Luckily, baseball has nothing to do with arm wrestling. It is not a simple measure of raw strength. The same two competitors can compete against each other again and again, and they must be sharp each time if they hope to prevail. It’s a new game with enough complexity to constantly present new requirements and new contours every time two teams enter a diamond.
According to the tape, the 2023 Los Angeles Dodgers would beat the 2023 Arizona Diamondbacks, regardless of the hypothetical version of baseball that resembles arm wrestling. They won 100 games, the D-Backs 84. With Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, they employ two of the five best players in the National League. Even amid a wave of pitching injuries, the Dodgers prevented runs more effectively than Arizona in the second half and at all times. They defeated these Diamondbacks 8-5 in the season series, including in all five games after April. In the 162 games of the demanding MLB regular season, the Dodgers were better.
In the current playoff format, that strength gives the Dodgers a bye — the D-backs had to beat the Milwaukee Brewers to reach that matchup — and favorable conditions, including more games on their home field. It doesn’t earn them anything and really can’t once the first pitch of the series is thrown.
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The Diamondbacks earned their surprise trip to the NLCS
To advance beyond the NLDS and maintain hopes of capping an era of dominance with a second World Series title to clinch the 2020 championship, the Dodgers knew the task: prove their demonstrated superiority three times in up to five chances.
They couldn’t do it. In that series, they couldn’t make it past three innings, let alone three games.
Fast, aggressive and opportunistic, the Diamondbacks thoroughly beat the Dodgers by both exploiting their weakness (lack of surefire starting pitching) and neutralizing their strength (the two MVP contenders). Arizona scored 13 runs in 14 outs against Los Angeles starters Clayton Kershaw, Bobby Miller and Lance Lynn. The Diamondbacks’ pitchers held Betts and Freeman to three walks and one measly infield hit.
Arizona’s best player, rookie outfielder Corbin Carroll, was on base almost constantly. The standout turned heads in an environment that demanded it when he hit an MLB record four home runs in a decisive inning in Game 3 on Wednesday. The Diamondbacks’ starters – Merrill Kelly, Zac Gallen and Brandon Pfaadt – covered 16 innings and allowed just two runs. Their bullpen army and role players came through on a big stage.
Torey Lovullo’s emerging team left no doubt this week. They deserved to win this series, a truth that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts readily admitted after the win.
“They’ve outdone us,” Roberts said, “and there’s no other way around it.”
The D-Backs deserve the chance to try to shock the next team that by all indications should overwhelm them. And they can do that starting Monday in the NLCS.
And the Dodgers’ loss is not in MLB’s postseason format
What the Dodgers make — or deserve — this season is a thornier issue.
They certainly deserved to lose to the Diamondbacks. Such a complete no-show by the team likely would have resulted in a similarly quick loss to the Brewers, the Phillies, or, frankly, a 64-win team if that had been an option.
The hand-wringing over MLB’s postseason format began before the Dodgers even lost Game 2. The biggest existential conflict — now that we can no longer bog down conversations with slow games and the lack of stolen bases — centers on the dismissal of the top seeds to alternate between Game 162 and the Division Series. Under the 12-team format that went into effect last season, the top two division winners in each league receive a bye through the wild-card series and five days off between games. In short, the concern is that this puts the best teams at a disadvantage.
I understand the anxiety and disorientation that comes with removing 100-win teams from the slate after six months of studying them. All else being equal, I’d rather see the regular season as a linear, useful prelude to the postseason rather than a drawn-out build-up to a dice roll. However, when you sift through the dubious results of the last two seasons’ obvious giants, these latest October flops have the benefit of the doubt that only comes from proximity to change.
In reality, the race from final score to immortal champion has been a hectic affair since the ALCS and NLCS were founded in 1969. The addition of more teams since then has brought more opportunities for surprises and perceived injustices, but has not changed the concept. The World Series isn’t necessarily won by the very best baseball team. It is won by the baseball team good enough to reach the tournament and then emerge from the riveting, dramatic scrum. This whole series of challenges has never been a secret.
So the Dodgers are out. Again. It’s their second short retirement in a row against supposedly weaker divisional rivals. And the record books will tell you that this is the third year in a row that they have lost to a team they beat by 16 or more wins in the regular season, including the 2021 Braves, a team with 88 wins. Still, I doubt anyone is worried today about the loss to an Atlanta team that has been among the elite ever since. If the Diamondbacks win 90-plus games over the next four years and routinely play each other in October, will this NLDS loss become acceptable?
Balancing the dynamics of a long season with the short, chaotic sprint of the playoffs can be harrowing, but coming up with ways to legislate that out of play isn’t very productive (or realistic, considering how cash associated with more teams). in the playoffs). Plus, give it a few more years and this seemingly barren, brutal environment will fill with the green of context and history.
The Dodgers have now made the playoffs in 11 consecutive seasons, the third-longest streak in MLB history. It doesn’t take a doctorate in baseball history to remember that the club with the longest streak – the Braves from 1991 to 2005 – won just a single World Series in a shortened season, much like these current Dodgers. From 2000 to 2005, the Bobby Cox-era Braves lost in the NLDS, then in the first round of the postseason, in five of six tries.
No doubt Dodgers fans are also aware that the Houston Astros of the American League have now reached both the playoffs and at least the ALCS in seven consecutive seasons, despite having had some more stressful journeys.
Getting into the playoffs is a game. Winning in the playoffs is a different – and admittedly flakier – game. The Dodgers are Game 1 champions, but their stumbles in Game 2 do not discredit the game or tarnish its enduring appeal.