Team strengths are abundant among Major League Baseball’s postseason contenders. They have to be over the course of a demanding 162-game season.
In October, those strengths become more critical than at any other time of the year. However, as the playoffs have shown in series after series, year after year, it is not always a team’s strengths that actually decide its eventual fate.
Often, it is a club’s weakness that determines how deep it can trudge through the postseason. When a team cannot rely on a vital part of its makeup when the leverages are at their highest, it can cost it its playoff life.
The standings show us the most likely postseason participants with about two weeks to go in the regular season. While we know which strengths have them sitting in those positions, it is now time to expose each projected playoff team’s fatal flaw, the glaring weakness that could eliminate it and end its World Series dream.