We’re 27 games into the 2023 Major League Baseball Playoffs Sponsored By The Lawn Company That Gives Money To Tormund Giantsbane, and let’s be honest, we’ve seen better. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the fact that the Rays lost ignominiously again, and that the Braves are already out, and that the Dodgers got absolutely humiliated in the first round without winning a game.
God, that’s all so satisfying.
But also, it kinda sucks.
Because it’s satisfying in hindsight. In the moment, watching the games, they’re…pretty boring. In those 27 games that have already been played, exactly three (3) of them have featured a lead change after the fourth inning: the two Diamondbacks/Brewers games in the Wild Card round, and Game 2 between the Phillies and the Braves. If you want to throw in a few more games as tense ones where the trailing team just didn’t quite catch up, then you can add NLCS Game 1, ALCS Game 2, and I dunno, maybe Rangers/Orioles Game 1.
That’s it, though. That’s really it. Even some of the other 1-run or 2-run games didn’t feel that close or that interesting. It would be the 7th, and the Astros would be up by a run or two on the Twins, and watching it, you’d think, yeah, they could come back, but they won’t.
That’s been the story of the whole postseason. Yes, the Phillies are fun and likable and it’s cool that they’re hitting a million dingers every game off of the Diamondbacks, but it would be nice to see the Diamondbacks take a lead at some point and make it tense. It would be nice if, seeing that the Astros have a fifth-inning lead, you didn’t automatically think, “Guess the Rangers will have to try it again tomorrow.” The lack of that in-game drama has made the games a lot less interesting than they should be.
So why is this happening? The easy answer is that bullpens are just too good now, and managers are perfectly happy to go to them as soon as possible in October. This depresses the run scoring environment, meaning that teams are less likely to score in late innings, so the games get duller. It’s just basic strategy, and the game has evolved to make it culturally acceptable.
And look, it’s not like there’s nothing to that. I think that does explain a big part of it. But during the regular season, the Rangers bullpen was 23rd in fWAR and the Diamondbacks were 24th. Even the Astros were just 18th. So while there might be something to that theory — obviously, the teams are going to push their better relievers harder now than they did from April to September, and with copious off days, they’ll have the rest to make that work — it doesn’t really explain everything.
No, the only way to explain everything is luck. I’m sorry that it’s unpredictable and unsatisfying, but that’s what playoffs are. The Dodgers had the best bullpen and an iffy rotation and they lost. The Twins had a great rotation and an iffy bullpen and they lost. In short series, shit happens. Sometimes games are just duds, and sometimes you get a lot of them in a short period. It sucks, but there’s not really anything you can do about it besides hope that the next few games will be better.
Of course, Rob Manfred’s solution will be that if you’re down by at least four runs, every run you score counts double, but we’ll cross that bridge when the people in charge of baseball panic super hard. Probably about ratings. Which will presumably be down this year again. Because the playoffs have kinda been boring.
Felicitaciones, Maestro!
(Pretty sure I already subscribed to your marvy baseball exposes.)