The NL is a mess in the playoffs. The three teams with the best records during the regular season have all been eliminated. The second place team in the West (4th best record in the league) is now playing the third place team in the East (5th best record) for the NL spot in the World Series.
The AL is coming out a bit better. Two division leaders will be playing for the AL spot in the World series there.
As long as someone beats Houston along the way, I’ll be happy. 
–Peter
The reason is actually very simple. The rest of the division in the differential stat were a sea of red. It was the worst division.
I respect the Dodgers. Don’t get me wrong. Just their leadership this year was not built on beating tough teams.
They also had the best record in baseball in games outside their division. It’s not just a weak division that lead to their record.
Absolutely. There are an awful lot of really good players out there right now. But there are a couple of teams with a distinct lack of such players. And a couple of the best players out there playing for really bad teams (I’m looking at you, Angels).
And a few really disappointed fans watching great teams lose to good teams in the playoffs.
–Peter <== Angel fan forced to switch to the Dodgers every post-season.
but you gave more credit to the AL than the NL.
As the owners stretch out the “playoffs” to milk the hype, watch for Plan Steve: end the “regular season” at the All Star game in July. Then they can have all August and September to have layer, after layer, after layer, of “playoffs”, because so many teams “make” the playoffs that the regular season standings become irrelevant.
Also in Plan Steve, require the players to bring their own sponsorships. So every pitcher starts the inning with an ad from his sponsor. Every batter comes to the plate, with an ad from his sponsor. People spend 3-1/2 hours watching a football team run out a 60 minute game clock, where they are only actually moving the ball for 8 minutes, so, certainly, people will not become bored with all the adverts with every at-bat.
Steve
Being that it’s Fall and I love getting out in the woods, been recording Lions games and watching them when back home. Can watch the whole game in an hour, and that’s without trying to cut out all of the fluff. I absolutely hate watching or listening to advertisements, so if I do watch a game in real time, it’s usually with the sound down while listening to some tunes or a podcast. So I know you’re somewhat kidding, but Plan Steve will not snag me, but you’re probably not too far off in your prediction. MLB might be trying to hire you onto their marketing team, lol.
You haven’t been watching baseball games, where they scrunch the picture of the game into a corner of the screen so they can use the rest of the screen to show more ads?
Do pitchers really keep that “Rolaids Relief Man” trophy in a place of honor, or do they chuck it in the basement and leave it for the next owner of the house?
MLB would have to get in line behind the faction that want’s my recommendations to “save Social Security, secure the social safety net, solve the lack of burger flippers, and give the “JCs” a tax cut, all at the same time”.
/sarcasm
Superbowl 7 was played January 14, 1973. Superbowl 2023 is scheduled for February 12th, after a month of “playoffs”.
The fabulous 1975 World Series (Bo Sox and Reds) started on October 11th. The 2022 World Series starts October 28, after two added weeks of “playoffs”. The owners want to split the leagues into four divisions, so they can add another layer of “playoffs”. To keep the guys from consistently playing in snow storms, they will need to shorten the season, as they expand the playoffs.
Steve
I watched the Mariners (wildcard team) vs. the Astros. All 18 innings. I can’t decide if it was the greatest game I ever watched or the worst game I’ve ever watched.
I suspect the answer to that may have a significant correlation to whether you were wearing a hat with an S or an A on it while watching the game. 
–Peter <== who remembers watching all 20 innings of an Angels/A’s game in his youth.
Team run differentials are Stats that don’t have much to do with winning games. The Sea of Red, as you call it, was the NL Central. The three worst records in the National League this year can be found in the National League Central and East. The Phillies’ Stats maybe be wonderfully better than the Giants’, but the Phillies met the Giants six times this season, and came away with one win. The only stat that matters is that the Giants were 5 games to 1 Game playing the Phillies. If the National League West was so worthless, why couldn’t the Phillies manage to beat the third place NL West Team (that didn’t even make the Playoffs) more than once in six games?
Baseball is played one game at a time, and that’s why the Phillies are still in it. It doesn’t really matter how many runs you scored last night, it only matters how you’re gonna beat the team tonight.
In the Lowest Team Earned Runs Against per Game, The Braves, The Cards, The Mets, The Mariners, The Giants, even the Angels all beat out the Phillies, but all those teams are out, and the Phillies are going. If you win with a walk-off HR tonight and lost by 12 runs last night, the only Stat that matters is that you’re one and one against that team.
Good Luck to the NLCS if the Phillies beat the Padres it will still be great baseball.
DC is a competitor in having the worst teams. Definitely the absolute worst MLB team.
That is the point if the diff is red like that you are not outscoring.
Tweaks made whatever the Phillies are scoring.
Stats? The game is about the stats.
Baseball has succumbed to the money grab of other sports. Turning finding a season worthy champion into who gets hot in the last month. To me, the saddest sports “season” is the NBA where 20 of 30 teams make the playoffs. Why bother?
I don’t follow hoops, so did not know that. I have noticed that nearly half of the NFL teams make the “playoffs”. This increasing irrelevance of the “regular season” is why Plan Steve has the baseball season cut in half; it is largely meaningless. Get the “regular season” out of the way quick, so the owners can hype the “playoffs”.
When the miserable Detroit Tigers hired a new GM (the guy knows nothing about baseball, never played, has Business and Economics degrees) the team won something like 11 out of their next 15 games, pulling themselves out of the division cellar by the end of the season. As the author of this piece points out, there is a danger in discrediting the season, in favor of “playoff” hype.
This author has long disfavored expanded playoffs, particularly for baseball. The regular season is substantially undermined when half the teams make the postseason, especially given MLB’s 162-game schedule and the inherent flukiness of baseball that allows a bad team to occasionally win four out of seven against a great team.
I had roughly twenty great years of watching UCONN men’s and women’s ball. We might be getting back into it on the men’s side of the court. This coach might have promise.
But that doesn’t mean you are losing games. You can be outscored 4::1 in a 4 game series and win 3 out of four games.
Baseball is more than a game of stats. You need to know which stats are meaningful, i.e., a pitcher’s W/L record has little bearing on how good that pitcher is pitching.
In the short term (like playoffs) that is true. But there aren’t a lot of 250 and 300+ win pitchers that pitched poorly over their careers and just got lucky. Nor 20+ game winners in a season
Mike
Win/loss for pitchers is sort of a one-sided statistic. It can help screen out poor performing pitchers, but it also screens out good pitchers. You can be a good pitcher (limit the opposing teams’ number of runs scored) but still lose games if your offense doesn’t produce runs. Or you can end up with no-decisions after a good performance if the bullpen isn’t good. A good win/loss record probably means the pitcher was good AND generally played for decent (or better) teams. But a bad win/loss record isn’t as meaningful. It can be a good pitcher on a bad team or just a bad pitcher.
–Peter
TB,
All I am saying is it is one red flag that things are not as rosy as they need to be.
You can also hit a lot of base hits or home runs when your team is ahead by 5 runs and they don’t (end up) meaning anything. While getting a clutch hit or RBI in a one or two run game is much more important. So no stat is really perfect. That’s why there are lots of stats.
Mike