My Two Cents: Pathetic 2023 Playoff Performance For Mighty AL East

The American League East always gets praised for being baseball's best division, but this playoff disappointment in 2023 has been embarrassing. Tampa Bay, Toronto and Baltimore were all swept this week, and the division went 0-7, which has never happened before. My column on the disaster, and what comes next.

ARLINGTON, Texas — Every year since divisional play started way back in 1969, there's always plenty of talk about the strength of the American League East. And with good reason. They've simply been the best, pretty much year in and year out.

Since then, AL East teams have won 16 World Series, the most in baseball. They've played in 27, also a record.

They had the best record in baseball this year — by far — and the year before that, and before that, etc.

Despite all that greatness, this 2023 season has turned out to be a disaster for baseball's best division. Three teams made the playoffs — champion Baltimore and wild-cards Tampa Bay and Toronto — and all three got swept. They finished 0-7 as a division, the first time any division had ever played seven postseason games without coming up with at least win. 

Count the New York Yankees sweep in the 2022 ALCS, and the AL East has now lost 11 games in a row.

That's never happened before in the illustrious history of the division.

It started in the wild-card round, where the Tampa Bay Rays won 99 games despite being ravaged by injuries all year but got drummed out of playoffs quickly by Texas Rangers, losing 4-0 and 7-1. It was the second year in a row they got shut out in the wild-card round while scoring just one game in the series. (Cleveland got them in 2022.)

It wasn't any better for the Toronto Blue Jays, who were swept by the Minnesota Twins, their mighty bats disappearing in 3-1 and 2-0 losses.

It all ended with a wimper here in Arlington on Tuesday night, when the 101-win Orioles were swept by the Rangers in the three-game series, losing 7-1. They also lost twice in Baltimore to open the series, falling 3-2 and 11-8.

The Rangers, a wild-card team, sure made the AL East look bad. In five games with the Rays and Orioles, the two teams with the most wins in the regular season, Texas outscored those two teams 32-12. 

That's a beatdown. And a farewell.

For the Orioles, getting run off so quickly was a shocker because they weren't swept in a series once all year. That's only happened 17 times ever in baseball, and they were only the second team to do so and then get swept in their lone playoff round. That was the 1998 San Diego Padres, managed then by Bruce Bochy, who did all the sweeping this year as the first-year manager of the Rangers.

“These guys played their butts off for six months. We just didn’t play well for these last three, unfortunately,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said. “I'm really proud of our group because they defied all the odds. Nobody gave us a chance back in spring training.

"How can I not (consider this season a success?)'' he said. "We won 101 games. We won the East. We defied the odds. No one gave us a chance. We played really well all season.''

That's for sure. Even though their rebuilding started to show some life last year, the Orioles were picked to finish fifth by many in the AL East. Their preseason over/under line for wins was 76.5.

They won 101 games!

Many of their young guys have turned into stars. All-star catcher Adley Rutschman hit .277 with 20 homers and 92 RBIs in his first full season after getting called up in May of 2022. Gunnar Henderson, a lock for 2023 Rookie of the Year, had 28 homers and 82 RBIs, and the Orioles would up getting solid results from their pitching all year, too.

Winning 25 games more than expected doesn't happen very often. It was a great turnaround — remember, they lost 110 games in 2021 and finished 39 games out of FOURTH PLACE! — and it was a great season for the fun-to-watch Birds, who re-energized that great baseball fan base in Baltimore. 

They aren't going anywhere, either, despite this week's disappointment. 

"We made great development all year,'' Henderson said. "This was a good step in the right direction, and it's going to fuel us for next season. We've got to get better to make a World Series push. "This is just a shadow of what we're capable of.''

It's not easy living in the AL East, though. The Rays and Blue Jays are saying the same things even after their playoff flameouts. And that's nothing, because let's keep in mind that it was the free-spending New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox finished fourth and fifth in the division — that's NEVER happened before — and you know their wallets will be wide open in the offseason. They don't do ''bottom feeders.''

Even Yankees and Red Sox fans have been laughing at their AL brethren this week. That's how back this 0-7 beatdown was.

But this postseason disaster won't go away easily. The Rays got beat 11-1 and the Jays only scored one run, too.

Even the Orioles' series was deceiving, because they weren't really in it. Look at these stunning numbers for Baltimore:

• They had a lead in just one of 27 innings played. They scored two runs in the first inning of Game 2, but were down 9-2 by the end of the third inning. They scored runs late in the 11-8 loss, but were never closer than the three.
• Starting pitchers Grayson Rodriguez (Game 2) and Dean Kremer (Game 3) both lasted just 1 2/3 innings. Rodriguez was yanked after allowing five runs, and Kremer gave up six. Even ace Kyle Bradish didn't make it through five innings, going 4 2/3 while giving up two runs and seven hits. For a rotation that sparkled all year, they were a playoff dud.
• Adley Rutschman went just 1-for-12 in the sweep. His only hit was a double in the eighth inning of Game 2 when the Birds were losing 10-5. The Orioles' best player was a non-factor in the series.
• There were several other hitters to point fingers at, too. Center fielder Cedric Mullins was in a slump coming into October, and he never got out of it, going 0-for-12. Infielder Adam Frazier was 0-for-5, Ryan Mountcastle just 2-for-11 and Ryan O'Hearn 1-for-5. 

The Orioles weren't alone in AL East pitching meltdowns, of course. Tampa Bay's starters — Tyler Glasnow and Zack Eflin — both only lasted five innings in their starts against Texas. Glasnow gave up three runs, and Eflin four. They didn't get any help from their offense, either. Their only run game in Game 2 when they were already down 7-0.

Sure, the Rays were decimated by injuries, but that was still a brutal playoff performance. They made four errors in the 4-0 loss in Game 1, something they hadn't done all year. They had base-running blunders and looked nothing like a 99-win team. 

They still felt like they had enough with what they had.

“We talked about it last year. Last year’s exit was really difficult. We’re human. This was a highly successful season with a highly disappointing ending,'' Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander said Monday.  “I think this one, the way those two games played out with the expectation — this group went from ‘Man, are we ever going to be able to have a representative team on the field the way we envisioned it?,’ to ‘Oh my gosh, this team has arguably the best bullpen in the postseason, the two starters we had (in Tyler Glasnow and Zach Eflin), a batting champ (in Yandy Diaz), Harold (Ramirez) would have been third in batting’ — of a team that got to a spot of being really well-equipped for a deep postseason run. It dDidn’t happen.” 

“It’s disappointing. It’s the fifth year in a row we’ve made (the playoffs). That was to me  probably the most disappointing exit we’ve had. That’s part raising the expectations and part just the way those two games went down, and as quickly as they went down. That’s not going to go away.”

The playoffs will go on without the AL East, while the Rangers have reached the ALCS for the first time since 2011, and they await the winner of the Houston-Minnesota series. The Astros won the World Series last year, and lead the ALDS 2-1, hoping to wrap it up on Wednesday. The Twins, who haven't won a pennant since 1991, won their first postseason series since 2002 when they beat the Blue Jays, snapping an 18-game playoff losing streak. 

Now it's the AL East that can talk about losing streaks. The tide has turned now — it is weird seeing the Orioles and Rays at the top and Yankees and Red Sox at the bottom — and this offseason is going to be full of changes.

The five AL East teams went 319-231 against the rest of the league. That's 88 games over. 500 and a huge .580 winning percentage. The division certainly benefited the most from the new balanced schedule, and it'll be interesting to see if that trend continues next year.

But this playoff bust is going to taste bad for a long time.