{"id":681114,"date":"2026-04-22T15:13:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/681114\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T15:13:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:13:36","slug":"thanks-to-mlbs-expanded-playoffs-the-red-sox-still-arent-out-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/681114\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks to MLB\u2019s expanded playoffs, the Red Sox still aren\u2019t out of it"},"content":{"rendered":"

There have been a lot of words spilled about the Mets<\/a> and the Giants and the Blue Jays and the Red Sox potentially ending their October dreams, well, already. Seeing things like \u201conly 3% of teams playing this poorly have gone on to make the playoffs\u201d makes it sound like a done deal. But for most of baseball history making the playoffs was hard. Really hard. And the Red Sox are making it as hard as possible as they open the season going 9-14.<\/p>\n

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Until 1968 only two teams made the postseason. They played in the World Series. When the Yankees<\/a> talk about \u201c27 rings\u201d remember that 20 of those were won via a single round of postseason play. (Yes that applies to the Red Sox too, but no other team is chanting their total titles.) The winner of that series won the World Series. No random chance 84-win team sending their ace in a coin-flip game. No Wild Card Series. No Division Series. No Championship Series. There was none of that when Cy Young, pictured above, was pitching in October, which was in fact, September in the beginning.<\/p>\n

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The 1951 New York Giants finished with a final record of 98-59. They started the season 9-14, just like the 2026 Red Sox. If the \u201851 Giants sound familiar to you it\u2019s because they, like the 2026 Mets, lost 11 straight. During the opening 23 games. At least the Sox haven\u2019t combined their record this year with the Mets losing streak. It\u2019s partially sequencing, of course, as the Mets have only been a tad worse (7-16) than Boston so far, but it does feel better to know there is, like the Sarlacc pit, a new definition of pain and suffering.<\/p>\n

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Those Giants are the only team to start 9-14 and make the playoffs in this era. But keep in mind these were the two-team, straight-to-the-World-Series years.<\/p>\n

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From 1969 until 1993 the playoffs doubled in size from two to four teams. With expansion to 24 teams (12 and 12) and splitting each league into two divisions the playoff push became more difficult. But double the teams entered the competition! The 1969 Mets and 1979 Pirates even win the World Series after their slow starts. The 1984 Royals, 1987 Tigers, 1989 Blue Jays all make it into the playoffs, losing in their Championship Series to the Tigers, Twins, and Athletics, respectively.<\/p>\n

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This is not even half as much time as the World Series era but the slow starting 9-14 teams have five playoff appearances just by going from two to four teams.<\/p>\n

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Before the 1994 strike canceled the end of the season and the playoffs, baseball was set to debut a new postseason format. Expanding from two division into three with East, Central, and West divisions in the American and National leagues, MLB added two new playoff seats as each divisional champion would receive an invitation. And as they said in the As Seen on TV Ads of the \u201890s but wait there\u2019s more! Two new Wild Cards \u2013 one per league \u2013 would be added as well. The team with the best record that wasn\u2019t a division winner, across the entire league, would also make the playoffs. From four teams to eight.<\/p>\n

The first team to go 9-14 and make the playoffs? The 2005 Yankees. The 2006 Twins, 2007 Rockies<\/a>, 2007 Yankees, and 2009 Rockies would all go on to do this as well. That \u201805 Yankees team won 95 games! The Twins won 96. The \u201807 Yankees won 94.<\/p>\n

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Outcomes can be unlikely but still possible. Heck, just look at batting averages. It\u2019s cliche but it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

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2012 would bring another tweak: the Wild Card would become a one-game playoff. We\u2019re now at ten teams or one-third of the league. There will be a one-year sixteen-team playoff tournament in 2020 due to, well, everything. And then from 2022 to at least 2026, a twelve-team bracket. In all of these Wild Card expansions there has been only one slow starting team in October: the 2014 Pirates. They started at 9-14 but finished at 88-74. The 2014 Mariners<\/a> would go on to win 87 games but not make the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Since then the slow starters have maxed out at 82-80, the 2025 Kansas City Royals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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But the takeaway is not that it\u2019s impossible or that it\u2019s likely to happen. But that over time, as MLB expands the playoffs, teams can make bigger mistakes, start slower, and not necessarily be punished. It doesn\u2019t\u2019 matter that 3% of teams doing X, Y, or Z made the playoffs from 1901 until 2025. What really matters is from 2022 onward. In four seasons, yes, there hasn\u2019t been a team that started 9-14 in the playoffs. And last year\u2019s Royals finished 5.0 games back from even the expanded Wild Card. But the Tigers made it in with 87 wins. Not starting 9-14, but the Cincinnati Reds<\/a> made it into the Wild Card with 83 wins. 83!<\/p>\n

The Red Sox are frustrating. But it\u2019s not over yet. Maybe 90 wins is impossible. But if they win 87 and Garret Crochet is healthy and cruising, Roman has 20 home runs, and Chapman has a pile of saved games, do you think that team couldn\u2019t win 2 out of 3 in the postseason? Or 3 out of 4? I\u2019m not sure I really want mid-or-low-80s teams to have a possibility of the playoffs, even if it\u2019s my team, but in a 12 team bracket that\u2019s possible. The longer MLB runs with 12 teams (or more!) in the postseason the more likely it is that these \u201cno team has ever\u201d records fall away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There have been a lot of words spilled about the Mets and the Giants and the Blue Jays…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,25003,50,55,2328,2304,620,4,2305,2303,1352,2431,89,168,235,812,9386,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-681114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-championship-series","10":"tag-cincinnati-reds","11":"tag-kansas-city-royals","12":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","13":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","14":"tag-mariners","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-mlb-playoffs","17":"tag-mlb-postseason","18":"tag-new-york-giants","19":"tag-playoffs","20":"tag-red-sox","21":"tag-rockies","22":"tag-team","23":"tag-the-mets","24":"tag-wild-card-series","25":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116449013080452960","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}