MLB's AL Playoff Race Is Proof Owners Already Have the Parity They Want

Even on the Internet, there’s not enough space to list all the reasons why you should ignore all the pro-salary cap propaganda that Major League Baseball will hit you with over the next several months or years or however long it takes for this winter’s lockout to be resolved.

So for now, we’ll just limit it to the debacle that is the American League playoff race, which provides plenty of evidence the owners already have everything they desire.

The owners want “parity?”A team that’s finished .500 or worse has never made the baseball playoffs in a full 162-game season, yet the AL field will likely include two such teams.

As play begins today, there are eight teams within three games of the last two playoff spots. The Houston Astros “lead” the AL West at 63-63, one game ahead of the Texas Rangers, who “hold down” the final wild card berth at 62-64.

Five teams — the Minnesota Twins, Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Guardians, Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers — are within a game and thus “within hot pursuit” of the Rangers while the Seattle Mariners are “lurking” three games behind.

This is not parity. This is an abomination.

And it was the latter long before Tuesday night, when the Mariners slipped another game back by giving up three touchdowns to the Milwaukee Brewers in a 22-0 loss — baseball’s most lopsided shutout since the 19th century. In a proper society, such a defeat would leave Seattle in danger of relegation instead of an increasingly unlikely winning streak away from a playoff spot.

But at least the Mariners — along with the Astros, Twins and Guardians — tried acting like contenders by acting as buyers prior to the Aug. 3 trade deadline, even if they’re a combined 19-33 since then.

Perversely, the Rangers, Blue Jays, Orioles and Tigers are a combined 30-25 since the deadline. This probably wasn’t what Texas had in mind when it tried trading Jacob deGrom…or what Toronto envisioned upon dealing Kevin Gausman…or what Baltimore desired by dealing one-time franchise icon Adley Rutschman to the division rival Boston Red Sox…or what Detroit wanted upon dumping two-time defending Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal on the two-time defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.

Then again, the potential “reward” for the aforementioned quartet is exactly what the owners want: Teams making the playoffs without their owners and executives actually having to try hard.

Even worse, the AL West winner is almost certainly going to host the final wild card in a 3 vs. 6 matchup, which means there’s a good chance a team .500 or worse is probably going to land in the AL semifinals and earn their owner at least two to five playoff gates worth millions of dollars. Talk about a win-win for teams who are doing way too much losing.

And once a mediocre team is in the playoffs, anything can happen in a sport that used to pride itself on the cruelty of the regular season leaving multiple worthy teams watching the playoffs on television along with the rest of us.

The 1980 Baltimore Orioles (100-62) and 1993 San Francisco Giants (103-59) surely scoff at the 86-win 2022 Philadelphia Phillies and the 84-win 2023 Arizona Diamondbacks, each of whom won the National League pennant. Wait until they see this year’s AL playoff field, already a testament to the owners possessing everything they want even before they shut the game down.