500 on: MLB Playoff Pain
No matter how bright the future is, losing a playoff series stings every time
I am a fan of the New York Yankees. Sometimes I try to leave my personal feelings and sentiments out of these posts, but this one depends on sharing these feelings. Last night, the Houston Astros defeated my team 4–0 in game seven of the ALCS, advancing to the World Series and sending the Yankees home.
I’m not here to try to paint myself as a woe-is-me, tortured baseball lover. Cheering for the Yankees immediately disqualifies me from all sympathy, and that’s how it should be. What I do want to say though, is that it’s been a while since I saw my team fall a little bit short in an extended playoff run, and I felt like a crestfallen 10-year-old watching the end of these baseball playoffs. The Yankees are young and talented, and will almost certainly be back next year, and the next year, and the next year, and so on. Right now though, last night’s loss still hurts.
I made a critical mistake in this series. After three resounding victories in New York, I subconsciously began to assume that the Yankees would win the series. It makes sense, too. Any team up 3–2 in a series has the edge, even if one of the final two games features an elite starting pitcher from the other team and both are on the road. ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight agreed with me. Even though the site gave the Yankees a less-than-50% chance of winning each game, their chance of winning the series hovered a little over 60% after game five.
Of course, I didn’t know that New York’s offense was about to vanish into thin air. One run in 18 innings is a good way to make sure that nothing good happens to your team, and the rest of the series played out about how one would expect given that initial fact. The Yankees pitched decently well, aside from two bad innings in game six, but seeing one of baseball’s best offenses suddenly vanish renders any game literally un-winnable.
Baseball, as many pundits and fans will tell you, revels in its unpredictability, its ways of thwarting the best teams and players on any given night. This is the same sport where the Yankees overcome a 0–2 deficit to beat the Cleveland Indians, after all. In the big picture of the 2017 playoffs, this isn’t anything odd.
And the Yankees are built for the future. A 2017 ALCS appearance was never in this team’s goals for the year, and the explosive growth from Aaron Judge and Luis Severino predicts a rosy future for this young, talented core. Add a few big-name free agents in a year or two, and this team could easily reach its late-1990s levels. Right now though, all fans can see are the disappointed faces of these young sluggers. Right now, all they can see is the celebrating Astros team. Right now, the present hurts.
