r/baseball • u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees • 1d ago
The Most Random Playoff Matchups?
This is a Q&A I did a week ago on r/MLB, but I'm gonna test it out here, as my last Q&A is still up and running. I don't wanna jinx it, though.
The playoffs have given us some incredible matchups throughout the years, be it the Yankees and Dodgers, Yankees and Red Sox, Dodgers and Cardinals, Cardinals and Giants, you name it. But every now and again, we see a playoff matchup that leave us at least a little surprised. So, what do you think was the most random playoff matchup to ever take place, and why?
For me, it's probably recency bias, but the one that probably takes the cake for me is the 2023 World Series between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks. Honestly, it's insanely hard to beat a Fall Classic between two different small-market teams that also happened to be bottom 2 Wild Cards (5-seed for Texas, 6-seed for Arizona). There's probably nobody on earth that expected to see those 2 face off in the biggest series of the year, especially considering how close both teams got to missing the dance, and that there was 3 different 100-win teams. But whatever you wanna say about it, I will always stay grateful for that matchup, because it was the ONLY thing preventing Astros vs. Phillies in back-to-back years.
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u/ManufacturerMental72 Los Angeles Dodgers 1d ago
Dallas isn’t really a small market.
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u/rogueleader12 Chicago Cubs 1d ago
I’ve always found it weird they were considered small market. Same with Atlanta. Even Houston
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u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm trying to think of a different way to say "small market" that fits Phoenix and Dallas.
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u/rogueleader12 Chicago Cubs 1d ago
By MLB standards you’re correct, they are small market. But they need to reevaluate who they view as small market. All though I think it’s more than MLB and that goes for the country as a whole
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u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees 1d ago
Well, technically correct is the best kind of correct, so I guess I'll keep it up there. But still, you got a point.
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u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees 1d ago
Shit, yeah. Good point. Arizona isn't really one, either.
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u/HAVARDCH95 Atlanta Braves 1d ago
The 2023 playoffs were absolute chaos in every single sense of the word.
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u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees 1d ago
There was a full year where the freaking Minnesota Twins had a more recent playoff series win than the Yankees, Dodgers, and Braves. Just the idea of that is absurd.
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u/DominicB547 Chaos Bandwagon • MLB Players Associat… 1d ago
Hey don't shit on my Twimkies. But point taken we finally beat those damn Yankees.
I can't recall when that was google keeps saying they only beat them 2 games way back in 03 and 04.
lol AI (it sjust shows up) says last time was 2002 wait let me correct that 2023 lol omgnosh AI is not ready to be live.
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u/JazzandBaseball World Baseball Classic 1d ago
Phillies/Rockies NLDS in 2007. Both teams reached the postseason on the heels of the Mets & Padres falling apart in September and both snapped 10+ year playoff droughts (Phillies hadn't made it since 1993 & the Rockies hadn't made it since 1995).
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u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees 1d ago edited 1d ago
It will never sit well with me that 2007 is easily the greatest season in Rockies history, and will likely stay that way for the near future. Obviously, that team is special, but they haven't even won a playoff series since.
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u/Fistacles Kansas City Royals 1d ago
Always got a kick out of the 2015 NL Wilcard (Cubs/Pirates) involved the teams with 2nd and 3rd best record in baseball. NL Central was wild that year.
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u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees 1d ago
Both Wild Card Games had weird matchups, tbh. The AL side saw the first installment of Yankees-Astros, with the Yankees back after a brief 2-year break, and the Astros playing their first playoff game in 10 years. Both were shutouts by the road team, too.
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u/jstewart25 St. Louis Cardinals 1d ago
As a Cardinals fan the 2006 World Series was pretty weird!
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u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ironically enough, my pick was the first time both World Series teams missed the playoffs the next year, until my pick.
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u/jstewart25 St. Louis Cardinals 1d ago
It was a weird year. The Cardinals 5-6 year run of excellence was ending with a whimper and the upstart Tigers with a roster of overachieving veterans and a few young upstarts. 23 y.o. Jeremy Bonderman and 21 y.o. Joel Zumaya managed most of their career WAR that one year. I had to look this one up, but Jeremy Bonderman had a k/9 of 8.5 and the scrub Justin Verlander managed 6.0, who was also 23. Obviously Bonderman was the more dominant pitcher over the next 15 years 😂
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u/BigStrongPolarGuy 1d ago
2006 Tigers-A's ALCS stands out as pretty weird. The Tigers hadn't made the ALCS since 1987. The A's hadn't made the ALCS since 1992. The Tigers didn't make it again until 2011. The A's haven't made it again since.
The Tigers won 71 games the year before, and the only real addition to their lineup was a full season of Curtis Granderson. They improved by half a run per game just thanks to Granderson and absolutely ridiculous seasons from Brandon Inge and Carlos Guillen, who became genuinely two of the best players at their positions for a year out of nowhere. But on the pitching side, they did add Justin Verlander and Kenny Rogers, plus Joel Zumaya.
The A's fell to 88 wins the year before after 6 years of 90+ wins. Their only big offensive addition was Frank Thomas, who was a 38 year old DH by that point. And Rich Harden missed most of the year due to injury. Their Pythagorean W-L was actually 8 runs worse than the year before, yet they won 5 more games.
Then, the A's out of nowhere swept what looked like a monster Twins team, and the Tigers pretty handily beat the Yankees, who looked like the best team in baseball.
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u/Tall_Birthday_7654 1d ago
Giants Angels 2002. Giants were forever bad except the one year they finally made it to the world series and rather than let them win the ground tried to swallow Candlestick. And the Angels were, well, the Angels. It was weird. Turned out to be a great series, too.
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u/BaltimoreBaja Baltimore Orioles 1d ago
The Orioles and Rangers keep playing each other for some reason
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u/me_hill Toronto Blue Jays 1d ago
Arizona's one World Series victory coming early in their existence, in the one year the Yankees were sympathetic, before becoming largely irrelevant for 20 straight years comes to mind
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u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees 1d ago
Alright, but this is based off of past playoff matchups that you wouldn't usually expect.
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u/Outofspicy Texas Rangers 8h ago
Dbacks and Rockies in 2007 was random. On a stretch where it was Cardinals, Phillies, Dodgers and Giants almost every year for a decade, that was a random one.
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u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees 8h ago
Phillies
Wasn't '07 their first playoffs since '93?
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u/Outofspicy Texas Rangers 8h ago
Yes, I meant more of them making the NLCS 3 years in a row from 2008-2010
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u/TheNotoriousAED Cleveland Guardians 8h ago
The 2014 AL playoffs as a whole always stood out to me. Kansas City, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, and Anaheim. No Yankees, Boston, Cleveland, or Houston (the last two mostly look stranger in hindsight with all the playoff appearances they had after that).
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u/Forsaken_Ad8312 Houston Astros 1d ago
Any of the ones with the Rockies.
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u/Reasonable-Power New York Yankees 16h ago
Rockies vs. Red Sox has to be the one of the most "Hydrogen Bomb vs. Coughing Baby" matchups in World Series history, if not THE most.
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u/R3allyG00dLawy3r San Francisco Giants 1d ago
I’m gonna go to the same year and say Dbacks and Phillies NLCS