For too long now, MLB has tried to be like the NFL, emphasizing the postseason at the expense of the regular season while embracing the idea that every team should be competitive every year. It was a ridiculous notion in 1994, when MLB realigned and foisted a new round of postseason play on us, and it's a ridiculous notion now. MLB has raised a generation of fans who don't appreciate the idea of September, of a long, drawn-out pennant race in which there can be just one winner, who don't understand that sometimes a great team can fall short of the postseason or even be eliminated in it, without changing its greatness...That should stop. Instead of cowering when it's compared to the NFL, MLB and its leaders should stand up and brag about the differences that make its game great.
I think that gets it exactly right. Baseball has a long season. That's the product. It has weaknesses -- very, very few games have the make-or-break suspense that practically every game for a good football team has. Virtually no one stops their life for each game, the way that football fans do. But the long season has strengths, and baseball fans love those strengths. The everydayness of the season, the way it becomes the background sounds of the summer, is wonderful. You don't wait for and anticipate a ballgame during the season; you just turn on the TV or radio when it's time, or if you don't have or don't care about your home team, you surf around and see if there's a game on right now. And the way that the everydayness of the season turns into the sustained pressure of the pennant race as the season goes along is something that is unknown to other sports.
The trick, in designing a postseason structure, is to emphasize the strengths, without creating weaknesses. The challenge is that MLB has a lot of teams, and so there it does make sense to try to keep a lot of them in contention late into the season. There's also a practical side to it: apparently, baseball makes plenty of money by having their current three-tiered playoff system, and it's not reasonable to ask the people who run major league baseball to leave money on the table.
My suggested solution would, I think, do that:
Replacing the wild card with the second place team has another virtue, which is that teams competing with each other could once again have identical schedules (or at least close to identical, if baseball can't bear to give up the "rivalry" interleague games), and teams can spend September within their division, thus maximizing the odds of teams that are competing for a playoff spot meeting in the final weeks.
Don't like my plan? Beat it! But keep in mind the natural strengths and weaknesses of the baseball season. That's the key to a schedule and postseason that will work better than the current one.
The trick, in designing a postseason structure, is to emphasize the strengths, without creating weaknesses. The challenge is that MLB has a lot of teams, and so there it does make sense to try to keep a lot of them in contention late into the season. There's also a practical side to it: apparently, baseball makes plenty of money by having their current three-tiered playoff system, and it's not reasonable to ask the people who run major league baseball to leave money on the table.
My suggested solution would, I think, do that:
Return each league to two divisions. First place teams advance. Second place teams advance. First round crosses 2nd place vs. 1st place (i.e. NL West 1st place vs. NL East 2nd place). First place team needs fewer wins than second place teams to advance -- I'd probably go with two wins for the first place team compared with three for the second place team. Also, I'd give more home games to the first place team; if it were really up to me, I'd consider letting the first place team host the entire series.As I've argued, this system has many advantages. It would give Joe Sheehan his pennant races back. No, the loser wouldn't go home...but by weighting the first round against the second place team, it would reward winning the division quite a lot; the trick would be to make a first-round upset unlikely, but not impossible. On the other hand, if a team started the season like the 1984 Tigers (35-5!) there would still be something to play for; realistically, any .500 team at the All Star break would still be able to have at least some chance to contend, which I do think is a virtue.
Replacing the wild card with the second place team has another virtue, which is that teams competing with each other could once again have identical schedules (or at least close to identical, if baseball can't bear to give up the "rivalry" interleague games), and teams can spend September within their division, thus maximizing the odds of teams that are competing for a playoff spot meeting in the final weeks.
Don't like my plan? Beat it! But keep in mind the natural strengths and weaknesses of the baseball season. That's the key to a schedule and postseason that will work better than the current one.
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I'd say your plan just doesn't seem fair. It stacks the deck too much for the first place teams.
ReplyDeleteI think better would be 2 divisions, division winners go to playoffs. 2 Wild Cards (they can come from either division-- that way we could have Rays, Yankees, and Red Sox in the playoffs if they're the 3 best teams in the AL).
I like the idea of going Best of 5, but with the 1st place team getting 4 of the home games. This gives them a strategic advantage in getting to bat last, and a psychological advantage of getting to play at home. However, it keeps the fundamental fairness of best of 5.
The system could be tweaked to best of 7 in the LDS, but with the first place team getting 5 home games, instead of 4.
I would like to do away with Divisions. So two single division leagues with balanced schedules. The winner of each league is then the league champion, they get the pennant at the end of the year. However, you keep the three tiered system by then having a playoff where the top four teams in each league advance and the winner of the playoff is the World Series Champion. This way you can reward excellence (how good you are in the regular season) and also have a money spinning and exciting playoff. Also, get rid of five game series they are useless.
ReplyDeleteSo in 2009 the Yankees would have been AL Champs, the Dodgers, NL Champs and the YAnkees the World Series Champs (though the world series would still have been Yankees/Phillies). In 2008, Cubs are NL Champs, Angels AL Champs and the Phillies World Champs. In 2007, Boston are the AL Champs, Arizona the NL Champs, and Boston the World Series Champs. And so and and so forth.
My objection to both of these plans is that they don't, in my opinion, allow for two great teams to play meaningful games in September. Mark -- the reality of it is that even if you call the 1st place team the pennant winner, as long as there are playoffs and a WS those are going to be the top goals that teams play for. After all, right now teams could play for "division winner," but we've seen that they don't really care whether they are division winners or WCs. I don't buy that "AL Champ" would be any more meaningful than "AL East Champ." And if not, then all that both of these plans do is give the best teams a boring September, since they'll basically clinch the postseason by mid-August, or even earlier.
ReplyDeleteIn both cases (anon and Mark), what you're doing is setting up September as a slightly better version of what the NBA & NHL have -- competition among the fairly good teams to get the last postseason spot(s).
Anon,
ReplyDeleteYou are correct that your system is better for the third best team (in each league) than mine, as is Mark's system. My system would guarantee postseason spots to the best two teams in each league, but not the other two teams would not necessarily be the 3rd and 4th best; Mark's system definitely guarantees that the postseason would be the best four in each league, anon's system guarantees the best three, with a good chance for the best four.
However, my system has a much better chance of getting the best team in the league into the WS. IMO, that's a much higher value than ensuring that teams that are 3rd and 4th best are fully rewarded for that "achievement."