually have some say in, I’m going to write a couple posts about the MVP races instead, with the NL today and the AL tomorrow. If I had a ballot again this year, this is how it would look, at least with a few games left to go; in most cases, there isn’t enough time left in the season to move the needle enough to change positions here, and realistically, there isn’t much of a difference between down-ballot spots anyway.

Anyway, here are my 10 picks for a hypothetical NL MVP ballot this year.

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A year ago, Mookie Betts was one of the more divisive young talents in baseball. Mostly overlooked by scouts due to his diminutive size and lack of power — he was a 5th round pick by the Red Sox back in the 2011 draft — Betts ended up crushing minor league pitching in 2013 and 2014 to put himself on the prospect map, though opinions about his future still varied pretty widely. Over at FanGraphs, we were pretty big fans based on his overall value skillset, but our enthusiasm was met with a lot of skepticism over the perceived lack of upside from a small contact hitter who generated a lot of value by drawing walks against inferior pitching.

And those concerns were somewhat legitimate. When I first wrote about Betts on JABO a year ago — suggesting that the Red Sox keep him rather than get tempted into dealing him for a frontline starting pitcher — I developed a list of offensive comparisons based on his swing and contact rates. There were some good names on that list, including Joe Mauer and Matt Carpenter. There was also the Tony Gwynn that doesn’t make for an optimistic comparison, along with Craig Counsell, Daric Barton, and Sam Fuld. The low swing rate/high contact types almost universally didn’t hit for power, and guys Betts’ size often end up being defensive-oriented players who try to slap enough singles and steal enough bases to avoid being an offensive hole.

Well, with his first full season nearly in the books, I think it’s safe to say at this point that Betts is not a slap hitter. Last night, he launched his 16th home run of the season, and perhaps more impressively, hit his 42nd double. Add in the 8 triples and Betts now has 66 extra base hits on the year, the same number of XBH as Nelson Cruz (who leads the majors in home runs) and Jose Abreu, and ahead of Cubs slugging rookie Kris Bryant, who was the consensus top prospect in baseball in large part because of his prodigious power. And that puts him five extra base hits ahead of Andrew McCutchen, who became the popular comparison this spring, when Betts was torching the Grapefruit League in Spring Training.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

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The way Jake Arrieta has thrown the ball this year — especially in the second half — has ended any discussion about who the Cubs #1 starter is. Arrieta has propelled himself into the discussion of true aces, and he’ll be the guy the Cubs put on the hill with their season on the line next Wednesday. With Jon Lester slotting in to the #2 spot, the Cubs top two starters should be able to hold their own against any other staff in baseball.

After that, though, things get a little more interesting. When asked who his third starter in the postseason might be, Joe Maddon stated simply “I don’t know.” Jason Hammel began the year as the team’s third starter, and his overall numbers are quite good for a middle-of-the-rotation guy, but those numbers are based on an excellent first half and a pretty lousy second half. Prior to the All-Star break, opposing hitters posted just a .261 wOBA against Hammel, but since the break, they’ve put up a .371 mark against him. The problems may be tied to a hamstring injury that landed him on the DL in July, and unless he really shows them something in the last week of the season, it’s not clear that the Cubs can trust that he’s healthy enough to be effective in high-leverage postseason innings.

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Over the weekend, the Mets officially won the National League East, though thanks to the meltdown in Washington — which now includes Jonathan Papelbon publicly choking Bryce Harper, with his manager apparently doing an impression of an ostrich while it happened — the accomplishment has been somewhat overshadowed in the news cycle. And it’s pretty obvious that, with the Nats falling apart at seemingly every opportunity, the NL East was the easiest division in in the league to win; even after sweeping the Reds over the weekend, the Mets still have just the fourth best record in the NL.

But lost in the shuffle of the MVP getting assaulted on TV, along with the Cubs and Pirates getting us all tuned up for what might be the best Wild Card game we’ll ever see, the Mets were quietly setting up their playoff roster, and the results of that tune-up should scare the crap out of the other four playoff teams.

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