While we watch the playoffs and celebrate the teams who had great 2012s, it's time to bring a much-needed dose of realism, sadness, and cynicism to the table. With that outlook in life, it's shocking that my social calendar has so many openings. As we look back to see who deserves the title of Most Unhappy Bunch of 2012, you'll notice that no Cubs, Astros, Mariners and their ilk are included. There's nothing wrong with a bad season or a rebuilding year, hell, sometimes they're fun what with the sloppy errors and cheap tickets. But to truly have the worst year in baseball, one that is so miserable and nasty, you need to mix high expectations with a healthy dose of underperformance, preferably with a scandal or two. 

Your options:

Pittsburgh Pirates

As noted scholar and philosopher, Bane, once said, "There can be no true despair without hope." Nowhere is this more true than Pittsburgh. After the team surprised the baseball world through the beginning of August, at one point 16 games above .500 and in position to take the wild card, the Primanti Bros-eating folk that cheer on this team saw their hopes rise, thinking that the Pirates had finally stopped being an easy punchline. While the team had been playing above their heads, plenty of people of people thought they'd remain competitive, at least in comparison to those ridiculous, run differential-defying Orioles (Oh, how one day we'll laugh). Instead, outside of Pedro Alvarez, Andrew McCutchen, and AJ Burnett, everyone else forgot to hit, pitch, field, or do whatever it was that they were paid to do. 

Thanks to some poor play by the Cardinals and Dodgers, the Pirates were left to linger at the fringes of the playoff field, like the corpses of real pirates, their bodies rotting as a warning for others considering their path.  Pirates fans could have accepted another October at home, but playing Astros-like baseball for the last two months and bringing the team a 20th straight sub .500 record was cruelly tacked on, like a new George Lucas prequel. It was gross. 

Look, the games on Friday were exciting. Good TV. Generally bad baseball, but entertaining. And I hate the fact that they happened at all.

When the new system was announced about eleven months ago, I wrote about why I didn't like it, and why I was unconvinced by the arguments in favor of it. There are a lot of reasons, and I continue to stand by all of them, but the main point is that after a grueling 162-game season, making four teams' fates depend on just one game in which almost literally anything can happen is lunacy. Part of the beauty of baseball, as I'm sure I've written before (and I know many others have), is how incredibly long the season is. Six months, with a game almost every day. There's still a lot of room for weird, hard-to-explain stuff to happen (Ex. A), but there's much less room for it in a 162-game season than there is in one that's only, say, 82 or 16 games. After 162 games, generally speaking, you've got a pretty good idea of who the best teams are. In one game, though, even the worst team -- let alone the second wildcard team -- would have a pretty substantial chance of beating even the best team. It's not much different than a coin flip.

I didn't (and, really, still don't) think we'd understand exactly what this system is doing for years now, but my fears and pessimistic expectations were almost perfectly illustrated on Friday. The Atlanta Braves, over the course of the preceding six months, proved pretty conclusively that they were one of the four best teams in the league. They tied for the third-best record in the NL, but did it in what was probably the best division in the league, so you could argue they were second-best to the Nationals. And they were certainly better than the Cardinals, who finished with just 88 wins to Atlanta's 94. You might argue that by pointing out that the Cardinals and Braves had similar run differentials, finishing with identical 93-69 pythagorean expected records; but, again, you've got the massive difference in the divisions, and the unbalanced schedules; the Cardinals got to play the MLB-worst Cubs and Astros 32 times, and went 21-11 in those games. (The Braves had similar success against the bottom of their own division, New York and Miami, but those teams just weren't nearly as bad as the Central's worst.) 

The Braves were a considerably better team than the Cardinals, and deserved more than a single game to prove it. It's a bit harder to stick up for the Rangers, since they didn't look like they had any interest in doing much of anything over the second half or so, but I still think they were the most talented team in baseball, and having qualified for the playoffs, they deserved more than nine innings to show it. After six months and 162 largely successful games, with one bad day -- and one extremely questionable call, to say the least -- the Braves were done. That makes no sense to me. It's intuitively, plainly foolish. It might fabricate some extra excitement, but that's not the only goal here -- it completely discards any sense that the postseason is much more than a kind of lottery. For at least those four teams, the regular season -- that long, wonderful six-month trudge -- suddenly means much less than it ever has before.

With the postseason starting today (if you count that one-game farce as the postseason; I'm still undecided), we thought it'd be a good time to get the Friday Forum thing going again and give you our staff's predictions for the outcomes of the various postseason series. There are a lot of us now!

For the fourth year in a row, I'll be predicting the outcome of each series by coin flip, in addition to my own, almost equally random picks. It hasn't gone at all well yet, but this could be the year!

Here's the table, with comments below in reverse order of senority, because TCM can't follow directions and wrote a freaking book:

With Bobby Valentine's exit from Boston nearly assured, especially with Ben Cherington's recent radio comments, Bobby V will surely be looking for work this offseason. With the job market in such a precarious position, Valentine has already put together a cover letter to send out to prospective employers. I have reprinted it below in hopes of increasing its reach. 

To Whom It May Concern: 

I am an outspoken, hardworking individual ready to hit the ground running and elevate your company to a higher level. It is a new era, one with thousands of new strategic paradigms, paradigms that I can bring to your company. I am a proven leader, innovator, and entrepreneur with a history of performance under pressure. Don't believe me? Then I'll punch you in the face. Ha ha. I'm kidding. :p

As a project manager, I have succeeded all over the globe, something that's very important in this 24/7 world economy that we live in. I am an expert evaluator of talent and a great manager of personalities, so you may as well call me Mr. Manager! (Though I do respectfully ask that you do not contact my current employers. They're real fartbags.) 

In my current position as an employee of the Boston Red Sox, I must deal with a cruel and thoughtless media (excepting ESPN. Those guys are real good folks) while juggling one of the worst lineups in the history of the sport. I was not afraid to call out a subordinate when their performance did not match my expectations, something that fostered excellent moral and team camaraderie. Thanks to these abilities, I was able to lead this company in crisis to a better performance than six, count 'em, six, competitors in our field. Without my expert leadership, guidance, and business acumen, just imagine how poorly the team would have fared. 

With only one week left in the regular season, the internet has turned their collective mind power to the MVP vote. As Mike Trout's numbers have taken a dip over the last two months and with Miguel Cabrera threatening for the triple crown, a small, online-only battle has broken out. Some writers like Jon Paul Morosi are saying you can't choose an MVP simply because of a single advanced metric like WAR while others chime in with, "Yeah, but stuff like defense and baserunning and award-winning smiles do have value that home runs don't account for." The race is no clearer in the National League with Andrew McCutchen, Buster Posey and the untrustworthy Ryan Braun all in the running (Though Bill did an amazing job this morning arguing for Posey). So just how is a busy baseball writer supposed to vote and keep up with the fall TV schedule at the same time?  

Turns out, in addition to counting numbers, advanced statistics, and ability to play on a postseason-bound team, there are thousands of other metrics to use if you're a BBWAA writer on a deadline. I've outlined a few options with some likely MVP candidates below: 

ARCHAIC STATISTICS

While everyone is busy arguing over the merits of WAR, why not select your MVP by using the archaic and useless statistics of the occult. Choose your poison--game-winning RBI, a statistic not counted since 1988? Most sacrifice bunts? Highest Fielding percentage? Fangraphs' Clutch rating? The list of possibilities is endless. 

LIKELY MVP CANDIDATES: Erick Aybar, Darwin Barney

MR BLACKWELL'S BEST DRESSED LIST

Tired of the sloppy look of baggy pants and unfolded brims? Let your MVP vote guide the future of on-field style. Reward those with interesting facial hair, high socks, and couture fashion while punishing the sloppy denizens who know nothing of elegance.

LIKELY MVP CANDIDATES: Brendan Ryan, Sergio Romo

This is going to be one of those years when so much attention is paid to one awards race (the American League MVP, of course), we kind of forget there are other things going on. It’s too bad, because I think the National League race is a lot more interesting. The AL race is one we’ve been through before, almost every year lately -- sabermetrics guys vs. old-school guys, narrative vs. analytics, etc., etc. Kind of boring, really.

The NL, on the other hand? Up for grabs. The metrics all disagree over who’s on top, while agreeing on the same general group of guys in the running. Based on the more basic stats, Ryan Braun would be a shoo-in for his second straight, except, well, you know. You have to figure at this point that it’ll come down to Braun or Buster Posey, but if you’re like me and don’t care about RBI or the performance of the player’s team, you’ve also got to consider Andrew McCutchen, David Wright, Yadier Molina, and Jason Heyward, and you could certainly make room for a couple more (Chase Headley, perhaps?) as well.

With every bone in my contrarian, so-totally-tired-of-the-PED-witch-hunt body, I want to back Braun for it. It’s pretty amazing that, for all intents and purposes, he’s doing exactly what he did last year. A few more homers, a few fewer singles, but it’s uncanny.

I can’t do that, though, because I don’t think Braun’s been the most valuable player in the league this year. I think Gerald Dempsey “Buster” Posey has.

We have news! Well, a bunch of it! And it’s exciting!

We’ve been keeping a secret from you, which has been difficult because Cee is the worst at secrets, but we’re excited to announce that TCM, Cee, and I have been invited by SB Nation to join their growing team of writers. You’ll start seeing us pop up all over the place a total of about nine times a week -- on their various team pages, and also Baseball Nation. We’re all incredibly excited about the opportunity to branch out and join a phenomenal collection of sites that figures to keep getting better, and we expect this to be a mutually beneficial relationship that will develop and expand over time. The good news is that we’ve already started (surprise!) and Cee and TCM have already kicked us off and you can already find their posts on Mets’ Jon Niese and on the Yankees' lack of Mariano Rivera. So, head over to SB Nation and take a look around...and since we’ll be writing on all of the team sites, it’ll be like a little The Platoon Advantage scavenger hunt to find us--and if you do, say something insightful in the comments, just like you’ve done here. We’re humbled to join the writers already providing amazing content there, and if you weren’t already reading Rob Neyer and things like Jon Bois’ Sports Cards for Insane People and Grant Brisbee’s baseball fan’s pseudo-review of Trouble with the Curve, I don’t even know what to tell you -- and be ready for a whole lot of us.

But fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective), this means remarkably little for what you’re used to. TPA is still going to be here, and we’re still a part of TPA, as are David and Jason. We’re also working on adding more quality writers to make sure the content keeps flowing. The first is the very funny and insightful Michael Clair from Old Time Family Baseball, whose debut should be up tomorrow, and we’ll be announcing more soon. So if you’ve been coming here on a regular basis, you should keep doing that; if you haven’t, now’s as good a time as any to start.

In addition, TCM and I will be keeping up our regular gigs at Baseball Prospectus and Getting Blanked, and Cee will be keeping up Baseball Prose. We’re really busy people all of a sudden, but we’re busy with something we love to do, so that shouldn’t even count, really.

So thanks for your attention, go check us out on SBN, come back here later for Michael’s big debut, and, um, I don’t know, go team?

Dear Readers,

Hello. I’m the famous Internet baseball writer Numbers McAnalysis. You may know me from my writing about baseball on the Internet. I’m here to talk to you about the assault on reason that is the Baltimore Orioles.

You see, the Orioles have a real good chance of making the playoffs this season. That part is cool, because they haven’t been in the postseason since the 90s. The uncool part? THEY’RE ACTUALLY A BAD TEAM. I mean, if you disregard the standings, that is.

This aggression will not stand. This is entirely unfair to actual good teams who are deemed not good strictly based on their wins and losses. (Look, for the sake of argument, go ahead and assume that when I talk about “good” and “bad” teams, I am not referring to how many games they’ve actually won and lost.) Because of the blatant disregard the Orioles have on playing the game the right way, we are going to see inferior teams play in, and possibly win playoff games. The taste of vomit in my mouth is running rampant.

Look, we have tools to decide whether a team is good or not. These tools have been crafted and improved and upgraded for as many as 30 years. They are infallible and not to be questioned. Who are the Orioles to question this? What makes them so special that they can fly boldly in the face of years of computation and data parsing? You’re ruining it for everyone, Baltimore. Your wOBA, xFIP, and fielding statistics are laughable. You’ve produced less WAR than the Phillies and Marlins. Why must you threaten us?

The Orioles’ “success” can be firmly affixed to the product of randomness. My colleagues and I hate randomness. Why? Because the presence of randomness precludes the terror-inducing fact that we are perhaps not in charge of our own destinies. If we allow these kinds of anomalies to exist, it proves that our mere existence as people is without meaning, consequence, or overall affect on the spinning of the planet and the alignment of the stars. Sure, astronomers can point to the Big Bang as a completely random act, but that does not mean we have to take this crap from a baseball team.

Think about the precedent this sets for the future. Are we just going to allow any team into the playoffs now simply because they have the best record? Imagine a future conversation you may have with a friend where you reminisce about baseball seasons passed. Would you rather say “Hey, remember that time the Orioles shocked everybody and made a run in the postseason?” or “Hey, remember that time everything went exactly how we thought it would and we all felt better about ourselves?” If you don’t prefer the latter, you have no right being a baseball fan, honestly.

I don’t want to root against Baltimore; I just want to root for process. Process is what holds us together and makes us feel alive. Process is how we glean joy out of things like baseball. Process, and our understanding of it, is what makes us smarter and better than those who simply enjoy the aesthetics and narrative of the game.

Death to the Baltimore playoff push. Long live Process.

If you're a baseball fan, I dare you to watch this and not get excited.  I can't wait to see this movie:

The movie's scheduled to come out on April 12, 2013 and stars Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson, Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, Christopher Meloni as Leo Durocher, John C. McGinley as Red Barber, and Alan Tudyk as racist jerkwad Ben Chapman.  Mark your calendars.

It's amazing to me how much of a difference a couple days can make.  On Monday, on Getting Blanked, I was singing the praises of the second Wild Card team, defending it from those who thought it would bring shame on the otherwise noble house of the MLB postseason.

I didn't see a problem with allowing fans of additional teams, teams who would have been out of the race a year ago, another reason to tune in, turn on, and drop in on more baseball, especially when it stole attention from football.  I also didn't see how the addition of this second wildcard would unduly punish the most successful MLB teams, or why we should even care much about that.  Frankly, I still don't.

But what I wasn't counting on was that Major League Baseball had put roughly as much thought into this plan as I did when I pulled a beanbag out from beneath my three-year old brother just after he'd jumped off our bar.  No, they just had an idea (a good idea, I think) to add another wild card team in each league.  But instead of thinking through the implications of that decision and taking the time to make sure that everything would work the way it was supposed to, Major League Baseball just pulled the beanbag chair out from under the 2012 season and figured...eh, maybe little 2012 will learn a valuable lesson about trusting his big brother.

Not only did they limit this first Wild Card round to a single game, upping the dramatic tension but reducing its general resemblance to actual baseball, but Buster Olney reported that teams will be allowed to manipulate their 25 man rosters specifically for these games (allowing them to carry just a single starting pitcher, for instance). Baseball’s postseason, then, has the potential to rival football and basketball with all the potential for in-game substitutions. You want to carry 4 left fielders?  Go ahead!  Wanna pinch hit for the pitcher every time the spot comes up?  You can!  Wanna have two extra pinch-runners for the late innings?  Go for it!  A 3rd LOOGY?  Terrific!

Obviously, not every team will take advantage of the opportunity these rules create, but some will try to game the system and gain a miniscule edge.  And that’s a problem, because it distorts the game and compromises the integrity of the regular season.

But look, if we’re really interested in making the one-game playoff so different and distinct from the game we watch 162 other times during the year, here are a few additional rule suggestions to make it more wacky for the kids: