General 2022 MLB Postseason Thread

Eventually this Dodgers run will end and they'll be a third place team and someone will write a great book about how they blew it every year in the playoffs and were part of I don't know how many "biggest upsets ever" games and series.

I really don't think you can explain it through bad luck. They play poorly and make bad decisions. Like tonight, the Soto stolen base was because of horrible defense, they simply weren't concentrating out there. That cannot happen in that situation. And once the comeback was complete they looked lost at the plate, you could see they'd basically given up

i was rooting for both the phillies and the padres but yeah i think when the 87 and 89 win teams make it to the LCS in a league with 3 100-win teams, that's a bad sign and something needs to change

Houston vs Seattle was 6:22

Just checked out of curiosity -- WAS vs SF Game 2 NLDS, which was also decided by a HR in the 18th inning, lasted 6:23.

holy shit guardians

and holy shit HOU-SEA lol. that’s real baseball baby

Didn't stick around for the Padres' comeback, but that's amazing. As much as I want to see Dusty Baker win one, Guardians-Padres would be something.

I was actually going to put up a poll the other day about whether baseball has a problem, but I stopped myself because the best teams (or close enough) won the WS in 2016/17/18 and--if you give it the same weight--2020. Not in 2019, and not in 2021. Still, didn't seem enough to diagnose a problem. But as you continue to add WC teams--and expanding the playoffs has been a matter of survival for baseball--you may be getting there.

And if you do get "there"--where it's just a free-for-all where anybody can and does win--for a lot of people, that's not a problem at all.

This is the weird shit we all signed up for imo

Idk if your team can’t beat a team in the playoffs that they may have beaten several times over the season, then stop whining imo. Team being drastically changed through injuries or something like that is one thing, but “it’s not fair that the best teams have to play the losers, and sometimes the losers win and that’s Bad for Baseball,” I can’t understand that at all.

The Dodgers not being able to overcome a team they beat 14-5 in the regular season is a problem for the Dodgers, not baseball. Just call it a choke and move on.

the playoff field should be selected by me, personally, each year

barring extreme circumstances, i can't really get behind third-place teams making the playoffs, so this year i'd have left out the rays and phillies

can't really support teams that finished 20+ games back in their division, so there go the padres. although maybe they get a one-time pass because matt holliday never touched home plate in 2007? seattle is perilously close to being nixed at 16 games behind the astros, but it had been 21 years so i'll let it slide

so in the NL i'd have gone straight to the DS with dodgers-cards and braves-mets. AL would have been more or less what actually happened, except we needn't have bothered with the cleveland-tampa series

check back with me next year for my absolutely correct selections

That all seems reasonable but what about the Pirates

Pirates did sweep the dodgers this season!

sorry for continuing to criticize a broadly unpopular change made before the season (expanding the playoffs) after the effect of that change is felt in a tangible way

if i'm going to argue about this on the internet for the umpteenth time then i guess it'll have to be established for the umpteenth time that playoffs in baseball are random and the results of individual series are a crapshoot

In the NFL, a “best-of-11” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate.

In the NHL, a “best-of-51” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate.

And in MLB, an astounding “best-of-75” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate.

i personally think that mlb and other sports leagues have some sort of responsibility to corral the best teams (as established over a legitimate sample size) into a better position to win the postseason. other people don't, and that's fine. when my hapless and pathetic orioles do eventually win it again, if they ever do, i will enjoy it regardless but i'd still prefer to know that they did it as one of the best teams in the league and not because any team with 83 wins in the right circumstances can hot streak their way to infinity.

i'd prefer it if there were less teams. i was against expanding to 12. i'll continue to be against expanding to 14 next CBA and then 16 for the CBA after that. i'm aware that it's going to happen anyway, so i think that deeper handicaps are needed to not only ensure that the best regular season teams tend to advance, but that teams are never satisfied entering the season with a "just good enough" win projection, which is what will continue to happen as the playoffs expand without more handicapping. giving the top two records a bye and removing a round of randomness is a good start, but it's not enough. the cards should be stacked higher against the lowest seeds - if you want cinderella stories, make it an actual cinderella story

that's it for me, not going to reopen this thread today because i'm supposed to be fucking myself up at the renaissance faire and i'm not going to let my internet argument brain worms get the best of me, please enjoy your sunday god bless

personally, i root for my favorite team (the kansas city royals) to win the regular season, and the regular season performance is mostly how i remember the team. for example, the 2004/5 cardinals were the really, really good ones. the 2006 won the WS but were worse. it was a crapshoot. this year they forgot how to score runs in the wild card and left after 2 games. i'll be remembering the other 162 games instead. there were some classic ones in there.

i don't have a good idea on how to "fix" the postseason. i don't want the established best teams to win every time. i don't want the kind of mediocre-but-streaking-in-october teams to win every time, either. i am ok with how it is tbh

I was getting a little ahead of myself back there. The Guardians still need to beat the Yankees--forgot they're a day behind.

Posnanski sort of addresses all this today:

https://open.substack.com/pub/joeposnanski/p/are-you-entertained-yet?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

The Guardians are so much fun. This team cannot hit a lick. I haven’t looked this up to verify, but I believe they set a major league record this year by finishing sixth in the league in runs scored despite the fact that Jose Ramirez was the only player on the team to get a hit all season.

even going back to single-division leagues playing each other in a 7-game WS is a crapshoot. i think you have to just see the postseason and WS as a bit of a circus and enjoy it for what pleasures it provides.

this is astounding. before last night

The Yankees had never once blown a multiple-run lead entering the ninth inning of a playoff game. Never once. They were 167-0, according to our Joel Sherman.

half the point of sports is teams battling to determine who is the actual best but the other half of sports is the joy and pain of random fickle events. both halves are equally important.

baseball is a weighted random number generator with fun personalities and noises attached

arguably the best team wins the World Series every year bc MLB defines the “best” as the team that wins the World Series. if the “best” team was the team with the best regular season record, there would be no need for a postseason

we could just have teams set their rosters and decide which is the best team on paper and then we wouldn’t need to have any of those pesky games at all

I'm fine with the way things are. Fact is, if an Astros/Yankees vs. Dodgers WS had been almost a sure thing, I probably wouldn't be watching now, and I'm getting quite caught up in the craziness.

I do think that, more years than not, you have to dispense with the idea that the WS winner is the best team.

i figured that was a joke, from NA. because if not, then we have to deal with the term "world series", which, despite toronto's proximity to the us border, doesn't seem to be accurate

Guardiac Kids!

Anyway - I wouldn't mind 7 game series for the second+ rounds along with a shorter season. Not sure it would make a difference as all these good teams would be down 3-1.

(xpost) 2032 Wild Card, Bracket G: Barcelona vs. Copenhagen.

For real though the World Baseball Classic was pretty outstanding fun to watch, last time around! I’m excited for the next one

i’m in favor of this new playoff format if it winds up getting aaron boone fired

as a fan of the Brewers I think this new format dramatically increases my team's chances of winning a WS and I think you could argue that it acts as a bit of a safeguard against high budget teams just buying their way to the playoffs (though how possible is this really? didn't the Cubs constantly trot out 75 win teams?) that said it does feel weird to see these insanely good teams just get eliminated over a weekend, particularly the Mets losing in a random 3 game series, you can't even really call it a "choke" because every 100+ win team still has a ton of 3-game stretches in which they went 1-2, that's just the nature of the beast. so I guess I'm on Posnanski's side - the regular season is kind of its own thing now, what's happening now is definitely a lot of fun, so who cares (sorry LA and NY)

dude stop jinxing Cleveland, they're not through yet

I don’t really know what my ideal postseason format would be. As I said above I think the division winners should start the postseason on equal footing instead of some of them playing a wild card team and others getting a bye. I suppose the fairest method would be to not have any wild card teams at all but I understand why they do it and I do like having the postseason last a little longer (more baseball = better).

The first round bye should be a huge advantage for the top seeds, although it hasn't appeared that way so far. Unless MLB goes back to four playoff teams to ensure the best teams play in the CS (which isn't happening) or they try some crazy format like spotting 100-win teams a 1-0 advantage before the series even starts, then the playoffs are always going to be "unfair" to some extent.

And in MLB, an astounding “best-of-75” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate.

This is not true for a 111 win team vs a 89 win team.

I don’t remember where I read it, but someone once floated the idea of every team making the postseason, with a series of one game playoffs until you get to the DS. Your record determines how much the odds are stacked against you. The worst teams have to win the most games, and the division winners go straight to the extended 7-game series. Despite how completely impractical it sounds, I still think about it a bunch.

I remember that article! Was this it?

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/23244608/radical-ideas-series-every-mlb-team-made-playoffs

Thanks for the link! That was it.

What in the hell kind of HR trot was that? Hilarious!

Apparently a reference to the pitcher being his “baby”

Yeah...Will have to check Josh Naylor's HBP totals.

Nothing to speak of--I wouldn't think pitchers would take to kindly to that.

Bob Costas and I, livin' in the past.

do pitchers really retaliate in elimination games?

No, I was thinking more in the regular season (if he indeed does that all time). Not in a playoff game, no.

Maybe it's a recent thing--his HBP did jump up this season.

Costas starting to look like a lesbian

Cole throwing 98 mph on his 107th pitch

I assume that anything off Judge's bat that looks like that is a HR.

There has been too much baseball so I cut the American Leauge but I love hearing Costas call baseball again

Anyone but Buck is ok with me