suffolkvoice.net
Some guys have all the luck, they say.
But for the first time in a long time, this baseball postseason doesn’t show it.
The usual players are out. No Boston Red Sox, no New York Yankees. (Hallelujah—it’s the first time since 1993 neither team has made the playoffs.)
Recent mainstays like the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies did not make the postseason.
Instead, the only teams left as of Monday were the Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals, San Francisco Giants, Washington Nationals, Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals.
And that’s just fine by me.
Sure, if we really wanted to shake things up, we’d find a way to eliminate the Cardinals and Giants to replace them with the San Diego Padres and New York Mets or some other lackluster teams, but for now I’ll take what I can get.
At the very least, the baseball postseason seems fresh.
In the upcoming American League Championship Series, fans of baseball get to watch two competing offensive philosophies at play: the Orioles just hope they have someone on base when they hit a home run, while the Royals win games with speed and defense.
Plus, they’re small-market teams the likes of which baseball fans aren’t used to seeing in the playoffs, which have traditionally been dominated by teams with payrolls the size of a small country’s economy.
(Seriously—cia.gov estimated the Federated States of Micronesia’s gross domestic product at $339 million in 2013, about $100 million more than the Dodgers’ 2014 payroll of $235.3 million.)
As of Monday, only three of the top-10 teams in preseason payroll were still in contention (Dodgers, Giants and Nationals), while the Cardinals, Orioles and Royals were 13th, 15th and 19th, respectively.
Maybe some guys have all the money. But in 2014, those same guys don’t have all the luck, and the playoffs are better for it.
Tim Carroll
Senior Sports Editor
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