Sure, baseball teams kinda want to make the playoffs ...

 ... inasmuch as playoff baseball generally creates a quick infusion of cash:

"The era of opportunity cost in baseball, the chapter we’ve lived in for the past quarter-century, is dead. Several years ago I made the case that it was time to stop considering player salaries when conducting transaction analysis, both because of its devaluation of labor and because of the difficulty of understanding what, exactly, the lost opportunity of an albatross contract presents when we lack access to trustworthy financial information. Now, I repeat this request, because the consideration of baseball players as commodities is no longer simply distasteful, it is also meaningless. Teams no longer operate under the constraints we’ve long assumed.

Thirty teams had the opportunity to employ relief pitcher Brad Hand for a single year at a price of $10 million. Thirty teams could pencil in a league-average, in-their-prime second baseman in Kolten Wong for $12.5 million. None did so. The idea of large and small markets, that some teams can afford the best players and others can’t, the philosophy that underpinned the seminal cliche of modern baseball, Moneyball, is now a myth. Your favorite team could improve its chances of winning. It won’t, because it doesn’t believe it’s worth it. Franchises are no longer forced to rely on winning to create profit. The era of baseball as pure competition is over."

Fleetwood Mac has released two albums in 25 years, and you can't name one song from either of them.

Because Fleetwood Mac doesn't sell music. 

They sell the idea of Fleetwood Mac.

 

MLB fans have been duped for a long time, not only with regards to the "value" of players, but the entire relentless fan-as-GM nonsense: "Move DJ to first base and trade Voit for some starting pitchers."

What a genius idea that everybody else thought of.

If Joe from Metuchen were the Yankees' GM, they undoubtedly would have won 12 Championships over the past 20 years.

It may be disheartening to realize that your fandom is taken for granted, but it is.