With a few week and a half till the playoffs start, and the playoff groups all however decided already, Major League Baseball has to just accept the reality.
Its new postseason format didn’t do a lot in any respect to extend end-of-season intrigue.
This is the primary 12 months that the league is letting 12 groups into the dance, and it’s straightforward to acknowledge who at the least 11 of these groups will likely be. The race for the ultimate National League wild card spot is the one do or die situation left, and even that’s not as juicy as followers would hope. The so-so Milwaukee Brewers come into Monday — which kicks off the final full week of the common season — 1.5 video games behind the Phillies for the ultimate postseason spot.
The San Diego Padres are only one.5 video games up on the Phillies, so it’s definitely not out of the realm of risk for them to overlook the playoffs. But there’s no query that the ultimate two NL wild card berths (the Braves or Mets will get the primary one) will go to 2 groups from the San Diego, Philadelphia and Milwaukee group. After the Brewers, the subsequent workforce within the standings is the San Francisco Giants, who’re beneath .500. In phrases of expertise, the Brewers are a lot nearer to these Giants than they’re to the NL’s official contenders.
In the American League, there’s a fair greater hole. The Seattle Mariners presently occupy the ultimate seat on the ship, with the Baltimore Orioles 4 video games out. Seattle owns the tiebreaker over the Orioles too — if two groups end with the identical file, their head-to-head common season matchups decide who would get within the playoffs, not a tiebreaker recreation — in order that lead is extra like 5 video games. Again, the subsequent workforce in line is beneath .500, the floundering Chicago White Sox at 76-77.
Rather than the expanded playoffs maintaining extra groups within the hunt, it’s proven that much less is extra when sending out postseason invites. It is each more and more apparent that there are usually not 12 actually good MLB groups, and that limiting the wild card berths to 2 or one makes for a greater end. Under final 12 months’s format, which granted playoff entry to 2 wild card groups in every league as an alternative of three, the battle for the final NL spot can be a massacre proper now. San Diego, Philadelphia and Milwaukee are separated by simply three whole video games within the loss column, giving every workforce a sensible shot of swapping locations with each other down the stretch, whether or not which means climbing the standings or plummeting down them.
If these three groups had been combating for one spot somewhat than two, all of their remaining video games can be that rather more tense, creating the precise state of affairs that MLB desires. Instead, the Phillies have gone 3-7 of their final ten video games and never misplaced their place within the playoff image. Last 12 months, San Diego passing them would imply the Padres get in whereas the Phillies keep house. This 12 months, it’s simply the distinction between the fifth and the sixth seed, and you can also make a really compelling case that the sixth seed is healthier anyway.
The Mariners have additionally had the newfound luxurious of enjoying very poorly for many of September with out it hurting their playoff probabilities. The M’s are 11-11 this month, having just lately misplaced collection to the Angels, Athletics and Royals. That would usually be a code purple catastrophe at this level of the schedule. But with the additional wild card workforce now, the Mariners’ odds of creating the playoffs, per FanGraphs, have gone from 97.3% on Sept. 1 to…99.9% on Sept. 26.
In different phrases, treading water has confirmed simply as efficient as really profitable video games. By advantage of there merely being fewer video games left on the schedule now than there have been at first of the month, plus the groups behind them not being significantly playoff-worthy both, each the Mariners and Phillies have been in a position to play subpar baseball for weeks with out having to worry an excessive amount of about it costing them their shot on the postseason. Philadelphia is 10-11 in September, a month that’s seen them put collectively a three-game shedding streak and a five-game shedding streak. No huge deal, as nestling into the sixth seed means avoiding the Mets or Braves within the first spherical and never seeing the Dodgers till a possible National League Championship Series.
Same factor goes for the Mariners, who, in the event that they find yourself within the sixth seed, would play Cleveland within the first spherical as an alternative of Tampa Bay or Toronto. Beating Cleveland, who they went 6-1 in opposition to this 12 months, would then earn the Mariners a date with the way more beatable Yankees somewhat than the loss of life machine in Houston.
So, for these maintaining rating at house, the brand new format will let mediocre groups into the playoffs, has completed nothing to extend late-September drama, and in some methods has incentivized being a decrease seed. The workforce with the worst file amongst its league’s division winners is not even assured a Division Series. This 12 months, which means the Guardians and Cardinals may each be going house within the wild card spherical somewhat than getting the five-game collection they deserve for profitable their division. The fifth seed within the National League will get a little bit of a punishment, too, as they’ll get matched up within the wild card spherical in opposition to both the Mets or Braves, who may each find yourself with 100 wins.
That Mets-Braves energy wrestle is without doubt one of the greatest issues going proper now, however a tug of battle for the NL East crown would have been doable final 12 months, the 12 months earlier than that, and 20 years earlier than that. The new playoff bracket had no affect on division races, which MLB knew. But it additionally, tragically, appears to have had no affect on the wild card races both. While Milwaukee continues to be technically very a lot in it, for weeks now it’s felt like we’ve identified precisely who’d be within the playoffs, the one query is what order they’ll end in.
Maybe subsequent 12 months will deliver some extra spice to the tip of the season, however this 12 months can go down as a definitive whiff.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com