Playoffs? Yes! Playoffs!

It’s playoff time in the grand game of baseball, and so, yes, obviously, we’ll have lots and lots to talk about over the next three or four weeks, starting with a little playoff preview today. In celebration, the good folks at Dutton Publishing are giving away TEN copies of WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL. Super-exciting! The deadline to enter is Friday, Oct. 13, which will be Game 5 day for the two American League Division Series (if necessary), but why not just enter today? It’s totally free.

Texas at Tampa Bay (3:08 p.m. ET, ABC)

Texas: So, it’s been a good news/bad news thing for the Texas Rangers all year. The good news is that they won 90 games and made it into the playoffs, and I don’t know that even the most optimistic Rangers fan expected that when the season began. So many things the Rangers tried worked almost magically. There were precious few people around the game who thought their decision to sign Corey Seager and Marcus Semien for a combined $500 million a couple of years ago made much sense at all.

Now, Seager AND Semien are likely to finish top five in the MVP balloting.

Bringing back Bruce Bochy from retirement — again, I heard a lot of skepticism about it. Bochy is 68, and let’s not forget that he finished his amazing Giants tenure with three consecutive losing seasons. Now, Bochy will be one of the finalists for manager of the year (he will probably finish second to Baltimore’s Brandon Hyde), and it seems clear that he has been a key figure in the Rangers’ surprising season.

Even stuff that did not work out all that well — such as the signing of Jacob deGrom, who broke down quickly, and the acquisition of Max Scherzer, who broke down quickly, and the trade for Aroldis Chapman, who broke down quickly in a different way — did not keep this team from reaching the postseason.

The bad news is …