I've been too busy this summer to blog much, but I certainly have
enjoyed the baseball action right down to the final day’s no-hitter. For most people, the love of the game has
many layers and for me, it starts with the simple play on the field as I enjoy
any baseball game, regardless of the context.
As we prep for the playoffs however and I stepped back to take a look at
the MLB big picture, it’s my opinion that the playoff format, now in its second
year, is NOT working - these “pennant” races s-t-i-n-k, STINK! In 2013 and 2014, in only four out of twelve
division races did the second place team finish within five games of the top. Not only that, but the other eight second-place teams averaged a whopping 9.5 games behind! As a result, an almost silly amount of
everyone’s attention turns towards the watered down “wild card” races involving
just a couple of teams competing in a virtual standing across divisions. I mean, Miss Congeniality might be pretty and
all that, but does she have to be the center of attention?
I have to say that it feels like a bit of a bait and switch
by MLB - on the one hand we were promised
more excitement down the stretch as more teams remained in contention for the
post season, but the result has been almost the opposite. I have to confess I don’t have the answer as
there’s a lot of number crunching to be done to consider the optimum number of
teams in each division and the balance of the schedule, but I have to think
baseball has some guys in high paying jobs to figure this out. I’m not sure how long it will stay like this, but since inter-league play has chipped away at each circuit’s identity, perhaps it’s
time for a total league and division realignment. This will rankle traditionalists, but I argue
they should be rankled by what we have now.
Additionally, these single elimination wild-card games are
an attempt by MLB to have their cake and eat it too. Sure, the plan was to sell you the idea of
more playoff teams, but since the season is widely considered to be too long,
there’s no time for a proper playoff. In
my opinion, the one-gamer is a gyp! In a way, a one-game elimination is as
unnatural to baseball as a shoot-out is to hockey or placing the ball the
twenty yard line in football. Let me
explain - traditionally, the measure
of the best baseball players and teams is how they perform over time. The best
hitters can go 0-5 any night and the best teams can put up a stinker, but over
the marathon season, the cream rises to the top. Come playoff time, while there have been
examples of teams falling flat in an entire series, it will generally showcase
team strength v. team strength. One crew of
starters or relievers may tip the scales or another team’s power or speed might
make the difference, or it could be something else - eventually one team's biggest weakness rears its...what? Ugly head? Leave it up to one game and these team-strengths or personalities, if you will, won’t necessarily show up. In my opinion, it makes for a lesser product
in the end. This means the team that wins
might not really be the better team which you might say belies the beauty of
sport, but again, I’m making the argument here that baseball is different than
other sports – it’s not about one game.
That said, in the past, the one-gamer has been reserved for
the final face-off between division rivals who ended the marathon season tied,
and that is a different story. Those elimination games act essentially as the
final game of a fifteen to twenty game series and don’t seem as random as two
cross division teams rolling the dice for one game. Heck, you could even say those games are unnecessary
because if a team has played a division rival 19 times – an odd number – why
isn’t the season’s head-to-head results not the tiebreaker? (and I could have been spared the whole Bucky Dent thing as the Yanks took the season series 8-7 in 1978 over my Red Sox). Ok, I take that back. We're better off with those one gamers - I know, I know, there’s a lot to do with business
and commerce and players unions and TV ratings and such…I get it. I just don’t like one game playoffs in case I didn't mention it.
Jim Tosches is an amateur umpire and blogger in Encinitas, Ca and author of the book, "The Rules Abide: The Thinking Fan's Guide to Baseball Rules (With History, Humor and a Few Big Words)"
Jim Tosches is an amateur umpire and blogger in Encinitas, Ca and author of the book, "The Rules Abide: The Thinking Fan's Guide to Baseball Rules (With History, Humor and a Few Big Words)"
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