The 2024 World Series matchup was a hype-machine doozy. The first Los Angeles Dodgers-New York Yankees World Series in 43 years. The collision of soon-to-be MVPs in Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge. And, most germane to our subject today, a pairing of this year's top playoff seeds.
As an admitted obsessive about all things related to format -- schedule, playoff structure, divisional alignment, etc. -- I can't help but notice that there is much less griping about the third year of MLB's current 12-team playoffs than there was a year ago.
The difference? Primarily, it's because last year we had two wild-card teams in the World Series, including a second straight sixth-seeded entrant from the National League. This year, we ended up with a one-versus-one pairing between two of the game's most storied franchises. People watched. All is well.
Thus the context for today's look at how the format is working is very different than when we did this last year. Nevertheless, even as I make a few observations about what can be gleaned from the 2024 postseason and the structure that produced it, one thing remains true: It's too soon to make any declarative statements about the current setup.
Just as last year's Texas Rangers-Arizona Diamondbacks Fall Classic could not hold up as a condemnation of the system, nor can this year's Dodgers-Yankees clash serve as a definitive validation. Our feelings about the postseason structure remain a work in progress.
Still, every season we complete adds a little information to what we know, and how we feel about it. Here are five observations about the format that gave us what was, all in all, a memorable October.
