Are The MLB Playoffs Broken?

Or are they working just fine? A debate!

The essential premise that we take to be true of every major American sport is that everyone’s ultimate aim is to win the championship. That’s what matters.

Maybe that’s not the very healthiest outlook, but it’s the one we have, so, respectfully: take it or leave it.

The regular season is one long wind-up, and it’s designed to provide a lot of things, but these are the first that come to mind:

1. It’s more regularly occurring entertainment for the fans, which makes the whole product (sport) that much more financially lucrative.

2. It provides the opportunity for teams and players to develop. If your team sucks, maybe that promising rookie gets some valuable reps. If your team rocks, then they probably used the season to hit their collective stride.

3. It separates the good/great teams from the okay/bad ones.

I’m sure there’s plenty of other stuff I’m missing — don’t @ me — but these strike me as the main points.

And when it comes to be playoff time in any sport, but especially baseball these days, that last point — the sorting hat aspect — tends to come up a lot, with some reason.

How did we go from An Ode to October two weeks ago to this second-guessery? The discourse! Blame the discourse. That’s usually my move.

The Discourse

The discourse, in short, is that the MLB playoffs are broken. The best teams keep flaming out, which means the regular season barely matters, and the whole thing is a disservice to the sport.

That take can be hard to distinguish from reactive hyperbole at this early stage. It’s still October. Wounds are fresh.

And you could understand why anyone rooting for any of the league’s five best regular-season teams might feel a certain type of way about watching their club get shown up just now. All but one got swept, with a 1-13 record altogether.

The overall standings and results of their respective seasons, as a quick refresher:

1. Atlanta Braves: 104-58 (lost NLDS 3-1)

2. Baltimore Orioles: 101-61 (swept in ALDS)

3. Los Angeles Dodgers: 100-62 (swept in NLDS)

4. Tampa Bay Rays: 99-63 (swept in Wild Card Series)

5. Milwaukee Brewers: 92-70 (swept in Wild Card Series)

Just one important caveat to add here. Here’s everyone tied for sixth, with results as of Thursday evening:

• 6A. Houston Astros: 90-72 (tied 2-2 against the Rangers)

• 6B. Philadelphia Phillies: 90-72 (up 2-1 against the Diamondbacks)

• 6C. Texas Rangers: 90-72 (tied 2-2 against the Astros)

Both of those Lone Star squads carried top-five run differentials into October, and none among us would credibly argue any of these teams lack the top-end talent to win the World Series, be that the pitching staff or the lineup.

Proof positive: the Astros won the whole thing last year with a pretty similar squad, and wouldn’t you know it, the Phillies were there too.

What’s more, the Astros — and not to forgive that cheating scandal, but that was in 2017-18, so we have years of evidence beyond that now — have made the ALCS seven times in a row, which does not sound like the result of disordered chaos. (At no point in that run have they needed to go through the Wild Card route that apparently makes this all too easy.)

And by the way, remember when we talked about payrolls a few months ago? The Rangers are #4 this year, the Phillies are #5, and the Astros are #7. That talent cost them money, which they spent in pursuit of getting here.

So yeah, if you want to claim the 12th-ranked, 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks may have gotten a little lucky in being here right now, then you could point to how badly they lost their first two games against the Phillies to support that conclusion.

You could also say the Dodgers were at some kind of disadvantage having rested while the Diamondbacks played, though I recall the Dodgers blowing a whole lot of series they should’ve theoretically won long before this format changed all of one year ago, and the longtime ace they had the privilege of lining up for Game 1— Clayton Kershaw — laid his fair share of October eggs long before turning 35.

This brings me to the only real conclusion that matters here, and you’re free to dismiss it as Get Off My Lawn talk if you’re so inclined, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.

Theory vs. Practice

This game, nor any, is played on paper. This is not a Madden simulation. We play the games for a reason, and for some other reason, people tend to get very worked up — myself included, at times — when the team that was “better” doesn’t win the big ones.

Why? It doesn’t seem fair. They played so well all year. Maybe they had the MVP, or a whole bunch of All-Stars, or a list of numbers — wins, chief among them — attesting to their excellence.

Or moreover, maybe the other team didn’t play well this year. Maybe their guys are just getting hot now, even if they weren’t that good this year or aren’t that good at all. Maybe their suddenly dominant ace pitched to a 4.46 ERA this year, as Philadelphia’s Aaron Nola did. Maybe that doesn’t seem very fair. Why are they only so good now?

I don’t know! But are we actually trying to argue that’s a problem in need of solving? Don’t we play the games to see who wins them? Isn’t that — pardon my language — the whole flippin’ point?

To present a man only partially composed of straw: does anyone object to this when we watch March Madness? Is it actually bad that a less talented team that gets hot, or just poses a bad matchup, can knock out a team that was good all year? Isn’t that the consensus appeal of the tournament?

For the most part, I just don’t see the issue here, and I suspect a good many of the grapes on this particular vine are sour.

The one complaint I will grant as legitimate is the five-day layoff for the teams that get a bye. The baseball season has a rhythm to it, and five days off is a long time away for a largely everyday sport. You could argue that rust becomes a factor, even in so short a period.

I would think that’s particularly true of the hitters, who don’t see full-on live pitching for long enough to throw things off in a famously fickle sport where the tiniest adjustments matter a great deal.

I will even grant that there’s something a little dispiriting about all the 100-win teams getting knocked out early these last few years. Maybe something’s up.

Fogel! Hi!

My retort, though, is pretty simple: welcome to baseball! This is a cruel sport, and it runs on improbable runs. The playoffs in general are an awfully small sample size for a numbers-driven sport that’s used to rewarding large bodies of consistent work. The post- and regular season have very little in common.

If the harshest detractors want to solve the anti-meritocratic problem they’re identifying, then they would advocate for making the regular season count for all the marbles.

Base the champion on who aggregates the best record over the year, kind of like F1. That’s the system that fits the complaint. Maybe people would prefer that.

I think it works for some sports, though the trade-off is the potential for a less than climactic end to the year (like, for instance, this one).

Or, you could advocate for going back to the old way, before 1969 brought the advent of divisions, and the World Series was played between the two teams with the best record in each league. NL vs. AL. That was that. No semis, no quarters. Let’s go.

I’d be okay-ish with walking that one step back and letting the four best records in, irrespective of division. I generally think divisions are a little dumb when it comes to stuff like playoff seeding, so hey — if you wanted this year’s playoffs to be the Dodgers, Braves, Orioles, and Rays, that probably still would’ve been fun for me as a neutral.

Make all the series best of seven and you’re pretty close to keeping the same total number of games, which is a priority for all the TV deals. So there’s one thought.

I’d tell you good luck getting that past the commissioner, but that’s probably not what most people are asking for.

In lieu of that, I’ll tell you something that’s hard for a lot of us to accept. And again, that includes me at times, so I do understand the frustration that underlies all this.

The best team doesn’t always win. In fact, they usually don’t. The team that wins is the one that played better that day/week.

Since 1969, the team with the top overall record has won the World Series just 14 times. They’re batting about .259, and that includes the 2020 Dodgers, who went 43-17 in a COVID-shortened season.

I’m a little surprised it was even that many.

This is the game, and it’s just not designed to be predictable.

Except for one part. There’s always next year.

Also, This

• The Aces are officially repeat champs after fending off a spirited challenge from the Liberty. Back-to-backs are hard to come by these days, so cheers, Vegas.

• Yeah, yeah, it’s preseason, I know, but safe to say the Wembanyama experience is off to a nice start. For that matter, so is the Chet experience. New stable of unicorns incoming.

• If you didn’t catch any of the quarterfinal games at the Rugby World Cup, whether you watch the sport or not, do yourself a favor and watch some of those highlights. Each of the four games was fantastic, and especially the heavyweight bouts: Ireland v. New Zealand and France v. South Africa.

  • While I mourn Les Bleus, at least we can look forward to a likely All Blacks-Springboks final.

• We’ve got a bunch of new sports coming for the 2028 Summer Olympics in LA, including cricket, squash, baseball, softball, lacrosse, and flag football.

  • On that last one, I don’t know what a truly competitive version of that even looks like, but if it’s anything like the intramural games I remember, then I suggest we get those referees set up for witness protection ahead of time.

• I’m noodling with an article about why hockey isn’t more popular. The regular season kicked off to, so far as I can tell, relatively little fanfare last week. Why is that? It’s a great sport and a great watch. If any of my wizened readers have takes as to why, by all means, send them my way.