It is now accepted that the playoffs are confusing. Everything is in bounds because every series is a week long at most and it's distilling down teams that have been playing for six months. Small moments like a pitching change here or a cutoff man missed that would just be barely a bubble on the sea of a baseball season become big things in the playoffs. Baseball fans know this and accept it, but they choose to look at the playoffs differently.
The L.A. Times can't seem to comprehend the difference.
On the verge of eating it to the Padres, letters editor Paul Thornton called for the Dodgers to be awarded the World Series trophy and wailed about how unfair the playoffs are. Thornton missed the point in saying that Dodgers fans are more focused on winning than they were before, even though the headline grabbed most of the attention. They have done more than any other person. The Dodgers have won a lot over the past 10 years. You can't say that you need the Dodgers to win, that you don't like the way the playoffs are structured, and that it's all left you flat. The playoffs don't mean anything or everything.
Jack Harris, the paper's Dodgers beat writer, did a deep dive into why the Dodgers lost in the NLDS that was similar to the collapse of a local government. Harris concluded that they didn't hit for two and a half games.
Well, well, well.
The Dodgers didn't hit for two to three games a lot during the season. They scored six runs in four games against the Giants and Angels. They scored five times in three games against the Padres and Mets. It is a thing that can happen. The idea that the Padres surprised the Dodgers by throwing more breaking pitches than fastballs isn't really a discovery, or that the Dodgers have faced better pitching in the past. That is how those teams got there.
The Dodgers have been so good for so long that they have only won one World Series, and it was the bastardized version of 2020. You can understand the desire to CSI it to see if there is an underlying mystery as to how this happened. There isn't There are times when you roll snake eyes. The last roll of the dice doesn't matter to the next roll of the dice.
If the Dodgers played only playoffs teams in October, they wouldn't win any games. There is no reason for it.
There is no secret recipe. The universe doesn't have a key. There is no formula. Even though baseball has broken the brains of a newspaper, this is how it works.
We've spent so much time on Tom Brady taking a flamethrower to his personal life so he could soak up some more public adulation while watching his team cough and wheeze to a sub.500 season, that we haven't given Rodgers' "don't look at me" If you were wondering if the Packers struggles have anything to do with Rodgers, you're in the right place.
Rodgers wants to be the coach now that he wants to be the GM. It's great for young receivers trying to find their way in the league to have their quarterback tell the world they're not good enough. Even though he seems to be unable to throw the ball over five yards anymore, Rodgers completely ignores himself of blame, even though he knows he can't.
Rodgers is free to tell everyone that his team isn't worthy of him if he has his own bullhorn. It's truly dignified.
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