Records Against Playoff Teams

Now that we know which five National League teams are in the playoffs, I decided to update a table I shared a few months ago that shows how the playoff teams performed against .500+ teams. The designation of whether an opponent was .500 & above or below .500 is based on each opponents end-of-season record, not their record at the time the two teams played. So, in this exercise, Arizona and Philadelphia are both in the “.500+” opponent category because each team finished with a record of exactly .500.

The teams below are sorted by their playoff seed.

All of these teams have made their season by beating up on the weaker teams, and playing at least .500 baseball (or nearly .500 baseball) against the better teams.

The Nationals played the most games against .500+ teams and had the best record against them. The Reds played the fewest games against .500+ teams, but they did have the second best winning percentage.

I further narrowed the focus to the teams who made the playoffs. Looking at head-to-head matchups against other playoff teams, the Reds roughest opponent was the Washington Nationals. The Nationals beat the Reds in 5 of those 7 contests, though outscored them by just 4 runs. The full list of the Reds regular season record against 2012 playoff teams:

Looking at the records of all the National League Playoff teams, the Reds and the Nationals are the only two teams to have winning records over opponents who are currently in the playoffs.

The Reds have the lowest number of runs scored per game against playoff teams but have also held playoff opponents to the lowest run totals allowed.