
It was a snooze fest because it ended 4-1. People forget that series was tied going back to Arizona until they completely folded at home for some reason. And quite frankly, AZ did not belong there in the first place. They got hot at the right time and because of that they knocked out Milwaukee and LA (the two teams playing as we speak). Furthermore, AZ has not been back to the playoffs since then. And I say all this as a Dbacks fan. So no, small markets had nothing to do with it.
It doesn’t matter how many people “want” a series, if there’s good baseball being played people will watch. In the case of both 23 and 24, there was not very good baseball being played. Dbacks ran out of steam after mainly getting carried by a hot offense, and the Yankees were just the Yankees.
Sure but the Yankees choked and got shit on. And again, market size and payroll and shit still has nothing to do with anything. You can’t just say small market automatically = boring and bad. Would you say that Milwaukee, Tampa, and Cleveland are flukes? Milwaukee and Tampa were the best teams in their leagues. You could say that Cleveland just had a bad division but coming back down 2-0 in the ALDS was no easy feat, and they’re currently trading haymakers with that said Tampa team.
In fact, the only thing about this year that’s a snooze fest is how the Yankees and dodgers play baseball, and the results are reflective of that. Nobody wants to watch guys walk up and either strike out or hit a home run over and over again. That’s why the Yankees got shit on, and why the dodgers are on the verge of elimination. The dodgers only beat the braves because they have the exact same flaws as them offensively, but had better pitching available.