Watching The Losers

MLB's playoff chase is just as much about incompetence as it is brilliance.

Perhaps it's my deeply felt antipathy of MLB's playoff system, because I should be watching this September with some level of glee. There are certainly things around that any baseball fan can enjoy. The Mariners, and in particular Cal Raleigh, in September have been stupid (the good kind). Aaron Judge has a 234 wRC+ this month, and is probably as close as we'll get to knowing what it would have been like if Zeus played baseball. Cade Horton seizing the ace role for the Cubs for the next decade, minus whatever time his elbow ligaments eliminate. Garrett Crochet, etc.

Perhaps it's just a fatigue of the Guardians. This is certainly a historic run, but we all know that it won't amount to much once the playoff start. They literally can't hit--they won Tuesday's game with a rally of batted balls that if combined might have made the left fielder move in a foot--and they'll be cannon fodder for whoever they come across starting next week. As it's always been, and will always be.

Which I admit is hypocritical. I'm the one who says that this playoff format is so silly that no team should be judged solely on what happens in 10-15 games in October after 162 of them April-September. This run from Cleveland will delight the 12 Guardians fans for years if not decades. Thanks to their ownership, it's about all they can hope for.

Still, it all leaves me a bit cold, because September has become just as much about which teams shits itself inside-out than about who surges to the top. I suppose that's the end result of the nasty cocktail of few teams trying to be all that good and the focus being the bottom of the playoff race instead of the top. Baseball used to worry about the latter, and was the only sport to do so. No more.

This season, in the AL we have the Astros, Tigers, and Blue Jays (to a lesser extent) choking on their own lungs along the home stretch. The Astros and Tigers very well may require the big blue sheet come Sunday, though their shared idiocy is going to keep one of them in the playoffs, a fate neither deserve by this point.

In the NL, the Cubs, Padres, and Mets have seemed happy to give away playoff spots if anyone wanted them, except no one did. At least not yet. The Reds have gone 23-25 since Aug. 1. The Giants 24-26. All of this has let Arizona back into it, after they went 9-16 in July and sold at the deadline. Once again, we're seeing teams actively wave the white flag, only for the competition to simply refuse to accept their surrender. It's as if, at the moment Roberto Duran said, "No Mas," Sugar Ray Leonard not only didn't raise his arms in victory but then knocked himself out.

It wasn't all that different last season. The Tigers were the white flag-shrouded conquerors, but they needed the Twins to swallow their own face to get there. In the NL, some of you lived through whatever it was the Cubs were doing, and Arizona matched them in urinating on their own shoes in September to miss out. The Cubs pulled the same trick the season before, only that time it was for Arizona's benefit. The Padres and Mariners pulled the same dry heave in 2023, as well.

The Tigers collapse may go down as an all-timer, but is rooted in their lack of effort to be anything more than they were. It's perhaps just a dramatic market correction. They'll end up with 85-88 wins, which is what they were built to do, and that 95+ win runway they were on for a good portion of the season was always an illusion. But after last year's playoff appearance, why weren't they built for more? It wouldn't have taken much to shore up the cracks in the foundation. They passed, and this is what they get.

The Reds could have honestly left the Mets in the dust by now if they'd been interested in signing any hitter over the winter. The Astros tried to replace their best player (Kyle Tucker) with some kettle grill ash that calls itself Christian Walker and Cam Smith (check out his second half). At least the Mariners are the story of a team that really did try at the deadline, and got the results.

Maybe it's just a couple seasons, and not every September will be a story of which team faceplants the hardest and which avoids breaking their nose to be declared the winner. But when more and more teams are settling for the middle, more and more teams open themselves up to filling their pants. It's not exactly inspirational.