The Phillies and the Padres fought the instinct to kick me out of bed this morning, which I appreciate. Strange as it is, they became my bedfellows on Saturday, the day I resumed an ability to watch baseball and not hate everything about it. Postseason will make people otherwise at odds find common cause.
Our cause (mine, certainly) was theirs, if only out of spite for the Braves and the Dodgers. I’m lousy with spite. No, I’m terrific with spite. That Phillies fans wish a pox on our house doesn’t stop me from having wished them the best of luck with heaping a bigger pox on the Braves’ house. I’ll chance a crimson shade of smug oozing into Citi Field next summer. The Phillies may be the Phillies, but the Braves are the Braves.
Correction: the Braves were the Braves. Now they’re as done as we are. Well done. Let’s check the final, FINAL records of the top two finishers from the now defunct, incredibly irrelevant 2022 regular season in the National League East, postseason results included for the sake of spite:
New York Mets 102-63
Atlanta Braves 102-64
What’s that? It doesn’t work that way? It doesn’t work at all, said the maintenance staff at Citi Field regarding the postseason bells and whistles that went ringless and silent. When it comes to These Mets, I’ll take what I can get. What I got was Those Braves going home.
Taken!
As for the Padres, who were rude visitors to Flushing what seems like a month ago, I’ll share the spiritual bed with them a little longer, having climbed in uninvited. Maybe they’re a team of destiny, in which case, who were our presumptuous 101-game winners to have stood in their way? When the Pads were at Dodger Stadium, they wore the same road uniforms in which they did their dastardly deed to the Mets. Too soon. Then they went home, put on their whites and browns and yellows for the adoring home folks who hadn’t had a chance to adore them in person in any October since 2006, and I chose to see them in a different light: lovable underdog with a slingshot in their back pocket. Down goes Goliath! While I know I have every reason to hate the Braves due to divisional warfare, I realize I hate the geographically distant Dodgers solely on merit. I’ve looked at their haughty asses in the postseason every postseason for a solid decade. They and their 111 wins can take a seat for the duration. They can sit a row ahead of us if it makes them feel any more vindicated.
Crazy system, huh? The four National League teams with the most wins (remember the Cardinals?) will join the nine National League teams who didn’t make the playoffs in not playing for the pennant. San Diego of the 89 wins and Philadelphia of the 87 wins now vie for the flag in a triumph of the pretty good who got very hot. If MLB tugs uncomfortably at its collar at the optics, it should rethink inviting 5-seeds and 6-seeds to its medieval fair. The Padres and Phillies didn’t know they were supposed to be jousting fodder. But they optimized their opportunities. I wouldn’t have said it a week ago, but good for them.
Over in the American League, sorry to Seattle, who did everything they could do across three games except keep the Astros off the board at the end of Game One and put themselves on the board for eighteen innings in Game Three (with a standard-issue loss tucked into Game Two). There’s been an epidemic of “the last time the Mariners were in the playoffs, gas was 29 cents a gallon and Rudolph Valentino was cinema’s reigning heartthrob” contextualization, but a dearth of postseason participation for 21 years speaks for itself. Now it doesn’t speak at all. Glad for the M’s fans who experienced their rebirth, no matter how cruelly the candles on their cake were snuffed.
Oh, and go Cleveland!
I have different thoughts re Philly-Atlanta. I dislike the Braves but it’s a healthy dislike. They’ve been in our way a lot. But they’ve usually been classy about it.
I despise the Phillies. Of all teams in baseball other than maybe the Yankees, I wish the sports equivalent of leprosy upon them.
Happy for the Padres and I hope to see them in the WS.
The NL East Rorshach test will yield an ink blot of varying hatreds.
Absolutely. But I haven’t gotten past Chase Utley breaking Ruben Tejada’s leg. And the fact that they ended up being right at the end of the season doesn’t make announcing themselves as the team to beat in March, 2007 after we took the division in 2006 anything other than classless and arrogant. Though my hatred goes back to the 80’s and 90’s and to be honest, I can’t even recall the reasons. Dykstra maybe? Don’t remember. But it’s been there a long time.
While I did enjoy the games yesterday I ultimately don’t think it’s good for baseball that the postseason structure has essentially rendered the season’s outcome meaningless. I think it really will take away from the excitement of end of the season pennant races.
The 3 division winners are still alive in the AL. If MLB sticks with this playoff format, it may turn out in the long run that the clean-sweep ASAP elimination of the NL’s 3 division winners and 3 100-win teams at the hands of 2 tack-on playoff teams that were significantly inferior in the regular season was an exception.
Braves classy? Not since Hank Aaron retired.
I was thinking the same thing this morning. It could not have been MLBs wish that the team with the two worst records in the postseason are headlining the NLCS. I am not a fan of the extra team in the postseason. I had always thought the WC series should be best of 3. They went a step too far.
One may argue…”but SD and Philly won! They deserve to be there.” I counter by saying LA and NY both were swept by the Cubs and the Pirates. Are we suggesting they (Pitts and CHI) belong in the playoffs because they somehow match up better against our pitching?
End note: Glad to see ATL get blooped to death. That Acuna half swing will bother be for a long time and it was nice to see them on the receiving end of such misfortunes. I doubt it will humble them or their fans in any way. They will still use their racist chop and tout their Brave way ever time they reach the playoffs and fail. So be it.
Well put Greg, you voiced (printed?) my feelings… I must always root against the Braves, even if it’s for the dreaded Phillies (who are mostly ex Mets anyway).
I look at it that part of the fun is playing the games – otherwise we would just appoint the team with the best record World Champion. Even in ancient times it was possible that the team with the lesser record could win the World Series. Now it’s just on a larger scale with more rounds, which it has to be because there are so many more teams. And I wasn’t crazy about the one and done playoff game.
At least the Cardinals and Mets lost in the playoffs to opponents who came from outside the division and won the regular-season series against the higher seeds. The Dodgers and Braves were eliminated in humiliating fashion by division rivals that the division winners had beaten convincingly in the regular season. And the Dodgers and Braves lost longer series with more room for error.
Imagine the Mets had edged out the Braves for the division title (say by flipping one or two of the ugly September losses prior to the Braves series), we eagerly looked forward to the NLDS over the well-earned bye week, and then we watched the Mets be embarrassed by the Phillies like the Phillies and Padres humiliated the Braves and Dodgers. I suspect we would have reacted worse to that loss than the loss to the Padres.
Hey, you could pull Oakland and Washington out of a hat and put them in as ‘Special Guests,’ and they can win the WS also.
Sucks for the integrity of baseball, but who cares, right?
Stefanie is dead right about the pennant races. Instead of caring who finishes FIRST, we care about who finishes THIRD.
How odd.
Baseball was always the greatest sport because it was FIRST PLACE or nothing, and unfortunately that is gone forever.
Go Houston!
Sure, they cheated, but they cheated to beat the Yankees, so that is fine with me!
Go Cleveland!
Welcome to the NHL. BTW, in today’s “international” MLB, the Phillies line-up has a rather Procol Harum-like complexion.
It’s not much, but I’ll take it. I don’t like the Phillies but I HATE the braves with their offensive nickname and even more offensive chant and their idiot fans. Here’s what you get for chasing us all year long. Good on ya. Also, their record against over .500 teams wasn’t great – not surprised they weren’t as good as they thought they were.
Phils were in 3rd place, but they were in probably the toughest division in baseball and played without their best player for a huge chunk of the year. They also reloaded at the deadline, so it’s not like this was the same team.
And as much as the Astros are a bunch of soulless cheats, I hate the Mariners more for their smug obnoxiousness during our series with them. Glad to see Sewald turn back into the pumpkin we had to endure for years. See you the next time you qualify for the playoffs in 2042.
So, what, do I root for San Diego who knocked us out? Would be comforting to know we were stopped by the eventual WS champs. Cleveland? With a couple of former Mets who probably should have hung in here? Astros? Never! Phillies? NEVER!
Sigh.
Anyone who complains about the rainout last night ought to grow a pair, or don’t be so wimpy.
There is nothing like the anticipation of actually going to a game, whether it is rained out or not. As well as the anticipation of watching it on TV later in the day.
And for those of you who want a retractable dome, I’ll take a few rainouts and rain delays a year in exchange for the open sky and the coolness of the weather.
We have become a country of spoiled automatons rather than well-formed emotional human beings, and our people from all walks of life unfortunately reflect that.
So please grow up, and please toughen up.
Oh, and Go Cleveland!
Lower seed won in every National League wildcard and division series. Now the 6th seed is up 1 on the 5th seed in the NLCS.
In contrast, the American League has gone nearly chalk with the 1 and 2 seeds facing off in the ALCS. The 90 win, 5th seed Mariners beating the 92 win, 4th seed Blue Jays is the only exception.
The Yankees win yesterday made me think of when the Yankees slumped and their W-L dropped below the Mets while the Mets continued to maintain one of the best records in MLB. Every Phillies playoff win has made me think of how hapless they looked against the Mets all season. The Phillies slumped to end the season and barely avoided the Brewers taking the 3rd wildcard. The Phillies were on the verge of losing game 1 against the Cardinals. Yet the Phillies flipped a switch in the 9th inning of that game and have been dominant ever since.
Every Zack Wheeler start like last night is a knife directly to the heart…
MLB is broken. Broken due watering down the game and greed. We want more inclusion, more diversity, more teams, more fan bases, MLB just wants more money. The playoff schedule (due mostly because of the strike – remember that?) is extended to November 5th! Crazy. I complain a great deal about the changes that have affected our game. Adding the DH to the National League game, the prominence of analytics/sabremetrics that have shaped offense whether it be fielding and how to swing the bat; the devaluing of starting pitching – what I considered up until a few days to be the greatest crime in the game. Until now. The great crime now is this wild card nonsense. 1 wild card made sense when the powers that be decided to create 3 divisions in each league – so the next best winning team deserved to be in the playoffs. That made sense. But now we have 3 wild card teams in each league – allowing teams barely over .500 to be eligible. So now we watch the Phillies – THE PHILLIES – a 3rd place team who played disappointing baseball for the first half of the season face the Padres who knocked off the Dodgers! The Padres lost 14 of 19 games to the Dodgers – that is just not fair!! Its a disgrace. MLB wanted more teams in the race, they did this out of greed, and in the process created a 3 game playoff for these wild card teams. I am furious with the Mets inability to hit and drive in runs in clutch situations and reliance on aging pitchers coming back from injury to get us through the playoffs. This team should have been better. We should have made adjustments to the roster to get a solid DH if we have to dilute the game to suffer through such a ‘position’ – and our pitching staff was running out of gas. So what if we won 101 games? Many of the problems that have haunted this team over the last few years came back again in the last month or so – and I know I didn’t want to admit what I was seeing – and now I am just angry. Angry because I spent the whole season loving this team and loving that for one of the few baseball seasons in the last 60 years the Mets were the best team – the envy of Major League Baseball. I was ready to take my victory lap during the post season. Ooops forgot that heartbreak is a necessity – not just an expectation. Mets got ripped off and more importantly, our fans and Baseball fans in general. Now we have the remainder of the postseason to listen to broadcasters talk about how exciting the new format is and how great the Phillies and Padres are playing! Idiots. All this did was make the 182 game season mean absolutely nothing. Somehow we need to band together and convince MLB this was a bad decision. Stop diluting the game. We don’t need bigger bases, we don’t need a pitch com – send the signs like they’ve done for 100 freaking years – stop changing the game!
I understand the frustration with the expanded wildcard, I really do. Ridiculous that it’s the Phils/Padres in the NLCS. But here’s the thing: ever since divisional play started in 1969, it was possible for the team with a lesser record to go to (and win) the World Series. Nothing has changed, we just have more rounds and more teams involved. This year it worked out fine for the AL as Eric points out (all division winners), it’s just a weird anomaly in the NL. I’ll bet in 1969 the old timers were also complaining about the extra round needed to get to the WS!
I guess I’m in the minority, but I really don’t see why everyone hates the new playoff format. Best of 3 is much more fair than 1 game winner take all. Having an extra team makes almost every team viable throughout the majority of the season. And it makes winning the division important. I hated seeing the Mets get bounced, but it would have been worse for it have been a 1 and done like 2016.
I agree with Seth and 9th string catcher that the playoff series themselves are as fair as before. The wildcard has gone from automatic entry just like a division winner, to 1 game play-in, to best 2 of 3.
Winning the head to head match-up and to the victor goes the spoils is the essence of sports. Minimizing the fact that the Mets lost head to head against the Padres while emphasizing their 101 regular-season wins versus the Padres 89 RS wins strikes me as an analytics mindset (sample size of context-removed data) clouding the essence of sports. Structural flaw? Okay. But the Mets lost to the Padres fair and square, possible Musgrove sticky stuff aside.
Optics. The difference is before at least 1 division winner was guaranteed in the LCS and all 3 division winners were guaranteed an LDS. This year we have 2 wildcards in the NLCS and a division winner eliminated in the WC round.
More optics. When it was just 1 wildcard, the WC team was usually on par record-wise with at least 1 of the 3 division winners, like the 2022 Mets. The 2nd WC team dropped off but not too far, and it was just the 1 semi-mediocre exception in each league’s playoff mix. But the 3rd wildcard now butts up to the 7th and 8th teams in the league that usually hover near .500 and epitomize mediocrity. And now we have 2 wins-status exceptions in each league’s playoff mix that can take both seats in the league championship series, which wasn’t structurally possible before.
Hader dominating in the post-season after his regular-season struggle makes me upset that the failure of the Mets starting pitching coupled with the yo-yo offense robbed us of the opportunity to find out if free-agent Edwin Diaz would raise his regular-season dominance to the playoffs like Hader has.
As is, as much as I enjoyed Diaz’s work this season, I can’t value it above 2015 Familia only because Familia had both a strong regular season and post-season. Familia’s only real blemish in the 2015 playoffs was the quick pitch to Gordon, but that followed strong performances in the NLDS and CS.
Of course, Familia’s post-season track record includes losing the 2016 wildcard game. Diaz, through no fault of his own, never got the chance to blow a wildcard save, let alone a World Series save.
So Diaz is now a free agent presumably demanding a long-term commitment, and we still have no track record to show us whether or not he’s a playoff-reliable closer.
Save the break the bank money on Diaz and Jake and spend on offense, offense, offense, with the shift gone next year, the better power-pull hitters will benefit the most.
… and burn the black jerseys!
“The NL East Rorshach test will yield an ink blot of varying hatreds.”
How true that is, Greg, but generally it all comes down to:
“My enemy is my enemy”
And:
“The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy.”
Frankly, I never understood the theory of rooting for the folks who beat you, as if that somehow softens the blow of your own loss.
In College Football, I root for the Conference, but just the opposite in MLB, so:
Go SD, and of course:
Go Houston!
AL post-season is on the verge of the higher seed winning every series except for the 90-win 5th seed beating the 92-win 4th seed in the wildcard round.
NL post-season is on the verge of the lower seed winning every wildcard, division, and league championship series, with the 6th seed that barely crawled into the playoffs now on the doorstep of the World Series.