If we're lucky enough to reach the playoffs, we'll get Chief Wahoo (and that might be a good thing)

For weeks now, the sweetest fake-karma about the AL East divisional race was that its "winner" - presumably, the Redsock '17 Hall of Fame Superteam of Destiny (TM) - would be rewarded by facing Cleveland, the hottest team in baseball history, in the first round.

For six months, Houston enjoyed the league's best record, which meant the Disastros would receive the door prize: Playing the diseased and depleted Wild Card winner... presumably us.

Twenty-two straight wins changed things. They usually do. Now, Cleveland is "the Golden State Warriors of Baseball," - a moniker that seems to kill every team it touches. Now, if we can beat Ervin Santana, the likely Twins Wild Card starter, our reward will be facing Yankee-killer Corey Kluber - (say that three times, fast) - in game one. Ouch.

Obviously, it's too early to print playoff tickets. But were I a Clevelandite, or a Clevelantonian, I would start worrying that this streak for the ages will end up tasting like a warm dish of microwaved mothballs. The former greatest winning streak - Brad Pitt's Oakland A's - never won nothing (a minor detail left out of Moneyball) - and though I believe the phrase "peaked too soon" stems from that great Boston hope Michael Dukakis, it remains one of the most important educations for anyone whose memory includes Yahoo Serious. 

We have all seen teams so blistering hot that we'd bet the house on them - (didn't Hal Steinbrenner do just that this July?) - only to watch them fall like Sonny Liston. Remember the 2012 Tigers - Verlander, Scherzer, Porcello, Fister, Smyly - who knocked out Oakland, then swept us in the AL Championship series... seeming en route to the championship? And then they were humiliated by the San Francisco Giants, 4-0.

Remember the snake-bitten 2000 Yankees, who lost their last seven games of the regular season, nearly blowing an insurmountable lead, belly-flopping over the finish line. Everything had gone wrong. And then the righted the ship. And all the losses, all the wins, meant nothing.

I don't presume to know what the Indians are thinking, but I suspect that in the backs of their minds they know that a) they're not the greatest team in history, b) what comes up, comes down and c) anything less than the World Series will make them a long term punch line. If we lose, we'll be mercifully forgotten. They're in a tricky place. And we'll get them in a best of five. Interesting.