By: Jonathan Goad

So if you haven’t been paying attention, the National League playoff race has been crazy for the past couple weeks. The teams are finally set, but not before two game 163’s. The NL West and NL Central still haven’t been decided. 162 games wasn’t enough, so they’ll play one more.

One game to rule the Central. pic.twitter.com/BGJumaaC2c

— MLB (@MLB) September 30, 2018

The Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers will play a winner-take-all (well winner-take-the-division title) game starting at noon, Central Time. That game will be played at Wrigley Field. Then, at 3:00 pm, Central Time, the Los Angeles Dodgers will host the Colorado Rockies in a similar style game.

There are no ties in baseball. pic.twitter.com/ICxFOBMcCU

— MLB (@MLB) September 30, 2018

Jose Quintana will get the start for the Cubbies. At the time of writing (10:14 PM Sunday night), the Brewers have not made their starting pitcher known. Brewers outfielder, Christian Yelich, will get one more shot at capturing the NL Triple Crown. He’ll need to hit two home runs and drive in at least three to achieve the first NL Triple Crown since Joe Medwick did it in 1937. The issue is that the guys he’s competing against for the league lead in those categories are also playing in Game 163 on Monday. Trevor Story is also tied with Yelich in HRs and Javy Baez leads in RBI. Story plays for the Rockies, and Baez plays for the Cubs.

In the second of the extra regular season games, the Rockies will send German Marquez to the bump while the Dodgers will start Walker Buehler.

So what’s at stake in these games?

Well, all four of these teams are already in the playoffs. The winner of the Dodgers/Rockies game will win the NL West and head to Atlanta to face the Braves, with the loser heading to the Wild Card game. The Winner of the Cubs/Brewers game will win the NL Central with the loser hosting the Wild Card game. From there, the NL Central Champ will host the winner of the Wild Card game. So, we could potentially see a rematch in the Division Series.

No one wants to play in the Wild Card game, except maybe the St. Louis Cardinals. Too soon?

The Wild Card game is a one-game playoff with the winner heading to whichever of the Central teams wins on Monday. Anything can happen in one game. Any team can beat any team on any given day.

If you want to watch the best baseball of the regular season, watch these two games. A division title is a lot to be proud of, so expect both teams to pull out all the stops. All four teams would much rather be locked into the five game Division Series, and the winning teams will do that.

Both games will be on ESPN, so you have no excuse to miss them, unless like me, you’ll be working. Don’t think for a second that I won’t be checking the score as often as I can though. Plus, when is the last time we had two game 163’s in the same season? The answer to that is: never.

History will be made tomorrow. I recommend that you tune in.