That NL East race was a shocker with the 84 Phillies outlasting some great teams in the Mets and Braves. For the Mets, they just had a team-wide power outage. Only 19 HR for Strawberry and it got a lot worse from there for everyone else. The Braves were just victims of horrible luck and late game collapses. Their Pythagorean record was 8 games better than what they did. Kerry Lightenberg had 21 saves and a low 3 ERA but went 4-10....Denny Neagle had a 3.05 ERA in 24 starts but went 5-10....things like that happened all over for the Braves and the Phillies got full seasons from Matuszek and Lezcano who hit 32 HR and 28 HR respectively.
In the AL, the big surprise was the 86 Tigers getting the wildcard. For them, it was all about their bullpen. Campbell, Hernandez and Petry combined for 27 wins and 34 saves. All 3 had well over 100 IP, so the Tigers just went to them and waited for Parrish, Trammell, Whitaker, Gibson or Evans to get big hits. A very interesting season for sure!