As much as I loved seeing the Cubs be swept, it brings back my biggest problem with the MLB Post-Season – The Wild Card.
I do like having a wild card; it’s made the playoff race more exciting since the WC normally goes down to the last day of the season.
The problem lies in the best of 5 series.
I think a 5 game series is more luck than which team is better (as seen by the Cubs-Dodgers series). You only have to win 60% of the games instead of 71% in the next round.
If the visiting team wins one of the first 2, they have home-field advantage going back to their stadium. That’s something that the WC should not have; they didn’t win their division, so they shouldn’t be treated like the other teams.
Also, WC teams tend to be the hot team coming into the playoffs; not the best team, the hottest. Since the creation of the current playoff format (13 seasons), 9 WC teams have reached the World Series and 4 of them have won it.
(I know that the WC team isn’t always the hottest team – ask any Mets fan in ’06)
I’ve heard many suggestions about what to do, but I’m not crazy about any of them.
1. Keep the season the same and change the first round to a best of 7 series – November is brutal in most places for baseball. In the World Series in ’06 in St. Louis, it was freezing. It would be even worse in New York or Boston.
2. Start the season a week earlier and change the first round to a best of 7 series – While Spring Training does seem to take forever, moving the season up would be like having the WS in November; the weather is just as bad in March as it is in November. Remember Cleveland getting snowed out a couple of seasons ago?
3. Add 1 more WC teams to each league and have the WC teams play a small series before the divisional champions play – It doesn’t solve the issue of the WC team being one of the hotter teams. It also would push the WS into November.
4. Add 2 more WC teams and adopt a NFL-like Post-Season structure (2 top divisional winners get byes in the first round) – Something that separates baseball from other sports is the playoff system. The playoffs are for the elite teams; some sports have half the teams qualify. It really takes away from the post-season if more teams are able to make it. Plus, this will push the playoffs into November, again.
5. Each team could have a day/night double-header one Saturday per month – This pushes the end of the season up one week, but won’t get signed off on by the players. Double-headers are not very popular.
6. Change the set up of the first round: the WC team gets 1 home game in the series – A 2-1-2 system for games in the first round would eliminate the loss of home field advantage, but would make for a killer travel schedule. Imagine the Red Sox having to fly from Los Angeles to Boston for 1 game, then fly back.
My pick right now would be #6, just for the fact it’s the easiest fix. If the WC team is truely that good, the homefield advantage wouldn’t be an issue. It will also keep the same time table. I wouldn’t complain, though, if the first round series was changed to 7 games.
What other options are there? Is there another way to change the playoffs to keep the better teams in?
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Back in the Kyle Lohse column, I mentioned the playoff teams and their young pitching – Viva El Birdos went into a little more depth on the topic. It’s a really good read for anyone interested.
VEB is a Cardinal’s Blog, but since they aren’t playing anymore they are doing more playoff analysis. I highly recommend checking them out.
They’ve adopted the Rays as their playoff team.
