The ALCS and NLCS are full of teams that actually tried to win

You might have noticed this past offseason and this season that not all of MLB’s teams are exactly engaging in a good-faith effort to win baseball games. Tanking is an issue, to the point where there are so now many tanking teams that they can’t all possibly all win in the way the Cubs and Astros did following their rebuilds. It also makes for some bad baseball a little too often, and given we just witnessed the largest dip in attendance MLB has seen in years, the bad baseball isn’t exactly drawing people in.

That’s why this year’s ALCS and NLCS should make you happy. The Brewers, Dodgers, Red Sox, and Astros all tried to win games this year. And I don’t mean that the other postseason teams didn’t try to win. It’s just that these four teams arguably tried harder than anyone else, and now they’re here in their respective League Championship Series.

The Brewers are the most obvious of the bunch in terms of actually trying to win. They nearly made the postseason a year ago, and instead of hoping they’d be a little luckier this time around with a similar roster, they decided to go all-in. Milwaukee signed free agent Lorenzo Cain in late-January, because the many other teams who were not trying allowed Lorenzo Cain to still be available in late January.

Cain rewarded them with a pretty nice season worth 6.9 wins above replacement level according to Baseball Reference’s measurements. Great defense and a 119 OPS+ went a long way for Milwaukee this year, and should give them faith that Cain will be valuable during much of the five-year, $80 million contract he signed.

It went even further because Cain wasn’t the lone addition to the team. At the same time they were inking their new center fielder, the Brewers were also trading for Christian Yelich, because the Marlins weren’t even going to pretend they had a shot at winning if they just added some free agents and made some deals to compete in a not-quite-baked rebuilding NL East.

Yelich is the likely NL Most Valuable Player after leading the senior circuit in both batting average and slugging while bashing 36 homers. Sure, it was a career year, but Yelich is 26: the Marlins were giving away a talented player who was just entering his prime, and Milwaukee saw the benefit in that.

Cain cost the Brewers money, Yelich prospects, but the Brewers said yes on both, and here they are in the NLCS after winning the NL Central.

The Dodgers didn’t go as hard in the offseason as Milwaukee did, but they didn’t necessarily have to since they were just in the World Series and brought most of that roster back for 2018. It would have been easy for them to give up on this year following a rough start and star shortstop Corey Seager’s season ending in May due to Tommy John surgery, but they were able to weather that storm in large part due to the resurgence of Matt Kemp — brought back to the organization during the offseason in a five-player trade with the Braves — as well as the emergence of scouting find Max Muncy, the Dodgers’ Chris Taylor of 2018.

Before the trade deadline, with just a half-game lead on the Diamondbacks in the NL West, the Dodgers traded for Orioles’ shortstop Manny Machado. Machado, a rental, was still owed about half of his $16 million salary, and he also cost Los Angeles five minor-league players. Yusniel Diaz is the actual prospect of the bunch: one good prospect and $8 million might not be a huge investment, but again, after watching everyone sit on their hands this offseason and then make mostly minor deals at the trade deadline, paying for a few months of Machado in an effort to try to be better feels revolutionary.

Dear lord do we need more big transactions in baseball.

Uh, anyway. The Red Sox won the AL East in both 2016 and 2017, the first time in history they ever finished atop the division in consecutive years. For 2018, they didn’t just hope it would happen again: no, they loaded up. Despite a payroll that was already hefty, the Red Sox added free agent slugger J.D. Martinez on a five-year, $110 million deal that pushed their Opening Day payroll to $233 million. That managed to break the Dodgers’ four-year streak of having the top payroll in the league.

Boston kept adding during the year, too. Ian Kinsler was brought on board in a trade with the Angels after it was clear Dustin Pedroia was not going to be around to play second base. Nathan Eovaldi isn’t particularly expensive at $2 million, but with the Red Sox already so close to the major luxury tax penalties after signing Martinez, seeing them add anyone else at all was encouraging — they could have stopped and pointed to their payroll and their record, which was the best in the game at the time of these deals, and said they were already doing all they could. After the performances of Eovaldi and Kinsler and Martinez in the ALDS against the Yankees, Red Sox fans can be glad Boston didn’t stop adding.

Finally, there are the defending champion Houston Astros, who got a head start on adding for 2018 by trading for Justin Verlander in August of 2017. Verlander helped the Astros in their goal of winning a World Series in the present, but Houston was also acquiring the remaining two years and $56 million on Verlander’s contract. The Tigers paid $8 million this year and will pay another $8 million in 2019, but still: that’s the kind of move you’re not seeing every team making if they’re already in a position to say they’re good and we’ll see what happens with the team they already have.

To add to having a full year of Justin Verlander in 2018, the Astros also acquired Gerrit Cole from the Pirates in the offseason. Like with Verlander — and like with the Dodgers’ ability to turn Taylor and Muncy into assets — Cole got back to being dominant with Houston after some tweaks to his game. A great team got even better.

I’m not giving Houston any credit for adding Roberto Osuna at the trade deadline, though. There were other relievers out there, you jerks.

Anyway, it’s good to see, in a year where so much of the story was centered around the teams that weren’t trying to win, that the League Championship Series have reminded us about the successes of those that did bother to put in the effort. It’s the kind of thing that can make you forget about why three AL teams were able to win at least 100 games, or why the Braves were able to be a year ahead of schedule in their rebuild, or...

okay, okay, I’ll stop. These four LCS teams are pretty great, and we should enjoy these two series and the Fall Classic that comes out of them. At least we know they’re all trying to get there.