October has absolutely delivered thus far for baseball fans. We’ve seen 38 playoff games and hopefully seven more are coming as the Dodgers and Yankees meet in the Fall Classic. We’ve seen plenty of late-inning fireworks and a lot of offense.
So who have been the biggest winners and losers of the October chaos so far? Let’s dive in.
Winners: Baseball fans
Nine days ago, I ran through how amazing the first two rounds of the playoffs had been. Since then, we saw a ton of offense in the NLCS with Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers advancing to their first full-season World Series since 2018. On the AL side, we just saw three incredible games in the Cleveland leg with Game 3 truly being one of the most dramatic baseball games in history. From the eighth inning through the 10th inning, there were four home runs that either tied the game or put a team in the lead, with three of those homers being two-run shots and the last one being a walk-off job. Games 4 and 5 were also dramatic with big-time blows, including Juan Soto’s three-run shot to help win Game 5 for the Yankees. It’s their first pennant since 2009.
There has just been so much drama and the best part is it hasn’t gone into the wee hours of the night/morning. We’ll get to more on that in a second.
Now, I should address that there are large contingents of fans who hate the Yankees and/or Dodgers. That doesn’t mean that all the “real” baseball fans hate this matchup or whatever. These are the teams with the best record in each league and have some of the best players in baseball. It’s great baseball. If you claim to love baseball, this series has the goods.
Loser: The ‘bye’ narrative
Unfortunately, in this era where everything has to be re-litigated the second there’s an upset, there was a narrative growing about the wild-card round bye being bad for the higher-seeded teams who got to rest. Part of the reason was the NL sent two No. 6 seeds to the World Series in the first two years of the current playoff format. Of course, the Astros got a bye in 2022 and went 7-0 on the AL side before winning the World Series in six games, but that got ignored by many people, notably those from the Atlanta area. I discussed it in much greater length here, but the reality was always that the small-sample results did absolutely nothing to prove that the bye was bad.
Here in 2024, three of the four bye teams won and each league sent the No. 1 seed to the World Series.
Obviously, this doesn’t prove that the bye is all of a sudden great, but the people who were overreacting have lost a lot of material for their argument. This is the third World Series in this current playoff format and a bye team will have won two of the three World Series.
Winners: Rod Manfred and baseball brass
Seeing the Rangers win the World Series for the first time last season was pretty awesome. The Diamondbacks had a fun and improbable run to the World Series. It was not, however, a very popular World Series. I don’t necessarily get caught up in the market-size discussion, but it should be noted neither of these teams are small-market ballclubs. The D-backs were just emerging from a rebuild and only won 84 games. The Rangers have a big fan base but take a back seat to their neighbors, the Cowboys. The TV ratings were bad. It only lasted five games, too.
From the perspective of attention across the sports landscape, MLB sure could’ve used a bounce back this season.
If you injected any of Rob Manfred and his inner circle of MLB execs with a truth serum heading into the year, they’d admit that a Dodgers-Yankees World Series would’ve been best for business.
And here we are. This is the most common postseason series, believe it or not. They’ve played in the World Series 11 times before with the Yankees being 8-3, though we haven’t seen the matchup since 1981. This is the first time in MLB history that two 50-plus home run hitters are squaring off in the World Series. Sure enough, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge are both overwhelmingly likely to win the MVP in their respective leagues. That would make this the first World Series with MVPs facing off since 2012 (Miguel Cabrera and Buster Posey).
How many World Series have there been where players the caliber of Juan Soto and Mookie Betts weren’t the best players on their own team? There’s more hardware, too, because Gerrit Cole has a Cy Young and Freddie Freeman also has an MVP, in addition to Ohtani, Betts and Judge.
And, again, these are the one seeds. It’s not like an 83-win Yankees Little Engine That Could made a late run. These two teams have been loaded all year and have fan bases that expected to be here.
This is a monstrous World Series.
While we’re speaking of Manfred …
Winner: The pitch clock
Once the pitch clock was implemented in the spring of 2023, there was a divide. The naysayers thought it would be an absolute disaster (I heard “shitshow” among other things) and there was a condescending attitude toward the people in favor of it. The implication was always something like, “it’s OK to admit you just don’t like baseball that much.” And I’ve discussed before the biggest problem was World Series games ending after midnight or even 1 a.m. ET on weeknights. You just lose so much of your potential audience in that window and this is the time to be winning over fans, not turning them away.
Now, look at all the late-inning action we’ve seen in the playoffs and realize that none of the biggest moments really happened too late.
The pace is excellent, too. We don’t have Pedro Baez sitting there holding the ball for a minute in a big spot. The players aren’t rushed. They just aren’t taking forever to play baseball.
To those aforementioned condescending people: I love baseball. I don’t love watching the players stand around not doing baseball. And these playoffs are pretty good proof that you’ve lost the argument and the pitch clock was an amazing implementation.
Losers: Top-shelf relievers
After giving up only five earned runs in the entire regular season, and only two home runs, Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase gave up eight earned runs on 12 hits — and three homers — in eight innings here in the playoffs. It wasn’t just him. So many power arms after wildly successful regular seasons got touched up in the playoffs. I covered this after Game 3 of the ALDS, but more happened afterward, including Juan Soto’s three-run bomb off Hunter Gaddis. Gaddis had a 1.57 ERA in the regular season and 4.91 in the playoffs.
Winners: Star power
We’ve already mentioned the World Series housing the likes of Judge, Ohtani, Betts, Soto, Cole and Freeman, among others. Teoscar Hernández is a two-time All-Star who hit 33 homers and won the Home Run Derby this year. He’s a relative footnote in this power-packed Fall Classic.
It wasn’t just this series, though. The entire playoffs have been loaded with well-known stars. The Mets featured Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso. They beat a Phillies team headlined by Bryce Harper. The Guardians pride themselves on being an under-the-radar ballclub, but José Ramírez has been a superstar — he’s finished in the top five of MVP voting four times. Some other titans we saw in the playoffs: Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Bobby Witt Jr., Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Gunnar Henderson and likely AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal. This was not even close to an exhaustive list. It was loaded this year.
Losers: Anyone worried about salaries
Inevitably, having the Yankees and Dodgers in the World Series means — in addition to all the good stuff mentioned above — that we’re bound to hear plenty about their payrolls. There’s context behind all the payroll talk and we’ve covered that before. The bottom line, though, is baseball still hasn’t had a repeat champion since 2000. The mighty Yankees haven’t even been here since 2009. The Royals have won the World Series more recently.
If you can’t see a Dodgers-Yankees World Series without fretting about money, I’m sorry but I have no choice but to throw the “loser” label on you here.
Winners: Under-the-radar moves
One of the many reasons baseball is different than the other sports is that you can’t just outspend everyone and automatically win. If there was no salary cap in the NBA, for example, you probably could. And while the Yankees don’t get to where they are without Aaron Judge in general, they basically won the ALDS and ALCS without him providing great help. He had a huge home run in Game 3 of the ALCS, but they lost that game.
It’s long been a discussion point that baseball differs because the biggest spots are determined by a pre-set lineup and not a “who gets the ball?” situation like in so many other team sports.
There were plenty of heroes in the playoffs so far that came via under-the-radar moves. Lane Thomas was a hero for the Guardians multiple times and he was a cheap trade deadline acquisition. Several Mets players who made big contributions came from moves that weren’t heralded at the time.
There are some good ones on the two pennant winners.
Yankees closer Luke Weaver was grabbed off waivers from the Mariners in September 2023. Their top lefty in the bullpen is now Tim Hill. He was signed in June after being released by the worst team in baseball history. Jake Cousins also came from the White Sox in late March.
The NLCS MVP was Tommy Edman. The Dodgers got him as part of a three-team trade on July 29. At the time, Edman hadn’t played all year due to injury. Much of the focus of the deal at the time was the Cardinals landing Erick Fedde. Also part of that deal was Michael Kopech, who had a 4.74 ERA and 1.35 ERA for the White Sox. He’s been brilliant for the Dodgers since the acquisition. Credit CBS Sports scribe R.J. Anderson for giving the Dodgers high marks on the deal. It has paid great dividends.
