Don’t miss Greg Joyce’s text messages from The Bronx and beyond — he’s giving Sports+ subscribers the inside buzz on the Yankees.

It is still a six-month, 162-game marathon in which big league teams are on the field six or seven days a week. That has not changed over the past six-plus decades. 

But pretty much everything else has. Pennant races are lost to history. There is a four-round postseason structure. Major League Baseball has become a playoff league just as surely as the NFL, the NBA and the NHL. 

And that is why, as maddening as it has been to hear Aaron Boone insist multiple times throughout this summer that has left much to be desired, that “it is all in front of us,” the fact is that the Yankees manager is absolutely correct. 

The wild-card Texas Rangers won the 2023 World Series with the sixth-best regular-season record in the league by defeating the wild-card Diamondbacks, who had finished with the 12th-best record. The NHL Florida Panthers captured the Stanley Cup this June after finishing with the NHL’s 11th-best record.