One reason MLB added a wild card play-in game was to give the wild card teams a disadvantage. That obviously didn’t work as two wild card teams, both with less than 90 wins, are going to compete for the World Series Championship. Oops.
Maybe both wild card games should be played on Tuesday, with the LDS starting on Wednesday. There are still too many days off. We will wait until Tuesday for the World Series to start. I’d love to see all the series lose the second day off, so that there is less time to wait if series go short.
This is really more of a consequence of putting one third of your teams in the playoffs. If you have ten teams out of thirty in the playoffs, then you have just created the possibility that the ninth best team and the tenth best team will meet in the championship game.
The consequences of this are more glaring in baseball, because of both the large absolute number of regular season games, and the percentage of games in the regular season vs the playoffs, which is larger than other sports. If the idea is to have so many teams in the playoffs, start removing regular season games and add more playoff games, so the regular season becomes what it is in the other media sports, the warm up to the main season, which is the playoffs.
The wild card play in was a cute attempt to increase the number of playoff teams to ten teams, without making it look like the number of playoff teams were being increased to ten teams. The cuteness was because having ten teams out of thirty make the playoffs with such a long regular season is such an obvious bad idea.
Maybe they could just eliminate the silly play-in game and go back to the excellent six division winners and two wild cards format.
The wild card game works fine now. It is no longer the same entry into the NLDS as the division winners, you need to use one of your better pitchers, usually ace, to win that game, then you face the division winners best pitchers, while the wild card is back staggered with the #2 and #3.
Is it the Giants fault that the Nats best pitcher couldn’t perform well enough against our #2 starter? And similarly in Game 2? Then they beat our actual ace in Game 3, but again, they blow their serve in Game 4.
And really, what separates the Giants from the other playoff teams? If you look at everyone’s record split, most are about the same playing winning teams, the main difference is how one team (Nats) beat up on losing teams than another (Giants). Two wins out of 58 and the Giants would have the same record as Nats against winning teams, and you know with how randomness works in baseball, that’s basically the same. Only the Cards actually had a winning record against teams at or over .500.
And the season is like the Beatles song, She’s so Heavy, the end is arbitrary. The set of playoff teams is different between 154 games, 162 games, or if the season were somehow extended another week. So a wild card team in one scenario is the division winner in another, the level of separation is sometimes paper thin.
And really, that record represents what that team did during the season, not how good they are at the end. Which leads to an anomaly like this season.
But the Giants were a good team, they were greatly hampered by player injuries. For example, one key difference now is that Belt is healthy and playing, but it was him being HBP that put him on the DL in the first place, then a freak injury during practice.
And is it really that bad? Last time this happened was in 2002. And since 1995, that’s 20 WS, 40 teams, 12 of which were WC. Previously, it was one of four teams, so that’s pretty randomized (randomly, 10 of 40).
So really, if this bothers you, the solution is moving to a four division format with only the winners playing and no wild card.
This is what I had been hoping for, bringing in two new teams to reach 32 teams, reconfigure to 4 team divisions, four divisions, because the wild card bothered me, being on the same footing as the other teams.
I’m OK with the new format of having the two WC team battle it out for the right to reach the regular playoffs, as that hampers the WC team to use their ace there, then forced to use their secondary starters first, then ace in game 3, as well as get less home games in the series.
As I said, the difference between teams are often paper thin, and teams are different at the end than during the season, but every team plays with those issues, and thus this is fair for teams to battle with these conditions.
But I still wouldn’t mind the four division format once two teams are added, that’s the only solution if wild card teams bother you.
Do what they do in Japan and start the wild card team down 1-0 in a six-game series, first one to 4 wins.
obsessivegiantscompulsive » All your points are very good. I just find it interesting that three years in to the new format, we have exactly what it was designed to avoid.
I also would like 32 teams, four four-team divisions in each league, and the eight winners competing in the playoffs.
There is one good thing about the current wild card system. In the past, there wasn’t a lot of return to spending money (rather than drafting players) to increase a team’s win total from 81 to 86 wins. With the second wild card, that’s may not be true any more. If 88 wins gets you into the playoffs, teams will be a little more willing to buy a free agent to get to the 86 win level (a .531 team can easily play .560 ball with some random luck). There is less of an excuse for teams to say, “We’ll be bad for another year and save our money and see how our prospects turn out.”
By the way, this is what seems to be happening with the Cubs. The fans want them to spend money to improve the team now, but the front office is holding out to see how the prospects develop. When you see that group buy a couple of free agents, that’s when they feel they’ll be ready to win.
If they cut down on all the offdays the WC series can be 3 games, the LDS 7 games, and the WS can be a 9 game series.
However, I would like to suggest a different format.
After the 1 game WC series, have all 4 teams in leach league play each other for a total of 12 games (each team playing the other for a 3 game series). The top 2 teams based on record and tiebreakers face each other for a 7 games series. And then the WS for 7 games
If you limit the off days, plenty of time. More important the networks will have more guaranteed games to broadcast. The winning team may end up playing a max of 27 (up from 20 today)
I’d just remind everyone that this current WC format is less than optimal. I’d much prefer a four team per league format, with every round being best of seven. I know that this would add length to the season, but in reality, we could move back to a 154 game season, with three rounds of seven games. This would move us towards a much more realistic representation of the best team winning the WS than what we have now. 2 cents.
pft » That’s an interesting out of the box suggestion.
I find pft’s idea to be interesting too.
But the math bothers me. I don’t think that there’s 12 games played, I think it’s 18: each team plays the other 3 teams 3 games, that’s 9 games, and each game is paired with the other two playing, so that is 18 games total played, for a total of 33 max.
I’m sure teams will like that, but the players association will probably want a bigger cut of the extra revenues, players already think the season is too long.
John, I would be OK with a 7 game LDS, but I like that the WC is forced to deal with pushing back their ace, while the divisional winner is rested and can use ace. To me, the division winners should get some sort of advantage over the WC team. The current WC is not ideal, but I think it’s fine and it’s better than the prior system, for me.
But, sure, it can be improved.
We could use your idea but incorporate the Japanese League rule that the WC is already down 1-0 with 6 games max to be played. That would be a huge disadvantage and something that is growing on me as an option, especially since another league is using it already.
Or maybe we could keep the 5 game format, but the WC has to play all 5 on the road against the top winner.
I don’t think they added the second wildcard and the play in game to make it harder for the wild card team to win in the playoffs, but to make it so that the a wild card berth wasn’t a guarantee to get into the Division Series. By adding a second wild card they reduce the value of all the wild card slots and make the division winning slot more valuable, because they have a 100% chance at the playoffs not a 50% chance.
Therefore, I don’t think it’s any kind of sign of trouble with the system that you have the two wild card teams in the Series. They made the Division series by the rules in place.
Disagree strongly, in spite of the fact that I am a Dodger fan bitterly watching the hated Giants benefit from the wild card format. If this is not considered to be enough of a handicap for wild card teams, IMO they should just junk the whole existing playoff structure and reform both leagues to create an NBA style system where the top X number of teams in each league make the postseason and are seeded by record (hopefully only 8 total, since baseball is a long season sport and adding more teams just makes that long season meaningless). As things stand, the wild card teams earned their spots in the WS and people should just quit complaining about it.