Tony DeMarco

When it comes to picking World Series winners this decade, there have been only two ways to go: The American League, or a National League upset.

And of course, nobody who was there the previous October, since the last five defending world champions have yet to win a postseason game in the year after their title, much less a series.

So who are we to mess with the pattern, especially in light of the developments of this regular season? After all, you remember the interleague massacre, don’t you? When the American League won 61 percent of games played?

In the AL’s cumulative 154-98 record against the NL, even the 100-loss Kansas City Royals were winners. So were the Seattle Mariners. Not to mention the Minnesota Twins (16-2) and Detroit Tigers (15-3), who built their surprising playoff appearances on 2½ weeks of easy NL pickin’s in June.

The All-Star Game streak gave us another clue — plus home-field advantage for whoever survives an American League field that averaged 95 wins, or six more than the NL entrants’ mark.

And down the stretch, when we might have thought the New York Mets would be a legitimate threat to end the National League drought, they stalled after clinching a playoff spot, then lost their ace, Pedro Martinez for the entire postseason due to calf and rotator cuff injuries.

So now that the October crapshoot also known as the three-tiered playoff format has arrived, we’re sticking with the Junior Circuit. And we’ll play the process of elimination game to get to a winner:

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The St. Louis Cardinals will arrive for a playoff date after almost getting Gene Mauch and the rest of the 1964 Phillies off the hook with a rapid, late-September collapse. It took a huge home run by Albert Pujols — you were expecting somebody else? — on Wednesday to break a seven-game losing streak that cost them all but one-half game of their lead over the hard-charging Houston Astros.  

The Cardinals won two of their last three after Pujols’ game-winner, but still had to go down to the regular season’s final day before they were assured of a division title, and they lost that day, too.

The choke word has been thrown around way too much here, as injuries to Mark Mulder, Jason Isringhausen, David Eckstein and Jim Edmonds have exposed a roster that is too talent-thin due to ownership’s unwillingness to get what was needed despite moving into a new (and bigger revenue-producing) Busch Stadium.

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Even with Eckstein’s return, some contribution from Edmonds, the incomparable Pujols and two scheduled starts from Chris Carpenter, this is a team heading for a first-round exit.

The Detroit Tigers were the story for much of this season for all the right reasons — the most important one being a historic turnaround from a 119-loss 2003 season to 95 wins and a first playoff appearance in 19 years.

But from a 76-36 record on Aug. 7, they went 19-31 the rest of the way, 1-5 in the final week, and couldn’t even beat the Royals once in a three-game series at home to win the division title rather than settle for the wild card. Two of those losses came after blowing seven- and six-run leads. The other came after they got down 7-0 in the top of the first inning. That’s no way to go into the playoffs, especially when the first stop is the Bronx.

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