Three reasons to root for each playoff team

There will be millions of baseball fans watching the MLB postseason over the next month, cheering for their favorite team to win them the World Series. But it is worth noting that millions of baseball fans will be watching the MLB postseason over the next month and not rooting for their favorite team to win the World Series.

Because their team didn't make it.

We need to help those fans out. Rather than focus on the negatives -- lamenting that your team is home this October -- let's find something positive. You fans need someone to root for. Let's come up with some Cheering Justifications For The Otherwise Unaffiliated. Here's why you should get behind each potential postseason team to win the World Series. Let's bandwagon together. (Teams are listed in alphabetical order by league, and we are including every team still mathematically alive, all 12 of them.)

AMERICAN LEAGUE

Astros (clinched AL West)

Zack Greinke is the best active player without a ring
In August we put together our MLB Dan Marino Awards, noting all-time stars and likely Hall of Famers who have never won a World Series. Greinke topped that list. It’s the main thing missing from his resume.

Who wouldn’t be happy for Dusty Baker?
Baker is 12th on the all-time managerial wins list, has now won a division title with five different teams, and is second among active managers (behind longtime rival and ALDS opponent Tony La Russa). But unlike every manager above him, Baker has never won a World Series. At 72 years old, and in the last year of his contract, this could be his last chance.

We love the black hat
For all the vitriol and rancor directed at the Astros in the last few years, it is undeniable that they inflame passion in a way that generates much, much interest. (Try writing anything positive about the Astros, ever, and watch everybody yell at you.) Pretend otherwise all you want, but it is fun to have a team to cheer against. The Astros will have everyone rooting for them to lose every game this postseason. “Bad guys” like that polarize fans … and get them fired up.

Blue Jays (clinch pending)

Vlad Jr.!
OK, maybe he’s not going to win the MVP, even if he just missed the Triple Crown. He’s still as charismatic a star, with as recognizable a name, as any in baseball. And he just had a career year. He’s also a joy to cheer for, a perpetually smiling face. Could he be the breakout star of this postseason?

This is still a rather cursed franchise
It gets forgotten a little how much the Jays have struggled since their back-to-back World Series wins in 1992-93. They didn’t make the playoffs again until 2015 -- 22 years! -- and fell much shorter than anyone expected when they got there. They’ve rebuilt and reconstructed the organization with young, thrilling talent, but there’s now 30 years of frustration built up.

We’ve all had wild years. But they’ve had the wildest
Remember, the Jays started the year in Dunedin, Fla., then went to Buffalo (where they spent all of 2020) and finally returned to Toronto just two months ago. They are back home now, and you can see just how appreciative those home fans are. This is a great baseball fanbase that was deprived of its team for nearly two years. And a young team deprived of its home. Everything is back in its right place now.

Mariners (clinch pending)

The drought is over!
The Mariners, if they make it, will end the longest postseason drought in North American professional sports. They can’t go this long without making the playoffs and just have it all vanish in one night, can they? They’ve waited 20 years for a playoff game. We should all want them to get more than just three hours for their trouble.

This is just the start
The Mariners are widely considered to have one of the best farm systems in baseball and are stacked with top-shelf talent. They very well might be the favorites in this division in two years. Soon, they won’t be the underdog anymore. It is always more fun to cheer for the underdog, and there’s no bigger underdog right now than the Mariners.

You can’t predict ball
Did you see any experts predicting the Mariners for the playoffs this year? Did you see the fancy projection systems stepping up for them? Did you think they had any chance as recently as, oh, two weeks ago? Heck, they still have a worse run differential than, say, the Mets. And yet here they are, shocking the world. It probably doesn’t make a lot of statistical sense that they are here, and making it this far is surely a mix of kismet, luck, good timing and the forever-elusive “clutch gene.” And yet here they are. Nobody saw this coming. Doesn’t that make it better? Doesn’t it make you want the Mariners to keep going? Doesn’t it make them your favorite team?

Rays (clinched AL East)

They’ve never won a World Series
They’ve come up just short twice (including last year), but they’ve built the sort of organization that is going to have to break through at some point.

Can Randy do it again?
Randy Arozarena’s 2021 season has been solid, but it has felt a little bit like a disappointment because he wasn’t Babe Ruth like he was last October. His 2020 postseason was perhaps the greatest in baseball history. Don’t you want to see if he turns into that guy again?

Everybody loves the little guy
The Rays have a bottom-five payroll, a much-derided ballpark and a general vibe of anonymity, particular with the monsters in that division. And yet: Here they are, with the best record in the AL once again. And they’re much more exciting than you think. Get on board!

Red Sox (clinch pending)

Chris Sale in the playoffs
This would be Sale’s third visit to the playoffs, and even though the Red Sox did win the World Series with him in 2018, he’s actually been a little shaky. He has a lifetime 5.76 ERA in seven postseason appearances, four starts, which is certainly a factor considering the Red Sox could have their season on his back in the Wild Card Game. Sale has probably missed too much time for injury in his career to be seriously considered for Cooperstown, but then again, if he has a Verlander-esque back half of his career, having some postseason dominance won’t hurt.

Rafael Devers having his star moment
For a guy who plays in such a major market like Boston, Devers is weirdly quiet for a young superstar. But that’s what he is, still only 24 years old and the best hitter on an excellent hitting team. He was so new in 2017 and 2018 that he was outshone by other players; this could be his closeup.

Fenway Park in October
It has been three years since we saw Fenway Park in all its glory in October, and even if you don’t like the Red Sox, that’s too long. Perhaps it’s being conditioned by, oh, this whole century so far, but Fenway has grown to become October’s backdrop. If the Sox can get to the ALDS, those freezing Massachusetts nights will return again.

White Sox (clinched AL Central)

They are downright oozing with young talent
It’s exciting to see a team with young players growing up together: It’s almost like those old Indians teams, or the Marlins before they traded everybody. The White Sox have Luis Robert and Eloy Jiménez and Yoán Moncada and Andrew Vaughn, and they’re boosted by veterans like José Abreu and the electric Tim Anderson. It is pure adrenaline to watch this team.

La Russa!
OK, so fine: Maybe Tony La Russa isn’t the most cuddly and joyous manager on the planet. But jeez, you've got to admire a guy who came back in the face of much, much discord, along with everyone assuming he wouldn’t be able to appeal to young players, and ends up cruising to his 13th division title. What’s that you were saying about baseball changing? Well, the second-winningest manager of all time might win the World Series.

Those jerseys
The jerseys. No team has a wider variety of potentially fun postseason jerseys. Want to go Southside? Or old-school SOX across the chest? If they play the Rays in the ALCS with the Rays wearing their Devil Rays throwbacks, we’ll ascend to heaven.

Yankees (clinch pending)

This wild season almost has to end with a World Series title
Or at least something wildly dramatic and insane. The Yankees have been wildly inconsistent, dominating at times and looking listless otherwise, and it has all evened out with a potential playoff berth, like it usually does. Still, this was supposed to be a lock as the best team in the American League, and perhaps baseball, and here they are, in a Wild Card fight to the death. They are maximizing the drama, as they surely always were.

It’s perpetually heightened when the Yankees are playing
They aren’t as hated as the Astros are at this point, but let’s not kid ourselves: These are still the Yankees. There isn’t a fanbase in baseball that doesn’t get excited when they get to play the Yankees. Especially when they beat them.

This is the generation of Yankees that really need to win one
The Yankees famously referred to them as the “fully operational Death Star” after signing Gerrit Cole, but, uh, maybe it’s time to remember that they kept blowing up the Death Star. The Yankees still haven’t made the World Series since 2009, which was so long ago that Wander Franco wasn’t even in middle school yet. The seat got a little warmer on everyone at various times this year. Eventually the Yankees are going to, you know, win the World Series.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

Braves (clinched NL East)

They did it without their transcendent star
I will confess, when Ronald Acuña Jr. went out for the season, I mentally scratched the Braves off my postseason contender list. Acuña is the best player on the team and one of the best players in baseball. How could anyone overcome that? But the Braves didn’t give up and, in fact, added players at the Deadline, exactly what they ended up needing. The Braves have earned the right to be here. They went for it. And they have been rewarded.

Freddie Freeman could be making his last ride
Many have assumed, because Freeman is so closely aligned with this franchise, that the Braves will sign him when he becomes a free agent in the offseason. But that shouldn’t be assumed, particularly with some big spenders needing a first baseman. Freeman was the MVP last year and has been the core of this franchise for a decade now. Don’t assume you’ll see him in a Braves uniform past this year. Cherish him here while you can.

The Atlanta sports team curse
Atlanta sports fans will remind you, constantly, how much pain they have endured as a sports city, from what Tom Brady did to the Falcons, to the Braves only winning one World Series during their incredible run, to the Georgia Bulldogs not winning a title in more than 40 years. (Though it does conveniently forget Atlanta United’s MLS Cup in 2018.) The Braves came this close to the World Series last year, and you have to think everything will fall their way at some point, right? If it does, it will be the end (again, Atlanta United excepted) of the most underappreciated sports city curse in the country.

Brewers (clinched NL Central)

They’ve never won the World Series
It certainly feels like the Brewers have won the World Series, right? It seems like they would have won one in the Robin Yount/Paul Molitor/Ben Oglivie/Rollie Fingers days, but they didn’t. That’s the last time they reached the World Series, losing to the Cardinals (of all teams) in 1982. This is the fourth straight year they’ve reached the postseason, the first time that’s ever happened for them, and if they’re ever going to break through, now’s the time.

The team most likely to play the shortest games
If you’re wary of staying up too late all October, well, you better get used to it: That’s what this month is for. But the Brewers have the best pitching (and the weakest hitting) of any contender, with a killer rotation and shut-down bullpen that can end your night before you know it.

Bob Uecker is still broadcasting for this team
May he forever reign. And mow.

Cardinals (clinched NL Wild Card)

The streak immortalized
There have been longer winning streaks in MLB history, but few have felt as clutch as the Cardinals’ September run has been: The Cardinals went from having a deeply disappointing, listless season to making club history and nailing down a playoff spot. There aren’t many hot streaks like this one.

That defense
The Cardinals’ defense has been their strength all season, but in September, it elevated to the world of the transcendent. Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado and Yadier Molina have anchored the corners and behind the plate all year, but the true revelation has been a frightening outfield defense, which covers all possible ground and probably some area you didn’t even know existed. And they’re so fun. Dylan Carlson is the low-key rookie, Tyler O’Neill is the bodybuilding superstar and Harrison Bader is the spark plug who can absolutely take over a game. These are not your father’s Cardinals.

Adam Wainwright
He’ll be starting the Wild Card Game, and that mere fact should not go underappreciated: He’s 40 years old and having one of the best years of his career. This despite that he has openly discussed how close he was to retiring out of frustration several years ago. And if you’re walking around the stadium the day after he pitches, you might just run into him.

• Wainwright signs extension

Dodgers (clinched at least a Wild Card)

It’s about time for a repeat champ, isn’t it?
It has been since the 2000 Yankees that we’ve had a repeat World Series champion. That’s a long time -- that’s too long, really. If there were ever a team that has put itself in a situation to repeat, it’s the Dodgers, who remain as stacked as ever. And maybe they’ll get to do it in front of their home fans this time.

So many Hall of Famers
Has there been a World Series winner in recent memory with as many Hall of Famers as this roster has? Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Albert Pujols are locks. Mookie Betts is well on his way. And how many of Trea Turner, Corey Seager, Cody Bellinger, Walker Buehler, Julio Urías and even maybe Kenley Jansen are going to be in there someday? Two? Three? This is the most recognizable team in the postseason by a wide margin.

They can’t have last year’s be the only one
The Dodgers have essentially been the model franchise in baseball for a decade now, and they finally broke through and won a World Series … smack in the middle of a global plague. Last year’s title was legitimate, of course -- it gets more impressive that they won it the further away we get from it -- but having it be the only one they win during this run would be difficult, historically, to grapple with.

Giants (clinched at least a Wild Card)

The most improbable season imaginable
Coming into the year, the popular consensus was that the Giants would probably outplay their projections a bit, but not be any sort of serious contender in the NL West, not with the Dodgers and Padres lurking. And here they are, with their first 100-win team since 2003. (This team is clearly better than the three Giants teams that won the World Series.) These sort of out-of-nowhere stories rarely happen in baseball, or in sports, anymore. How do you not love that?

Buster Posey’s return
The Giants are loaded with veterans who have found late-career mojo with this team, but none have been more remarkable than Posey, who, after not playing last year and having the worst season of his career in 2019, has put up his best OPS since his MVP year of 2012. He’s trying to become the first National League player since Sandy Koufax and Johnny Podres to win four World Series with the same team, and he’s doing it in the unlikeliest possible way.

That ballpark at night
Have you forgotten how gorgeous that ballpark looks come postseason? How clear and lovely those fly balls look when soaring deep into the San Francisco night? It has been five years since we saw it. It’s going to look beautiful once more.