Every October, some version of the same take can be heard in all playoff discussions: the team stumbling into the playoffs is doomed, and the team on a roll is a lock to advance. It sounds right. We believe that momentum is a real thing in sports. It makes sense to us that a team playing confidently in September should carry that into the postseason, and a team scuffling through the stretch run would carry that baggage along with it.
So I decided to actually check.
I pulled every MLB playoff team from the last nine full seasons (2016 through 2025, skipping the COVID-shortened 2020 season). That gave me 98 “seasons” using two different playoff…
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