PHILADELPHIA — For the Mets, whose October presence is limited to Francisco Lindor on a beach in a beer commercial that has played an awful lot during these playoffs, and for the Yankees, who have been suspiciously mum since an alleged deep reflection period following their worst season in a generation, there is a lesson to be gleaned from the National League Championship Series: Just get in.
Headed into Game 7 on Tuesday night, the Phillies were looking for a second trip to the World Series in as many years despite not being the best team in the NL East either time. The Diamondbacks were trying to repeat the Phillies’ feat from last season by making it to the final round as the sixth of six seeds.
Oh, and they were competing for the chance to play the American League champion Rangers, who parlayed a 90-win, wild-card season — two years removed from losing 102 games — into home-field advantage in the Fall Classic.
The takeaway isn’t a new one, but it is more real and relevant than ever in this era of over-expanded playoffs: Once a club gets into the postseason, anything can happen.
“With the more teams you have, the more chances you have at a run like this happening,” Diamondbacks closer and former Met Paul Sewald said. “Anybody who has ever been here knows if you’re in the playoffs, you have a chance of winning the World Series. If you’re not in, you don’t have it.”
The Phillies’ Nick Castellanos said: “Last year, we all wanted to get in because it’s been a while since this franchise has been in the postseason. This year we were like, we’re going to get in. We don’t care what it looks like. We don’t need to win the division. We just need to get in because we know that once we’re in, we thrive in October.”
That makes these Diamondbacks reminiscent of those Phillies, a team that was better than most people expected in the regular season and wound up making a run longer than anybody expected in the postseason. By the time…
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