You only need four letters to sum up the divisional round of the 2024 MLB playoffs. In order, those four letters are: h, a, t and e.
Antipathy will be baseball’s universal calling card for the next week. The Padres hate their foe, the Dodgers, and the feeling is pretty much mutual. No greater evidence of that fact was needed than Sunday night's Game 2 Padres win, punctuated by a 10-minute delay resulting from Dodger fans hurling baseballs at Padres players.
The Tigers and Guardians, separated by just 90 miles, have been divisional rivals since the two franchises were simultaneously created in 1901. Think it's not competitive? Consider that after 2,314 meetings, the Tigers hold the all-time advantage by exactly four games, 1,159 to 1,155.
As for the Mets and Phillies, don’t get either the teams or their obnoxiously loud fan bases started. Again, distance (81 miles) and a history dating back to the Mets’ founding in 1962 fuels the reality that familiarity breeds contempt.
Familiarity breeds contempt in 2024 Division Series action
Against those three blood-oath rivalries, the Yankees vs. Royals may, at first glance, seem like a friendly get-together. But not to fans of a certain age who recall the teams’ decade-long series of showdowns between 1976 and 1983. Brett vs. Gossage, Brett vs. Nettles, McRae vs. Randolph, Chambliss vs. Mark Littell and Brett vs. pine tar remain vivid in the memory banks of those teams' fans.
The regular versions of these divisional matchups did little to assuage the feelings on any side. The Padres and Dodgers met 13 times, with San Diego winning eight and outscoring their big, bad, high-spending neighbors to the north 62-56.
The Phillies won seven of their 13 meetings with the Mets, but lost four of seven September meetings. Those games reduced the impact of Philadelphia’s 69-59 season-long scoring edge.
Cleveland also won its season series with Detroit 7-6. But that victory was a tempered one; the Tigers outscored the Guardians 60-50, with five of Cleveland’s wins coming by a single run.
The Yankees are the only divisional round team that could be said to have dominated – that’s probably too strong a word – its opponent. New York took five of seven from the Royals, outscoring Kansas City 42-24 in the process.
But again there, a word of caution is in order. The two teams’ three-game September series at Yankee Stadium was only decided in New York’s favor on an 11th inning walk-off hit by Jazz Chisholm, and the Royals played that series absent their three-hole hitter, Vinnie Pasquantino, who was sidelined with a hand injury. The Pasquatch is back now.
Here’s the bottom line. The divisional round features four series that couldn’t have generated more mutual fan-base animosity if they were hand-selected for that purpose.