How Much Stake Are We Putting into the MLB Regular Season?

A tale as old as time… the teams that are regular season buzzsaws but then fade during playoff time. The MLB becomes particularly unique in that the season consists of 162 games, further deemphasizing the importance of each individual contest across such a long season. The constant undermining of the regular season is projected as both reassurance for teams clinging to wild cards who claim, “the playoffs are a whole new season” or “it doesn’t matter where you finish as long as you get into October”. The antithesis of this, however, is the fans of the teams who are ahead of the pack by a large margin such as the 2018 Red Sox who constantly caution us to “Not get too far ahead of ourselves” or “It’s been a great season, but it doesn’t matter until the postseason”. After the Mariners won a record 116 games during the regular season only to  lose in the ALDS in 2001, they have served as the archetype of a team that peaked too early. Meanwhile, there have been Wild Card Teams such as the 2004 Red Sox, 2011 Cardinals and 2014 Giants who have went on to win the World Series. Unlike basketball and football, the regular season doesn’t seem to provide a clearcut formula to decide who is the real deal and who are frauds.

Another element that further complicates things with predicting MLB postseason outcomes is the limited impact an individual can make in a given game. In the NFL a quarterback can go on a historic run to shoulder the load of a team and in the NBA the league is polluted by individual ring chasing. Yet in the MLB, the Ace of the staff can only pitch one out of every 3 or 4 playoff games and a team’s best hitter can only come up 1 out of 9 times in the batting order. So when a team like the Red Sox has #1 and #2 in the AL MVP race even this doesn’t provide the best indication of fate. Or if you’re a Yankees fan and continue to fall behind in the East is it really that heartbreaking knowing that you could easily get on a run once fully healthy?

What you end up getting at is trying to decipher not the anomalies of the World Series winners, but rather the commonalities between them all. In the NBA it’s the star. Name me the last NBA team who won without a star. In the NFL, it’s the starting quarterback. Besides Peyton Manning, every Super Bowl winner since 2003 is still maintaining their spot under center for their given franchise.

With this piece, I’m kinda throwing a message in a bottle out to sea because I sure as hell don’t know the answer to the question I’m posing. If I did, the MLB would be a lot less fun. But instead, the MLB is chaos, and man do I love it. Over the upcoming days I’m going to look back at some of the recent World Series Champions to see if I might identify a few traits they all shared. But if anyone out there has a legitimate answer for me I would appreciate it. Until then, I’ll be prepared to be astonished.

Written by Paul McGovern