Bud Selig and the owners agreed on a rule change to make all tie-breaker and post-season games nine innings, no matter what.

Lew Wolff's idea of shortening the playoffs is to make the first round best of one:

"I'd make it one-game-and-you're-out for the first series," the Oakland Athletics owner said Wednesday. "It would be exciting. It would be great."

Begun in 1995, the division series has been a best-of-five competition. Some people have advocated it be expanded to best-of-seven, matching the league championship series and the World Series. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has repeatedly said he favors the current format.

Wolff said he hasn't brought up his concept with Selig.

That would certainly make things pretty random. In 2008, we would have had the same four teams in the LCS as well.

Maybe this is the way to do the World Baseball Classic. Make it sixteen teams, single elimination. The tournament would end in five days so team can get back to spring training. If the teams are seeded and the opponents are set from the original pairings, office and online pools would pop up and there would be a lot more interest in the WBC.

Major League Baseball appears to be taking a non-refundable cut of post-season tickets.

CBS Sportsline notes that Cole Hamels became the third pitcher to win all three game ones during a single post season. John Smoltz and Josh Beckett also accomplished the feat. Three times in fourteen tries, however, doesn't seem like very long odds.

Update: Teddy Kaplan in the comments notes that the story is incorrect. David Wells also won three game ones in 1998 for the Yankees.

Jim Salisbury writes about the Phillies efforts to prepare themselves for their post-season opponents:

In the first inning of that game, the Dodgers' Manny Ramirez drew a two-out walk. The next batter, Russell Martin, worked a 2-2 count against Cole Hamels. The Phillies' scouting report on Martin, a righthanded hitter, said that he became very aggressive with two strikes and often tried to hook the ball to the left. Aware of the report, Phillies coaches moved third baseman Pedro Feliz a half-step toward the line. Martin pounded a ground ball to third, and Feliz threw to second to force out Ramirez.

These are the little nuances that can help a team win a big ball game, the little observations provided by advance scouts.

I have to believe databases make this job easier. Observations the scouts make can now be confirmed by examining pitch selection and hit charts, allowing teams to filter out good impressions from bad ones.

The Hardball Times playoff odds are out. Interestingly, the Phillies remain a huge underdog to win the World Series despite an unknown AL victor.

The Red Sox voted Manny a 2/3 post-season share of their earnings:

Only players who were on the roster for the entire season were eligible to vote, according to the report. For players who did not spend the entire season with the team, voting players first determined whether the player in question would get a payout for exact time on the roster, or a larger percentage, reflecting their contribution to the team.

For example, in 2004, Nomar Garciaparra received a three-fourths share of Boston's playoff money, despite the fact he played only two-thirds of the season with the Red Sox before being dealt to the Chicago Cubs.

According to a source with direct knowledge of the vote, the vote on Ramirez was divided, the Herald reported.

I wonder how much of a share the Dodgers voted him? If LA and Boston had both reached the World Series, and the Dodgers voted him more than a 1/3 share (how could they not), Manny might have had the biggest pay day of any player in the post season.

The Numbers Guy provides a number of useful sports related links, and this paragraph:

In his last 16 postseason games, the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez has collected eight hits in 56 at bats, with one home run and one run batted in. In his last 13 postseason games, Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz has 10 hits in 51 at bats, with no home runs and five runs batted in. Rodriguez is famously un-clutch; Ortiz famously clutch. Yet both have had ups and downs in their playoff careers, which provide too small a sample size to reach definitive conclusions, as I wrote last month, and USA Today echoed. Now Ortiz, the hero of the 2004 playoffs, is beginning to experience what A-Rod has: doubts about his clutch abilities.

Anything can happen in 100 at bats, and even more anything can happen in 50.

In the bottom of the third, Ellsbury flies out and Pedroia smack another ball off the wall. Jacoby went 6 for 18 in the LDS with three doubles, but is now 0 for 13 in the LCS. Pedroia collected just one hit in 17 at bats in the LDS, but that double makes him 6 for 10 in the LCS, three of those hits for extra bases. The Red Sox could use both of them setting the table.

Update: Pedroia gets left on base again. The Rays lead 5-0 going to the top of the fourth.

Art Kyriazis sends this note on the Phillies home wins this year:

As you know, the Phillies moved into the Citizens Bank Park about four or five years ago, and are now playing on grass at home. In fact, their offense now very much resembles an Earl Weaver type team (pitch well and wait for a three run homer).

This got me to thinking, "when was the last time the Phillies had won a post-season game on grass"? as much of their post-season glory came at the Vet during the post-1970 vet era.

The answer was surprising. It's been since 1915 that the Phils had won a post-season game on grass at home, and the winning pitcher was hall of famer Pete Grover Cleveland Alexander v. the Red Sox.

In fact, that was the only home win for the Phillies before the Veteran Stadium era.

The Phillies didn't play much in the post season prior to moving into Veterans Stadium.

Bats publishes the list of pitchers to record three hits in a post-season game.

I took part in a back and forth at ESPN the Magazine defending why baseball playoffs are better than the Stanley Cup playoffs and the NCAA Basketball tournament.

The Heater explains the playoff schedule to Rays fans.

The Rays can't think of anyone to throw out the first pitch at their first post-season game. Deadspin has a great suggestion:

Suggestions so far have been Dick Vitale, Gen. David Petraeus or Ryder Cup captain Paul Azinger. How about Victor Zambrano? I'd say his contribution to the team's success is pretty significant.

They should probably hold off on Victor. If they face the Mets in the World Series, he'll be the perfect choice.

The Cub Reporter offers a very good explanation of how a player qualifies for post-season play. It seems that having a good number of players on the disabled list on 8/31 really gives a team flexibility.

The Cub Reporter offers a very good explanation of how a player qualifies for post-season play. It seems that having a good number of players on the disabled list on 8/31 really gives a team flexibility.

World Series shares were down this year due to the low capacity of Fenway Park:

Boston's split of the postseason players' pool was $18.89 million, down from the $20.02 million the Cardinals shared when they won the title. The Red Sox voted 47 full shares, 14 partial shares and 11 cash awards.

NL champion Colorado, swept by the Red Sox, voted 44 full shares of $233,505, five partial shares and 45 cash awards. Mandy Coolbaugh, the widow of Rockies minor league coach Mike Coolbaugh, was voted a full share. Mike Coolbaugh was killed when struck by a foul ball during a game in July.

Last year, a full share on the Detroit Tigers was worth $291,668 after they lost to the Cardinals in the Series.

You can also see the difference in the money LCS losers Arizona and Cleveland took home:

Full shares for the league championship series losers came to $139,460 for the Arizona Diamondbacks and $107,458 for the Cleveland Indians.

Update: See the comments to this post. The difference in the share value for the Indians and Diamondbacks was the number of shares each teams awarded.

If you thought the post season was very sparse on games this year, you were right. This was the fewest games played since the start of the three tier system in 1995:

Number of post-season games played out of a possible 41

Season	Games Played
2007	28
1998	30
2005	30
2006	30
1995	31
1999	31
2000	31

We're clearly in a drought right now, with the last three years only producing 88 of a possible 123 games, 72%. This is one of those issues where on a gut level I feel like something should be done, but it's tough to make teams at the top of the leagues more competitive without making teams at the bottom of the league less competitive. Going into the playoffs, the NL teams seemed fairly balance and the AL teams seemed fairly balanced, but we only saw one competitive series, the ALCS.

The best year for games was 2003, in which 38 of 41 games were played. That's a real outlier, however, as the next closest year is 2001 with 35.

Be sure to check out my posts at AT&T Blue Room. Click on sports buzz. My latest is on Red Sox post-season book ends Cy Young and Josh Beckett.

Crucial Minutiae asks you to watch for the warning signs of a serious disease and do all you can to stop it. The picture with the post is priceless.

A friend writes:

I heard that only 10 teams out of 65 have made it out of a 1-3 hole in the ALCS, the Red Sox being the last. Now that we are at game 7 how many teams won the series? Understand what I mean, what is the conditional probability now?

It's actually the post-season, not just the ALCS. I'd expect it to be 50-50, meaning about 20 times the series was forced to seven games. However, the seventh game has only been forced fourteen times. That means the team mounting the comeback won 10 out of 14 times, a .714 winnings percentage. The last two times it happened in the LCS, the team winning went on to win the World Series (2003 Marlins, 2004 Red Sox).

Correction: Sorry, the 1996 Braves lost the World Series. The Braves won the 1995 World Series.

David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez are putting on an awe inspiring performance in the post season. The two combined to reach base ten times in ten plate appearances last night:

"I've never seen anything like it," said Sox third baseman Mike Lowell, who knocked in three runs with a two-run double and sacrifice fly. "They're unbelievable. They're aggressive, they're patient, they're picking their spots, and it doesn't seem like it's just one thing. It's great for me, because they're always on base."

Ortiz has reached base 16 times (7 hits, 8 walks, 1 hit by pitch) in 18 plate appearances in four postseason games. He's averaging four times on base per game. Ramírez has been on base 13 times (5 hits, 8 walks) in 18 appearances.

"Video games, you can program to do whatever you want," said injured reliever Brendan Donnelly, whose official capacity is professional observer/cheerleader. "These guys are doing it in real life.

"But give a lot of credit to Mike Lowell. Whether these guys are getting on base via a hit or a walk, you've still got Mike Lowell to deal with. And that's where Mike Lowell has been big for us all year. You may walk a tightrope and pitch around those two, but you can't pitch around three."

Sometimes I wonder if pitchers just get too scared of hitters. Manny and Ortiz can hurt you, but they still make outs most of the time. Sixteen walks issued to the pair is just ridiculous. Pitchers need to throw ball in the strike zone to get them out. Walking the dynamic duo is just an invitation for the Red Sox to score runs.

The Red Sox decided to take the extra day off. I'm a bit surprised, but not entirely. The team was hurting down the stretch, and I suspect this will help. It does however, mean they'll face Lackey and Escobar twice if it goes five and totally miss Santana.

It also might help the Yankees as they'll get to face the 3-4 starters for Cleveland instead of facing Sabathia and Carmona twice.

In 2003, baseball came pretty close to a Cubs-Red Sox World Series. Bad managerial decisions doomed both those teams as Dusty Baker didn't have anyone warming up things went south for Prior, and Grady Little decided Pedro could get another batter. At that time, the team hadn't won a World Series since 1908 and 1918 respectively.

Now we get a chance for the teams with the longest streaks of seasons without a championship to face off. The Cubs still haven't won since 1908, while the Indians last claimed a title in 1948. The Cubs actually had plenty of chances to pick up another series title as they won the National League pennant seven times between 1910 and 1945, a good rate for an eight team league. From 1929 to 1938, they were a dominant NL team, never finishing lower than third, and going to the big dance four times. In two of the series, the hitting collapsed, and the pitching faltered in the other two. And with the Cubs not returning to the Series since 1945, the base of fans remembering their pennants is dwindling rapidly.

The Indians do have a recent history of World Series visits, losing in both 1995 and 1997. I know of no curses on the Tribe, just bad management that took one of the few teams that challenged the Yankees in the 1950s to over thirty years of also ran status. That's changed over the last fifteen years, and it would be good to see it rewarded with a World Championship.

Both these teams have an urgency to win due to their historic droughts. I'd love to see them face off in the finale this season.

Tom Verducci explodes some post-season fallacies. He also has information on the Mitchell investigation.

Jon Weisman asked which NL West team I would most fear facing in the playoffs. Mine and other answers are in Jon's Fungoes column at SI.

C.C. Sabathia is scheduled to pitch on Tuesday for the Indians. If he wins, that gives him a chance to go for his 20th win on Sunday. But that creates a bit of a problem. If he pitches Sunday, he can't pitch again until Friday, and Friday is an off day in one of the ALDS series. If Cleveland holds on to best record in the AL, it's not a problem. Cleveland takes the extra day off and starts Carmona in game one on six days rest. Then C.C. can pitch game two on Friday and game five if needed on full rest. Or does Cleveland simply skip Sabathia on Sunday and let him open the series on seven days rest? It may come down to how important Sunday is to clinching home field.

Update: Someone in the comments points out that C.C. will start on Friday. That makes sense. Give him the extra rest now, and let him pitch on regular rest for game one.

Soxfan explains why he wants to see Boston play LAnaheim in the first round.

With Cleveland clinching today and the Chicago Cubs taking a solid lead in the NL Central, I was thinking how much fun it would be for those two teams to meet in the World Series. With the White Sox and Red Sox winning recently, the Cubs and Indians are the longest suffering franchises in baseball. At least one of them would have a burden lifted from the team. Of course, the Padres, Rockies and Brewers never won a World Series, so they would also make a worthy opponent for the Indians, also.

Rematches are also a possibility. The Red Sox and Mets played a dramatic series in 1986, and I bet Boston fans would love to get some revenge on New York. The Yankees were a few outs from defeating the Diamondbacks in 2001 and winning their fourth straight World Series. No doubt the Mets and Padres would like to take a little revenge on the Yankees for 2000 and 1998.

The Angels and Padres gives us an all California World Series, and a good excuse for Fox to start the games at 9 PM, although Mets-Angels would likely be a ratings bonanza, as would the Cubs vs. the Red Sox.

So, which World Series matchup would you most like to see and why?

Update: If the Yankees play the Cubs, maybe A-Rod can call at shot at Wrigley. :-)

The Red Sox held a quiet celebration yesterday.

Manager Terry Francona spoke about how proud he was of his Red Sox team, and the only other speaker was veteran reliever Mike Timlin, who seemed, in a few words, to epitomize the mood and the circumstance.

"I told them not to relax," Timlin said. "I want to win the division. A lot of guys have been here before and we don't want to get too excited. We wanted to recognize what we had accomplished but to make sure we all knew and all understood we had our eye on bigger things. This was just the first step."

That's good. They still have their eyes on the prize of home field advantage throughout the playoffs and the chance to pick their schedule in the first round.

My thoughts on changes to the playoffs are available to Baseball Prospectus subscribers in my latest column.

The AL team with the best record gets to choose if it wants an extra-day off in the first round of the playoffs:

In recent years, one of the four postseason series had an extra off day between Games 1 and 2, and it alternated leagues in the series that didn't involve a wild-card team.

Because there is an extra off day between Games 4 and 5 under the new postseason television schedule this year, it means that the series with the extra off day between the first two games would be played over eight days. Because of that, teams in that series would be able to use their Game 1 and 2 starters on full rest for Games 4 and 5.

It's a nice wrinkle. If a team's 1-2 starters are really strong, but 3-4 are much weaker, they might want the extra-day off. If the starters are fairly even, but the opponent has a strong 1-2, you might not want the extra day off. For example, I could see Boston not taking the extra day if they finish with the best record, so they don't' have to see either Sabathia and Carmona or Lackey and Escobar on normal rest twice.

Vegas Watch notes that the change in the playoff schedule provides room for the first round to move from five to seven games. He does the math and finds that the odds of the best teams winning in seven instead of five don't change that much, so it would be a way of raising revenue. I'll have more on this later.

Earlier today I wondered if there would be a huge break between the LCS and the World Series this year, given the MLB is starting the series later. Every series is going to start later than usual. One good thing about this new schedule is that there will always be a travel day between games four and five of the LDS:

The 2007 postseason will begin on Wednesday, October 3rd, with three of the four Division Series in play. One of the two American League Division Series will begin on Thursday, October 4th. Any decisive fifth game of a Division Series will now be preceded by an off-day. All Division Series games, which will continue to follow a 2-2-1 format, will predominantly be airing on TBS with additional games on sister network TNT.

That's a good decision. And although they were trying to avoid games on Friday, they end up with two on the first Friday of the LCS.

I remember this being part of the new television deal. The World Series will start on a Wednesday this year:

A Wednesday start will allow baseball to avoid playing on Friday, which is TV's second-least watched night after Saturday. If the Series goes to a Game 5, it also would go head-to-head with ESPN's Monday Night Football.

According to USA Today, Game 1 will be scheduled for Wednesday Oct. 24. If the Series goes to a Game 7, it will be played on Nov. 1, the first time baseball has scheduled a World Series game in the month of November.

Does this mean a huge gap between the LCS and Series? The regular season ends Sept 30, 2007. That means the LDS would run from Oct. 2 to Oct 8. The LCS would run from Oct. 9 to Oct. 18. That's a six days off if the LCS goes full length, a week and a half if both league championship series are sweeps. What is this, the super bowl?

This certainly wasn't the most inspiring of post seasons. Only one series was truly competitive. Only the Mets and Padres won a game facing elimination. Of a possible 41 games, 30 were played. There was a distinct lack of drama.

There were no huge managerial goofs. The biggest one I thought was not starting Bonderman in game 1 of the World Series, but it's not clear it would have made a difference. No one obviously left a starter in too long or used the bullpen ineffectively.

Jeff Weaver and Kenny Rogers were good redemption stories, at least Rogers was until he was suspected of cheating. Weaver very likely saved his career, adding to Dave Duncan's legend.

And it's good to see Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen win a series. Edmonds is running out of time in his career, and the injuries he sustained this season make me wonder how long he'll go on. Rolen is one of the great third basemen, and I'd hate to see Pujols go through his career like Barry Bonds or Ted Williams, a great hitter who never won a championship.

But given the dramatic series and great stories from 2001 on, this post season paled in comparison. And that's all right. Sometimes, you need a boring year to remind you of the greatness of years like 1986.

The New Republic notes the that the end of the Cardinals/Mets series represented a rare event:

How often is it that you see your team come within one swing of winning a pennant, only to have it all end in that same instant? This question was all I could think about as my brother and I filed out of a drizzly Shea Stadium with 56,000 other traumatized Mets fans last Thursday night, and all I've been able to think about ever since.

Not often at all, it turns out. A search through the vast archives at Retrosheet.org, which aims to collect box scores and play-by-play accounts of every baseball game ever, reveals that Carlos Beltran's at-bat against Adam Wainwright with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the NLCS was an extraordinarily rare moment. It appears to have been only the tenth at-bat in baseball history in which each pitch could have resulted in a league pennant or championship for both the team at-bat and the team in the field.

Most of the time, the out was recorded and the series won by the team in the field. Thanks to Marc for the link.

Double Play Depth believes that Kenny Rogers post season is simply the law of averages at work:

My theory on Kenny Rogers goes like this:

Law of Averages.

Sure, he was Awful before, and he's been Great this year, but the average of Awful and Great is Mediocre, which is exactly what Kenny Rogers has been over the course of his career. When you add up his career postseason numbers, they look like this:

             IP    H   ER  BB   SO   W   L  ERA
New Kenny   23.0    9   0   7   19   3   0  0.00
Old Kenny   21.1   37  20  16   15   0   3  8.44
All Kenny   44.1   46  20  23   34   3   3  4.06

The law of averages is not like the law of gravity, however. The law of averages is just a good idea.

The thing that is suspicious to me is his strikeout numbers. Kenny hasn't posted a decent strikeout rate since 1999. Over the last seven seasons, his strikeout rate is 4.9 per 9 innings. This post season, it's 7.4 per 9. Plausible? Sure, especially since he did the same thing earlier this year.

People should be suspicious of a substance on a pitcher's hand. But we should be open to other explanations as well.

Update: Since two people mentioned this, I'm not implying steroid use in the last sentence. I'm implying non-cheating explanations, such as luck!

Strikeouts have more to do with fooling batters than overpowering them. A big increase in strikeouts might mean the ball is moving more for Rogers, and a substance on the ball might do that. That's why I find the strikeouts suspicious. But as I point out, he's had a good three game run of strikeouts this season, so while it's unusual, it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Joel Sherman tallies the myths broken in the current post season:

Weaver and Rogers were two of the worst pitchers in postseason history. Now look at them. It's as if Ed Whitson showed up as the ghost of Yankees past and started putting up ghost eggs; Rogers has 15 shutout innings this postseason, Weaver has a 2.16 ERA in three starts.

So the notion that Weaver and Rogers can't handle the postseason is the No. 1 myth busted this October.

Now that we believe both can pitch in October, we'll probably get a slugfest tonight.

Will Leitch of Deadspin pens an editorial in the New York Times:

Much is written by statistical analysts about "sample size" in baseball, and the playoffs are the most extreme example. If the Royals, one of the worst teams in baseball, played the American League champion Detroit Tigers in a 10-game postseason series, they'd win at least 3 -- probably more. A bad team beating a good team is not particularly difficult, or unusual. Yankees fans can take some solace in this. The Yankees were an outstanding team this year. In the playoffs, though, they ran into three Tigers pitchers who pitched dominant games those particular days. The Yankees didn't lose because A-Rod wasn't "clutch" or because Joe Torre forgot how to manage a baseball team or because the Tigers had more "heart." They lost because the Tigers happened to win three games in a row.

It happens all the time during the regular season. We just don't notice. Sportswriters say the Tigers "got hot at the right time," but they weren't saying that one week earlier, when they lost three at home to the Royals to end the season. Did the Royals just have more heart?

The Cardinals are on the cusp of the World Series, and if they win it, no one will care about September losing streaks. (I know I won't.) The World Series does not establish the best team; it just compacts 162 games into seven or so frenzied ones. This lottery nature is what makes it so exciting. Ya gotta believe, because you never know when your number's coming up.

The Mets hope their number is the better one tonight.

TBS won the right to broadcast the LDS and one of the LCS series starting in 2007 through 2013.

In July, baseball agreed to a new seven-year contract with Fox and Turner Sports, a deal reportedly worth more than $400 million.

The deal included TBS being the exclusive home of the division series round starting in 2007. The division series is currently televised on Fox and ESPN.

Now TBS will also televise league championship series starting in 2007 with the NLCS. The network will alternate between the leagues for the duration of the contract, which runs through 2013. Both the NLCS and ALCS are currently on Fox.

"We are proud to add a sports programming crown jewel like the league championship series to what was already a landmark MLB package," said David Levy, president of Turner Sports.

A few years ago I give this the thumbs up. In my opinion, TBS did one of the best broadcasts in baseball. But I watched a lot of Braves games down the stretch on Turner South and was unimpressed with the broadcasts. I hope they go back to the formula that worked so well when all the games were on TBS.

There are two posts today that look at changing the wild card format. The first is by Bruce Regal at Baseball Analysts, and proposes going back to four divisions and creating a challenge round:

I propose that instead of going directly to a four-team tournament, each of the four divisions first have a "Challenge Round" in which the second place team in each division would have an opportunity to catch the first place team in a series of head-to-head games. In effect, the regular season would be extended for up to another 6 games between the first and second place teams, until one or the other clinches the division. If they end up tied at the end of 6 games, they play a seventh game in the form of a one-game playoff. To provide a few examples of how this system would work, suppose divisions ended as they did in 2006. In a Challenge Round, Anaheim (second place, four games behind) would play Oakland needing six wins in seven games; Minnesota (first place) and Detroit (one game behind) would play, with the Tigers needing four wins in six games; and LA and San Diego (who tied for first) would play a full best of seven game Challenge Round series.

I'm actually more in agreement with the commenters to that post:

There is little evidence that the team with the better record is categorically the "better" team so it seems counterproductive to jury-rig a system designed to produce outcomes more identical to the standings. No rational argument is made as to why this is an end we should be striving for. The 2003 Atlanta Braves had the best record in the NL but were 9th in the NL in ERA, 11th in strikeouts, etc. Why should we engineer an overly elaborate system that basically tries to rig the playoffs so the team with the best record wins? There is no good reason.

It's a petulant reaction to people angered that their flawed teams have been shown up in the playoffs.

Basically, 162 games is not a big enough sample size to tell us which teams are the best. Instead of thinking as the playoffs as a way to determine the best team, think of it as an exciting tournament among the likely best teams in the league. That's a more accurate description.

Ennuipundit modifies this proposal a bit with a play-in game. But, like the first proposal, you're trying to fix something that's not broken.

I'd rather see division winners rather than wild cards in the playoffs, but that would require expanding to 32 teams and going to four team divisions. But I also wouldn't mind going to five six-team divisions and having schedules similar to the ones when the leagues contained 12 teams, and awarding three wild cards.

Basically, if you are defining the best team as the team with the best record, you're not going to achieve a system where that team wins most of the championships. The season is too short to say for sure that the team with the best record is the best team, and the playoff series are too short to say that one team is truly better (as opposed to luckier) than another.

Jeff Weaver just completed his 10th shutout inning of the post season. I am not a big Weaver fan, but he's certainly making the Cardinals look very smart for taking a flyer on him after he failed with the Angles. La Russa didn't bring him out for the sixth against San Diego. We'll see if he does the same here. Jeff's only thrown 71 pitches.

Trevor Hoffman hasn't helped the Padres in the playoffs:

In a perfect world, Trevor Hoffman, the near-perfect reliever, would be reveling in the postseason spotlight this week.

October has yet to work out well for San Diego or the premier reliever in the history of the game.

The Padres not only haven't been able to get the ball to Hoffman in a save situation against St. Louis in their National League division series, San Diego is winless in the best-of-five series heading into Game 3 at Busch Stadium today.

Just like Joe Nathan, a closer is only as good as the team that gets him the ball. If the Padres or Dodgers or Twins or Yankees can't take a lead into the ninth, the most perfect pitcher in the world isn't going to do them any good. It's nice to have the luxury of a Trevor Hoffman, but his talent is wasted if your team can't score.

MetsBlog.com remembers the 1988 NLCS:

...i was a happy-go-lucky child growing up...after the fall of 1988, i became quite cynical and a huge skeptic and i blame that series, and specifically Mike Scioscia, for making me this way...

It turns out there are lots of possible rematches this year. The Twins and Athletics faced off in 2002. St. Louis and San Diego played just last year. The Mets and Cardinals met in the 2000 NLCS.

The A's and Yankees played a number of memorable ALDS games, but also met in the 1981 ALCS. Detroit and Minnesota faced each other in the 1987 ALCS.

The Padres lost the World Series to both the Yankees and the Tigers. The Mets and Yankees played a subway series in 2000, the last time the Yankees won the fall classic. The Dodgers defeated the Twins in 1965, and the Athletics fell to the Dodgers in 1988 (although they won in 1974). The Cardinals are the only NL team with long term success against the Yankees in the World Series. And the Yankees/Dodgers World Series are the stuff of legend. The Twins and Cardinals played the first World Series in which all the games were won by the home team in 1987. And Detroit won an exciting seven game series against St. Louis in 1968 (although they lost in 1934). And who can forget the 1973 World Series in which the Mets took Oakland to game seven before falling, losing the last two games on the road.

There's lots of opportunities for retribution this post season.

Correction: The Tigers/Cardinals played in 1968, not 1967.

Barry Zito will pitch games one and five of the ALDS and Esteban Loaiza game two. If Rich Harden is healthy after Sunday's start, he'll go Friday in game 3, otherwise, Dan Haren gets the nod for Oakland.

It strikes me that with so many NL playoff contenders close to .500, the post season might produce one of the lowest combined winning percentages of any set of playoff teams. If you take the set of teams that would be in the playoff right now, their combined winning percentage is .570. That's low, but not the lowest.

In 1981, the split season produced eight teams with a combined percentage of .554. Of course, the Reds, who owned the best overall winning percentage in the National League didn't make the playoffs. The 1996 season is second, with a .567 winnings percentage. Six of the eight teams posted winning percentages less than .570 that year.

Three other seasons, 1987, 1997 and 1982 produced a set of teams with a combined winning percentage under .570. It's a poor crop of post-season teams this year, but by no means the worst.

Harry Powell writes, pointing out this article by Joel Sherman on stopping coasting in the regular season and adding more excitement to the playoffs.

The solution is to add one playoff team from each league. Yes, add a team. This idea was first proposed in this space several years ago.

And watching the Yanks' disinterest over the weekend motivated me to renew the call. Making room for one more wild card would not water down October as much as bring greater incentive to win a division and finish with the best record in the league.

Under this plan, the two wild-card winners would play a best-of-three series on three consecutive days beginning the first day after the regular season ends. The winner of those series would then immediately face the team with the best record in their league, regardless if they are in the same division, in a best-of-five Division Series.

I'm not sure if it really solves the problems Sherman cites. For example, the Mets are so far ahead of everyone in the NL that they could coast no matter what. Getting to face the wild card team, even if it is from your division, isn't necessarily an easy task. Often, wild card teams are playing well going into the playoffs. Look at the number of them that won the World Series.

A short, extra round would be fun. But teams get their rotations in order with the coast time anyway. I'm not sure that really solves anything.

Still, it's a good idea, and one that's bound to add some revenue to MLB coffers.

Tigers playoff tickets go on sale at 10:00 AM EDT. Who thought I would write that sentence six months ago?

Well, I had some hope:

A number of factor on the Tigers point toward improvement. Guillen and Ordonez playing healthy for a year make them a better team. A full season of Placido Planco ups their win totals. Shelton and Bonderman should continue to mature and improve. Even the addition of Kenny Rogers should help the staff, provided he controls his temper. Detroit is another team that if everything that can go right does go right, they'll be in the division race. More likely, however, is that a few thing will go wrong, and they'll be fighting the Twins for third place.

Never mind my predictions about the rest of the division..

The 2006 Caribbean Series gets underway today, pitting the winter champions of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Venezuela against each other in a double round-robin tournament. If you want to watch, the games are available at MLB.com for a fee.

Will Leitch has his yearly preview of the playoffs up at The Black Table. And be sure to check out Will's new venture, Deadspin.

White Sox ALDS tickets go on sale in a couple of hours. Of course, they first need to survive the on slaught of the Indians. Cleveland is five games behind Chicago, and have six of their last 16 games against the White Sox. You can buy tickets for those games here.

It didn't take Red Sox fans long to get smug about their great victory in the ALCS. Bambino's Curse quotes Soxaholic:

And the Soxaholix get it right: This puts an end to the Bucky Dent crap NY fans have thrown in our faces since '78. That dog don't hunt no more. Now NY fans can torment themselves with thoughts of Johnny [expletive] Damon.

You see, the problem is that "Greatest Comeback Ever" is in the eye of the beholder. Now, I happen to agree that this was likely the greatest comeback ever. But coming back from 13 games down and having your light hitting shortstop administer the lethal blow is pretty darn close to the greatest comeback ever. Being 1 strike from losing the World Series, down 2 runs in game 6, no one on base and still coming back to win the series is pretty darn close to the greatest comeback ever.

So by my scorecard, the Red Sox were involved in three of the greatest comebacks in baseball, and are 1-2. You get to flash the #1 finger, but the Yankees will always have Bucky Dent and the Mets will always have Bill Buckner. Those things just don't go away.

(The Bambino's Curse permalink isn't working yet, so try here It's working now.)

Update: There's one other thing. There is a greater comeback possible. A team could win the first three games of the World Series and then lose the series. We'll know in a few days if there's a chance of that happening.

Tom Bridge sends this poem a friend sent him:

Oh, how I envy thee, Mountain Time Dweller.
The slow death of the baseball fan in October
So, sweet, so delicious
yet in bed by 10 pm

Oh, how I envy thee, Mountain Time Dweller
In my minds eye, I see thee.
The crack of the bat against the golden hues
of October Aspens quaking in the breeze
like a knuckler tumbling through the air

Oh, how I envy thee, Mountain Time Dweller
The eastern daylight time, salutes you
with bleary eye and dry tongue
Mountain Time Baseball Fan!

I've been drained by these series. I can't imagine what effect it's having on the players.

The Black Table has its annual huge playoff preview up. I, at least, was laughing out loud.

Jayson Stark has an excellent article examining various ideas for awarding home field in the world series, expanding playoff formats and making the all-star game attractive. Here's Al Leiter:

Leiter's pitch for this idea is that baseball needs to reach out beyond those traditionalist fans "who think we should go back to the 1950s, with two leagues, no divisions and eight teams in each league." The fans baseball needs to lure into into the fold are the fans who are spending Saturday afternoons watching skateboarding."

"We have to move forward," he says. "We have to be progressive. We have to have inventive ideas."

Leiter has a good idea for expanding the playoffs. Sandy Alderson raises a good objection to it.

"One of the concerns about extending the playoffs," says Sandy Alderson, MLB's executive vice president for baseball operations, "is not what it does to the postseason time line -- but what it does to the nature of competition during the regular season."

What baseball is concerned about, Alderson says, is that, if too many teams make the playoffs, it could actually lessen the meaning and the drama of the season instead of adding to it -- as baseball believes the current wild-card structure has done.

The answer to Alderson's concern, of course, is more teams. If you want 12 teams making the playoffs, you probably need to have 40-48 teams to make the regular season meaningful. So let's really go outside the box and throw out all our preconcevied notions about leagues and try this on for size.

Let's start with 48 teams divided into four 12-team leagues. Each league has two divisions of six teams. So you'll have 8 division winners make the playoffs.
Each league will produce 1 wild card. That's 12 playoff teams.

The Leagues are not permanent. The divisions are based on the previous year's record. Let's call the four leagues Babe Ruth, Henry Aaron, Sandy Koufax and Christy Mathewson. The teams with the six best records from the previous season go into the Ted Williams division of the Ruth League. The teams with the six worst records go into the Mario Mendoza division of the Ruth League.

The teams ranked 7-12 go into the Lefty Grove division of the Koufax League, and 37-42 go into the Bobby Witt division. I think you get the idea.

Teams play 90 games within their division (18 against each club). The play 36 games against each club in the other division in their league (a home and away series vs. each club). They play 36 games against another equally matched division. (So the Williams division would play the Grove division, and the Mendoza division would play the Witt division).

The good points about this system as I see it are:

• Every team has a chance to make the playoffs. Teams are mostly competing against teams at the same level. Tampa Bay's chances might look a lot better if they didn't have to be in the same division as the Yankees every year.


• The worst teams from the previous years get a visit from the best teams of the previous year, which should help boost attendance in those cities.


• The same teams won't make the playoffs every year. The teams in the Williams division all probably made the playoffs the year before, and four or five of them won't repeat. Different teams in the playoffs every year adds to fan interest in those cities. It also keeps the good teams from becoming complacent. They won't be able to say, "We killed the division last year, let's stand pat."

The negatives:

• Travel. If you end up with a Boston, Milwaukee, Seattle, San Diego, Texas, Florida division, air travel would be tough on those teams.


• People would argue that lots of the best teams not being able to make the playoffs was a bad thing. Of course, this happened many times in the four division system.


• Some traditional rivalries would be lost.

If you did the same sort of thing with the 30 existing teams, here's what the divisions would have looked like this year:

Ruth League

Williams Division

Atlanta Braves NY Yankees SF Giants Oakland A's Boston Red Sox

Mendoza Division

Milwaukee Brewers NY Mets San Diego Padres Tampa Bay Devil Rays Detroit Tigers

Koufax League

Grove Division

Seattle Mariners Florida Marlins Minnesota Twins Chicago Cubs Houston Astros

Witt Division

Colorado Rockies Texas Rangers Baltimore Orioles Cincinnati Reds Cleveland Indians

Aaron League

Mays Division

Chicago White Sox Toronto Blue Jays Philadelphia Phillies St. Louis Cardinals LA Dodgers

Gene Michael Division

Arizona Diamondbacks Montreal Expos Kansas City Royals Anaheim Angels Pittsburgh Pirates

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this whole issue.

Finally, I disagree with how Jayson ends the article:

So just when you thought baseball had reached that long-sought era of good feeling, it's clear there's still plenty for management and the union to argue about -- now and for years to come. Great. We can hardly wait.

No, it is great, because they are actually speaking with each other rather than shouting at each other. Leiter's ideas were given a hearing. Other's ideas are being given a hearing. Argument is fine, if people are willing to listen. This will only be bad if all sides are closed-minded about the possibilities.

Bryan Johnson links to an article about how Bud Selig decided not to expand the playoff format because the 2003 post season was so good. I'm glad Bud made that decision. It's not that the playoffs are so long, but the season itself is very long. Unfortunately, the only ways to shorten the season cost people money. I really think that spring training would be find at four weeks instead of the 6 or 7 it is now. But that means fewer tourists for Arizona and Florida. MLB could easily lop a week off the season by scheduling six or seven double headers for each team during the season (this was the norm when I was young). But that costs teams that are selling out every game.

I'm not adverse to more playoff rounds. In the future, as more MLB teams are added, they will need to expand the format. What I hope is that they find a way to do that without expanding the length of the season.

Seth Speaks takes a look at the Twins playoff history and picks his all time Twins playoffs team. One thing I disagee with:

Zoilo Versalles won the 1965 American League MVP award. He had a really great season. Believe me, if it happened now, SABRmetricians would probably take issue with that decision.

Of course that's nonsense. Versalles had 32 win shares that year. The only AL player that I can find with more is his teammate, Tony Oliva. Versalles was a shortstop, which would probably put him over the top. I can't think of a sabermetrician who would argue against his receiving that award.

Daniel Shamah sends this link to the ESPN staff predictions on the post-season baseball tourament. Apart from the typo in Rick Sutcliffe predictions, it's time to see what the experts think.

On the most important question of who will win the World Series, we get the following votes:

Team	Votes	Odds of Winning
Giants	5	27.7%
Red Sox	4	22.2%
Yankees	4	22.2%
Braves	3	16.7%
Twins	2	11.1%

None of the experts gives the A's, Marlins or Cubs a chance to win the World Series.

Another interesting item from this list is the near unanimous consensus that the Red Sox would beat Oakland in the ALDS. Only Scott Ridge picked the A's. The A's did win the season series against the Red Sox 4-3 this year. The Red Sox are a poor road team, and they will be playing up to three games at Oakland. I'm surprised this isn't closer to 50-50.

The experts pick the Cubs to beat the Braves 12-4 in the NLDS, but not one picks the Cubs to win the World Series. They can beat the best team in the NL, but they can't take the series? As I pointed out earlier, the Braves are very good at beating good pitchers. My gut here is that there's a lot of wishful thinking going on regarding the Cubs and the Red Sox.

Update: Michael Davidson writes:

You write that "None of the experts gives the A's, Marlins or Cubs a change to win the World Series". I'm sure you know this, but that's just not true. None of the experts thinks that those teams will win, but I'm sure they'd all give a probability of greater than zero if pressed. It looks like ESPN's survery isn't that nuanced.

Yes, that's true, and I knew that when I wrote it. However, I'm looking at the odds of these teams winning based on the predicitions of the experts. And based on their predictions, the probability of those teams winning is 0. Odds, after all, are no more than the consensus opinion of the betting public. Here, we have a very small public, so you have to expect the odds to be skewed a bit.