Postseason in baseball tends to always be chaos! It’s always a month that consists of upsets, shocking/heartbreaking defeats, and the least likely teams facing the most likely outcomes. It doesn’t matter how many games you win in a season! Whether it’s 100 wins or 85 wins, the World Series title will always go to the team that is the hottest and the most competitive throughout the entire playoff run. In recent years, however, the way that Major League Baseball has constructed it’s playoffs has caused several debates on whether or not it causes too much chaos, most notably for top seeded teams that get more days off than the wild card teams.
This postseason has seen the elimination of 75% of the top seed teams and only one division winning team has moved on to the league championship series. The top-seeded Baltimore Orioles, who won 101 games in the regular season, got swept in the division series rather easily by the wild card Texas Rangers. The top-seeded Los Angeles Dodgers, who won 100 games in the regular season, also got swept in the division series rather easily by the wild card Arizona Diamondbacks, who had just 84 wins and finished 16 games behind the Dodgers in the standings. And, just yesterday, the top-seeded Atlanta Braves, who won the most games in the regular season with 103 victories, got ousted out of the division series yet again by their daddy in the Philadelphia Phillies by three games to one, which would have been a sweep if it wasn’t for some poor defense/baserunning from Philadelphian along with some miraculously timed clutch hits/catches from Atlanta. Only the Houston Astros have been able to advance to the next round while being one of the top two seeded teams and winning their own division respectively, something which they also did last year.
There has been a call for MLB to change the playoff format because of the way top-seeded and 100-win teams are getting knocked out of the playoffs rather easily. Many believe it has to do with the top teams getting five extra days offs when compared to their wild-card opponents, which always causes the team to go into their own series rather rusty with their opponents who are coming high off a playoff series victory. Some have suggested to make the playoff format in a way that the NHL or NFL does it, some have suggested to make it like it was back in the days where divisional opponents weren’t allowed to face each other in the division series and ONLY in the championship series, and some have even called to have the one-game playoff back because that supposedly feels more like playoff baseball than whatever the wild card rounds have been thus far. If you ask me, it’s all complicated.
I will admit straight up that I’m not fond of these wild card rounds and the way it’s structured. Thus far, the wild card rounds don’t so much feel like playoff baseball but more of just one extra series in the regular season just tacked on. Since last year, there has been eight wild card match ups with seven of them resulting in sweeps and just one going into a third game. Just like that, for seven teams thus far, their season ended with a complete whimper just like that.
It’s just very anti-climatic that a team who has had a lot of success in the regular season such as winning 90+ games and winning their division, could potentially get knocked out in a best-of-3 series just because they are required to play another series which can always go either way. Say what you will about the one Wild Card game, that took place from 2012 to 2021, but those always feel like playoff games by heart because there’s ALWAYS a sense of tension and intensity because it was always in fact an elimination game. The wild card rounds, on the other hand, never give off that impression because it just feels like any other ordinary series because it’s not just one victory that turns the tide, it’s two.
Of course, you might claimed that I’m speaking from experience because I too had to witness my team last year getting knocked out in the playoffs in the wild card round because they were forced to play a tacked on series despite winning their own respective division (The pic above should give a hint on who it is!). But, I think most people will admit that a team that finished 1st place in their own division being forced to play a wild card round despite not technically being a wild card team is ridiculous. What’s even the point of winning the division anymore if a team has to play in these rounds anyway and could have their season end in a heart beat because of one or two things that went wrong from them in one of these games? In a best-of-3 series, literally ANYTHING can happen and that is exactly what has happened thus far. Wild Card rounds should go to simply that, WILD CARD teams. Otherwise, it just makes the regular season even more meaningless to a division winner unless they happen to claim one of the top seeded teams.
To make matters even worse is what’s going on with teams that aren’t require to play these wild card rounds because of how they were in the regular season. The way that so many 100-win teams getting knocked off early can send the wrong message to the rest of the league! Should you really bust your butt off to gain a top seed if the five day layoff is going to kill any momentum that you will have? Why even bother trying to build a juggernaut if just a mere 84-win wild card team can make it to at least the League Championship Series? Is it better to aim for the division crown to make sure your playoff appearance is secured or should you just let a few losses slight to sneak into a wild card spot because that will get you to play with more urgency? Those are all the kind of questions that everyone has been asking for the past two years and it’s only going to continue with the results of the postseason in recent memory. For as much flack that Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto got recently for his comments about doing the bare minimum to get in the playoffs, the playoff results of these last two years basically back up his points, and that quite stinks.
And that’s not even going into other little things. You have a team like the Rays could literally finish with the second most wins in the league with 99 but not get the second seed just because they are in the same division as their top-seeded division rival. Or for whatever reason, there is a day off in between games one and two just for the sake of not cramming in too many division series games in the same day. Or how the MLB is STILL hosting playoff games in the afternoon when the kids are still in school and the adults are still at work? There is a lot you can pick apart about the current playoff format and deservedly so. On the other hand, there’s also another counter argument to go with that!
As flawed as the postseason structure is, that shouldn’t be an excuse for top seeded and favored teams getting knocked out early. If a team firmly believes they are the best of the best, then October is their time to prove it, no matter how well they did in the regular season. Playoff baseball is always a different animal compared to regular season baseball. It’s when the skills of all 26 men on the roster is put to the test! The pitching must be lights out, the hitting must come in clutch, the fielding must be as clean as it goes, and there is very little room for error. That’s how it always has been in the playoffs and that still remains in 2023.
Even so, there are plenty of other reasons as to why top seeded teams this year got knocked out early instead of just more time at home. The Orioles were a very young team with no playoff experience and a flawed pitching staff, especially after Bautista’s injury. The Dodgers had a starting rotation that was beaten to hell and went into the playoffs with basically no legit or healthy starters. The Braves had only one reliable pitcher that showed up along with going into the series with a very elitist and cocky mindset that ended up coming back to bite them in the ass. The Astros……um actually they brought their A game as always in the playoffs and made slapping the Twins around as easy as the Yankees always do despite having the five-day layoff. If it’s not able to bother Houston, then what excuses does everyone else have?
It should be common sense by now that what you are able to do in the regular season does NOT factor into what you will in the postseason in any way, shape, or form. Unless you are an absolute LOADED team with basically no notable flaws to speak off heading into the playoffs (2009 Yankees, 2016 Cubs, 2018 Red Sox, 2022 Astros, etc..), you are never guarantee to win the whole thing. And even then, there will always be plenty of obstacles to complete and adversity to overcome on the way through that you have to basically earn to win a ring. Since the expansion era of baseball started, there have only been two seasons which the teams with the best record in the league were able to make it to the World Series. There was the 2013 World Series with the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals and the 2020 World Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays. Every other World Series either have one team with the best record from either league or none at all. It’s what you do in October that counts the most in the playoffs, not what you did from spring training to when September ends. Winners understand that, losers will just find excuses.
Don’t take this post critiquing both sides of the argument take away the fact that the teams that have advance to the LCS don’t deserve all the credit in the world for what they’ve done in the playoffs thus far OR that the playoff format is heavily flawed. Both of those can be true. The Diamondbacks, Phillies, and Rangers are to be congratulated for making it to the league championship series and have completely earn their right to do so. The playoff format is an absolute crapshoot and is clearly only design this way to get more teams into the postseason to increase revenue. I’m not oppose to any of this. But, at the end of the day, teams gotta play the games and win the majority of them if they want to win a World Series title. No amount of change to the playoff format is going to change that!
If it were up to me, I would structure the playoffs the way that the NHL does it. Have two different divisions in each league, with eight teams in each division, have the top four seeded teams from each division qualify for the playoffs, and structure the playoff rounds in the traditional #8 vs #1, #7 vs #2, #6 vs #3, and #5 vs #4. That way, if those lower seeded teams are able to win those rounds and make for a deep playoff run, then they will have deserved it every step of the way and it proves that the top seeded teams just didn’t have it in them. Then again, I don’t work for MLB or come up with these ideas so what do I know?
What I do know is that if you want to win a World Series, you got to beat every opponent you come up against and perform when it matters the most. As I said before, winners understand that while losers will make excuses. For the Orioles, Dodgers, and Braves, well, it’s in their hands if they want to understand or make excuses.
Regardless, we know have our LCS match-ups which is set to start on Sunday for the AL and Monday for the NL. The National League will have the Diamondbacks take on the Phillies while the American League will have the Astros take on the Rangers. This should be some entertaining series that will hopefully lead to an entertaining World Series! Bring on more chaos!
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