I raised this issue in the last pot-potpourri post, noting that, horrors, I agree with Keith Olbermann: the current system, now combined with the “balanced schedule,” is unethical (Keith didn’t exactly say that, since “ethics” isn’t in his vocabulary), because it is unfair to teams that have achieved the best record over the course of the season. As I explained in a comment thread,
“I detest any system where a team that was decisively clobbered by the team that won the division is ever in the position to eliminate the clearly superior team. That devalues the season. “….As long as the divisions had significantly different schedules, there was an argument that a superior record in one division(or league) didn’t necessarily mean the team finishing second in another division wasn’t as good (or better). The seeding means that the teams that have to play in the first round may actually have an advantage over the better teams that get to sit out the first round [because the extra days off may in fact be a handicap]….With 30 teams, there is no good solution, but it still stinks.”
Forget about your baseball biases: this a basic fairness question.
After the Dodgers joined the Orioles as being near elimination yesterday despite dominating their divisions yesterday and the Atlanta Braves narrowly missed being in the same fix (down 0-2 in a best of five series against a clearly inferior team), my lament—and Keith’s—is now a popular topic of debate. Sayeth “The Athletic,” concentrating on the “bye” problem:
The premise hasn’t worked as intended. Lower seeds have won five of these eight series in the last two seasons. You can win as many games as you want in the regular season, then sit through a weird layoff and run into two great pitchers on a 90-win team. Poof, advantage gone.
The writer on this piece disqualified himself as an ethics arbiter by protesting, “Let’s not alter a fun product because the higher-ranked team isn’t winning. The NFL and NBA also employ similar formats, for what it’s worth.” Seeing such an unfair system as justifiable because it’s “fun” is the kind of argument made by sportswriters and fans who see nothing wrong with Barry Bonds turning himself into a mutant by cheating with steroids (“Home runs are fun!”) or games turning on an incompetent umpire’s strike three call on a pitch a foot off the plate. (“The charm of the game!”). And citing the NFL and the NBA is worth nothing. In both sports, lay-offs have little adverse effect, and in both sports superior teams win a higher percentage of the time, which is why baseball’s season is as long as it is: single games are less significant in baseball than in the other sports.
Then the writer kicks it over to star baseball commentator Ken Rosenthal (I’ll take Peter Gammons or Bill James any day, thanks) , who wrote a longer examination of the problem yesterday before the Dodgers game. His suggestions:
….one immediate fix would be to re-seed after the first round. The No. 1 seed currently faces the winner of the wild-card series between the Nos. 4-5 seeds, while the No. 2 seed faces the winner of the Nos. 3-6 series. The idea is to ensure that the No. 1 seed does not face another division winner in the DS while still preserving the original bracket. Hogwash. The No. 1 seed should face the lowest remaining seed. If a new bracket is required, big deal.
I don’t see how that significantly addresses sthe problem. More…
.…further handicapping the wild cards. On Sunday’s FS1 broadcast of Game 2 of the Rangers-Orioles series, Hall of Famer John Smoltz suggested eliminating the off-day between Game 3 of the wild-card series and the start of the Division Series, an idea that might hold some merit. One problem: Game 3s likely would need to be played in the afternoon to ease the travel burden, an idea ESPN almost certainly would oppose.
Again, nibbling around the edges. But the play-offs don’t have enough daytime games, to baseball’s long term detriment: why let the integrity of the sport be warped by ESPN? I know, it’s a different issue. Ken goes on…
Another possibility would be to borrow a concept from Korea’s KBO, and give the bye team an immediate 1-0 advantage in the Division Series.
I like this solution, but it doesn’t go far enough. I’d endorse a tiered handicap system based on the season records of the teams. If a team dominated the league, let it begin every series one game up. If it was less superior, then have it start every game with one run already on the scoreboard in one, two, or all the games depending on how inferior the opponent was. That makes the season meaningful, and would give the teams that dominated an edge they deserve.
The system appears to be unfair, ironically, but that’s focusing on the trees rather than the forest. The forest is integrity, and the importance of letting fans know that the regular season is little more than exhibition games. It is big picture fairness, and I’d endorse it.
Ethics Alarms 
The only real solution is to go back to a two-step playoff. The AL East winner plays the AL West winner to get to the World Series.
Same with the National League.
The problem with this is obvious: less TV revenue.
The other option: divide the American League and the National League into 4 divisions. Then, the winners of each division goes to the playoffs. No Wild Cards, no Byes.
This would require 2 expansion teams, but I am sure Vegas would be in line.
But, giving the leader a one-game advantage is even dumber than giving the leader team a lead off runner on 2nd base in every inning.
-Jut
Why? Why shouldn’t winning the league win more than a mostly meaningless home field advantage? (The Astros and Orioles were both better on the road.) Why not a real advantage?
Oh—the Orioles just were swept by a team that finished 11 games behind them—22 fewer games over .500. They came out of the break ice cold. With a winner’s advantage, they would be down 1-2—still behind, but with a chance for the better team to prevail.
Yes, but is it accurate to say that the Rangers are an inferior team to, actually, anyone else in the AL?
The Rangers had six players start in the All Star game. That should say something to the talent level that this team possessed, at least to me.
However, for at least two months starting from around the break, injuries resulted in the Rangers never being able to put all six of those players on the field at the same time — until mid September. Injuries and slumps are a part of baseball every year, to be sure. But without those injuries the Rangers were playing much of the season like a 100 win team, even though half of their starting pitching has been totally lost for the season.
Talent alone doesn’t make a championship level team, of course — else the Angels would have half a dozen titles by now.
Records are an indicator but they don’t tell the whole story. Here’s another thought — should the Houston Astros have declined their current home field advantage this series since they have played so much better on the road this year? (A side note that was brought to my attention — we make much (rightly) of the cheating scandal in 2017, but then why did the Astros that year have a better road than home record?)
If we think that long layoffs are detrimental, which is something that has been debated many times with no real answers, then the only solution is to have a power of two teams make the playoffs in each league 2, 4, or 8 so that there are no byes. The whole concept of the bye comes from football where there is near universal agreement that an off week is a big benefit starting the playoffs.
They had 4 teams for a good while and MLB is never going back to it. If they went to 8 teams, fans like us would be unhappy that it further dilutes the playoffs.
Personally, I thought the move from 4 to 5 playoff teams was a bad idea. However, I had to change my mind when I saw just how much it increased fans involvement in the playoff races much longer into the season. This year, going into the final weekend, there were four AL teams in contention for three playoff spots — and any of them could have been left out altogether, and there was still a path for any of three teams to win the AL West.
Lastly I will just say that there is actually no solution to the layoff dilemma. The Rangers, who just beat up on the Orioles, will now have four days off (at least they’re already home, finally). Their opponent will have one or three days off, depending on what happens tonight. We’ve seen it many times before when a team sweeps — and sometimes it seems to help, sometimes it seems to hurt.
Your momentum is as good as tomorrow starting pitcher.
…who also may be adversely affected by too many games off. I agree that there is no ethical solution that isn’t a debatable trade-off. The All-Star Game point doesn’t wash, because we know half a season is as deceptive for players as it is for teams. This season, it was being debated whether Alex Verdugo and Yoshida of the Sox belonged on the team based on their first halves. Yoshida looked like a possible battig champ or Rookie of the Year. Both crashed. And remember how Luis Arraez was a threat to be the next .400 hitter? He ended up missing by almost 50 points.
I agree something needs to be done.
To your point – After a brutal 162 game regular season, a best of 5 game divisional series is too small of a sample size to be advantageously fair [there’s a misnomer for ya’] for the overall better team. Anything can/will happen in 3 games that does not mirror the entire season’s stats. Mini slumps, mini hot steaks, a bad outing on the mound, inconsistent ump behind the plate day, a blown save, a nagging injury that cant be rested, a stomach virus, Don Denkinger, etc.
So, for obvious reasons a best of 5 game baseball series outcome is not a great indicator of how a 162 game regular season played out.
The expanded playoffs do however generate more REVENUE. So rest assured, we’re stuck with it.
For 100 years, only 2 teams made it to the post season and from what I read and the few years I was old enough to remember, it was great.
If the playoffs are unethical because the teams with the best regular season winning percentages don’t win all the playoff series, why have playoffs? Why let the Red Sox defeat the Yankees in 2004? The wildcard team defeated the winner of the American League East and the holder of the best regular season record in the American League and was allowed to go on to win the World Series.
As Howard Cosell was fond of saying after any alleged upset, “That’s why they play the games.” If the playoff results aren’t appropriate, don’t hold playoffs. Two leagues, two league champions who play each other in the World Series. That’s baseball. Anything is else is what we have. Is it unethical? No.
Well, I think that’s beyond argument, but it’s impossible from a practical point of view. Baseball attendance was a fraction of what it is now when the Yankees would wrap up the pennant by July and 7 o5 9 teams would just run out the string. With 15 teams, it would be a disaster. So not having play-offs is an impossibility.
What saved the Sox’s legitimacy in 2004 was that 1) they were very close to the Yankees in the regular season and, most of all, they came back from a 0-3 deficit, which no team has done before or since. That proved their worthiness—in fact, I predicted that they WOULD come back from 0-3 because that was the only way this team could ever beat “the curse”—weirdly.
Yes, before playoffs, seasons ended early. But that was baseball. You rooted for your team even if they stunk and you went to ballgames because going to the park and watching a game was enjoyable. And the players were major leaguers. The playoffs extend fan interest and increase attendance. Is that a bad thing? Will tinkering with the playoff format eliminate upsets? NO. A seven game series was always billed as the only way to get a fair determination of whose is the better team given the impact of the quality of entire rotations. But on the other hand, playoff MLB baseball is incredibly more entertaining than regular season baseball. (Although I wish they’d get the John Smoltzes and Ron Darlings and all the other former pitchers to shut up at least once an inning. Sheesh. Baseball is not that complicated. It’s not nuclear physics.) The impact of each game being so large makes the games much more entertaining that a game in May. It’s as if each game is played in extra innings or with a ghost runner. Again, the only way to make the playoffs “ethical” is to simply set up brackets and then stage a televised event where the better teams “defeat” the inferior teams. It could be done in an hour, including commercials. Alex Rodriguez could host it! And by the way, English Premier League soccer has twenty teams. No playoffs, no divisions. Best record with various tie breakers wins the championship. BUT, the three teams that have the worst record, are kicked out of the league. That generates fan interest. How great would that be if the teams that finish at the bottom of their division were relegated to Triple A? Hah! That would motivate ownership!
Sox being close to Yankees at end of season: moral luck.
Nonono. The 2003/2004 Sox and Yankees were very close in talent; it was moral luck that they finished the way they did and not reversed. A million little bounces and strike calls could have reversed those standings. (The 2003 Sox were much better than their record, but had a true idiot managing them.)
I can’t stand the playoff system and I couldn’t stand it when my Atlanta Braves went through it and won the Series two years ago. But when I was reading the suggestions from Rosenthal, my mind drifted to “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” when Sinatra and company debate how to divide up the $350k they’re going after. If necessary, find the clip and watch it for context.
I think the solution is easy, if you’re going to leave three divisions per league.
There are six divisions in baseball. The playoffs are comprised of eight teams: the six division winners and the non-division-winning team from each league with the best overall record (so one wildcard). Over a 162-game season, those are the best teams from each league. Parenthetically, this is even better if inter-league play is again eliminated (build that wall!!) and each team plays the other teams in its league the same number of times.
Team 1 (best record division winner) vs. Team 2 (second-best record division winner)
Team 3 (third-best record division winner vs. Team 4 (wildcard)
Seven-game series. Winners advance to the championship and winner of that to the Series. Home-field advantage to the team with the best record during the season.
On final note. The All-Star game – like all “all-star” games in other sports – is completely worthless now. Drop it, name the All-Stars and let them gather for a group photo, maybe the home-run derby (cuz the kids love it and Berman’s “back, back, back…” never gets old), and an array of imported ciders.
In 50 innings — 5 1/2 games — the Dodger and Braves have scored a total of 11 runs between them. That’s an ERA for the Phillies and Diamondbacks of 1.98.
So with today’s results, three of the four best teams in baseball over the regular season are out of the play-offs, and the fourth, Atlanta, is on the ropes.
And both the league championship series include the wild-card team. That the teams with the best overall W-L numbers are out and the wild-cards in either speaks to a failed playoff scheme or to balance among teams…..
Or, for example, take the Tampa Bay Rays — they had the second best record in the AL. However, they got there because they were red hot the first half and then cooled way off after. I don’t believe they were as good the last part of the season as their record indicated.
The Astros and Rangers tied for the AL West division, tied for the 3rd best record in the AL.
I don’t know what all is up with the Braves and Dodgers but scoring just 2 runs a game just won’t cut it.
But the Rays still were better than the Phils or the Diamondbacks. The Rangers/Astros have a chance to save a bit of MLB’s face, but there’s no getting around it: these play-offs eliminated the top four teams in baseball. After the ALCS, it will be 5 out of the top 6.