The 1981 Cincinnati Reds: Baseball's Best Record, but Missed the Playoffs
In 1981, the Royals went 50-53. The Reds had the best record in baseball. The former made the playoffs and the latter didn’t. After putting up a .611 winning percentage in the regular season, the Cincinnati Reds should have been among the favorites to win the 1981 World Series. But the Reds never got that chance because they missed the playoffs entirely. How, you may ask, did a team who won at a clip equivalent to a 99-win team in the regular season miss out on playing in October? Blame the 1981 strike and the wonky playoff rules that resulted from it.
On May 29, the Major League Baseball Players Association voted unanimously to go on strike since free agent compensation still wasn’t being handled in a way that satisfied them. Games didn’t come to a halt until after June 11, 56 games (for some) into the year. Through 56 games, Cincinnati sat at a solid 35-21, but trailed the Dodgers by a half game (36-21) in the National League West standings. Simply by playing one game less in what became the first half of the season, they were stuck in second place.
By the time baseball came back two months later, on August 10, it was decided that the season would be split into two halves: before the strike and after. The team in each division who finished in first place in each half of the season would play one another in a miniseries to decide who would meet in the League Championship Series in both the Senior and Junior Circuits. If the same team won both halves, they would play the team with the second-best overall record from both halves of the season combined.
Having finished in second place in the first half, the Reds needed either to win the NL West in the second half or have the Dodgers win it again and end up with the second-best overall record. Despite both teams floundering down the stretch, the Astros and Reds finished 1-2 in the division in the second half, Houston edging Cincinnati by a game and a half (33-20 vs. 31-21). Somehow, the Reds had finished a total of two combined games out of first place between two halves of the season at 66-42 overall, but had missed the postseason entirely. Over the course of a 162-game season, they would have been on pace to win 99 games, as many or more than 20 of the 28 eventual World Series winners since 1981. In the NL East, the Cardinals also finished with the best overall record at 59-43, but missed out on the postseason after finishing second in both halves. The Kansas City Royals, who finished the season 50-53, made the playoffs after winning the AL West in the season’s second half.
Seven teams have won 100+ games and missed the playoffs before, but six of those seven came when the World Series was the only playoffs that existed. You won your league or you didn’t play deep into October. It’s easier to see how that could happen. Since the dawn of the modern playoffs, which began taking shape in 1969, very few teams have won more than 95 games and missed out on the postseason. But at least those teams lost out by being beaten out by genuinely better teams. The Reds had the best record in Major League Baseball and didn’t get to play in October. We haveneverseen that before or since.
With the likes of George Foster, Tom Seaver, and Mario Soto, you have to have liked the Reds chances of winning it all. After all, they finished four games better than the eventual World Series champion Dodgers and 6.5 games ahead of the American League champion Yankees, not to mention13.5 gamesbetter than the Royals, who snuck into the playoffs. But thanks to a historical anomaly, we will never know what might have transpired that postseason had it been the Cardinals and Reds fighting for the NL pennant with the A’s and Brewers battling for the AL pennant. Chalk it up to a set of circumstances in baseball history we don’t ever want to see play out again.