When Major League Baseball (MLB) extended its postseason from 10 teams to 12 teams in 2022, traditional fans of the game were livid. During those playoffs, the sixth-seeded Philadelphia Phillies made it all the way to the World Series as the team with the worst record in the postseason. This made fans upset, as many had concerns that this postseason format made the regular season irrelevant and gave teams that did better throughout the entire season no advantage when it mattered most. Regardless of your regular season record, if you can’t win a five-game series in October, it doesn’t matter what your regular season record is, you aren’t the best team in baseball. 

     The next season, we saw the league-leading 104-win Atlanta Braves get taken out in their first series by the Phillies, as the World Series was played between the fifth-seeded Texas Rangers and the sixth-seeded Arizona Diamondbacks. This raised more questions concerning the legitimacy of the new playoff format, as many fans felt we were being robbed of watching the best teams in baseball. The irony is that we were already watching them. While “traditional” fans were busy complaining that the one-seed wasn’t playing for the championship, the true fans of baseball were watching the two hottest teams in the game face off in the biggest game of the year.

     The same thing happened this season. Although both the top seeds in the American League (AL), the New York Yankees and Cleveland Guardians advanced, the most exciting team in baseball came from the National League (NL). The New York Mets rattled off 17 wins in September, tied for the most in all of MLB to make an improbable run at the playoffs. They’d go on to knock out the third-seeded Milwaukee Brewers and the first-seeded Phillies en route to the National League Championship Series (NLCS). 

     The Mets’ story went from a comedy, to a drama and to a feel-good underdog story in the span of three months. The stellar play of shortstop Francisco Lindor made him into an MVP candidate, and Lindor’s contribution coupled with second-year pitcher Kodai Senga emerging as one of the best in the game, made the Mets a real contender from the NL. 

     This year’s NLCS was a battle of David vs. Goliath. Although the Dodgers have two of the greatest players to ever live in MVP frontrunner Shohei Ohtani and former AL MVP Mookie Betts, the Mets have won with the odds stacked against them time and time again. 

     This is why we need the new playoff format. On paper, the Mets had no chance of winning, but luckily for them, the game of baseball is the most unpredictable game in the world. The greatest player in the world could go hitless while the guy at the end of the bench hits three home runs.

     Although the Mets would ultimately fall short of reaching the World Series, this is what baseball is all about, and true fans of the game understand that. Streaks, stats and strategy all come together to make up the game that we love and without the new playoff format, we would have never been able to see Francisco Lindor and the New York Mets push for an improbable championship.