I just wonder how many teams try to build themselves for the playoffs rather than the regular season and how different teams would look if they were more concerned with the best record rather than winning a championship. I’d heard one reason the Braves teams often failed to win the Series was because they were a team made for winning during a grueling season, but in a quick series they were over matched.
Whenever I heard the Yankees are leading the league in home runs or runs or some offensive category I always figure they won’t go too far into the playoffs because in the playoffs you just don’t face bad pitching.
No stats to back any of this up, of course. Just my own wondering and speculation.
You can’t really “Build a team for the playoffs.” I guess you could, theoretically, but in practice what teams do is just try to build a good team. Then the plan falls apart; people get hurt, a guy doesn’t develop, your second baseman doesn’t hit but suddenly you have two shortstops who are good so do you convert one, blah blah blah. The distinction between “good regular season team” and “good playoff team” is finer than the distinction between “things worked out” and “things didn’t work out.” Either you have a lot of good players, or you don’t.
Maybe they should go with the NBA program, with first and second place and six wildcards so that the playoffs can start to rival the regular season in length, finishing right around the same time as the NCAAF regular season, a week or two after the Grey Cup (another sport played in summer).