Okay, but then why have 8 teams in the playoffs? Why not scale back to 4? But then, why 4… why not just two, like it was prior to 1969?
I mean, if you’re going to have any playoffs at all you’re conceding the possibility that a team that didn’t do as well in the regular season will defeat a team that did better. The only question is how many you want.
I don’t think 8 out of 30 is too many, and I don’t think 10 out of 30 is really a substantial change. I don’t jhave a problem with it being “A third of the teams” versus “a bit more than a quarter of the teams.” What I don’t like about another Wild Card spot is just that it seems vaguely stupid; it’s not the same as pairing off four teams. A play in series is effectively identical to pretending that two teams tied for the WC even when they didn’t; it will also, inevitably, be a scheduling ass-pain.
I actually like having more playoffs, for the simple reason that it means more exciting baseball games for me to watch, more teams with a chance to win something, more intrigue for more fans. But the straightforward elegance of an x^2 playoff system is better than play-ins or byes or what have you. If they wanted to go to a 16-team playoff system I actually wouldn’t mind that, though it would just make my desire for more expansion more relevant.
Even if you’re going to go with 15-team leagues, why not move Houston to the NL West and Arizona to the AL West? It’s two moves instead of one, but has a couple of advantages: 1) keeps Houston, a long-time NL team, in its league, while moving a much newer team to a different league; 2) Texas still has an AL and an NL team, and they’re now nicely lined up for geographic interleague play.
I actually like the segregation of league competition and knockout competitions that European soccer leagues use. Let’s have a National League and American League table (I’d prefer them to be 14 and 16 just to make scheduling easier), with the winners facing off in the World Series. Balanced schedules, so every team plays the other teams the same number of times. So for the 14-team league each team could play the other 13 10 times (and hey, 5-game series are nice because you have to use your whole starting staff - and less travel). That’s 130 games. In the 16-team league those 130 games would be hard to split up… 9 games against the other 15 teams is 135 games. Probably just have to add 5 random games to the 14-team league just to even it up. Anyways, details are overrated.
Then, for our knockout competition let’s put everyone in a year-long knockout tourney as well. 6 pods of 5 teams, you play each of the other 4 teams in a three game series home and away (total of 24 games). All pod winners and top two non-pod winners go into the quarter-final series, etc. Winner gets the MLB Cup, or something. We can re-draw the pods every year to mix things up, or do the geographical outline proposed up-thread. Adding the ~135 league games to the guaranteed 24 cup games gives… 159 total games in the season! Not too bad.
The problem with this idea is that it’s really boring. I mean, it’s traditional, sort of, but you are 100% guaranteed to make a lot of people lose interest in major league baseball by significantly reducing the number of pennant races.
By trying to attach more meaning to the regular season, you are inadvertently reducing the number of meaningful regular season games. Indeed, in many years there will be few, if any, meaningful September games at all. Everyone remembers the great pennant races but few remember that prior to the Wild Card, and especially prior to divisional play, there were often years when there was only one good race, or sometimes no good September races at all. In 1991 there was only one pennant race. In 1992 there really weren’t any.
MLB’s profit motive is not an entirely bad thing. It was wise to go to divisional play in 1969, and I think going to the current format was equally wise. I’m not totally sold on another wild card just because of the clumsiness of it.
We’re going to have to see how things shake out with them now starting to eliminate the AL/NL format.
In case this was not mentioned upthread (I didn’t see it), those changes take effect in 2013. As far as moving the Astros and not other teams goes, there is the hope that they’ll have a good rivalry with the Rangers because they’re in the same state. The Diamondbacks wouldn’t have that, the league would probably prefer to move the fewest teams possible, and the Astros were an option because they were being sold and the league made it a condition of the sale. So it’s a combination of opportunity and some strategy.
Worst case scenario come true. This makes me feel sick.
162 game season, and the team with the 2nd best record in all of MLB could end up with a 1-game playoff against a team 10+ games back. And the team 10+ games back could have the advantage because the good team may have burned their best starter trying to win the division. A team may have to play a team they finished ahead of in the same division in the “first round”.
2001 Oakland had the 2nd best record in MLB with 102 wins, and would have been given a 1-game playoff against the 85-win Twins (17 games back).
1997 Yankees had 96 wins, would have been given 1 game against the 84-win Angels.
2008 Red Sox finish 6 games ahead of the Yankees in the same division, Yankees would be rewarded with a 1-game playoff against them.
2002 Giants finish 3.5 games ahead of the Dodgers in the same division, would have been given a 1-game playoff against them.
This is an ugly, ugly decision, and I really believed that, despite the money, sanity would prevail and they would not do this.
I still don’t believe an idea this stupid can last, or possibly even take effect. A 1-game playoff is absurd on its face in baseball; it is identical to pretending that teams which could be 17 games apart actually tied and just need a tie-breaker, rather than an actual series involving rotations and bullpens. Even a 3-game series in not sufficient after a 162-game season.
I won’t even get started on the idiocy of there being different “classes” of playoff teams, eliminating the entire beauty of the playoffs, the accomplishment of making the playoffs, and devaluing the regular season. Or about just how bad many of the playoff teams would be, barely over .500.
The victory count does not tell you the relative strengths of the teams. Some have much tougher division rivals and the interleague schedule is hit and miss.
Don’t worry-in a few years they’ll add 2 more wild cards (mimicking the NFL’s system), and after that they’ll surely add 2 more again so that it’s more like hockey and the NBA*.
*[Assuming anything closely resembling the former NBA emerges from the smoke and wreckage of their labor negotiations-but that’s another thread.]
We’ve been using victory count for over a hundred years to decide who gets into the playoffs and who doesn’t. So one game will tell us more?
I agree that this is the worst possible solution; pretending two teams tied when they didn’t is ludicrous. The 2001 example is the most egregious one, but it’ll keep happening, you’ll see. The only saving grace is that you can argue a team that didn’t win its division should just be glad it’s getting a shot. Still, at least a best-of-3 series would have given this thing some legitimacy.
I would be been happier with them naming THREE wild cards per league and forcing #5 and #6 to play in to a playoff game with #4, which at least gives #4 a big advantage in a day of rest/no travel.
This extra layer of playoffs, regardless of the format it has taken (which is particularly stupid) was a dumb idea created by idiots. FFS, if you haven’t figured out who the top 8 teams are after 162 frickin’ games, there is something fundamentally wrong with what you’re doing. I am very much against rewarding mediocre play while punishing exceptional play. Frankly, I’m still not much of a fan of the wild card system as it is, although I grudgingly concede that it is here to stay. I blame Bud Selig for everything that is wrong with the Majors right now. And he probably has something to do with most everything else that is wrong with the universe, but I haven’t yet figured out how to pin it all on him. Yet… :mad:
Speaking of awards, who the hell voted for Mark Trumbo for AL Rookie of the Year? He hit 29 home runs and does nothing else. The guy isn’t going to last seven years. He shouldn’t even have been named on a ballot.
Is hard slotting in the draft official yet? Because that is worse, to me, than the stupid playoff thing. Sure, why wouldn’t MLB want to send the best high school athletes to full scholarships in football and basketball rather than have them play baseball? That can only make the sport better in the long run.