MLB 2023 postseason: harmful byes?

6 teams in each league made the playoffs this year. The top 2 seeded teams had byes while the bottom 4 seeds battled it out in the wild card round. After 5 days off, the top 2 teams in each league took on the wild card survivors.

The AL top-seeded Baltimore Orioles, winners of 101 games in the regular season, were swept by the Texas Rangers, 3-0.

The NL 2nd-seeded Los Angeles Dodgers, winners of 100 games in the regular season, were swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks, 3-0.

The NL top-seeded Atlanta Braves, winners of 104 games in the regular season and owners of the best record in all of baseball, trail in their series to the 4th-seeded Philadelphia Phillies, 2-1 with game 4 today in Philadelphia. The Braves are in a fight for their lives while the Phillies have the momentum and play at home.

Consider these dates:
• Sunday 01 October — was the final day of the regular season
• Tuesday 03 October — the best of 3 WC series start
• Saturday 07 October — the best of 5 DS series start
• Wednesday 11 October — the Orioles and Dodgers have been swept out, and the Braves are close to elimination.

Is the time off harmful to the top seeded teams? Through the years and the changing playoff formats, have the stronger teams with more days off underperformed in the postseason?

I don’t really have an opinion on the question, but I will point out that the season is long and potentially full of trades, injuries, call-ups, and other adjustments, so that the teams which are strongest over the whole course of the regular season are not necessarily the strongest in October.

This. And the post-season is so much about pitching. The Dodgers managed to shore up a depleted pitching staff with replacewmts ranging from terrible to too inexperienced. Lynn was a disaster, Kershaw was clearly hurt and Bobby Miller was green. The Braves ran through how many starters throughout the season, and knew guys like Morton would be running on fumes by the end of it. The Orioles were in the same boat - relying on guys coming off injuries, and with a fully depleted bullpen.

The Astros didn’t seem to miss a beat.

I seem to recall a stat from a few years ago that having the most regular season wins is a very unreliable predictor of who wins the WS, never mind the playoff format.

Baseball, out of all sports, is a game of “who’s hot right now” and a five- or seven-game series is simply not long enough to consistently identify the better team, if we define “better team” as who is likeliest to win the most games across an entire season. 100-win teams can have multiple losing streaks during the season. Why not during the playoffs? The baseball gods are just fickle.

Supposed juggernauts lose to “lesser” teams in the playoffs with a regularity that doesn’t seem to occur in (for example) playoff football. So, not saying that the playoff format may not need improvement, but my gut at least (always the best indicator, this board will agree) says it’s probably an overstated problem, if it is one at all.

It certainly feels wrong even if it isn’t. It especially stands out in contrast to all the rule changes this season. So many good decisions except this one turd in the punchbowl.

Historically, it’s actually pretty unusual for the team with the most wins to win it all. At least since divisional play started - prior to 1969, of course, only two teams made the playoffs.

We do not yet know if the bye hurts a team, because they’ve only done it this way for two seasons. That’s not enough info to go on. Last year the bye teams were 2-2 in the division series, and this year so far 1-2, so really we can’t tell. 3-4 means squat.

I’ve always thought that the teams that had to fight over the last couple weeks of the season to reach the postseason had an advantage over those that clinch early and could take it easy in those weeks. Getting hot late in the year gives momentum that the early clinchers don’t have.

Allowing players to rest and injuries to heal, as well as allowing managers to set optimal pitching matchups are advantages of byes that should at least cancel out any detrimental effect of time off.

Keys to postseason success typically have been dominant pitching and playing really well when the games matter most.

If that sometimes favors underdogs who perform under pressure, that adds to my enjoyment.*

*the triumph of “lesser” teams really pisses off front-runners. Long-time L.A. Times sports columnist Jim Murray used to become outraged when upsets occurred, like the Mets knocking off the “better” team, the Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series.

Momentum is tomorrow night’s starting pitcher. Maybe the 2019 Nationals can claim that a late season surge propelled them to a title. But are there any other real surprises in the last 20 years?

I never really bought the concept of “momentum” in this context. Late season injuries or fatigue or lack of depth exposed in the do or die crucible that is playoff baseball? Sure but not momentum

You can look at the ALCS for an example. Both teams fought it out for the AL West, a playoff appearance was not assured for either until the last series, and the division itself was decided literally on the last day of the season.

But the Astros, who had to fight to the last day this season, clinched earlier in previous seasons, yet still managed to make deep postseason runs those years. Giving their starters a break in the last couple weeks did not hurt - and some argued it helped to rest their bullpen and heal up a little from the grind.

So the same team in different years is somehow an example of both how good it is to rest and recover but also how to maintain momentum going into the playoffs.

Truth is any team can run into hot or cold streaks at any time. That’s just baseball. The whole concept of a playoff itself does not reward the ‘best’ teams but injects a bit of randomness and excitement. And expanding playoffs exacerbates the randomness. A team that has been the best overall team for 162 games rarely wins the whole thing.

I’m fairly sure that’s not true; I don’t have it in front of me, but did read a study a few years back that teams that seem to have “momentum” at the end of September don’t do especially well in the playoffs. I’ll see what I can do to dig up some data.

The biggest surprise in the last 20 years has to be the 2006 Cardinals, and they backed into the playoffs, losing 9 of their last 12.

I don’t think this season is representative that the byes will do poorly in their first round. The Dodgers for one thing were a bit of a mess, not the juggernaut we know them to be or what they were in the regular season. Atlanta is a really good team and could pull it out. Don’t forget too that teams in the postseason are good, that’s why they are there. Maybe Atlanta has had trouble this season against those teams.

Same thing last year. We have just two seasons of this playoff format. So far, the bye teams are 3-4, in my mind, about what you would expect, 4-4 if Atlanta comes back against the Phillies. Probably not statistically significant, nor likely even 3-5. As I said, the Dodgers are not the same team earlier in the season so I’m dismissing them making it 3-3 against another good team. Last year, they lost against the Padres and those games were close. Taking everything into account, I don’t think we can say that have a week off is detrimental.

I wrote about just this for a now defunct sports website over a dozen years ago. As I recall, I researched this very question and as I recall, there was no correlation to winning it all for teams that finished strong. I could find no correlation at all for other things such as teams with the better record.

It’s all about the matchups, which team is healthiest at the time, especially in the pitching department and often a little bit of luck or bad luck depending on your point of view.

Well we definitely cannot say the opposite, that getting a week off is beneficial.

It’s one fewer series to worry about.

It’s impossible to say either way. We have a tiny data sample.

Going a bit further back, the 2000 Yankees lost 15 of their final 18 games. That team only won 5 more games on the season than this year’s fourth place finishers

The 1985 Royals finished the season 9-11.

The 1987 Twins lost seven of their last nine games.

The 1990 Reds had a losing record in September.

The 1991 Twins finished 10-13.

Teams that finish hot win too - the 1992 Blue Jays never lost two games in a row after August. But overall it seems pretty random to me. A team’s performance in April or May is no less predictive of playoff success.

The pattern seems to be that good teams tend to be the ones that make the playoffs in the first place. So a good team, albeit not always the one with the best record, will win the whole thing or at least make a deep run.

Other than that, ‘momentum’ or ‘rest’ or whatever are post-hoc justifications for how a team that was good enough during the season somehow managed to also be good enough in the postseason.

To the extent a team gets a bye and loses a series, well, that happens. How many times during the season did one of the playoff teams drop a series to a sub-.500 bottom feeding team? Happens with more regularity than we would like. Example: this season alone, the A’s won series against both the Braves and the Astros and the Royals won series against the Dodgers, the Twins, and the Astros

Any team can have a bad few games, and suddenly they’re out of the playoffs.