October glory: Glaring questions for each playoff team

Don't let that unseasonable warmth from earlier this week fool you: postseason baseball is nigh.

On Saturday, with the Boston Red Sox finally locking up the American League East and the Milwaukee Brewers squandering their wild-card aspirations in St. Louis, the 10-team playoff bracket was finalized, and we're now just over 48 hours away from the start of a wild October.

With the march to the World Series set to begin, then, let's take a look at one glaring question facing each playoff team. Better throw on those eclipse goggles if you still have them, guys, because these questions really are glaring.

National League

Los Angeles Dodgers

Will Alex Wood be included in the postseason rotation?

Alex Wood, who started the season in the bullpen, upstaged even Clayton (expletive) Kershaw in the first half of 2017, crafting a 1.79 ERA with an absurd 31.5 percent strikeout rate while allowing just two home runs in 13 starts prior to the All-Star break. Things have gone awry of late, though, with Wood managing a not-at-all-Kershawian 3.89 ERA over his last dozen starts, and his inconsistent second half - marred by a considerable decline in velocity and swinging-strike rate - has forced Dave Roberts to entertain the possibility of bumping him back to the bullpen for the postseason. That would leave Hyun Jin Ryu to round out the NLDS rotation behind Kershaw, Yu Darvish, and Rich Hill, and while the resurgent left-hander has been great this year, Ryu hasn't pitched past the fifth inning in six of his last eight outings. He looked especially lost Friday, serving up five runs on three homers over just two frames - his shortest start of 2017.

Washington Nationals

Will Bryce Harper be Bryce Harper?

Before hyperextending his knee on a slippery base back in August, Bryce Harper looked very much like the version of himself that became the youngest MVP in history back in 2015, having hit .326/.419/.614 with 29 homers and 27 doubles through 106 games. Since then, however, the 24-year-old has barely swung the bat. Harper, who spent six weeks on the disabled list before returning to the Nationals' lineup Tuesday, didn't get a chance to play any rehab games - the minor-league season was doneski when he was ready to get back into games - and the club opted not to send him to instructional league to take some perfunctory ABs against awestruck teenagers. Instead, the Nationals brought him back to the big leagues with essentially no warmup hacks, and in four games since rejoining his teammates, Harper is 1-for-14 with one walk and six strikeouts.

Chicago Cubs

What will Joe Maddon's rotation look like?

With Jake Arrieta getting scratched from his final regular-season start due to hamstring issues and Jon Lester scuffling hard right now, Maddon will likely be pulling out his hair while filling out his playoff rotation. Lester, who finished second in Cy Young voting last year, has been mediocre, at best, in 2017, putting up a 4.33 ERA (4.09 FIP) across 32 starts, while John Lackey, the presumed odd man out for the postseason, has enjoyed a strong second half and boasts a 3.27 ERA over 140 1/3 career postseason innings. Could Maddon really omit Lester from his postseason rotation, though? Will Arrieta's hamstring even afford him that choice? Opting for Lester over Lackey, besides likely evoking Lackey's famous ire, would mean the Cubs will start two left-handers in the NLDS, as Jose Quintana figures to slot in either third or fourth in Maddon's rotation. That doesn't augur particularly well for the Cubs, seeing as the Nationals were the fourth-best NL team (.273 average; 100 wRC+) against left-handers this year.

Arizona Diamondbacks

Can Paul Goldschmidt snap out of his funk?

A month ago, even with Giancarlo Stanton seemingly hitting five homers every night, Paul Goldschmidt had a pretty compelling case for National League MVP. Now, the 27-year-old is on the fringe of the conversation thanks to a subpar September in which he's hit just .175/.256/.313 with only three multi-hit games and a 26.4 percent strikeout rate. J.D. Martinez has taken some of the pressure off the five-time All-Star, and the Diamondbacks' rotation has done an impressive job keeping their lineup's stress level low all year, but it's tough to imagine Arizona advancing deep into the postseason without a productive Goldschmidt. You know, assuming they make it past the wild-card game.

Colorado Rockies

Does Carlos Gonzalez deserve to be their regular right fielder?

Nolan Arenado can get as sentimental as he likes about the possibility of Carlos Gonzalez's tenure in Colorado coming to an end, but, frankly, the three-time All-Star has been pretty awful this year, putting up -0.3 WAR with his lowest league-adjusted OPS (87 OPS+) since his rookie season. Though his second half wasn't atrocious, he's played poorly enough that Bud Black has to strongly consider benching him this postseason given the glut of alternatives at his disposal, from Raimel Tapia to Gerardo Parra to Ian Desmond. None of those players really tore it up at the dish this year, but, at worst, Tapia is a plus runner, Parra is a plus defender with a cannon for an arm, and Desmond ... well, he hits right-handed, giving Black a potential platoon advantage against left-handed pitching.

American League

Cleveland Indians

Are Trevor Bauer and Josh Tomlin for real?

Normally, it'd be difficult to identify any truly glaring issues on a 101-win team that played at a .730 clip for the final 10 weeks of the regular season. Normally, though, teams don't win 101 games with Trevor Bauers and Josh Tomlins in their rotation, so it seems the Indians are an anomaly. The cognitive dissonance is real, I tell you. After all, their recent success notwithstanding, neither pitcher is more than a smidge above average, at best - Bauer owns a career 99 ERA+; Tomlin's is 90 - and though they both impressed over the past couple months, both pitchers have outperformed their peripherals since the All-Star break by an average of a half-run per nine innings. With Mike Clevinger headed to the bullpen and Danny Salazar's status very much uncertain, both Bauer and Tomlin are going to be part of Cleveland's postseason rotation for a second year in a row, but it's probably foolish to expect them to perform any better than they did last October, when the pair combined for a 4.88 ERA over 31 1/3 innings.

Houston Astros

Which Lance McCullers shows up in October?

Given that Lance McCullers essentially disappeared for the second half of the season - and was terribly ineffective when he was around - it's easy to forget that the 23-year-old was an All-Star this year, having authored a 3.05 ERA with a 28 percent strikeout rate in his first 16 starts. Over the ensuing 10 weeks, though, McCullers took the mound just six times, missing extended time with a back injury and stumbling to an 8.23 ERA in his handful of outings. His postseason tuneup Saturday at Fenway Park was a disaster, too, as he coughed up five runs in just 4 1/3 innings against the Red Sox, unable to get through the fifth for a second straight outing. Frankly, he's pitched so poorly of late that he may have cost himself a spot in the postseason rotation. His job could end up going to Brad Peacock.

Boston Red Sox

Will the Red Sox be healthy enough to contend?

On Tuesday night, the Red Sox hosted the Toronto Blue Jays at Fenway Park without Mookie Betts, Dustin Pedroia, and Eduardo Nunez in their lineup. They lost. When healthy, the Red Sox boast a lineup rife with tough outs - while they don't hit many homers, Boston ranks fifth in the AL in OBP (.330) - but, well, they just aren't all that healthy as the postseason nears. Pedroia and Betts have both returned to the lineup (the former didn't play Saturday, though), but neither seems especially healthy, and Nunez didn't play in any of his team's final seven regular-season games. Given how their rotation has struggled of late - even Chris Sale has looked mortal - the Red Sox can't afford to field a B-lineup in a best-of-five series against the 100-win Astros.

New York Yankees

Can Aaron Judge keep mashing?

This year, the Yankees went 31-14 (.689) in games in which Aaron Judge hit a home run. When Judge neglected his yardwork, the Yankees were 60-56 (.517). It's no coincidence, in other words, that they went 14-15 in August, when the 25-year-old rookie hit .185/.353/.326 with only three homers. With all due respect to Gary Sanchez and his coterie of perfectly-fine-but-hardly-spectacular teammates, New York's fate is inextricably linked with Judge's success or failure, and the Yankees are going to need their leviathan of a right fielder to continue mashing - he boasts a 1.438 OPS over his last 25 games - to really make some noise this postseason. You know, assuming they make it past the wild-card game.

Minnesota Twins

Will Miguel Sano be able to play?

Miguel Sano's absence from Minnesota's lineup for the final six weeks of the season was surprisingly inconsequential, as the Twins went 21-17 between losing their hulking third baseman to a stress fracture in his shin in late August and his somewhat unexpected return Friday. Not only did their offense fail to suffer, it actually got better sans Sano: The Twins' 109 wRC+ over the last 30 days - the seventh-best in baseball over that span - represents a eight-point jump over their cumulative 2017 mark. Still, recency bias notwithstanding, they're a better team with Sano, a newly minted All-Star with a career .848 OPS (126 OPS+), in the lineup. He's their best hitter, and his presence allows Paul Molitor to move Eduardo Escobar to shortstop, if he fancies, to field the strongest offensive lineup possible in an environment where managers use their bullpens extremely liberally. Whether Sano's shin allows that to happen, however, remains to be seen. (You know, assuming they make it past the wild-card game.) He pinch hit Friday and hobbled his way to first after hitting a meek ground ball, then went 1-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts Saturday. Read into that as you see fit.

(Photos courtesy: Action Images)