Late games in the season can be very deceptive since you have expanded rosters and if a team has more or less wrapped up a spot the pressure is off and often top players are rested. I often liken them to spring training games except for the few that do have an impact on the playoff picture. I really hate that we have lost a lot of the pennant drives of yesteryear since the wild card was introduced. More than anything it has made September often an anticlimax rather than what it used to be. The expanded round of playoffs doesn’t really add much except push the final game of the world series close or even into Novemeber.
Good points. This year would have been a great pennant race between the Yankees and Tampa Bay, except for the fact that we knew that, based on their won/loss records, that one would win the division and the other would get the wild card.
I’ve heard that changes could happen in the playoff format. For example, they might add another wild card team in each league, but in that case, the two wild cards would play a series to see who gets to advance, while the 3 division winners take a few days off.
I hate that the World Series ends in November now. Is the extra TV money really worth it to stretch it out and gamble that you will have bad weather????