About the MLB Postseason…

In Major League Baseball, Playoffs by Rice Cube48 Comments

So we were talking about the way the MLB playoff system is set up in the previous post, and given how three of the road teams just advanced this past week, two of them relatively easily, I guess part of the calculus is trying to figure out a way to ensure the home team has a greater advantage. Then, once they advance out of the wild card rounds, how do you ensure the bye teams can get more of an advantage than they’ve shown since the three division winner/three wild card system was instituted? There’s an interesting article about that on MLB dot com, but given the lack of sample, it’s mostly kneejerk reactions based on recency bias right now, so perhaps everything’s fine the way it is. Especially when you figure that baseball is inherently chaotic, and nobody is going to do a best-of-75 or whatever number you need to make sure the “upsets” don’t happen as often (assuming arms don’t start falling off in the clinching game 69). I generally agree that the teams, despite getting into the postseason, have flaws that got exposed on the highest stage, but that won’t stop us from trying to figure out ways to make life easier for the better seeds, who built teams that either earned their 90+ wins or just lucked into it, but the wins are wins.

We can start by assuming that MLB will never ever reduce the number of teams making the postseason after having expanded it, because postseason = more money. We will further assume that once the A’s actually move to Vegas and Tampa Bay gets their new stadium built that MLB will expand to 32 and likely adopt the NFL’s 1 (bye) + 6 (division winners + wild cards) system per league. AC doesn’t like deliberately tiring out pitching staffs, but that’s basically what the pitch clock may be doing anyway (plus the icky injury bug that’s cropped up lately that bears investigation), and that’s part of the appeal behind getting that bye, right? And per the article I shared before, it makes sense to get the bye than not, because at least you get the rest and the ability to set the rotation prior to the games that count.

Regardless, we are far from the system where you had to win the league, or there was only one division winner getting to the NLCS and that was it. There is also a better system than a wild card getting equal footing against the top overall league seed, or a one-and-done game. Perhaps the grousing at this time is just because people are making excuses for their team, or sour grapes from the players who lost, but given the unlikely prospect of shortening the season and the reluctance to extend the postseason deeper into November (eww), I am thinking this is the best possible system at this time.

Maybe just try to get the bye, and hope that when you play games that count, that you don’t suck at it. This is also a message to teams like the Cubs to not assume that 84-87 wins will get you in, because that certainly was not the case this year. I get that trying to build a team projected for 95+ wins is hard, but that confers the best possible advantage, and then you just have to try to fight past the chaos regardless of your seed in the postseason. I guess that’s the appeal of the NCAA basketball tournament anyway, everyone appreciates the underdog, but a team that plows through the playoffs can rightfully be crowned a legend.

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    Rice Cube

    andcounting,

    He basically hung a bunch of changeups and got burned, whether the Mets knew or not is up in the air but based on the breakdown it seems like they did see something, it just may have been different than what Jomboy suggested

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