MLB '24 Postseason thread

The future of the AL Central may very well pivot on whether Travis Bazzana lives up to his draft position. The three teams in the playoffs are young, talented and well-run. Cleveland adding another star to Ramirez would be the difference maker. If he’s merely good, the division will be a three-horse race for years.

 

Your analysis is spot on. The Orioles are primed to be very, very good for the rest of the decade. Only one player over 30 -- McCann -- had more than 200 plate appearances. And Jackson Holliday isn't going to hit .189 again. As you said, Baltimore was not playing its best down the stretch and the flaws were exposed against the Royals, who have excellent pitching. Add the oversized expectations and they looked like a team pressing to make things happen instead of staying patient and letting the game come to them, not just this week but for the past couple of months.

I still don't have a handle on this playoff format, but you either need to come into the wild card on a heater or assure yourself of a bye. The entire postseason is a Monte Carlo simulation. Any three-game series, even with the higher seed at home, is essentially a coin flip. Even a five-game series falls within a measuring error. With 12 teams, no one has a better than 1 in 5 chance of winning the World Series, which means the Yankees or Phillies don't win it all four out of every five times.

The Twins lost 18 consecutive playoff games, which is mathematically impossible. And yet, it happened. Baseball is weirdly hard. Which I think keeps all of us fascinated by it.

 

The AL especially is a true crapshoot. I could make a compelling case for all six teams who got in to get to the World Series, and I could make a compelling case that all six of those teams have a fatal flaw that would be exposed in the short-series nature of the postseason. Would not be stunned at all if KC beats the Yankees. who were about as shitty as the Orioles were in the second half, have a top-heavy lineup and major pitching concerns. Would not be stunned if Detroit beats Cleveland. But hey, that's the playoffs. Certain leagues -- NBA especially -- make it almost impossible for a really good team to lose in a seven-game first-round series. Not the case in baseball.

 

Right on. The weirdly hard makes it elegant.

 

I'm obviously all Royals here, but I wouldn't mind seeing Harper get a ring, even if it is with the Phillies.

 

Cool watching my buddy’s kid get the win for MIL last night. Last year I got to talk to him about pitching in the WS for Nats and I felt like a little kid.

 

You have to come ready to play in this round and have your shit tight from the start, and I appreciate that as a fan.

 

The White Sox.

 

I loved the one-game do-or-die wild card, but a best-of-three at one site is the next best thing.

 

I like the best of 3 in the wild card round. You can survive one bad game.

 

Yeah, I don't really get the part about the pitching being gutted. There's no telling about Burnes, and Rodriguez will definitely be back. There may be some holding of breath about Bradish, Wells, Bautista, even Means ... but there's also every possibility they're back in form.

 

Bradish and Wells are out for most if not all of 2025. Same with Means, who is a wild card of his own because he’s a free agent.