Major League Baseball Has A Problem

[clydepepper]

Originally Posted by GaryPassamonte

This year's baseball playoffs further expose a glaring problem with the format. Five of the top 6 seeded teams have been eliminated. This is just not acceptable from a fairness standpoint. The baseball season has traditionally been long to mean something, that the best teams over the long haul are rewarded. Given the layers of playoffs now used, the "best" teams throughout the season are vulnerable to losing to an inferior "hot" team. This is not what baseball has been about for most of its history and is not weighing the regular season fairly. I don't know what the solution is, but a format needs to be implemented that respects the regular season record much more than it does.

How 'bout the teams with the better records START the game with a ghost runner at second base...

Originally Posted by SAllen2556

The teams with the five best regular-season records – the Braves, Baltimore (101 wins), Dodgers (100), Tampa Bay (99) and Milwaukee (92) – all failed to reach LCS.

So yeah, there's a problem. You have to somehow weigh the playoffs more towards the teams with the best records. The bye doesn't seem to work.

What if your seeding determined the number of games you need to win to claim the series? If the 1 seed plays the 6 seed, then the 1 seed needs to win 1 game and the 6 seed would to win 6 games, or something like that, and then re-seed every series until you get to the World Series.

The other obvious answer is to shorten the regular season to around 120 games. Then you could have all best-of-seven series, which would tend to favor the better teams.

How 'bout the teams with the better records START the game with a ghost runner at second base...in every inning.

Originally Posted by Casey2296

You could go back to the old format where the team with the best regular season record in the NL met the team with the best record in the AL for a best of seven World Series.

Oh, Wait! That sounds even better!

[todeen]

Personally, I like the current 12 team format. I wouldn't change that. I also don't care that the best teams are losing. If Houston would lose, I would be all the happier. But I understand what people are saying, so I would tinker with the protocol.

Here's some things I've seen around:

Reseed each round of the playoffs to make sure the remaining top seeds always play the lowest remaining seed. For example, the NL #1 seed ended up playing a tougher team in the NLDS (#1 Braves vs #4 Phillies) than the #2 team (#2 LA vs #6 AZ). That should not have been.

Another idea I've heard is borrowed from KBO Korean baseball. Allow the higher seed to start with a one game advantage. So in a 5 game series, the higher seed only needs to win 2 games, while the lower seed needs to win 3 games.

Another idea I've heard is that you return the Wild Card series to one game, and then have the winner immediately travel to the bye team city and play the next day. This allows the bye team to have a shorter break rather than having to create fake games with split squads to stay in the groove.....which obviously didn't work.

Another idea I've heard, which I think is stupid, is that the lower seed cannot pitch pitchers on short rest. This ruins the chess match strategy of a lower seed trying to defeat a higher seed. So a #1 pitcher that throws in the WC round must wait until his next 5th day rotation spot comes back around. This supposedly would allow the higher seed in the Division Series to pitch their #1 seed against the #3/#4/#5 pitcher of the lower seed. But this also negatively impacts the drama of having the two top pitchers face each other.

[philliesfan]

How about.......the teams with the better records.......PLAY BETTER when it counts.

[BobbyStrawberry]

Originally Posted by philliesfan

How about.......the teams with the better records.......PLAY BETTER when it counts.

+1. I really don't get the complaints. The whole concept of a baseball playoffs is to increase randomness and allow more teams a shot at a championship. If we don't like that, let's go back to three division winners and one wildcard.

[bobbvc]

Originally Posted by BobbyStrawberry

+1. I really don't get the complaints. The whole concept of a baseball playoffs is to increase randomness and allow more teams a shot at a championship. If we don't like that, let's go back to three division winners and one wildcard.

Really they had it perfect with 5 playoff teams. The 2 wildcards were punished with a coin flip game, the division winners had a short enough break not to get rusty and then we started the real playoffs with the division series.

[Shoeless Moe]

Originally Posted by philliesfan

How about.......the teams with the better records.......PLAY BETTER when it counts.

Exactly!

Everyone else quit the whining.

It's not a problem for Houston.

[TUM301]

So what`s the problem again, I for one enjoy seeing all these higher seeds going down the toilet.

[mrreality68]

Originally Posted by Shoeless Moe

Exactly!

Everyone else quit the whining.

It's not a problem for Houston.

+1 Agree
The Top Seeds have the advantage of Home Games etc and if they are truly better teams they will move on.
Upsets happen in all sports and sometimes teams built for the regular season are not really built for the playoffs.

[Seven]

I think the issue is that the playoffs are too bloated. I understand the necessity for a single wild card team, but I honestly hate what the playoffs have become. Major League Baseball will stop at nothing to make more money, so I'm not surprised.

The general direction of the sport is leaving me with a soured taste in my mouth. Pitchers barely go the distance anymore, all everyone cares about is velocity and spin rate. Too much showboating, the players are investments now, and do not play over the slightest bit of an injury. I know I sound like an old man, but man I think the game was more enjoyable, when it was less complicated.

[packs]

I cannot disagree more with the premise of this thread. The postseason has always been about getting hot. I'm not even really sure what you're saying. Why would anyone want to sit through a season with the kind of predetermined outcome you're looking for? How would that be exciting?

[D. Bergin]

I guess the Giants better give those 2 Super Bowls back to the Patriots.

It's not "fair", that the superior team didn't win.

Should have given the Patriots a 10 point cushion to start the game.





Only real solution here, if there actually is a problem, is to make the 3 game series, a 5 game series, and make the 5 game series a 7 game series.

Take a few games off the regular season if need be.

[Snapolit1]

Mixed feelings.

I do think when sports continue to expand and drag out playoffs it deemphasizes the regular season. I mean who is going to pay $250 to see a hockey game in the middle of the season where your local team is playing one of the worst teams in the league. All you need to do is get in playoffs by the skin of your teeth and peak then.

Baseball is such a long year. . . .does seem in a way unfair for teams that dominated over 162 games to get bounced because some team 5 games above .500 got hot one week in October.

On the other hand, if you've dominated all year. . .play well in the post season.

If the Yankees got in via the wild card and got hot I suspect you'd hear very little of this kind of griping.

[packs]

I'd prefer watching a team win the World Series rather than watch a team that everyone thinks should have won the World Series be declared the winner.

[bk400]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

I guess the Giants better give those 2 Super Bowls back to the Patriots.

It's not "fair", that the superior team didn't win.

Should have given the Patriots a 10 point cushion to start the game.





Only real solution here, if there actually is a problem, is to make the 3 game series, a 5 game series, and make the 5 game series a 7 game series.

Take a few games off the regular season if need be.

Agree with this apt comparison to the NY Giants.
This said, I disagree that the Patriots were the better team. Definitionally, the Giants were the best team in 2007 and 2011 because they ran the table in the playoffs. They won when it mattered most.

IMHO, the season MVP award for all sports should take into account playoff performance. What did Acuna do during the playoffs? He looked like Elly De La Cruz out there.

I mean, Mariano Rivera never won an MVP or a Cy Young Award, but that guy's got 5 rings, and I'm not sure you'd want anyone else on the mound if you had to close out an inning to win a championship.

I love watching guys like Tony Gwynn, Mike Trout, Ichiro, Ken Griffey, Jr., Ohtani, and Dan Marino, but I'm hard pressed to say that they are "better" than guys with a bunch of hardware.

(As an aside, I looked up these stats, which I thought were interesting. In 2007, the Giants had ZERO All-Pros and beat the Patriots, who had 10 All Pros and an undefeated season. In 2011, the Giants did it again, this time with two All Pros (Victor Cruz and Jason Pierre-Paul) versus 8 for the Patriots.)