Obviously, it seems too simplistic to think of tonight’s NLCS event between the Phillies and the Padres as two teams that just traded or signed a bunch of good players. It’s such a damn statement about the position of MLB at this point that this seems like a radical idea. The easiest thing to conclude is that you need better players to be better than you. However, here we are.
Neither the Padres nor the Phillies are as scary as “homegrown” as it is. The only player that Padres has put through their system, kinda, can’t decide if he wants to fall off his motorcycle or not read the labels on whatever he’s on or both, but he definitely wants to do more than he wants to play baseball. So the Padres is built entirely from the outside.
The Phillies have a few more players they can call themselves one of their own, such as Aaron Nola or Alec Bohm or Rhys Hoskins. But they also include a lot of imports, such as Bryce Harper, Nick Castellanos, Zack Wheeler, Kyle Schwarber. While these teams’ total wins don’t give the LA Times any respect for them, they’re certainly the teams that are giving everything to be here.
What MLB doesn’t want anyone to notice is that eight out of 12 of this year’s knockouts are in the top 11 on the payroll. And the Mariners and Jays probably won’t wait too long to join those ranks to complement the already-developed core of their roster. The Mariners are particularly getting a ticket here because it’s the first season they’re considered anything, and you can expect them to be major players in free agency for whatever they are. feel the need. While MLB has certainly tried to give the narrative that teams have to be built with only cheap labor (that’s how they think about it, don’t fool yourself), the reality is that teams often don’t get here. if not get the top of the list from outside their organization. Maybe you could be a production line like the Astros or the Braves (and the Braves’ last year’s championship was played by a playing field where they had to throw together mid-season via swap), but they still felt the need to trade for the Justin Verlander or Gerrit Cole once upon a time.
There’s probably nothing to be learned from post-season. It is simply too weird and random to give you any clue as to what can be done to control it. You build a team of 162 people and just hope that everything that matters in six months continues to matter in the next three weeks. But what lies right there is at the top of the list, and you have to make them the best you can be.
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While there’s still too much to wait for the next day about the Dodgers’ 111-winning team failing to make it through, the truth is that when it comes to the knockout stages, the Dodgers don’t have to face similar releases. of the teams with which they raced the regular season. For example, the Padres basically had to pick their 4th and 5th starters for this series. Mike Clevinger threw 2.2 innings, and Sean Manea was thrown out of the car in the woods above. What made the Dodgers win 111 games in six months was that there was little difference between their first and fifth games, and a 1-27 drop or so, many over the course of the season.
This doesn’t matter in October. Basically, teams can only rely on three warm-ups, and maybe three or four pain relievers. The Padres needed just four releases to throw more than two innings in four games, receiving 9.2 innings from just Suarez, Hader and Martinez. The Dodgers learned about this in 2019 when the Nationals were able to break the Corbin, Scherzer or Strasburg node over the course of five games. Or in 2018 when the Red Sox just threw whatever boots upright right back out of the pen. Condensed versions of these teams are probably a lot closer to the 111-winning Dodgers than their regular season form.
Same goes for the Phillies, who basically had to use four painkillers to get the Braves into that good night, while the importance of Aaron Nola and Wheeler being in the first half of the series is one advantage over the starting percentage they make. in a regular season. Especially when the Braves’ best starter is injured and their manager is asleep.
But that’s just the front desk staff. Phillies and Padres needed more than that to get here. Neither of them really achieved all that is good in the entire lineup, but the people they trusted did. Bryce Harper scores 0.5 points ahead of the Braves, and they get mass shooting moments from JT Realmuto and Hoskins. Ditto the Padres has been carried by Manny Machado (1,113 OPS in the split series) long enough to allow others to have their moments here and there. Yes, there are unsung heroes Trent Grisham or Auston Nola, but their contributions only matter if Machado is carrying the flag going forward.
Neither the Dodgers nor the Braves don’t have a stellar roster. Ditto the Yankees if they lose in a few hours (actually, wait a minute, they have Aaron Judge, not many others. But we’ll save that for another day). It’s just that in the knockout stages, they’re more likely to see players as good as the ones they have, and they’re less likely to look at those who fill the bottom of the list. Teams are compressed to look like the Dodgers or the Braves or the Mets in five or six days.
That means it’s good to have really good players, however you get them, as simple as that but as complicated as the MLB teams did. And seeing that so few people can produce it all on their own, that means more teams should be doing whatever they can to get what’s already out there. People who make a difference don’t grow on trees, and the Phillies and Padres are here because they’ve accepted that and done something about it. They don’t wait around maybes and hope for the development of prospects. They got the real thing. Hopefully that’s a lesson.
