The lesson of these MLB playoffs for the Mets and Yankees? Just get in.
Arizona Diamondbacks relief pitcher Paul Sewald and catcher Gabriel Moreno celebrate their win against the Philadelphia Phillies after Game 6 of the NLCS in Philadelphia on Monday, Oct. 23, 2023. Credit: AP/Matt Slocum
PHILADELPHIA — For the Mets, whose October presence is limited to Francisco Lindor on a beach in a beer commercial that has played an awful lot during these playoffs, and for the Yankees, who have been suspiciously mum since an alleged deep reflection period following their worst season in a generation, there is a lesson to be gleaned from the National League Championship Series: Just get in.
Headed into Game 7 on Tuesday night, the Phillies were looking for a second trip to the World Series in as many years despite not being the best team in the NL East either time. The Diamondbacks were trying to repeat the Phillies’ feat from last season by making it to the final round as the sixth of six seeds.
Oh, and they were competing for the chance to play the American League champion Rangers, who parlayed a 90-win, wild-card season — two years removed from losing 102 games — into home-field advantage in the Fall Classic.
The takeaway isn’t a new one, but it is more real and relevant than ever in this era of over-expanded playoffs: Once a club gets into the postseason, anything can happen.
“With the more teams you have, the more chances you have at a run like this happening,” Diamondbacks closer and former Met Paul Sewald said. “Anybody who has ever been here knows if you’re in the playoffs, you have a chance of winning the World Series. If you’re not in, you don’t have it.”
The Phillies’ Nick Castellanos said: “Last year, we all wanted to get in because it's been a while since this franchise has been in the postseason. This year we were like, we're going to get in. We don't care what it looks like. We don't need to win the division. We just need to get in because we know that once we're in, we thrive in October.”
That makes these Diamondbacks reminiscent of those Phillies, a team that was better than most people expected in the regular season and wound up making a run longer than anybody expected in the postseason. By the time Sewald joined Arizona at the trade deadline, the dream of winning the NL West over the Dodgers was basically dead. Chasing a division title “wasn’t really a thing,” he said, so merely snagging a wild-card berth “was our only focus.”
The D-backs’ 84 wins would be the third-fewest of any team to make the World Series in a full season, behind only the 2006 champion Cardinals (83 wins) and 1973 Mets (82).
“It’s all so unexpected,” Sewald said. “We went into Dodger Stadium [in the NLDS] with no fear because there’s nothing to lose. We’ve been playing with house money for a couple of weeks now. It’s just fine. That’s great for us. We’re too naïve to know we’re not supposed to be here."
Phillies starter Zack Wheeler said: “We both play in tough divisions. Obviously, teams had better records than we both did. But it goes back to: We have a good playoff roster."
All this is more possible than ever because MLB and the players’ union agreed to expand the playoff field — again — to a dozen teams prior to the 2022 season. It was a blatant cash grab, with ESPN paying many millions of dollars for the right to broadcast the wild-card round that consists of at least eight and potentially 12 games. Gigantic corporations like MLB tend not to give up such revenue streams once they obtain them, so don’t expect a return to any of the previous playoff arrangements. If anything, they’ll add teams in the coming years.
A larger bracket has imbued the national pastime with an element of March Madness-style survive-and-advance unpredictability. Asked about the Diamondbacks’ mediocre regular season, manager Torey Lovullo even borrowed language from college basketball, saying “we feel like we deserve to be in the Big Dance.”
For the Mets, Yankees and everybody else, this underscores the importance of trying — certainly in the offseason of course, and probably also at the trade deadline too. For as much as modern front offices try to stick to their competitiveness timelines, franchise-defining moments can arise when you least expect them.
Cinderellas are good news for New York baseball in 2024. The Yankees seem like a reasonably safe bet to rebound from their 82-win season; falling out of the playoff race with weeks to go again would be a shock.
Next year looks like something of a bridge season for the Mets, but pressed at his introductory news conference this month about how he defines “competitive,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said: “We should be in the playoff race and be a true playoff contender. That should be our goal.”
In other words, just get in.
“That was outright said a couple of times, right?” Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll said. “You don’t have to be [amazing]. If are you playing good baseball in the playoffs — we've seen it before — stuff can happen.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
