Major League Baseball released its revised, revamped, and-- we hope-- unrepeatable postseason plan yesterday, and while we sure never want to see something like this appended to a "real" regular season, we're all for it in this unusual circumstance. We agree with the guy doing the Giants-Dodgers game on ESPN last night who said, in effect, "This season is the time to try out all the new wacky experimental stuff." Indeed.
What this means for the Giants is simple: they are now contenders, ugly late-inning loss last night notwithstanding. With eight teams qualifying, a sub-.500 postseason finalist is eminently possible. Not that that necessarily would be the Giants, in either sense, but it opens up the whole field. They're all contenders.
Baseball has taken its cue from the NFL's 1982 strike season, when only nine of 16 regular-season games were played. The postseason, including the Super Bowl, was 15 games, and 16 of the 28 teams participated. With this plan, the 60-game regular season will be followed by a postseason of between 40 and 65 games, and 16 of the 30 teams will participate.
We like the 3-5-7 game format in the league elimination series and we like the 3-0 home-field advantage in the opening round, though it could be tough on the 5-6 seeds, whose records might be similar to the 3-4 seeds.
If this insanity-- excuse us, this format--had been in place last year, in the AL Tampa and Oakland would have been elevated to the 4 and 5 seeds, and Cleveland would gotten in as the 6. All those teams won 93 or more games and all were within 4 of each other. On the back end, the at-large wild-cards would have been Boston (84-78) and Texas (78-84, with a six-game cushion over the rest of the field). The Rays, with one fewer win than the A's (97-96) would have played all three first-round games at Oakland.
We think it would be better if the division winners got all three at home and the other series went 1-1-1 with the rubber game going to the higher seed.
But... who knows where these games will be played anyway, and whether anyone will be in the stands? Put another way, what home-field advantage?
Critics have argued that with the regional schedule, regular-season records and therefore seeding will be skewed toward teams in more lopsided, uncompetitive divisions (hint: not the AL East). We don't know what the alternative is; draw straws? The NFL faced the same problem in 1982. For instance, the 49ers played four division games (the Rams twice), four interconference games against the AFC West, and only one game against a NFC non-division opponent (the then-St Louis Cardinals). We see it as an inevitable consequence of a season that's had to be jump-started and jury-rigged from the git.
And that's the gist of our "insanity" remark above. We never want to see a 16-team baseball postseason field again. But this is the Year of Insanity, and people, right now it makes eminent sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment