Say what you want about the problems with MLB‘s current playoff system. You can bemoan the addition of the Wild Card, or whine about how home field advantage for the World Series is determined by the All-Star Game, or complain that a best-of-five series is a poor way to determine which of two good teams is superior.
But when the first round kicks off on Wednesday, don’t pretend that you won’t be watching.
The postseason is when heroes are made. It’s when role players become household names, and stars aim to reach immortality. I know it sounds like a cheesy MLB Network commercial, but I defy any baseball fan to disagree.
In this slideshow are the 25 players who have had the best postseason careers in MLB history. Because this is about the career as a whole, I tried to make rankings relatively context-neutral, so a clutch hit or a walk-off homer didn’t matter as much as they would have in, say, a “top postseason moments” article.
If someone you think deserves to be here didn’t make the cut, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t considered—my original list had 75 names, meaning 50 nearly worthy players almost made it in.