The 2023 Giants prove the third wild card is bullshit
For some reason, I am not feeling positive about the team this week
By no rights should the 2023 Giants be anywhere remotely near a playoff hunt. This is not a winning team. This is not a team to be proud of. This is not a team to remember. This team is a disappointment, a failure that meekly retreats back into its corner, a pathetic display of wasted potential. There was a time that it should have been something fun, impressive, memorable. Instead, it’s this.
And they could still make the playoffs.
Nothing could do a better job of proving why 6 is too many playoff teams. Nothing could serve as a stronger example that the new playoff format doesn’t reward teams for actually being good baseball teams. The 2023 San Francisco Giants, a team that was briefly good before watching its promise sputter out at the beginning of September, is a .500 team that is just 2.5 games back of the Marlins for the final wild card spot.
If you have watched the Giants this year, the only possible conclusion is that the final wild card spot should not exist. It is a false promise, a mirage. It rewards the undeserving with an accolade they didn’t earn. It takes something that should be reserved for the best of the best and dilutes it to the point where it loses a lot of its meaning.
Now, yes, it is true that the Phillies made the World Series last year, capping off an inspiring run from the 6 seed by losing to the Astros, but on the other hand, should they have? Was the Padres-Phillies NLCS better than a Padres-Braves NLCS would have been? We had Cool Thing B, but how do we know that Cool Thing A wouldn’t have been better? We don’t!
Here’s what we do know: Objectively, to a non-Giants fan, any playoff series with the Giants in it will be worse than the same playoff series with a different team in it. It won’t be as exciting. There won’t be as many stars. It probably won’t be as competitive. Alex Wood might be involved. The whole thing just sounds awful, and for what? So the winner of the NL Central can play a whole extra series against a team that had its ticket punched by default? I mean, that kinda sucks for them. They got in the right way. The hypothetical Giants got in so that MLB could make more money playing stupid games. We are not the same.
I was never even sold on the second wild card team, if I’m being honest. Sure, it helped the Giants win one World Series and then have a dynasty-shattering loss in an NLDS, but the reasoning behind it never made sense. “So, we have this wild card team that’s less deserving of being in the playoffs than all the other teams, right? Here’s how we fix that: make them play an even LESS deserving team. Problem solved!”
Then you add in a third wild card team, which is just too many. The meaning of being in the playoffs gets further watered down. I’m aware that there didn’t used to be Playoffs, that it used to be just the World Series, but there are twice as many teams now as there were then, and you have to give a good percentage of those teams something to play for, which means an inevitable inflation in the number of spots in October, even beyond the ~100% increase in teams. Okay, fine.
But now, almost paradoxically, there is less to play for. There is no tension over whether the Cubs or Phillies will make the playoffs this year, when that tension would be fun. There is, instead, tension over which member of the basket of deplorable teams will get in. A half game separates the Marlins, Reds, and Diamondbacks, so they all have a chance, but then, they’d all have a chance without that last spot. 4 games back with more than 20 to play isn’t insurmoutable. They’d even have a chance if there was just the one wild card spot. Teams have overcome worse odds. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s part of the team’s legend forever.
The Giants would not overcome those odds. There’s almost no chance they overcome the long odds they’re facing now, and they’re just 2.5 games back with 3 teams to beat. If they were 7.5 back with 5 teams to beat? No way. And that’s what they deserve. They deserve to be a team that drops out of the Postseason Contention graphic. They deserve to be an afterthought. It’s what their poor play has earned, and the fact that they’re not getting it only proves that the playoffs don’t mean as much as they used to.
So after all that, I guess the only conclusion we can come to is this: Good thing the Giants won’t win enough games to make the postseason. Good thing their collapse has been so total that we’ll be spared from further humiliation in the wild card round. Good thing that when the Giants fail, they fail with a capital F, followed by “uck you for ever believing in us.”
I don’t even want this team to go to the playoffs. I think it’s better that they stay home and think about what they did. The grapes were probably sour anyway. Who needs the Postseason-E-Mart?
(Plaintively, while sitting on the roof): I dooooooo.
As a good pedantic 2014 Giants fan knows, the second Wild Card did NOT help them win the World Series. They in fact finished the season with same number of wins as the Pirates (both at 88), so they would have played a one-game playoff for the Wild Card anyway, even if the second Wild Card had not existed.
But do you remember the 2015 Giants? The year after they won the aforementioned World Series. They were allegedly 84-78, and if I recall (I don't) not exciting. They would have been the third Wild Card that season had it existed.
In short: Make teams earn it in the regular season. Wild Cards are stupid. Second Wild Cards are even dumber. And third Wild Cards are trolls tormenting the regular season who should be banned by the moderator.