September 19, 2007
Thoughts on the Playoffs
My thoughts on changes to the playoffs are available to Baseball Prospectus subscribers in my latest column.
That's a nice column, but to accepting of the Bud's new TV-mandated schedule for the post-season tournament. The fact that a 5 game series could be determined by only two starting pitchers from each team has further turned this post-season tourney into a farce. One of the beauties of baseball and one of its distinguishing characteritics is that the teams play such a long season and the regular season records truly reflect the quality of the ball club after such a long season. 162 games is a great sample size for showing how talented and how deep a team really is. Diluting that with extra rounds of playoffs has been acceptable because it has been fun to watch more baseball even though it has diminished the accomplishments of teams that have eked into the playoff tournament and then gone on to win the tournament championship. But to then stretch the first 5 game series over enough days so that a team doesn't even need pitching depth to be successful (when that is probably the single most important factor in a team making the playoff tournament to begin with) threatens to make the tournament a farce. I'm almost ready to accept the regular season champ as the true World Series champion for any given year.