Postseason rooting guide!
OFFICIAL OFFICIAL if I just keep saying it it becomes true I think OFFICIAL
The playoffs start today, and your San Francisco Giants are not in them, possibly because they were utterly incapable of scoring runs in the second half of the season. Or possibly not! Who’s to say?
But that leaves the casual Giants fan with a dilemma. Who should you root for in the upcoming baseball games during the month of October? Why, if only some brave soul would rank each playoff team, from Least Rootable to Most Rootable. That would really help you out, someone who for the purposes of this introduction is apparently unable to form extremely inconsequential opinions. Just go with it.
Anyway, on to the rankings after I remind you to subscribe! If you already subscribe, you can skip that part, though.
12. Dodgers
No
11. Braves
Absolutely not
10. Astros
Look, I’m genuinely happy for Dusty that he got his ring last year. He’s deserved to call himself a World Series-winning manager for a long time, and I’m thrilled for him that he checked off the last box on the Making Haters Shut Up list.
On the other hand, this is the cheater team. They cheated! They won a World Series with cheating! And then they won a second World Series a few years later. And now they want a third? Uh-uh. No. Maybe — maybe — once Altuve and Bregman leave and Jim Crane sells the team and the city of Houston repudiates its 26-lane superhighway (though they shamefully counted 8 full lanes of frontage roads in that figure, like cheaters), we can treat them like a normal team again. But for now? No one wants to hear from you, Astros. Go away.
9. Diamondbacks
Look, as much as the Dodgers are the Giants’ main rival and it sucks and is awful that they are much better than the Giants every year, at least they’re a real baseball team. They’re not some Johnny-come-lately upstarts who stole what should have been the Giants’ thunder. They’re not a team whose rightful place is losing 93 games every year but having analysts say “They’ve got the prospects to be real good two seasons from now,” proving those analysts wrong by being good two seasons too early. They’re not the ones whose SB Nation site editor celebrated Buster Posey’s leg being broken in 2011. They’re not the goddamn Arizona Diamondbacks.
Or, to put it another way:
Unacceptable. Also, how DARE they have a rookie who didn’t fade into depressing irrelevance as the season went on? What monsters.
8. Rangers
Look, I want to put Bruce Bochy higher on the list. I really, really do. I really, really, really, really, really, really do.
I cannot put Aroldis Chapman higher on the list. Honestly, he’s already too high. By any objective measure, the Rangers should be tenth. Ninth, at most.
7.Rays
God, isn’t it just insufferable when the Rays win? “Oh, look how smart they are!” “They do it on a shoestring budget!” “The real stars are the anonymous front office types!” Shut the fuck up. I hope the Rays lose every game they play this postseason. Or at least, I would, if they weren’t playing Aroldis Chapman’s team.
6. Marlins
Yes, I am still bitter about 1997 and 2003. No, it is in no way fair. The Marlins have a lot going for them. They have a really strong pitching staff, even with Sandy Alcantara and Eury Perez injured. Luis Arraez is an incredibly easy player to root for, because striking out 5% of the time and hitting .350 is just really cool. They’re underdogs. They’re justifying my opinion that the Giants should have hired Kim Ng back in 2018, and no, there’s no record of me thinking that, but trust me, I did.
But man, that 1997 team was so inspiring. That 2003 team was so good. Stupid Marlins.
5. Phillies
Their run last year was fantastic. It’s the exact kind of thing you hope for when your team’s not in it. Bryce Harper took over the NLCS. Kyle Schwarber hit some big dingers. The team had all the momentum on their side. Sure, they were a 6-seed, but they outplayed the Mets and the Padres on their way to the World Series. And they can do it again! This year’s team is probably better than last year’s. They added Trea Turner, who eventually started hitting. Zack Wheeler had another outstanding year. And Nick Castellanos has been eerily quiet when it comes to hitting homers that coincide with world events. It all points to something special when this team plays this month.
4. Twins
I mean, it would be pretty funny if a somewhat-better-than-mediocre Twins team went super deep in the playoffs solely because they finally didn’t have to play the Yankees. It’s not that they don’t do good things: the pitching staff led the league in strikeouts, they were the sixth best offense in baseball for the season, and the third best since the All-Star Break. They do seem like they’re Sneaky Good, and could well have a nice run in October.
They’re also the Twins, and we all know that the Twins don’t make it to the ALCS. That’s not how the world works. Don’t get invested.
3. Brewers
There’s nothing wrong with them, really. Well, their offense isn’t anything special, but that just gives me hope that the Giants don’t have that far to go before they’re back in the playoffs! It’s all about the bright side! And Brandon Woodruff being out for this series, and possibly for the whole postseason, is a blow that’ll be hard to recover from. But Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta is a pretty solid 1-2 in the rotation, with Devin Williams there to shut the door in the ninth. On the offensive side, apparently Christian Yelich is really good for the first time since 2019, even though I am 100% sure that no one said his name at any point this year.
2. Blue Jays
It’s not just Brandon Belt, though admittedly them having Brandon Belt is a big point in their favor. Just imagine Belt with a third World Series ring, relentlessly trolling Brandon Crawford and also giving joking answers to boring media questions that the general public takes entirely seriously for some reason. They have Vlad Jr, who’s very exciting, though this wasn’t a great year for him. They have Bo Bichette and Matt Chapman, and Kevin Gausman’s still making Farhan look bad by having another great year. Yusei Kikuchi gets at least 11 hours of sleep a night!
Also, they’re Canadian, which seems novel somehow? Like, Canada’s literally been up there for my entire life, but I’m still like, “Cool, Canada! That’s new!” So sure, let Canada have their first World Series in 30 years. That’s a cool idea. No problem there, except for…
1. Orioles
They deserve this. No one could deserve this more than the Orioles, and that includes the Blue Jays and the nation of Canada. The Orioles were awful for pretty much this whole century, had a 5-year run where they played well, and then were awful again. It’s like Oriole Awfulness was the natural order of the world, and when they escaped its gravity, it sucked them back down hard for a 115-loss season. At last year’s trade deadline, they sold off players, even though they were in the hunt for a wild-card spot. It was like the team was just giving up.
And they were! But only on 2022. Because here in 2023, the Baltimore Orioles had the best record in the American League and the second best record in baseball. They’re back, they have a great team, and, most importantly, we’re not all tired of them. Don’t get me wrong: if the Orioles can keep this up for the better part of a decade, it’ll go from “Yay, the Orioles!” to “Ugh, them again.” But that’s what you want. That’s the whole point of success. You take this kind of young, exciting, fresh-faced team, and turn them into crusty veterans whose faces you’re tired of seeing.
It happened to the Giants, you know. It happened to the Cubs. It happened to the Astros, though there were Outside Events (you know, outside, where you find garbage receptacles) that contributed to that. It it literally the dream for that to happen. And I want that for the Baltimore Orioles. I want them to be so good for so long that everyone else starts to resent them. I want Gunnar Henderson to be in an annoying Motorola ad that plays every other commercial break. I want Adley Rutschman to be a household name.
In all, it’s just great to see the birth of a star, and that could be what happens if the Orioles make a run. It could be Henderson or Rutschman, but it could also be Cedric Mullins or Austin Hays. There are just so many ways for things to go right if the Orioles win, and you can’t say that for pretty much any other team. Who would root against them? The Orioles have to be the sentimental pick right now, and deservedly so.
To coin a phrase never used for any sports team before: Go birds.
A.L. Orange-and-black. With Buster Dos behind the dish.
It's a no-brainer.
I will always root for the orange and black. The fact that they are good this year makes it even easier.
I don’t really keep up with AL teams, or east coast teams, but don’t the Orioles have a lousy owner? Maybe I’m thinking of some other team. Not sure.
But yeah, Belt trolling Crawford with a third ring would be hilarious.