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The doublehader things surprises me, though. I was under the impression that no-one in baseball (besides the fans) likes them, from the owners only selling one ticket to the managers who have to do wierd things with the lineup to the players who get worn out.
The sudden-death idea is totally stupid, by the way. The outcome of a baseball game is almost as random as a coin-flip.
i say shorten the season back to 154, so you start a day or too later, end a day or too earlier, and have a couple extra off-days in the season.
Contract about 4 teams and go back to an AL & NL East and West. No wildcard.
and most importantly: abolish the off-sides rule in soccer. thats the worst sports rule i can think of.
and most importantly: abolish the off-sides rule in soccer. thats the worst sports rule i can think of.
Unequivocally not. The result would be each team stationing their forwards inside the penalty box, which means teams would be stationing their defenders inside the penalty box, which means more 0-0 games.
It's one of the most elegant rules in any sport, along with the strike zone and ... heck, there are not a lot of elegant rules in sport, most of them force players to do contorted, unnatural things.
The bad thing about both the offside rule and the strike zone is that they are heavily dependent on an official's judgment. But in theory, and largely in practice, they are beautiful things.
If a "play-in" game is an attempt to capture the magic of an old-time single-game playoff every year, then after a few years the magic will evaporate. If it's an attempt (as seems here) to hobble the wild-card teams vis-a-vis the division winners, it has some flaws (one of which is that the WC teams may well have better records than one or two of the division winners; another is that rest and finely-tuned matchups are harder to capitalize on in baseball than in football).
That way, you have no WC, just four division winners. With 8 fewer regular season games, you could make the all the playoff series 7 games if you wanted.
The challenge here, I assume, is that 8 fewer regular season games means the teams that don't make the playoffs will make less money. But I don't think there's any reason why MLB, if run well both at the league and franchise level, couldn't support 32 teams.
Tito is a big White Sox fan?
The fundamental problem with this is that you'd have to twist and turn to put the Red Sox and Yankees into a different divisions, which would either dilute the rivalry or leave one marquee team out of the playoff race.
Like why he wears a dugout shirt that makes him look exactly like Big Nate's sidekick Francis, with that dorky little "B" on his chest.
That's a nice idea. But how do we define "best"?
If it's Wins, I think a team like the Yankees, who kind of knew they'd be seeing the postseason in August, would be yanking their top starters in the fourth routinely and bringing in Jaret Wright to vulture the wins.
There'd be howls from teams with a dominant ace - take Santana away from Minny and tell me what you're left with.
Personally I think there is no reason for the wildcard and I think it just diminishes the importance of winning a division. I would really like the 4 division winner idea.
The think I want most changed is the unbalanced schedule. I dont wanna see the Yankees and the Red Sox play 19 times a year it is a little excessive. I would rather play everyone in the AL almost the same amount.
Sure, unless they used their best pitcher in game #160 and their second-best in 161 and their third-best in 162, all of which were must-win games just to get to the play-in, where they win miraculously with their fourth-best, leaving their ace fresh as a daisy for the LDS. This kind of thing has unintended consequences.
Making the playoffs a more or less completely level playing field makes baseball's long regular season interminable - with very little incentive for this year's Twins and Tigers (or last year's Yanks/Sox) to actually win their division, the fans are robbed of important, meaningful baseball in September.
By george, I think he's got it!
And there is no incentive for the twins and tigers. The AL Central is over. Could have been a fun race.
4 divisions! We're already getting really soft regular-season teams sneaking into the playoffs by merit of playing in a weak division. With a little bit of luck, the Phillies could actually make the wild-card with the 2nd best record in the NL this year and the Cardinals (or Astros, believe it or not) could actually win the Central with a .500 record.
The wild-card isn't the problem so much as the three-divisional format with the unbalanced schedule and interleague play.
The problem is the number of teams. It's getting to the point where 2 divisions, while desirable, is not really feasible anymore.
A lot of the issues with extending the playoffs could be resolved by returning to double-headers on the schedule.
If you think wild cards need a handicap, consider a 3-2-2 series in the first round for the wild card teams (instead of 2-3-2 for the div winners.) That gives the WCs a max of 2 home games and rewards the best division winner as well. I think it's too much, but it would certainly give the Yankees something more to play for this week.
I like them because they challenge a team's depth mid-season instead of creating these death marches through August and September. If they were all bunched together like interleague play (Double-Header Weekend!) it would be a little fairer since half the teams wouldn't caught out tired afterwards. You could use the Mon and Thur following to give back the earned off day. Plus you could avoid those four or two game series against division rivals.
Uh, the Red Sox are in fifth place in the WC race right now. The second berth wouldn't do them much good.
So take the WC+4 ?
Are you joking, or do you not know he has a medical reason for that?
I don't know, but I can't imagine what the medical reason is for wearing a pullover instead of a uniform top. What's the reason?
The White Sox used to employ Terry Francona. He was Michael Jordan's manager.
I don't think of it as "punishing" the Wild Card as rewarding the division winners. It really depends on what you think the purpose of the playoffs is - if you see it as a way to get the best teams in, then the current structure works poorly, but it sort of works.
If you see it as a "tournament of Champions", then, well, the Wild Card is the champion of nothing.
That said, the idea of a "Play in" is really dumb. I can say without fear of contradiction that the White Sox have not earned the right to a shot at the postseason. They've gotten beat six ways to sundown - why should they get another chance?
Francona has a circulatory disorder that's almost killed him once or twice. He uses the pullover to stay warm.
Keep up the fashion tips, though. Very germane.
Is that the reason for the bald head, too? Does Francona wear a uniform top under the pullover, or does he have a dispensation from MLB?
Did they know about this during his playing career, or was it later onset?
Of course, getting rid of the Wild Card entirely would accomplish the same thing...
I'm on the same page as you are. But I think MLB has fallen in love with the TV money from the playoffs, and most fans seem to like the WC. A play-in game preserves both of these. Even non-fans watch Game 7s sometimes, and a play-in game would probably attract a substantial audience. I know that I would find a one-game playoff completely watchable and exciting.
In exchange for other, meaningful baseball in September.
Two weeks ago, there was a legitimate 4 team race for the NL wild-card, with the Astros, Phillies, Marlins, and whoever didn't win the NL West. No wild-card, and the Marlins and Phillies are playing meaningless games (and it sure looked that way for the Astros, until St. Louis collapsed).
The wild-card both adds a race and diminishes a race. But the 1997 Marlins, for example, absolutely were a great team that showed significant success in the regular season, and was deserving of a playoff spot. They would have been robbed of that opportunity with no wild-card. Houston wasn't nearly as good, and they showed how outmatched they were in the playoffs, getting swept in the NLDS (game 2 wasn't even competitive).
This year's weak field notwithstanding, without the wild-card, legitimately good teams are often completely eliminated because they are unfortunate enough to play in the same division as an even stronger team, while a very weak division sends a team into the playoffs.
The problem is that it sometimes moves the exciting races down a tier - from the very best teams to the pretty good teams. Watching the Twins and Tigers battle for a playoff spot would be, to be frank, a heck of a lot more exciting than watching the NL teams try to out-collapse each other. As it stands, though, the AL field was pretty much set with a week left in the season.
This year's weak field notwithstanding, without the wild-card, legitimately good teams are often completely eliminated because they are unfortunate enough to play in the same division as an even stronger team, while a very weak division sends a team into the playoffs.
This fails to bother me. I've never thought of the playoffs as the place where the "best" teams play.
Again, to newcomers, Jerry's and I are in agreement on this issue for the most part.
But I lost you there. I figured the playoffs as the place where the "best" teams play. My difference is that I had no assurance that the playoffs were the place where all of the "best" teams play.
Any set elinination system (like a sports playoff) is going to have variations of the quality of the teams "left behind" based on the year and the races. For what it's worth, I completely agree with Jerry's first statement in #45 - "The problem..."
In this season, that's especially true. But it wasn't in 2005, when the Astros were every bit as good as the Atlanta Braves and better than the Padres. You could make an argument that they were the 2nd best team in the NL.
The AL has been less interesting lately because the wild-card has destroyed the significance of the Yankees/Sox race. But in many years, a good number of divisions are all but mathematically decided long before the season is over. The wild-card creates interest in an otherwise completely dead September.
Take the 2006 season. Two of the three divisional races in the AL and two of the three in the NL were all but over in early September (arguably, the Tigers also looked close to a lock for the AL Central on 9/1). So instead of practically no interesting baseball, we had a few dogfights for wild-cards.
I've never thought of the playoffs as the place where the "best" teams play.
I suppose I have always thought the regular season's purpose was to weed out the non-best teams, and run-off between the rest of them.
We can compare one instance where the WC would have siphoned all of the fun out of something and one instance where it made a race that didn't exist before - that'll keep on happening either way this gets decided. The purist in me wants the WC to go completely away, but the pragmatist in me knows that pandora's box cannot be closed. So further expansion of the playoffs is inevitable IMO, but it can be done in a way to increase drama and also to appeal to the purists - that being the best in your division over 162 still means a great deal.
I don't know of an easy way to fix this due to the condensed nature of MLB playoffs compared to other sports (2-2-1-1-1, would likely be completely unfeasable in baseball). Maybe have the series be 2-5?
*A quick check of all 7 game playoff series since the strike (arbitrary endpoint, I am lazy) shows the team with homefield advantage has played 93 home games and 94 away games. Basically in a 7 game series you are slightly more likely to get more home games if you do NOT have home field advantage.
I'm sure I'll get baseball chick all mad at me, but the Astros should have thought of that before playing terrible ball until the ASB.
If you're going to judge it by how good the team is at the right time, I'm sure that the Royals or Pirates have won 6-of-7 at some point in the last few years in the autumn. Should a playoff system "reward" this with a chance to unseat a 95-win team in the playoffs?
Under the old, two-division format, the Twins and A's would be battling for one playoff spot, and the Yankees and Tigers would be neck-and-neck for the other. It would have been a tremendous September.
I suppose I have always thought the regular season's purpose was to weed out the non-best teams, and run-off between the rest of them.
I'm probably in an extreme minority, but I view the regular season as "real" baseball (as far as that goes), and the postseason as a fun bunch of exhibition games.
One would add a second wild-card team in each league. The wild-card teams would have a play-in game, giving the division winners three days to set up their pitching.
The other change would have every team playing two doubleheaders in the regular season, resulting in the playoffs starting earlier and the World Series starting on a Tuesday instead of a Saturday.
A third change suggested by Francona would be to add any team in the AL East whose name contains "Sox."
Although the NL West would look like the 1973 NL East. Which may not be all that bad, I guess.
I wonder if I'll live long enough to see the inevitable 16-team postseason format. Because once they move beyond 8 ... that's where it will go.
I expect the next change to be to a 7-game Division Series.
Just let the 3 division winners in and give a team a bye.
I know that means a week off, which is time to get rusty. Ask Joe Torre or Willie Randolph if they rather have the rust, or have to face Detroit or LA.
If rust is that big of an issue, play some intra-squad games and let the fans in for free, or play your AAA team, and let the fans in for free, etc..
Then winning the divisions matters (a lot) and having the best record in the league would matter even more. You'd also be guaranteed of having the best team in each league in the LCS and one-step from the World Series, so maybe the team with the best record in baseball might win a WS more often than once a decade.
Uh . . . the Tigers did fight to the death, hell they brought in their Game 1 starter in the 11th inning to try to win that game. The HomerDome was going apesh!t when the Royals pulled ahead in the 8th. I think both teams definitely wanted to win the division.
The bad thing about both the offside rule and the strike zone is that they are heavily dependent on an official's judgment. But in theory, and largely in practice, they are beautiful things.
I was a soccer official for eight years before developing tendinitis in both my knees and worked some pretty talented games (I was brought from MN to St. Louis to ref the 16-year old ODP tourney when I was 19, for example). I've told many people that it is actually much more difficult to be the Assitant Referee than the center because your head has to be on a swivel to follow both the ball and the offside position. I loved it because it is a much more technical job than being in the center.
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