Image credit: Sergio Estrada-USA TODAY Sports
Translated by Fernando Battaglini
In theory, parity is a good idea for professional sports. Everyone has a chance! It’s not exciting? However, in practice, you could end up with something like the 2024 National League. Everyone has a chance, but it’s not because every team worked and worked to be a potential playoff team. That’s because most of the league is mediocre in ways that are crowding the wild-card seed and, presumably, will also ruin the July 30 trade deadline.
Remember, the trade deadline doesn’t work like it used to. There isn’t a tougher second deadline, like the one when the Red Sox and Dodgers agreed in August to a trade of unemployed players for $250 million in players and contracts that instantly changed the direction of both franchises back in 2012. Deals are now made at the single trade deadline, or not at all. And since there are two full months left in the season when the deadline hits, and 13 of the 15 National League clubs have a legitimate shot at making the postseason, we may not even see those wheels turning much. Even if there are still nine or 10 teams left on July 30, how many deals do we expect to close to help thin the herd?
Entering play on Wednesday, the Phillies lead the NL East, trailing the Guardians for the best winning percentage in MLB by just a half-game, at .658. The Dodgers haven’t been as good, but they’re not far behind at 50-31 (.617). The Brewers are the weakest division leaders in the National League right now, at 47-33, and have the narrowest lead of the trio right now at five and a half games, but the second-place club in the Central , the Cardinals, sport a -30 run differential. While they have a few additional wins in the bag, that may not be something they keep repeating, that’s all.
The Wild Card contenders have a lot more in common with the Cardinals than they do with the division leaders. The Braves are genuinely good despite injuries to key players and have a four-game lead on a wild card spot because of it, and the Padres… the Padres are trying, at least, even if the results aren’t quite there this year either. The defending NL champion Diamondbacks are 39-40, which puts them just a game and a half behind a wild card. The Nationals are the same, albeit with a slightly worse run differential (-12 to -3). The Mets are 38-39, also 1.5 back, and deserve to be there. The Reds are 37-42, but probably should be where the Cardinals are, given that they’re +11 in run differential. The Pirates are 2.5 back despite a 38-41 record and a -35 differential. The Giants are 38-42, three games back despite a minus-29 mark to go with their record. And the Cubs are behind the contenders at 37-43, four games behind the Padres at minus-21. The Pirates (two) and Giants (one) are slightly ahead of their expected win total, but everyone else is either where they belong in that regard, or one behind (the four-win deficit Reds are the exception here).
This is a boring lot, but they all have a genuine chance to appear in October baseball. Obviously, none of them deserve it, necessarily, outside of the Braves, but here we are anyway. The third wild card is to blame, of course. Or, more precisely, it is to blame for worsening an already annoying and aggravating situation year after year (not enough teams trying as hard as they can to compete) by making it even easier for teams to be rewarded, despite don’t try so hard. as they should to compete. There are some flukes here, sure: The Diamondbacks actually added help last winter season instead of simply regressing, but it hasn’t been enough right now, and the Reds, again, are better than the win column says so far . after their own busy winter, but this is mainly a group of teams that started the season with uninspiring rosters waiting for something like this to happen. That is, a situation where they could have a shot at making the postseason without having to inject the kind of resources that likely would have improved that shot.
Let’s go back to the trade deadline for a moment: If most of these teams are still within striking distance of a wild card a month from now, how many of them will be sellers? There won’t be many players available on the market if all but a handful of National League teams believe they are still competing. However, this also has another side. How many of these teams, if the standings remain this congested in a month, will be buyers? Buying can improve a team, but it can also end up feeling like a waste of resources if they can’t separate themselves from the rest of the pack after adding win-now talent. So we will have teams reluctant to negotiate and teams reluctant to add. That’s not to say that all of these clubs will sit still, but it’s unrealistic to believe that we’re in for a rush of activity within the deadlines given the situation.
And don’t worry, this could all get worse if MLB owners get their way and add more postseason teams again in the future. There will be even fewer reasons to build a winning team on purpose, even fewer reasons to make moves during the season other than simply bringing in players from the minors or making claims for unemployed players, because the postseason, now within reach of the entire League National, with the exception of the Marlins and Rockies, will allow even more teams to enter, which only increases the chances of teams with a losing record “earning” a postseason spot.
Team owners, of course, don’t care. They don’t care enough about what the entire A’s saga is doing to the public perception of the League, so why would they care about the quality of the competition when tickets keep selling and revenues keep piling up? They no longer care enough about trying to win in such an obvious way that it hampered this winter’s free agent market, raising concerns about the current collective bargaining agreement. And questions about the future of broadcasting and the money to be made from it will only increase the volume of owners screaming for an even more expanded postseason in the next collective bargaining agreement, no matter how pathetic things look on the front. competition due to the expansion that is taking place. has already happened, because they will want to compensate for any possible loss of profits in some way, regardless of the cost.
Things could change: perhaps some wild card hopefuls will have the sort of coming weeks to give a much clearer picture of which clubs have a genuine chance and which are simply waiting for their luck to work out for them. Or maybe a month from now the Braves have a bigger lead at the top of the heap, but everything else looks relatively the same and the trade market is frozen because of it. So we can all take a step back, even knowing that the expansion is still pretty fun in October, but it’s a disaster for the quality of the previous six months of the season. But only because we know that we are trapped in this mess and that we will have to make the best of it when we can.
Thank you for reading
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2024-06-27 10:45:36
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