Thankfully, I could pre-write this intro! So I’ll just take the time to say that their plan to move the two Braves games to the off-day between the regular season and the postseason was really dumb. I’m sure whichever team goes to the postseason (possibly both, if they split the series) will be thrilled with having to go all-out, losing an off-day, and traveling back-to-back-to-back like this. And if the Diamondbacks make it, even though they at least got to keep their off-day free, I’m sure they won’t be thrilled with having to wait so long and cut it so close to find out if they’re playing in October, let alone who their match-up will be against.
And this was such an obvious conflict. It was clear that the games would be disrupted due to weather, and rather than preemptively rescheduling them or moving them to a neutral site, my understanding is that Commissioner Manfred caved to the Braves management over concerns about missing out on ticket sales from the home games, letting them put off searching for alternatives until it was far too late to do anything.
Maybe it’s just my familiarity with the Astros, but I remember a time when the league would have stepped in and said “I’m sorry, but we need to move these to keep everything running smoothly”. In fact, I remember multiple times that happened! And neither of those scenarios were as pressing as these Mets-Braves games (both times came earlier in the season and had less bearing on postseason outcomes). And sure, I wasn’t happy about either of those at the moment, but I at least understood why they happened, and this present mess is offering a clear example of why the league needed to do something about the problem.
The big difference between then and now is, of course, the league’s commissioner. Bud Selig was greedy and rarely stood in the owners’ way, but he did seem interested in keeping the league functioning properly and improving the product on the field, even if that did occasionally lead to him overruling the owners. In contrast, Rob Manfred doesn’t seem to have that “but”; he’ll just let the owners keep pursuing whatever harebrained schemes they think will make them money now, even if it hurts them or the game in the long-run. Perhaps there are other scenarios where this pattern reappears.
Anyway, let’s move on to when future-me has the results of those last two games…
DROUGHTS
I thought for sure that we’d see a downturn in average and median World Series droughts this postseason. After all, the Rangers erased the Major’s second-longest active Championship drought last year, and although they wouldn’t be returning this October to defend their title, all three of the winners from 2020 to 2022 (the Dodgers, Braves, and Astros) would be there. However, that’s not what we wound up seeing.
Instead, by both median (27 years) and average (29 ⅔ years), the 2024 postseason has the fifth-highest mark since the start of the divisional era. Even with three of the last four winners making an appearance, plus another champion from the last decade in the Royals (not to mention the Yankees generally), the set on the whole is relatively cursed. Some of it is that the Astros, Braves, and Dodgers were already accounted for in last year’s playoff set, so the set of those three coming back didn’t change much. But it’s also because those five plus the Phillies (last win in 2008) make up our entire lower half, while the other half of our dozen teams are all in the throes of notable dry spells.
Cleveland is of course leading in the other direction, with this year representing year #76 since their last title; them returning to October after missing last year does more than enough to offset the Rangers going away. And speaking of Texas, with their drought over, co-1969 expansion teams San Diego and Milwaukee (neither of whom has won it all) now take over joint ownership of the second-longest active title drought; both will be playing this week. And looking across the rest of our field, the Orioles (1983), Tigers (1984), and Mets (1986) now represent our sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-longest droughts, since so many of the big players are off the board.
So if anything, it’s going to be difficult to top this year in the near future, especially if any of those six go all the way this year. Lining up six of the eight longest droughts to appear in one postseason already seems difficult; if the Rangers bounce back, or any other semi-recent winners like the Nationals or Red Sox have a Royals-like resurgence, it would likely start pushing these numbers lower again.
PLAYERS WITHOUT A WORLD SERIES
In another Hot Corner Harbor tradition, the Best Players Without a World Series quiz series will be returning once the actual World Series has concluded. This year’s version should be around 50 names, covering roughly the top 100 players; I went pretty deep into the 101-115 range last year, but there was enough turnover that I didn’t have to bother with that this time.
As in the past, I’ll include the list of names at the end, so that anyone who doesn’t want to spoil themselves a month early can skip it. But just as far as numbers go, this is what we’re looking at. I’ll remind everyone that to keep things simple, I use “anyone who played for the team this year qualifies”. That actually does come into play for at least one team. Additionally, because of the churn, the WAR cutoff is a little lower, so there are a lot of players who just missed that line, even on the “None” teams. And of course as always, there are a lot of players still too young to qualify, but who will certainly make the list in two or three years if they don’t win now.
None: Orioles, Royals, Tigers
One: Astros, Braves
Two: Dodgers
Three: Brewers, Padres
Four: Guardians, Phillies
Five: Yankees
Seven: Mets
THREE-TEAM PLAYERS
Last year, history was made as relief pitcher Will Smith became not just the eighteenth different player to win a World Series with three different franchises, but the first to do it all back-to-back-to-back, going from the 2021 Braves to the 2022 Astros to the 2023 Rangers. And this year, he has a chance to keep that historic streak going with his new team the Royals. I’m not sure if Smith will see time in the postseason, as his performance this year was pretty lackluster and he’s rehabbing from an injury at the moment. But he is a left-handed reliever, and given how in-demand that can be, we probably can’t rule an appearance out, either (even if it is in a “last man in the ‘pen” role).
We had a chance for a three-team player in Joc Pederson, but the Diamondbacks getting eliminated removes that possibility. Outside of him, we’re just looking at players hoping to win with their second team. There are too many to name all of them, but some cases of note:
-Several of last year’s Rangers have already moved on to other teams. We’ve mentioned Smith, but there’s also Robbie Grossman (Royals) and Martin Perez (Padres).
-For any readers from The Crawfish Boxes searching for ex-Astros, the Royals also brought in Astros hero Yuli Gurriel towards the end of the year as an emergency injury replacement, just in time for him to qualify for postseason rosters. Joe Musgrove from the 2017 squad is still pitching with San Diego, while 2022 bullpen arms Ryne Stanek and Phil Maton both landed with the Mets after starting the season elsewhere. And if you want to include the technicalities, Teoscar Hernandez is on the Dodgers (if you want to count the players the ‘17 Astros traded away at the deadline), while Dallas Keuchel pitched briefly for the Brewers earlier this year (four starts before being cut).
-Meanwhile, an Astros win this year would add Jason Heyward to the two-team club. Several of his 2016 Cubs teammates are also in October this year, including Kyle Schwarber (Phillies), Anthony Rizzo (Yankees), and Javier Baez (Tigers), although the last of those may not play due to injury and underperformance.
-And of course, a lot of the names I mentioned last year still apply this year, including Freddie Freeman (Dodgers), Xander Bogaerts (Padres), Trea Turner (Phillies), and Juan Soto (Yankees). I’m surely leaving out some names, because again, there are a ton of them, but I’ll do a more thorough check once we have our actual winner.
EXPANSION TEAMS
Last year, the Rangers and Diamondbacks gave us just the third-ever all-expansion team World Series, following 2015 (Royals-Mets) and 2019 (Nationals-Astros). What are our chances of seeing that feat back-to-back for the first time?
Obviously it won’t be with the same time, but we do have a decent crop of candidates: The Royals and Astros represent the expansion teams in the AL, while a full half of the NL teams (the Brewers, Padres, and Mets) began after 1960. In fact, if the Braves had choked away that second game of the double header, literally every team in the NL Wild Card round would have been an expansion team, which feels notable.
Of course, since none of those five got the byes, that also means there’s a high chance they’re going to be whittled down quickly. If you treat every round as a coin flip (not a bad rough estimate), we’re looking at about a 1-in-4 chance for the AL and a 3-in-8 chance in the NL, for a combined chance of just under 1-in-10. So not super likely, but not unthinkable either; in fact, that’s about what the odds were of it happening in 2019.
And while we’re talking about expansion teams in the World Series: as far as total wins go, the Astros, Mets, and Royals will all be gunning to become the first expansion franchise with three World Series titles. Meanwhile, the Padres and Brewers are both seeking their first championship (with the Rangers removing themselves from the list last year, there are now just five teams left with no World Series titles under their belt).
UNIQUE MATCH-UPS
This is one area where there’s a pretty big difference with last year’s set: out of the 36 potential World Series matchups we might see this year, a full 16 of them have happened before. That might not seem like too big of a change compared to last year, when 11 potential matchups would have been repeats, but it’s worth remembering that those 11 potential matchups covered just 11 different World Series (i.e.; each one had only happened once).
This year, our 16 potential repeats would cover a full 31 past Fall Classics. There have only been 20 World Series matchups that have happened twice or more at this point, and four of them are represented here. The Yankees are a big part of that, with Yankees-Dodgers being the big one (with 11 past iterations), and Yankees-Braves (four times) tying for fifth-place all-time in Most Common Match-up. Surprisingly, the one non-Yankees repeat we’ve seen before involves the Guardians, despite their lack of recent postseason success.
While we’re talking about them, the Yankees have faced most of our NL competitors this year, having squared off against 12 different franchises in the Fall Classic, but the Brewers are actually one of their few remaining match-ups that hasn’t happened in the World Series before.
Part of that is that the Brewers have not won an NL Pennant; their lone World Series appearance came back in 1982, when they were an AL team. As a result, every potential match-up they would be involved in would be new, so if you’re hoping for something unique, their your best bet. The AL equivalent this year would be the Tigers, who (despite their long history) have only faced one of our six NL teams: the Padres, of all teams.
Actually, on that note, it’s kind of funny how well-represented these expansion teams’ past matchups are here. The Astros and Mets only have five pennants, but a full three of their past World Series foes are here (even more shocking, since one of the Astros’ pennants came as an NL team). The Royals have four pennants, and half of their old opponents made it to October. The Padres have only made it to the Fall Classic twice, and both of those teams are here.
And tying that fact back to that “20 World Series matchups have happened multiple times” factoid, none of those 20 rematches have involved an expansion team. Should any of those repeats happen this year, it’ll be the first. And we even have a potential rematch for our first all-expansion series from back in 2015, in the Royals-Mets.
And let’s take on the flip side of that fact: unique match-ups between the sixteen founding MLB teams are much harder to come by, especially in a playoff field that includes both the Yankees and the Dodgers. However, we do have a handful of possibilities this year: Guardians-Phillies, Tigers-Phillies, Tigers-Dodgers, Orioles-Braves, and Tigers-Braves.
Let’s see, what else is there… Yankees-Mets will obviously be between two teams in the same city, although we covered that back in 2000. If the Astros face the Mets, it’ll be the fourth unique NL East team they’ve matched with in the last six seasons (not to mention the third World Series where they’ll face a team they once played in the NLCS, back before they switched leagues). The Orioles briefly played as the Milwaukee Brewers when they were founded, before becoming the St. Louis Browns in 1902; there’s probably not a ton of bad blood there, but it’s still not every year you see a matchup like that (particularly not one that doesn’t involve the Yankees, Dodgers, or Giants). Dodgers-Guardians will be a rematch with two new names; not just the Guardians, but the Dodgers as well, who were still known as the Brooklyn Robins the last time they met back in 1920 (which would also, coincidentally, make it the oldest possible rematch we could see, even before any of the Yankees ones).
| rematches | PHI | MIL | LAD | SDP | NYM | ATL |
| NYY | X | X | X | X | X | |
| CLE | X | X | ||||
| HOU | X | X | X | |||
| BAL | X | X | X | |||
| DET | X | |||||
| KCR | X | X |
A Full List of Potential Rematches
Yankees-Dodgers, 11x (1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956, 1963, 1977, 1978, 1981)
Yankees-Braves, 4x (1957, 1958, 1996, 1999)
Yankees-Phillies, 2x (1950, 2009)
Guardians-Braves, 2x (1948, 1995)
Astros-Phillies (2022)
Astros-Braves (2021)
Astros-Dodgers (2017)
Royals-Mets (2015)
Yankees-Mets (2000)
Yankees-Padres (1998)
Tigers-Padres (1984)
Orioles-Phillies (1983)
Royals-Phillies (1980)
Orioles-Mets (1969)
Orioles-Dodgers (1966)
Guardians-Dodgers (1920)
PLAYERS WITHOUT A WORLD SERIES (SPOILERS, after the email list)
Astros: Jose Abreu (Josh Hader is the active World-Series-less leader, if you only want to count players still with the team, although he falls a bit short of what will appear on the quiz)
Braves: Matt Olson
Brewers: Christian Yelich, Willy Adames, Wade Miley
Dodgers: Shohei Ohtani, Kevin Kiermaier
Guardians: Jose Ramirez, Alex Cobb, Carlos Carrasco, Andres Gimenez
Mets: Francisco Lindor, Starling Marte, Jose Quintana, Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil, Julio Teheran (cut after one start), Pete Alonso
Orioles: none (active World Series-less WAR leader: Corbin Burnes)
Padres: Manny Machado, Yu Darvish, Fernando Tatis Jr.
Phillies: Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto, Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler
Royals: none (active World Series-less WAR leader: Tommy Pham, who narrowly made it last time but fell off this season)
Tigers: none (active World Series-less WAR leader: Tarik Skubal, although Jack Flaherty and Mark Canha both have more career WAR and played for them before being traded away; both would be removed my the list, under my current rules)
Yankees: Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Gerrit Cole, DJ LeMahieu, Marcus Stroman
Didn't realize there were so many Yankees without a World Series!
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