Three Takeaways from MLB Divisional Series So Far
October 16, 2022
Prior to this year, only one post-season major league baseball game had gone past the 11th inning with no runs scored by either team. Then last week the longest such game occurred in the wild card round when the Cleveland Indians beat the Tampa Bay Rays 1-0 in 15 innings. Just a week later, that record was again broken when the Seattle Mariners lost to the Houston Astros 1-0 in 18 innings. Shutout games in 2022 have been up and batting averages were down, but it’s extraordinary to see scoreless postseason games go into the 15th and 18th innings on successive weeks. There has also been another shutout in the divisional playoffs, a 3-0 victory by the Braves in game two of their series with the Phillies although it was decided in 9 innings.
Number two, teams continue to burn through many pitchers every game, a sign of the increasing reliance on relievers and deemphasis of starting pitchers. The average number of pitchers used by a team in the first 14 divisional games played so far has been 5.1. Game 3 of the Seattle-Houston series used a combined 18 pitchers, ten by Seattle and eight by the victories Houston Astros.
Saving my most important takeaway for last, the results so far cast some doubt on the format of expanded teams in the playoffs as a means for deciding the truly best team in each. In the 20th century, just nine teams made it to the World Series after winning fewer than 90 games out of 150 or more games played during the season. That’s nine out of 198 teams that got all the way to the world series. Baseball is a game that needs many, many observations to rank the relative success of different teams. Very good teams may still lose 60 games in a season, while very bad ones usually win as many as 60. It’s the other 40 games played that reveal who’s best. Until 1969, there was no interleague games, and only the single team from the American and from the National League with the best won-loss record played in a post-season best-of-four series to determine a “world champion.” The original format guaranteed that only teams that had proven elite through a grinding 6-month schedule were allowed to compete for the title and thus ensured that the crown went to a franchise truly deserving of that award. Even when the leagues were split into two divisions, resulting in four post-season team entries, the world series almost always pitted two competitors that had done very well over 150-plus games.
The National League Championship Series that will decide that league’s representative in the 2022 World Series will pit the Philadelphia Phillies against the San Diego Padres. The Phillies won 87 games, finished third place out of five teams in the league’s Eastern Division with 14 fewer wins and 14 more losses than both the Atlanta Braves and N.Y. Mets in this year’s final standings. The Padres finished in second place in the Western Division with a record of 89-73. That’s a whopping 22 more losses and 22 fewer wins than the 111 games won by the first place Los Angeles Dodgers during the year. The N.Y. Mets, Atlanta Braves, and Saint Louis Cardinals also play in the National League and won more games than the Padres during the past season.
The American League opponents that will be competing for the AL world series slot include the team with the most wins (104), the Houston Astros. The other team in the ALCS will be either the NY Yankees, who won 99, or the Cleveland Guardians, who won 93. The Guardians hold a 2-1 edge and will clinch the spot if they win tonight. Otherwise, the teams will play a fifth and deciding game Monday in which Cleveland will still have the edge due to better and more rested pitching match-ups in the latter innings.
With much of the post-season yet to play out, it’s already possible to question whether the process emerges consistently with knighting the authentically best team of the season. It certainly winnows the field to a team which gets hot at the end of the show, but consider this: over the final ten games of the 2022 regular season the Phillies and Padres won only 4 and 5 games. World Series outcomes now also seem to provide less assurance about how one year’s winner will perform in the years just ahead. Eleven teams this year won more games than last year’s world series winner, the Atlanta Braves. 2020 only had a 60 game season due to Covid, and so needs to be thrown out in this analysis. The Washington Nationals, who won the 2019 World Series won only 55 of its 162 games this year. The Red Sox, who won the WS in 2018, lost six more games than it won in 2022 and, like the Nationals, came in last in its division. The Chicago Cubs and KC Royals, winners of the 2016 and 2015 World Series, won 74 and 65 of their 162 games played in 2022.
My argument is not to go back to a single layer post-season or even to a field of four or six teams in a post-season tournament. It is to create and acknowledge a special award for the team in major league baseball that each year wins the most games. Such an accomplishment is at least as noteworthy and meaningful as being the last team standing in a short and layered post-season tournament.
Copyright 2022, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: MLB Divisional Series
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