SNUB TITLES IN ’20?
Not in MLB; eventual Series winner this season won’t be a substandard champion
With MLB’s expanded playoffs whittled down to a final four, it’s time to make one thing clear:
There’s no need for any asterisk. That symbol has dogged the game for more than a century, tied in an almost mythical sense to scandal or often length of schedule. So it was natural, perhaps even appropriate, that fans and media wondered aloud if this 60-game season, and the 16team playoff that followed, would require unofficially affixing that starlike character to the 2020 champion.
But now that we’re here, and we know that only one of the Dodgers, Braves, Astros and Rays will claim the title, it’s safe to say a legitimate champion will be crowned.
Call it luck or the surprising efficacy of a best-of-three wild-card round, but the pretenders have been dismissed. A September hot streak that can elevate a flawed club to the postseason wasn’t enough to topple a top seed (sorry, Blue Jays). An entire division of punchless pretenders mostly hovering around .500 was sent packing (see you in February, Cubs, Cardinals, Reds and Brewers).
And, yes, even America’s Team, a squad that overcame the loss of 18 players three games into the season because of the coronavirus probably wasn’t fit to serve as champions of baseball (though we will miss you, Marlins).
But wait, you say, a sub-.500 team remains in the field. Worse yet, it’s America’s Antiheroes, the cheatin’ Astros, who still feature several protagonists from their trash-can-banging scheme on the way to the 2017 World Series title.
Yet as we sit on the verge of the American League and National League Championship Series, the Astros’ 29-31 regular season becomes more of a distant memory, a small and likely unrepresentative sample of their true level.
It’s also impossible to ignore what they’ve done since. After their four-game dismissal of the Athletics in the AL Division Series, the Astros have taken out the Nos. 2 and 3 seeds in the AL. And if you add their 5-1 playoff record to their overall mark, suddenly, they’re not a 29-31 team but rather a 34-32 team, healthy and trending upward.
Funny how these small-sample seasons work, eh?
While most baseball seasons are best viewed as individual entities, this year’s unique circumstances compel us to view every team’s accomplishments in a deeper context. In short, track records matter.
And the remaining teams are anything but Johnny-come-latelies.
The Rays were coming off 90- and 96-win seasons and backed that up by winning twothirds of their games this year. The Astros have advanced to their fourth consecutive ALCS, their 2020 accomplishments achieved far away from Minute Maid Park.
The Braves? Merely back-to-back-to-back NL East champions, only now with a true October shutdown starter in Ian Anderson. And then there are the Dodgers.
The eight-time NL West champions are four wins from their third trip to the finals in four years, only this time with the great Mookie Betts in tow. As the season began, you could sense trepidation or relish, depending on whether you loved or hated the Dodgers, that the club waited 32 years to break its World Series drought, only to do so in a bastardized and truncated season that proved nothing. Well, that concept has been put to rest. L.A. went 43-17, a .717 winning percentage that computes to 116 wins in a full season, and outscored opponents 349-213. In these playoffs, the Dodgers are 5-0 against the Brewers and Padres, and besting a very good Braves team, followed by the AL survivor, would leave them with nothing for which to apologize.
Lest we forget, the conditions under which this season is being contested provide their own hurdle.
In less than three weeks, provided the participants successfully keep COVID-19 at bay, someone will be declared a champion.
History should note that the title comes with few, if any, caveats.