Saturday, March 10, 2012

Regarding a one-game MLB playoff

Yes, I've talked about this brilliant idea before and you already know where I stand on it but I was listening to the John Kincade Show on ESPN radio the other day and he provided a little more ammunition for my position on this.
During the last 10 years the average distance between the American League Wild Card team and the team that didn't earn a Wild Card berth was 5 games.  That is a very large margin.  Also, during that same span, if you did have another Wild Card team, 4 out of those 10 years it would have come from the same division as the Wild Card team.  So on average that second Wild Card team would have been 5 games behind the first Wild Card team in the season-ending standings and would have been a third place team.  Is that a team worthy of a playoff berth?  Absolutely not.
And all of this talk about this new format creating more season-ending drama like last year, keep in mind that under this new format last year would not have happened.  In addition, over the last 10 years the Division winners in the American League on average played 9 MEANINGLESS GAMES at the end of the season because there's one Wild Card team.  Now imagine how many meaningless games these Division winners are going to play, since with an addition playoff berth existing they will have wrapped up a playoff spot earlier.
My position has always been that this waters down the game, cheapens and frankly makes mostly irrelevant the regular season -- a 162 game season that's supposed to separate the men from the boys.  It does not in my opinion make winning the Division more important, it makes it less important.
If you're going to insist on adding another team and, therefore, another round, at least make it a three-game series, so that a team that didn't really deserve to be there in the first place can't get lucky or have one outstanding pitching performance and walk into the next round.  Sure, it'll make the season even long and the other playoff teams will have to wait to play (yes, even more damn reason not to do it in the first place) but it won't be a complete farce.  It's also another reason to finally shorten the regular season.
Leave my baseball alone!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

At this rate MLB will have a sixteen-team playoff similar to hockey in the near future. Noooooooo!

tpubgu said...

I know you and I have discussed this in the past, but that's why the baseball season is a marathon and not a sprint or middle distance race. This is just another attempt of trying to generate gate receipts for owners without any real product.

dasnake said...

i dunno rj and t have points, you have a point also, and we will see, i remember a few one game playoffs, it went quick and added to the flavor.
i've hated hockey since i was old enough to hate hockey, so that tells you there was six teams and one cup run.
now look at the cup run, i have a tan before the bull ends, the way baseball is going my xmas lights will be up before the series is over, i know more fans, more teams, but if you can't do it in 162 games, unless you hit a hot streak like st.lou did last year and a few other teams have done in the past, do we really think this will change the final outcome, i know selig likes this, he is an owner and a robot for the owners, he also is a dink, i'm not gonna say absolute no, i will leave this year up to an open mind, but my gut says, do we really need this, jmho.