The Phillies will be the only team that received a bye to reach the league championship series-a year after the Astros were the only team with a bye to win a postseason round. Discourse about the pros and cons of this still-fairly-new format will grow only more contentious as the best regular-season teams keep losing early in the playoffs.
This October may feature fewer round-trippers. The league's isolated power (slugging percentage minus batting average) was .106, down from .116 and .119 in the past two wild-card rounds. MLB experienced a power outage late in the regular season, which could be carrying over into October.
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