MLB playoff format a bust or boon for Miss Congeniality?

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)"

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No Scoop for Yu! Is a No-No Greatness or Just a Statistical Oddity?

I tuned into Friday night's Rangers-Red Sox game just as the Ranger's Yu Darvish took a no hitter into the ninth.  After two quick outs, David Ortiz stepped into the box and as a Sox fan, I thought if anyone could break it up, it would be Big Papi. Right on cue, Ortiz pulled a hard grounder that just managed to beat the Big Papi shift that has the shortstop playing behind second base and the second baseman in short right field. This heart breaker was the proverbial "ground ball with eyes" that squirted through just a few feet to the right on your screen of Elvis Andrus and a few feet to the left of Rougned Odor (not a typo) who couldn't scoop it up albeit a nice diving effort. - Click HERE to see it. - My first thought was "wow, how random is it that this routine ball just

The First Instant Replay Walk-off - It's Got Positraction!

It was just a matter of time before the first game-ending play was reversed using instant replay...I mean, the first play that was reversed that became the walk-off, game-ending play...after everybody already walked off, after the play had ended, you know, after the review of the ending play. Please wait a minute while we sort this out...

Glove is All Around -The Anatomy of a Catch!

Ah springtime, “when everything else begins again” as past commissioner of baseball A. Bart Giamatti once said referring to the cycle of life which promises “sunshine and high skies”…and of course, baseball!  This is a spring unlike any because of the experiment of instant replay and several new controversial rule changes so as the baseball season blossoms, I think it’s time you and I have a little sit-down about the birds and the bees to better understand the anatomy and how certain things work.  Today we’re going to look at the catch and transfer that has hearts pounding like a teenage crush…

Pirates-Brewers hurt each other's feelings...benches clear! Divas and DEVO

If you didn’t see a clip of the baseball “brawl” yesterday in Pittsburgh, here’s what you missed - in the top of the third, Milwaukee’s Carlos Gomez hit a deep fly to center field that he thought was a dinger so he went into a slow home run trot, a la Domingo Ayala, and hurt pitcher Gerrit Cole’s feelings because in fact, the ball didn’t leave the yard. After Gomez reached third on his inside-the-park triple, Cole ran towards, but not too close to Gomez, shouting mean words in his general direction like an insulting Frenchman which in turn, hurt his feelings as well. This visibly upset many of the other players and coaches who trotted on to the field somewhat rapidly to air their grievances but this only lead to pushing and shoving and an all-out scuffle. Eventually, some players wrestled on the grass and got stains on their bunched-up trousers. Oh yeah, and then the Brewers went on to win an otherwise great game, 3-2 in 14 innings.

Pine Tar Redux - Not For Nothin', Lets Take a Look Back...

It's quite clear in our big-screen, high-def world that Yankee pitcher Michael Pineda was using pine tar on his pitching hand last Thursday night versus the Red Sox in Yankee Stadium.  Before the reaction on social media could crash the internet or you could hire Matt Taibbe to do an investigative piece, Boston manager John Farrell was silent on the issue immediately after the game while slugger David Ortiz had this to say, "everybody uses pine tar, it's no big deal."  If your first instinct is to call Oliver Stone so somebody can get to the bottom of this cover-up, let me ask you a question. Pineda was obviously breaking the rules, but was he really cheating? I'll answer that somewhat circuitously by going to the way-back machine and taking a look at the only pine tar controversy that matters, the 1983 George Brett incident.  Work with me here...

Aaron's #715 - To The Moon!

This week marked the 40^th anniversary of Hank Aaron’s record setting 715^th home run.  To a kid growing up in the 70’s, this event was as big it got, “The Thrilla in Manilla”, Evel Knievel jumping Snake Canyon, Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King’s “Battle of the Sexes” throw down all rolled into one gigantic super-hyped inevitability. How big? I was 13 at the time and remember being in the car with my parents and hearing the call on the car radio…I remember it was a Monday night.  We usually only use tragedies to mark those handful of times in life when we remember exactly where we were when something historic happened, but this one was different, transcendent in ways a 13 year old simply couldn’t grasp. Growing up in Massachusetts, I wasn’t completely oblivious to race issues – the Boston busing crisis was in our consciousness – but again, I was just a 13 year old fan so for me, number 715 was just a

Crash Course - "Slide or Avoid" Adopted in Bigs

With all the attention on instant replay this spring, another significant rule change is in effect involving plays at the plate which now makes it illegal for a runner to intentionally crash into a catcher to knock the ball loose; the play that put the “hard" in "hardball."  Rule changes, like no-more-fakes-to-third which was adopted last year, usually start at the big league level and trickle down, but this is a rare case of the big leagues adopting a rule that’s long been in place in the amateur leagues for safety’s sake. 

The First "Bad" Call Overturned - A Deal is a Deal!

In an earlier post this spring, I predicted that the expanded use of instant replay will show just how accurate major league umpires are.  MLB's own analysis of last season seems to support this as there were 377 wrong calls in 2,431 games, or about 1 every 6.4 games - not bad if you ask me.  I also promised that when the first call was overturned, there would be a logical explanation and that I would write about it, so a deal is a deal...

Opening Day - What does it mean to you? Is baseball still our national pastime?

“The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again…”  A. Bart Giamatti

Opening day of the major league baseball season is unlike any other. I’m not going to get all schmoopy on you, but if you’re a baseball fan, you know what that means. Sure, everyone is tied for first place and this could be the year, but beyond that, your oldest best buddy is back in town for six months and just like that, everybody is young, good looking and flush with cash - "déjà vu all over again," only new. I’ve made the brief argument before that baseball is still going strong as our national pastime – “in all its forms it tickles each of the sense…seeping into our lore and leisure” - but you could write an entire book exploring that argument. Baseball is an old game, but it seems to find new ways to get under our skin. Let’s take a quick look at baseball in modern times.

Umpire drilled by line drive, what they didn't tell you.

It might have been St. Patrick's Day but MLB umpire Brad Myers was anything but lucky on Monday when he couldn't avoid a line drive off the bat of The Reds Brandon Phillips during a spring training game. The painful-to-watch video, currently making the rounds, shows Myers was in a dangerous position with a right handed batter up so let me explain a few things that were left out of most national reports of the mishap.

Baseball Lessons - Something Happened...

Something happened Sunday in a game I umpired that I wasn't quite prepared for. It had nothing to do with baseball and in another way, it had everything to do with baseball. 

You see, on Sundays I have the honor and pleasure of working a very special amateur baseball league that plays its games in an unbelievably beautiful setting on Coronado Island in San Diego, on a gem of a field on a quarter-mile wide sandy strip of land known as The Silver Strand. It’s an age 55 and over senior league, but frankly most players are 60+ and many well into their 70s. The quality of play is no different than any amateur league in that in the end, the team that doesn't beat itself usually comes out ahead - of course!   The guys take the game seriously, but there's also no doubt they're all well aware that the outcome is not as important as the gift of still being able to play baseball from the neck up the way they always have. What time has chiseled away from their athleticism, the heart has recompensed.  Sore limbs and aching muscles are usually no match for the will to hit, field, throw, slide, and yes, even dive for the baseball on occasion. But sometimes, too much is just too much, as it was on Sunday.  While working on a shutout in the 4th inning, after firing a strike, the pitcher took a woozy step off the mound, went down to a knee and collapsed. After the immediate attention from a few players with medical training and the extended efforts of the quick-to-arrive paramedics, about thirty minutes later, the gentleman was pronounced dead right there on the field. A life ended at age 57 on a pristine summer-like March day, under blue sky, the sailboats silently dotting the harbor beyond left field, teammates and opponents silently milling about the field. 

Shortly after the reality of the situation was apparent, players from both teams joined in a circle for the impromptu memorial and it didn't take long for the sentiment to surface that the deceased died doing what he loved, and we should all be so lucky to go that way when our time comes. I suppose medical professionals see these dramas everyday but for me, it was sad, shocking and surreal to see a guy playing baseball one minute and lying lifeless in the next. You often hear stories about how life is precious, which I think we all know on one level, but on another, our awareness is dominated by the more practical matters that compete for our utmost attention. Indeed, it isn't easy to maintain balance and keep everything in perspective. No, we can’t enjoy every moment, but we certainly should try to and, more than that, find the time to follow our passions any way we can. The thing that happened Sunday had nothing to do with baseball, but in some way, it had everything to do with it.

Please say a quick prayer for the pitcher, try to notice the beauty in each day, and if you're ever visiting San Diego, stop by The Strand on Sunday and catch a few innings of some old-school baseball.