Who to Root for in the Baseball Playoffs (Other Than the Mets)

10/05/2024 05:00 AM

The NFL may be more popular, the NBA may be cooler, the WNBA (amazingly) may be driving the most exhausting culture-war conversations, but when it comes to providing moments of raw, batshit, my-brain-just-fell-out-of-my-head-and-is-rolling-around-on-the-floor madness, there really is nothing quite like postseason baseball. Thursday night, the Mets' Pete Alonso, a pending free agent (who hadn't done anything in about a month), faced the Brewers' Devin Williams, one of the best relievers in baseball (who had given up only one home run all year), with the Mets just two outs away from the end of their season. The Mets looked doomed, because the Mets always look doomed. And then, out of nowhere, Alonso did the unimaginable:

The Mets have been around for 62 years, and 62 years from now, they'll still be playing that homer on their Jumbotron. The Mets were done — and then they did something immortal. That's what postseason baseball is capable of: It can make you feel like you are ascending to the astral plane.

All four Division Series begin Saturday, which means there are now eight teams left. If you are a fan of any of these teams, you already have a vested interest. Losing your mind for your team, all day every day, is just what you'll be doing for the next couple of weeks. But for the rest of us, those whose teams didn't make it this far, we remain unaffiliated — and available. If you're looking for a bandwagon worth jumping on, I hope this year's League Championship Rootability Ranking will help.

Kansas City Royals

One of the strangest aspects of this year's MLB postseason is that there aren't any real villains. In recent years, you could just toss the Banging Scheme Astros in this last-place spot and move on with your day, but the Tigers ended the Astros' seven-year ALCS streak with a sweep this week. The Royals, like every other team left, are pretty likable: a small-market team with a signature superstar in Bobby Witt Jr., an underappreciated fan base, and a big slugging first-baseman named Vinnie Pasquantino who happily answers to the name "Sasquatch." (Every time he reaches base at Kaufman Stadium, a man in a Sasquatch costume begins walking around in right field.)

There are two reasons the Royals come in last: (1) They're not actually very good (they somehow won their series against the Orioles despite scoring a total of three runs), and (2) improbably, they've had more World Series success over the past decade than any other team on this list, going to consecutive World Series in 2014 and 2015 (and winning in 2015). The last three times the Royals made the postseason, they've reached the World Series. Add that to the consecutive Super Bowls the Chiefs have won … Jeez, save some for the rest of us, Kansas City.

New York Yankees

Okay, so I can't put the Yankees any higher than this, I'm sorry. Still, this is an unusually likable Yankees team, with Juan Soto looking like a perfect fit in pinstripes, Aaron Judge maybe having the best season ever for a right-handed hitter, and fun personalities around like Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Luis Gil.

It's also a Yankees team with legitimate stakes. Gone are the old monster Yankees teams, the utilitarian monoliths who outspend everyone and mirthlessly lurch their way toward bland dominance. These Yankees haven't made a World Series since 2009, which means the whole franchise, from the ownership group to Brian Cashman to manager Aaron Boone, is acting as if they'll be thrown from the ramparts if they fall short again this year. This sort of desperation actually wears well on the Yankees. It's good to see them with a little bit of that trademark Mets flop-sweat. And the field has cleared for them this year: no Astros, no Orioles, just three AL Central teams that the Yankees have typically flicked thoughtlessly off their shoulders. If this Yankees team can't make the World Series, which one will?

Cleveland Guardians

Now that the Cubs have won the World Series again, there's no franchise left in baseball that has gone longer without winning that championship than Cleveland's, which has been titleless since 1948. Theoretically, then, 2024 should be a feel-good story with the Guardians winning the AL Central and potentially setting themselves up for an ALCS matchup with the hated Yankees — the team that has knocked them out of the playoffs three times in the last seven seasons.

But after a fast start, this Guardians team has been limping along for a couple of months now. And it's a mostly nondescript team with two superstars — third-baseman José Ramírez and closer Emmanuel Clase and not much else. The Cleveland team that should have won the World Series was the 2016 team: Does anyone really think this is the one that will finally break through? Besides: They're not even the best story in their own division series.

Philadelphia Phillies

When he broke into baseball as a teenager more than a decade ago, Bryce Harper was considered sort of a punk disruptor; Phillies legend Mike Schmidt, before Harper was even drafted, said someone "is going to have to figure out a way to police this young man." It didn't turn out that way. Harper has matured into a sort of elder statesman of the game, a respected veteran and future Hall of Famer who has won two MVPs and is an unquestioned leader of a terrific Phillies team built specifically to win a World Series right now. That World Series ring is the only thing Harper is missing, and his career will feel incomplete without it—particularly because the Nationals, the team he started his career with, won one the year after he left the team.

The Phillies reached the Series two years ago, came one game short last year, and has an aging team that only is going to get a few more shots at this. The Yankees are the most desperate team to reach the Fall Classic this year. But the Phillies are next. An underrated likable thing about this incarnation of the Phillies: Their fan base has an unusually strong connection to them that grew out of games played in the COVID season of 2020, when fans, calling themselves the Phandemic Krew, would gather outside an empty stadium in Philly and play music and sing songs for the players to hear. This is the rare Philadelphia team that city unequivocally likes.

Los Angeles Dodgers

I will not blame you if you are cheering against the Dodgers this postseason. They're exactly the sort of team that is typically a villain in the playoffs. They have the highest payroll in the sport (by far), they have raided other teams for their best players, they win every year (they haven't missed the playoffs since 2012), and they just won a World Series in 2020 (though that was the COVID season, which still counts, but, you know, not really).

But the Dodgers remain, for now anyway, irresistible, thanks of course to Shohei Ohtani — who not only put together the first 50-50 season in baseball history this year (after weathering what could have been a debilitating gambling scandal) but did so while rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, a surgery he's so close to recovering from that there are rumors he might even take the mound this postseason. (Rumors that the Dodgers have not entirely shot down.) Ohtani, because he spent the first six years of his career alongside Mike Trout in Anaheim, has never played in a postseason game before, denying this once-in-a-lifetime athlete an opportunity on his sport's grandest stage. Simply put, there's no more electric figure in baseball right now than Ohtani, and as long as he's playing, he's the sport's signature story. It's worth cheering for the Dodgers just to watch him.

San Diego Padres

Last year was supposed to be the year for the Padres. Thanks to the pocketbook and seemingly sincere love for his city and his team of then-owner Peter Seidler, the Padres built a superteam like the franchise had never seen before with superstars Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Xander Bogaerts, Juan Soto, and Blake Snell. But that team fell on its face, missing the playoffs entirely, and when Seidler died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma shortly after the season ended, the Padres shipped Soto to the Yankees, let Snell leave in free agency, and fully expected to take several steps backward.

Instead, they've had their best season in years, thanks to the remaining stars, phenom rookie Jackson Merrill, and a fantastic pitching staff led by former Yankee Michael King, who arrived in the Soto trade. The Padres along with the NWSL's San Diego Wave are the only major professional sports franchises left in a great American city, and that city has embraced the baseball team in a way few others have — you can feel the whole area levitate every time the Padres so much as do anything. And now they get to face the Dodgers, the rabbit they're forever trying to chase down. Another reason to root for the Padres: They're the only franchise left that has never won a World Series.

Detroit Tigers

At the trade deadline on July 30, the Tigers were five games under .500 and 7½ games out of the Wild Card. Thus, they quite reasonably traded away any players not under contract past this year — namely, starting pitcher Jack Flaherty, currently taking the hill for the Dodgers this postseason — and began concentrating on 2025. And then they just went nuts: 44-19 after the deadline, led by pitching Triple Crown winner Tarik Skubal and a cavalcade of youngsters emerging at the exact right time.

The Tigers hadn't made the playoffs since 2014 before this season, but they're a classic, signature MLB franchise with a fan base that adores the team and has long deserved better than it has received. Elmore Leonard once wrote about Detroit: "There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees. And there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living." The Tigers are, by far, the biggest underdog in these playoffs. And everybody loves an underdog.

New York Mets

C'mon, now: I'm not made of stone.

Finally! The @mets have a clincher at Citi Field. pic.twitter.com/1iIXkgs67g

— Howie Rose (@HowieRose) October 4, 2024