The Major League Baseball (MLB) postseason is well underway and unique storylines are abundant this year.
We have seen some unexpected teams make the playoffs, which has been a theme for the MLB postseason since the introduction of the expanded playoff format. Neither of last year’s finalists, the Arizona Diamondbacks or the Texas Rangers, will be participating in the postseason this year. The Rangers posted a losing record despite their roster remaining largely intact from last season.
Arizona Diamondbacks
The Diamondbacks are a more interesting story. They posted a better record than last year, getting eighty-nine wins on the season rather than eighty-four, but lost the tiebreaker matches to the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets. The Diamondbacks tried to improve in the offseason, signing one of the most coveted free-agent pitchers on the market and an opponent in last season’s World Series matchup, Jordan Montgomery. He was terrible for them and is a major source of the blame for why they did not make the playoffs. His 6.23 ERA, for example, is a number so bad it shocks me that he even managed to start twenty-one games for the Diamondbacks this year.
Kansas City Royals
Keeping with the unexpected, the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers both made the playoffs for the first time since 2015 and 2014, respectively. The Royals improved from an abysmal 56-106 record in 2023, good for second worst in baseball, to eighty-six wins, one of only six times an improvement of thirty or more wins from season-to-season occurred in over fifty years. Even more of an achievement was beating the Orioles 2-0 in the wildcard round, a team that posted one hundred wins just a year prior.
Detroit Tigers
This year, the Tigers are a personal favourite story. Not only was this team 55-63 on 10 August with a 0.2% chance to make the playoffs, according to FanGraphs, but they were also sellers at the trade deadline. Shockingly, they managed to advance in the wildcard round, beating the Astros 2-0. Sure, the Astros cheated, but irrespective of those antics in 2017, they had been to seven straight American League Championship Series, winning four pennants and two World Series Championships coming into this season. Many picked the Astros to win everything this year, so to bow out of the postseason without having even won a game was already unexpected. But for the Tigers this is a whole new realm. The Tigers are a great story this year, even if they do not advance any further. A shining example of how the regular season is a marathon, not a sprint, and yet the postseason can come down to who the hottest team is at any given time.
Baltimore Orioles
Sticking with the American League, the Orioles disappointed yet again. Most people expected they would beat the Royals and have a chance to go deep, but their young core has failed once more, sound familiar? They have 189 regular season wins and zero playoff wins over the past two seasons. In fact, since 2014, the Orioles have lost ten straight playoff games, which the Toronto Blue Jays happily contributed to.
Los Angeles Dodgers/New York Yankees
This year is also unique for being the first to have no one-hundred win team since 2014, not counting the COVID-shortened season in 2020. In fact, parity seems to be at a high right now across the league, with eighteen teams posting a neutral or winning record this year. However, a deviation from the theme of the unexpected are the Dodgers and Yankees. Perhaps the sport’s two most hated teams, especially from the perspective of Toronto Blue Jays fans in the wake of the recent offseason dramatics with Shohei Ohtani. Both powerhouses hold the best records in their respective leagues.
The Dodgers are notorious in the expanded playoff format for losing to wildcard teams they should be beating with no issue, so we will see if Ohtani can lead them past what has been their traditional stomping grounds since 2022. Would it be unexpected if the Dodgers beat a wildcard team, or should we expect it at this point, given how good their regular seasons have been?
The Yankees have pressure on them this year after they missed the playoffs in 2023 for the first time since 2016. While they have managed to claim their division, the impending free agency of Juan Soto puts this group in a precarious situation.
Even in a season like 2024, which is unique in so many ways, it seems baseball’s old habits die hard, as the two faces of each league hold the best records and sit waiting for their opponents from the wildcard at the time of writing. Baseball is full of surprises. This year, the unexpected seemed to happen left and right, and yet in the chaos of everything that went so differently, the Yankees and Dodgers’ success stayed the same. After all, I find it safe to say that not many would have picked the Diamondbacks and Rangers as the finalists at the start of 2023.
Will the playoffs play out as we expect, with a Yankees-Dodgers World Series, or will
things go the way they have all year with a trend towards the unlikely, such as the Tigers? Only time will tell.