MLB: 4 Things You Need To Know About The 2014 World Series

Nobody Is “Out Of It” In July

Per Baseball Prospectus, the Royals were five games behind the Detroit Tigers, and the Giants were four games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers, with a combined otds of winning the World Series at four percent.

Few picked either team to win their division, which is good because neither team did, and even fewer picked them to advance to their respective league championship series, and now both teams find themselves playing for a title in late October.

So what’s the lesson here? Unless this is some sort of homage from the baseball gods to outgoing MLB commissioner Bud Selig (who championed both the Wild Card and later, the expansion to two Wild Cards), the lesson here is your team likely isn’t out of it at the trade deadline. Five playoff spots in each league means unless your team is really struggling at that point (and there were certainly some at that point this season), your team isn’t out of it.

There’s an argument to be made that it was foolish for teams to simply hope to get into the dice roll of the playoffs, and maybe nine out of ten times, you’d be right, but both the Giants and especially the Royals are proof that MLB’s postseason has changed, and perhaps this season changes the goal for teams to “just get in the playoffs.”