My Reds blew it again yesterday.
But let me say this, I despise this current playoff system.
There’s no way that a 3rd place team should be in the playoffs. And that’s merely 3rd place in their division, for, if going by winning percentage, they were 5th place in the league.
I grew up in the sixties, and in those stellar years of baseball, you either won the league or you didn’t.
That’s why the season was so important.
If being 3rd best in a 5 team division is good, then what do we call 3rd worst in a 5 team division?
I hear you, I tend to be a purist myself, but I certainly understand what happens if all but 4 teams are out of post-season contention before August....It’s all about money and keeping interest....Baseball could afford that in the days before pro football took over the top spot on the sporting landscape.
In the American League, the system brought several teams into the mix leading to a one game match up to decide the second wild card. It saw a team win out the last ten games of it's season. It saw the Drama of several teams in extended winning streaks and made the end of the season interesting instead of just a wind down to the excitement of the playoffs.
I think the league would be well served to return to a 154 game schedule and expand the playoffs. They could eliminate or greatly curtail the abomination that is inter league play and have a wild card play off of best of 3 series, a division series best of five, an LCS of best of seven and a World Series best of 9.
They had a best of nine World Series in the past and the expanded interest in a two team Wild Card as well as four more post season games would increase TV add revenue far greater than the gate receipts of the seven regularly scheduled games.
I agree with you about the playoff system, and I’m afraid that down the road it will just get worse. Eventually, they’re adding two teams (and most likely going to four divisions in each league) — at which point, I expect them to adopt the NFL system — the two lowest-seeded division winners against the two wild cards, with the two highest-seeded division winners waiting for them.
Wild cards damage pennant races, as Whitey Herzog, Bob Costas, and others have pointed out. In 1996, the Dodgers and Padres came down to the last day tied for the NL West lead. They both played their games like exhibition games because the “loser” had locked up the wild card.
That’s what the second wild card is intended to stop. It’s designed to create a strong disincentive to settle for teh wild card and keep everyone fighting for the division title as long as possible. That’s a good idea, but it merely papers over the real problem. The real problem is that we let non-winners into the playoffs. Take the Marlins, for example — two World Championships, nary a division title to their names.