The 2024 Major League Baseball season has ended and this past month has shown that MLB playoffs are the best in North American sports.
MLB’s storytelling each year provides a backstory for every playoff matchup. It helps that baseball is almost 150 years old and rivalries like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are ingrained in the culture of both cities.
It seemed like there was drama in every playoff series this season. It started with the New York Mets, two losses away from not making the playoffs, upsetting the No. 3-seeded Milwaukee Brewers in the Wild Card round.
Another intense series was the rivalry matchup between the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLDS. Game 2 saw controversy, when fans threw objects at Padres outfielders and into their bullpen in response to Jurickson Profar taunting fans.
The fact a 32-minute YouTube video was needed to cover only the first two rounds, and not the Championship Series or World Series, shows the level of entertainment and amount of stories to be told from this season’s playoffs.
The Yankees and Dodgers advanced to the World Series. The Dodgers would win in five games, outlasting the Yankees with the help of World Series MVP Freddie Freeman, who hit the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history in Game 1.
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The NBA playoffs take a long time to find their champion. This season started April 16 and ended June 17, with the chance of taking longer if the finals weren’t only five games.
The 16-team playoff is the main cause of this length. The NBA has the unnecessary play-in tournament which makes mediocre teams feel like they are good. Having the 10th-best record in the conference shouldn’t warrant being able to compete for a playoff spot.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, every No. 10 seed has lost in the play-in, and every No. 9 seed to make the playoffs has lost in the first round.
Meanwhile in MLB, the No. 6 seed Mets were down by two in the ninth, before Pete Alonso turned the tides with a three-run homer that led them to a National League Division Series berth. They were a bottom seed that advanced to the NLCS.
The NBA also has a severe lack of parity. Outcomes are very predictable and top-end talent will more than likely get you to the Finals.
LeBron James made the Finals eight straight times. There was a time when everyone just expected the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers to be in the Finals because it had already happened the last three years.
There hasn’t been any team higher than a No. 3 seed to win an NBA championship since 1995. Between 1999 and 2011, only three teams won the Western Conference, according to Basketball Reference.
The No. 6 seed has won 10 series in the three years of the MLB’s 12-team format, according to The Athletic.
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The NFL, while being very popular, focuses more on the spectacle than the actual football. This definitely builds excitement, especially with everyone in sports media talking about it weeks before the actual game, but it feels like hype and commercialization can overshadow the actual play on the field.
People can hate all they want about the Yankees and Dodgers World Series, but Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman facing off against Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and Gerrit Cole is fun and good for baseball.
Big games like the Super Bowl price out fans. According to CBS News, most common fans have to rely on the resale market to buy tickets, in which prices skyrocket to impossibly expensive rates.
A face-value ticket can cost $900 to $9,500, which can already be a lot more expensive than the World Series, but resale can reach $7,000 to $60,000, CBS News said. This prices in the rich and famous, making the Super Bowl become a celebrity row.
In the MLB, more loyal fans can afford to show up and bring excitement due to the lower ticket prices. Lower ticket prices allow more loyal fans to show up, and there is more excitement during games and the crowds show up. The Tigers set a postseason game attendance record in Game 3 of the ALDS with 44,885, according to Yahoo Sports.
FERNANDO. TATIS. JR. #NLDS pic.twitter.com/DbwB6Q0TPJ
— MLB (@MLB) October 9, 2024
Now celebrities are at all major sporting events of course, but because it is only one game, organizations try to put every celebrity they can in ads because they don’t have as much time on air as other sports. According to Adweek, the amount of Super Bowl ads with two or more celebrities has increased from less than five in 2010 to over 20 in 2024.
The NFL playoffs only play one game per week to advance in order to avoid injuries, and the emotion and intensity of a rivalry in a seven or five-game series can’t be replicated in just one game.
Rivalries can’t be maintained when dynasties dominate. The New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs have won nine of the 23 Super Bowls since 2000 according to ESPN.
The Houston Astros failed to make the American League Championship Series for the first time since 2017, getting swept in their Wild Card series by the Detroit Tigers, who had a 0.2% chance to make the postseason in August, according to FanGraphs.
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The NHL playoffs started on April 20 and ended on June 24. Like the NBA, it is common to schedule multiple off days between games. A 16-team Wild Card format also leads to first-round matchups between division rivals that should be happening later in the playoffs.
The format can also promote tanking at the end of the regular season for a certain playoff position in order to not face a team that has their number in a playoff series, especially with teams in division facing off so often.
Three of the four MLB League Division Series matchups were between division rivals. Matchups like the Padres and Dodgers and the Phillies and Mets hate each other, and a five-game series with a championship series appearance on the line makes it more intense.
The intensity of these series does lead to higher viewership, but the commercialization and hype of Super Bowl LVIII drew 123.7 million viewers according to Nielsen, which is over 2.5 times the top-ranked World Series in a ranking by Baseball Almanac of US viewership rankings since 1973.
Despite its superior format, baseball doesn’t get the attention that sports like football and basketball do. The 2024 World Series averaged 15.81 million viewers, the most since 2017 according to MLB.com.
The ranking showed 2024 ranked 41st of 51 years, and every World Series since 2017 was ranked in the bottom ten.
MLB has the perfect amount of teams for its format, while also not taking as long because the first two series are shorter at the start.
Clearly, this format hasn’t stopped upsets from happening, as we have seen not only from this season but 2023 when a No. 5 seed and a No. 6 seed met in the World Series.
That being said, the ranking showed the 2023 World Series ranked dead last out of 51 years.
America’s pastime is losing popularity, but it can still compete as a powerhouse in terms of playoff excitement and intensity.
While it isn’t a perfect system in its own right, baseball has the formatting, storytelling and execution to outdo the other leagues, even if it doesn’t get the same amount of attention anymore.
