Adam Minter, Columnist

What Baseball Traditionalists Don't Get About the Arizona Diamondbacks

A World Series contender without the best winning record could be good for business.

October 27, 2023 at 4:02 PM UTC

Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of sports. He is the author, most recently, of “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale."

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Americans love an underdog, so long as the underdog stays out of the baseball World Series. That’s the unwelcome reality faced by the Arizona Diamondbacks since qualifying for the Fall Classic. They advanced even though they barely won half of their regular season games — 84 in total — beating out the five best regular season teams, including the 104-win Atlanta Braves.

Baseball’s traditionalists, frustrated that the most dominant regular season teams didn’t steamroll into the playoffs, are lashing out at Major League Baseball’s 2022 expansion of its playoff field. Instead of 10 teams, there are 12. Without the change, the analysts note, the Diamondbacks would already be on winter vacation.