The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox barely had any time to let their AL East battle settle before being thrown into another high-stakes chapter of their rivalry. They are facing each other in the AL Wild Card Series while the Atlanta Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies are battling it out in the National League. However, MLB’s postseason bracket has sparked a broader question about the playoff structure. The issue is not the rivalry itself but whether the current format can produce the matchup baseball’s strongest teams deserve in October.
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Former MLB player Erik Kratz wondered if it would have been better to see the aforementioned marquee rivalries play out later in the postseason. And veteran MLB reporter Ken Rosenthal weighed in on a solution that can change how the bracket is determined beyond the opening round.
“Sometimes it just works the way it is working right now,” the analyst said in a recent “Foul Territory” podcast. “But the re-seeding after the Wild Card series, that’s something that has been talked about a lot in recent weeks. And that is something that honestly needs to happen.”
The Yankees have managed to comfortably secure a playoff spot this season. Even with their captain Aaron Judge missing several months, they were atop the Wild Card standings with a 93-68 record. Boston, on the other hand, struggled earlier in the season. But towards the middle, they made an incredible turnaround and ended up just behind New York in the Wild Card standings.
The Phillies had a similar scenario. Their season almost slipped away before it even settled in. But they made it work under Don Mattingly’s management and secured the final NL Wild Card spot. The Braves, their divisional rivals, took the NL East lead and entered the postseason as the No. 3 seed.
That’s why Rosenthal said, “Ideally, you want the Yankees and Red Sox playing in a later round, possibly the Braves and Phillies as well.”
The analyst is saying that the format shouldn’t lock the marquee rivalries into happening so early in the postseason.
“They have to recognize what is happening in the American League this year. You have the three best teams on one side of the bracket: Yankees, Red Sox, and of course, the Tampa Bay Rays, who got the bye,” he added. “And then on the other side, you have the Guardians, the Astros, and the White Sox, whose records are simply not as good, not even close to as good. That’s not what you want.”
The Cleveland Guardians, the AL Central leaders, got a bye, while both the Red Sox and the New York Yankees are playing the Wild Card series despite having better records. The Guardians will face either the Houston Astros or the Chicago White Sox in the ALDS.
A re-seeding has the power to change the picture to offer the opportunity for the better teams to reach the ALCS.
Several times, highly successful teams faced another strong team early in the postseason and got eliminated. Take the Los Angeles Dodgers, for example. They won 111 games in the 2022 regular season, more than any other team that year. But LA faced the San Diego Padres in the NLDS and lost 3-1. The Braves had a similar fate the next year. They got a bye with 104 wins and then got eliminated by the Phillies in the NLDS.
That’s why Rosenthal mentioned that, “It’s not an ALCS that you’re going to want. Ideally, the ideal ALCS would be one against two, right? That’s Tampa Bay against the Yankees.”
He hoped that MLB would consider this in the upcoming seasons. While the debate will continue, the Yankees just secured a 9-0 win over Boston, and Philadelphia dropped the first game 5-3 against the Braves.