MLB playoffs suck (at picking the best team)

[Phil Plantier]

I missed this article when it was posted last year. Apologies if this was discussed here at the time. That was when the top 2 teams were eliminated in the first round. We have a bigger problem now.

Money graph is here (bad quality from original, for some reason)

Spoiler

The article recommends going to best-of-11 series for all rounds. Is this just recency bias, or is it time to think about baseball playoffs differently?

 

[voidfunkt]

The point of the playoffs isn't that the best regular season team should win... there would be no need for playoffs if that were the case.

 

[joe dokes]

I missed this article when it was posted last year. Apologies if this was discussed here at the time. That was when the top 2 teams were eliminated in the first round. We have a bigger problem now.

Money graph is here (bad quality from original, for some reason)

Spoiler

View attachment 72460

The article recommends going to best-of-11 series for all rounds. Is this just recency bias, or is it time to think about baseball playoffs differently?

Tbh, being old and cynical, I think the uptick in complaining most directly parallels the uptick in gambling access. That's a graph I'd like to see (although the "complaining axis" might be difficult to assess).

 

[DennyDoyle'sBoil]

We get this some years during the NCAA tournament, where the fact that the one seeds lose gets people going. And it makes you wonder why they even like the tournament in the first place.

 

[Phil Plantier]

The point of the playoffs isn't that the best regular season team should win... there would be no need for playoffs if that were the case.

That's true. But shouldn't the best team win more often than it does? Shouldn't stronger teams have a better chance of winning than they currently do? At some point the randomness undermines the regular season

 

[nolasoxfan]

It's a tournament. Upsets can and will happen. A best of 11 series could push the World Series into November.

If MLB wants one of the top 2 teams to win, the owners can vote for single divisions--AL and NL--and have the regular season winners meet in the World Series. Oh, and forego all of the advertising revenue. I can already hear the choking at the table.

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

I missed this article when it was posted last year. Apologies if this was discussed here at the time. That was when the top 2 teams were eliminated in the first round. We have a bigger problem now.

Money graph is here (bad quality from original, for some reason)

Spoiler

View attachment 72460

The article recommends going to best-of-11 series for all rounds. Is this just recency bias, or is it time to think about baseball playoffs differently?

It's been time to think about baseball playoffs differently since 1995 when wildcards became a thing, or even 1969 when divisional play began. As soon as they introduced more than two teams into the post-season, the odds of the "best" team winning the title in a given year began to decrease. Even in the pre-divisional era, the World Series wasn't always a match-up of the two best teams in baseball. It was a match-up of the best team in each league. Second or third place in one league could still have been objectively better than the first place team in the other league.

I can get behind the idea that a best-of-11 series will yield the "better" team winning more often (cream rises to the top over time). Problem is that logistically it's harder to do with more teams in the post-season. It's way better than a best-of-3 or best-of-5 in smoothing out flukiness, but doing it would push the World Series well into November (unless they reduce the regular season). That won't happen.

 

[nolasoxfan]

That's true. But shouldn't the best team win more often than it does? Shouldn't stronger teams have a better chance of winning than they currently do? At some point the randomness undermines the regular season

So, gift them a 2 game lead in a best 3 of 5 series?
I prefer to embrace the chaos.

Edit:

 

[Bergs]

The point of the playoffs isn't that the best regular season team should win... there would be no need for playoffs if that were the case.

No, the point of the playoffs is - like the rest of everything - to make money, mostly by advertising revenue (sad but true).

That becomes much easier/more likely when the teams that people want to watch don't get knocked out in 2 or 3 days during the first week. Personally, I'm just annoyed I don't get to see more BAL, LAD, and ATL playing baseball.

That said, best of 11 series is just silly, and I imagine we've passed the point of no return on the number of teams. Maybe if the season got knocked back to 154 games, MLB could have longer series early on. In theory, that could eliminate the seeming arbitrary nature of it all, but who knows.

 

[tims4wins]

In the graph, what does it mean by how often does the best team win the regular season? I would take that to mean that they aren't simply looking at the best regular season record (otherwise the best team would win the regular season 100% of the time, right?).

It's interesting that the "best team" wins the title at about the same rate in MLB and NFL (and no one seems to complain about this in the NFL), but I'm very curious what the regular season metric is.

Edit: looks like it is "power rating"

 

[Toe Nash]

I do think the first round should be seven games and they should go back to the WC being a single game. But that wouldn't materially change the odds that much. When you have a game where the best team only wins 60% of the time you're going to get stuff where one team gets hot for a few weeks or a top pitcher gets hurt or just doesn't have it and the team gets bounced. It used to be less weird when you only had 4 or 2 teams in the postseason but now with 12 teams making the playoffs it's only a matter of time before an essentially mediocre team wins it all.

In European soccer you get a trophy for winning the league (which has a very balanced schedule) and you get a trophy for winning other tournaments like the FA cup and Champions' League. Fans put relatively similar weight on both. There's no real reason we couldn't do that in the US but fans just don't put any weight on winning the regular season title even though it's less due to random chance. I have no idea how you change that though.

 

[tims4wins]

In European soccer you get a trophy for winning the league (which has a very balanced schedule) and you get a trophy for winning other tournaments like the FA cup and Champions' League. Fans put relatively similar weight on both. There's no real reason we couldn't do that in the US but fans just don't put any weight on winning the regular season title even though it's less due to random chance. I have no idea how you change that though.

Yeah seems like an impossibility. Mention the President's Cup to Bruins fans... yeah no one cares.

 

[Phil Plantier]

In European soccer you get a trophy for winning the league (which has a very balanced schedule) and you get a trophy for winning other tournaments like the FA cup and Champions' League. Fans put relatively similar weight on both. There's no real reason we couldn't do that in the US but fans just don't put any weight on winning the regular season title even though it's less due to random chance. I have no idea how you change that though.

I think MLS is trying to thread that needle with the Commissioner's Shield and an entry into the CONCACAF Champions League. I don't think it's 100% successful.

If we get some mediocre teams winning the World Series, I wonder if we start using terms like "regular season champion"

 

[Max Power]

I can get behind the idea that a best-of-11 series will yield the "better" team winning more often (cream rises to the top over time). Problem is that logistically it's harder to do with more teams in the post-season. It's way better than a best-of-3 or best-of-5 in smoothing out flukiness, but doing it would push the World Series well into November (unless they reduce the regular season). That won't happen.

You might want to check out the schedule for this year's World Series. The playoffs already go too late in the year and everything needs to be pared back.

Like I said in the other thread, the point of the playoffs isn't necessarily to find the best team. It's to produce the best games between some of the best teams and the most dramatic moments for the fans. Having an underdog win is fine, but not when the games are crummy because the teams are tired/rusty/not actually that good.

 

[ifmanis5]

Bob Costas enters the chat... We have two leagues. The best team from each league meet in the World Series. Problem solved.

 

[E5 Yaz]

It truly sounds as though some folks would like the lesser seeds to show up for these games and play as though they're the Washington Generals -- play just well enough to lose, so the better regular season teams always will advance.
I mean, it's pretty simple: The Braves didn't hit, the Orioles didn't pitch and the Dodgers didn't do much of either. If you're upset they're knocked out, it's not the system or the opponents you should be blaming

 

[joe dokes]

That's true. But shouldn't the best team win more often than it does? Shouldn't stronger teams have a better chance of winning than they currently do? At some point the randomness undermines the regular season

According to the graph and story, even in the NBA, with the "best" playoff result, the best team wins less than 50% of the time.

 

[joe dokes]

It truly sounds as though some folks would like the lesser seeds to show up for these games and play as though they're the Washington Generals -- play just well enough to lose, so the better regular season teams always will advance.
I mean, it's pretty simple: The Braves didn't hit, the Orioles didn't pitch and the Dodgers didn't do much of either. If you're upset they're knocked out, it's not the system or the opponents you should be blaming

It's the manager, of course.

But seriously, I think this is the right answer. "The playoffs" are different than the regular season. And to win a Championship, you have to be good at both. That's why there's a "playoff Tito" and a "playoff Krejci."

I think 11 or 9 games series are as unlikely as a shorter regular season. (With all due respect to Deacon Phillippe, Bill Dinneen and Cy Young).

 

[CoolPapaBellhorn]

It's not so much that the best team doesn't win that's off-putting, it's that the 5th or 6th best team in a league can win.

8 really was the perfect number of teams. They'll never go backwards, but the thing to do instead of expanding to 10 teams (I believe Bud's nonsensical quote at the time was that "10 is more fair than 8") would have been to make the LDS best-of-seven, which still gets you more playoff games/revenue, but also makes it more likely that the 1 seed advances.

 

[j44thor]

I think the problem is you have the top seeds that clinch early have nothing to play for late in the season then wait another week just for the WC games to finish before their playoffs start. That is simply too long to sit.
Not to mention the 2nd rd should be best of 7 not best of 5.

WC should be 1 game and the ALDS starts the next day, not 2-3 days later. This makes it a true competitive advantage to win the division vs. being a WC.

 

[Sandy Leon Trotsky]

At the end of July there were barely any teams "out" of it. That's good for baseball fans and for revenue sharing and with 8 teams getting in, that's the situation. I believed up until mid August that the Sox could sneak their way into the playoffs and ended up in last place. Nothing is worse for a fan to think there's no chance in hell they're getting October baseball by the end of May.
And yeah... as someone mentioned above... you need to build two teams. I thought the Sox had a good club that was built for October baseball but wasn't built to get there. I still think once you get in though, it's mostly just dumb luck. Yeah, having a great 1-2 will help tremendously but those still aren't guarantees for success either. Great defense? Nope. Killer offense? not always.... getting randomly hot and lucky? Yeah... .let's plan for that!

 

[Yo La Tengo]

Combining a couple of my posts that fit better here:


The playoffs are inherently unpredictable because of the limited number of games (that goes for all sports) and baseball is even less predictable because of some baked in factors (I think primarily that the most important players only play once every 5 games), which evens out during a season but amplifies the uncertainty in October. With an unbalanced schedule, and giving playoff spots to the top team in weak divisions, shrinking the number of wildcard teams would create a whole host of fairness/competitiveness issues that I think are worse than the current system.
Can you imagine what the NFL playoffs would look like if the top QB only started every other game? Also interesting to me that we are thrilled when a low seed knocks off a top seed in the NCAA tournament but get upset about the same thing happening in the MLB. Personally, I find the early rounds of the NBA playoffs to be incredibly boring since the results feel like forgone conclusions.


Is the current MLB playoff structure unfair to the top teams? Thought experiment: let the top 2 teams in each league decide if they want to play in the 3 game opening round. They could choose their opponent or take the lay off. No team would ever, ever choose to play in that series voluntarily, which really undercuts the "its not fair to have a 5 day rest" argument.


Leonard Mlodinow in his book, “The Drunkard’s Walk / How Randomness Rules Our Lives”:
“f one team is good enough to warrant beating another in 55% of its games, the weaker team will nevertheless win a 7-game series about 4 times out of 10. And if the superior team could beat its opponent, on average, 2 out of 3 times they meet, the inferior team will still win a 7-game series about once every 5 match-ups. There is really no way for a sports league to change this. In the lopsided 2/3-probability case, for example, you’d have to play a series consisting of at minimum the best of 23 games to determine the winner with what is called statistical significance, meaning the weaker team would be crowned champion 5 percent or less of the time. And in the case of one team’s having only a 55-45 edge, the shortest significant “world series” would be the best of 269 games, a tedious endeavor indeed! So sports playoff series can be fun and exciting, but being crowned “world champion” is not a reliable indication that a team is actually the best one.” (p. 70-71)

 

[grimshaw]

I wouldn't change a thing. As someone who typically moves on from baseball after the regular season once the Sox are out, I've had much more interest tuning in to see if upsets will happen.
They are great for baseball, because you now have a large swath of Arizonans who are new fans. MLB would have loved a Dodgers team in the World Series, but adding new fans is the long term play to grow the game.

I expect that the O's Dodgers and Braves are still going to be really, really, good next season too.

 

[TapeAndPosts]

Like Toe Nash, my mind also went to European soccer, where a team can be playing in their domestic league, as well as a domestic cup tournament, as well as an international tournament like the Champions or Europa Leagues. Combining trying to win any/all these competitions with trying to qualify for the international leagues for the following season and trying to avoid relegation, there are a lot of things to play for, and seasons can stay interesting and feel successful in multiple ways.

I'll also say that system, while I think it's great, does have the issue that there are a lot of games, and it seems to increase as leagues look for more ways to play games and more ways to make money. Combine that with players constantly going off to play with their national teams in addition to the club games, and injuries seem to be becoming more and more of a problem as players get overworked. This is something soccer needs to address, but I still really like the basic structure.

But anyway, I have long felt it would be better for baseball if there were other ways to have successful seasons besides just being the 1 of the 30 that wins the postseason — which, as we're discussing here, has become more and more of a tournament independent of the regular season. What seems simplest to me is to just give "the AL pennant" and "the NL pennant" to the team in each league that finishes the regular season with the best record, and have there be big trophies for that and maybe some other reward, like automatic entry into the postseason the next year. Then keep the World Series as-is as the culmination of the post season tournament. Often the pennant winners would be different than the WS winner, and that's fine. Sometimes a pennant winner would also win the WS, and it would be a particularly special season. I can think of other formats, but this one is the least departure from the way we play now.

 

[AB in DC]

Like I said in the other thread, the point of the playoffs isn't necessarily to find the best team. It's to produce the best games between some of the best teams

Do we really consider Philly and Arizona to be "some of the best teams"? Or Philly/SD last year? That's my fundamental problem here. You've adequately described what I want out of the playoffs, but I don't think we're getting it, and haven't for a while.

 

[DennyDoyle'sBoil]

That's true. But shouldn't the best team win more often than it does? Shouldn't stronger teams have a better chance of winning than they currently do? At some point the randomness undermines the regular season

It just depends on what you mean by best and stronger. The bottom line is that if you have a playoff, it's always gong to be a snapshot. All that a playoff can do is reward the team that is playing the best at the time the games are played.

In some sports, there is less variability, but in baseball, it's very variable. Even the best teams overall have snapshots where they are not the best teams. Just looking at the Orioles, they finished the year 11-9.

That is just the way it is. To me the question here is whether the layoff is the culprit. If making teams sit for nearly a week truly becomes a disadvantage, then that's something that needs to be considered. Not sure what the answer is, though. Maybe offer the top teams the right to decline the bye?

 

[jon abbey]

I have been somewhat out on postseason baseball for a while, the way it is treated bothers me more than the format. National telecasts are consistently subpar (we are all bummed during the regular season if our team is on Fox or ESPN or TBS even once, then in the postseason every game is there) and games are moved to odd starting times, sometimes with very little notice to the teams. If that means that teams play a season-deciding game in super-odd shadows and sun, oh well.

I don't know the answer, I just know that I haven't cared like I used to for a while, and preemptively, no, that is unrelated to NY's success or lack thereof.

 

[Ale Xander]

Make the DS 7 games, make the WC 1 game. This isn't hard.

 

[Petagine in a Bottle]

Watching these games, I haven’t gotten the sense that the wrong team has won any of the series. If a top seeded team couldn’t ge motivated or weren’t prepared, that’s on them. Would have been nice to have had more competitive series, but that’s how it goes sometimes. I don’t see the problem.

 

[Petagine in a Bottle]

I have been somewhat out on postseason baseball for a while, the way it is treated bothers me more than the format. National telecasts are consistently subpar (we are all bummed during the regular season if our team is on Fox or ESPN or TBS even once, then in the postseason every game is there) and games are moved to odd starting times, sometimes with very little notice to the teams. If that means that teams play a season-deciding game in super-odd shadows and sun, oh well.

I don't know the answer, I just know that I haven't cared like I used to for a while, and preemptively, no, that is unrelated to NY's success or lack thereof.

I agree with this- I don’t like 4 games in a row, with multiple games overlapping on random networks. NCAAT is like this too and it’s overwhelming, and it’s all over so fast. In a crowded sports landscape, though, not sure the solution.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Also interesting to me that we are thrilled when a low seed knocks off a top seed in the NCAA tournament but get upset about the same thing happening in the MLB.

This is true. But the upsets in college basketball actually feel like upsets. If Florida Gulf Coast beats Georgetown, that's shocking because of the (likely) talent disparity between the two, and it's exciting because none of us have ever heard of Florida Gulf Coast. An upset in the MLB playoffs is an 90-win team beating a 100-win team in a five game series. That's...not nearly as thrilling.

 

[BaseballJones]

That's true. But shouldn't the best team win more often than it does? Shouldn't stronger teams have a better chance of winning than they currently do? At some point the randomness undermines the regular season

Winning percentages of the best teams in the sport (just this past season, but it tends to hold true year after year with tiny variations):

NBA: Milwaukee, 58-24 (.707)
NFL: KC, Philly, 14-3 (.824)
NHL: Boston, 65-12-5 (.792, if we count all OT losses as pure losses)
MLB: Atlanta, 104-58 (.641)

Now this past year, MLB Atlanta had a high number of wins for the best record, while NBA Milwaukee had a low number of wins for the best record. But the point is this: in baseball, the best teams in the sport tend to have a much, much lower winning percentage than in the other sports. And the reason is, there's a lot more room for a "worse" team to win in baseball. One dominant pitcher, and one #9 hitter bloops a homer around the foul pole and you can beat a much better team that day. That kind of stuff happens regularly.

So it shouldn't surprise us when the top seeds lose in baseball. It's not necessarily a function of the system, it's a function of the sport itself.

 

[jon abbey]

Winning percentages of the best teams in the sport (just this past season, but it tends to hold true year after year with tiny variations):

NBA: Milwaukee, 58-24 (.707)
NFL: KC, Philly, 14-3 (.824)
NHL: Boston, 65-12-5 (.792, if we count all OT losses as pure losses)
MLB: Atlanta, 104-58 (.641)

Now this past year, MLB Atlanta had a high number of wins for the best record, while NBA Milwaukee had a low number of wins for the best record. But the point is this: in baseball, the best teams in the sport tend to have a much, much lower winning percentage than in the other sports. And the reason is, there's a lot more room for a "worse" team to win in baseball. One dominant pitcher, and one #9 hitter bloops a homer around the foul pole and you can beat a much better team that day. That kind of stuff happens regularly.

So it shouldn't surprise us when the top seeds lose in baseball. It's not necessarily a function of the system, it's a function of the sport itself.

This is all true, but also the NBA has long been a league where many of the top teams/players pace themselves all year long for the postseason, so the postseason makes much more sense in that league. Even if a #8 seed (MIA) beats a #1 seed (MIL), it usually doesn't feel like a genuine upset afterwards.

 

[jon abbey]

I agree with this- I don’t like 4 games in a row, with multiple games overlapping on random networks. NCAAT is like this too and it’s overwhelming, and it’s all over so fast. In a crowded sports landscape, though, not sure the solution.

The game-winning Austin Riley HR the other night came just as the DVR window for one game was closing and the next was starting, so the recording cut basically as he was rounding the bases. At least it wasn't mid-HR (barely), but still, not ideal.

 

[mauidano]

If they are complaining about losing momentum, how about scrimmage with your AAA guys? If they are that concerned about the “break” do drills every day. Be at the park every day, the hell with spending time with your family. Take it more seriously. Maybe cancel the All-Star Game too. That 3 or 4 days off. Give me a break.

 

[Sad Sam Jones]

Maybe before the start of the season every year, MLB could have a big nationally televised event where they:

• Flip a coin to decide if home field advantage of that year's World Series will be the opposite league than the previous year or determined by winning percentage.
• Spin a roulette wheel to determine the number of games in each round of the playoffs, and...
• Pull out a ping pong ball that decides how many teams will qualify for that year's postseason.

(I'm kidding... I think)

 

[8slim]

I think the issue here may be our perception of “best” when it comes to regular season baseball.

Is there really a huge difference between a 100 win team and, say, a 92 win team?

If we frame the games played in the MLB regular season like the NFL, then every 9.5 baseball games equates to 1 football game.

Would we get all indignant because a 12-5 team lost to an 11-6 team? I doubt it. And that’s largely what’s happened this MLB postseason.

 

[8slim]

I do think the first round should be seven games and they should go back to the WC being a single game. But that wouldn't materially change the odds that much. When you have a game where the best team only wins 60% of the time you're going to get stuff where one team gets hot for a few weeks or a top pitcher gets hurt or just doesn't have it and the team gets bounced. It used to be less weird when you only had 4 or 2 teams in the postseason but now with 12 teams making the playoffs it's only a matter of time before an essentially mediocre team wins it all.

In European soccer you get a trophy for winning the league (which has a very balanced schedule) and you get a trophy for winning other tournaments like the FA cup and Champions' League. Fans put relatively similar weight on both. There's no real reason we couldn't do that in the US but fans just don't put any weight on winning the regular season title even though it's less due to random chance. I have no idea how you change that though.

The issue is that the championship path in US pro sports is constructed much differently than European soccer.

If MLB was merely the premier American baseball league, and there were a half-dozen other North/Central/South American baseball leagues of equal quality, then it would more resemble Euro soccer. But obviously that’s not the case at all.

There’s no other championship level club tournament that has any prestige for MLB teams and fans. Same for the NBA of course.

So it stands to reason that the championship tournament that matters for these sports is self-contained within the one league of importance.

 

[54thMA]

I'm seeing this as a hot topic of a couple of other message boards I'm on and I really don't get it.

With sports, there is no script, nothing is etched in stone, upsets happen, that's the nature and the beauty of sports.

So three 100 teams got knocked out and now people want to change the format? For what? To rig it so that the two teams with the best regular season records meet in the World Series?

The pure beauty of sports is the sheer randomness and unpredictability of it.

In 2021, the Red Sox qualified for the playoffs on the last game of the season, won the WC play in game, then upset Tampa and got to the ALCS; no one complained about that, Red Sox fans all thought it was great.

The first round gives the team with the better record HFA for all three games, what more do people want?

If the better team by record loses because they were outplayed, that's just the way it goes.

Stop trying to fix what's not broken and leave it be.

 

[Max Power]

I'm seeing this as a hot topic of a couple of other message boards I'm on and I really don't get it.

With sports, there is no script, nothing is etched in stone, upsets happen, that's the nature and the beauty of sports.

So three 100 teams got knocked out and now people want to change the format? For what? To rig it so that the two teams with the best regular season records meet in the World Series?

The pure beauty of sports is the sheer randomness and unpredictability of it.

In 2021, the Red Sox qualified for the playoffs on the last game of the season, won the WC play in game, then upset Tampa and got to the ALCS; no one complained about that, Red Sox fans all thought it was great.

The first round gives the team with the better record HFA for all three games, what more do people want?

If the better team by record loses because they were outplayed, that's just the way it goes.

Stop trying to fix what's not broken and leave it be.

You're aware that the playoff format changed in 2022? Which version of things is not broken and should not be fixed?

 

[joe dokes]

I'm seeing this as a hot topic of a couple of other message boards I'm on and I really don't get it.

Too many people lost money on the favorites.
This sort of complaining occurs whenever "better" teams lose, but the intensity seems higher. Part of that is that sports coverage generally is little more than a firehose of rage and grievance about *anything* remotely rage-worthy. ("Watch Steven A. shit in his pants and throw it at Shannon Sharpe because Don Orlovsky thinks that LeBron is only the 2nd best athlete in the history of the world.")
But considering the vast increase in the number of people placing bets, I find it hard to believe that the increase in hotness of the takes isn't related to that number.

Related, but non-glib, answer...are there sources that track legal gambling losses? Like "how many draft kings bettors lost money in the ML divisions series"?

 

[luckiestman]

Stop trying to fix what's not broken and leave it be.

Why is now the time to leave it be? Why wasn't that when there was one wildcard team?

Playoffs are fun but hockey and now baseball make the regular season nearly meaningless. It has to be a balance otherwise why care about the regular season?

 

[54thMA]

You're aware that the playoff format changed in 2022? Which version of things is not broken and should not be fixed?

The way it is right now works fine.

 

[54thMA]

Why is now the time to leave it be? Why wasn't that when there was one wildcard team?

Playoffs are fun but hockey and now baseball make the regular season nearly meaningless. It has to be a balance otherwise why care about the regular season?

Hate to break it to you, but playoff formats in all sports get changed as time goes on.

To add more teams.

To make more money.

 

[Max Power]

The way it is right now works fine.

Why? You came in here saying you don't understand the complaints and compared things to 2021 before the changes were made. Many posters have spelled out their exact issues with the current setup. What have you liked about the 2022 and 2023 postseasons that makes you feel this is the best system for baseball?

 

[54thMA]

Too many people lost money on the favorites.
This sort of complaining occurs whenever "better" teams lose, but the intensity seems higher. Part of that is that sports coverage generally is little more than a firehose of rage and grievance about *anything* remotely rage-worthy. ("Watch Steven A. shit in his pants and throw it at Shannon Sharpe because Don Orlovsky thinks that LeBron is only the 2nd best athlete in the history of the world.")
But considering the vast increase in the number of people placing bets, I find it hard to believe that the increase in hotness of the takes isn't related to that number.

Related, but non-glib, answer...are there sources that track legal gambling losses? Like "how many draft kings bettors lost money in the ML divisions series"?

BINGO

It's all about the money.

Heard some guy ranting today about how "Three division winners got knocked out and I lost my shirt!!".....................

 

[54thMA]

Why? You came in here saying you don't understand the complaints and compared things to 2021 before the changes were made. Many posters have spelled out their exact issues with the current setup. What have you liked about the 2022 and 2023 postseasons that makes you feel this is the best system for baseball?

The first round is heavily slanted to the team with the better record, ie, all three games at home.

And two favorites lost and got swept at that.

The next round is a best of 5, the Dodgers, Braves, LET'S GO O'S!! all stumbled out of the gate and never made up that ground, all three lost, two of whom got swept.

Not sure what can be done differently to avoid that, upsets are part of sports.

If you want to get rid of one wild card team and go back to a one game play in, or get rid of two wild card teams, best of luck with that, not going to happen.

Short of that, enlighten me as to how you would "fix" this.

 

[Max Power]

Yes, I'd like to get rid of one wild card and go back to the single game playoff for the two remaining ones. Expanding the playoffs has hurt the trade deadline, the regular season, the quality of individual playoff series, and the date that the World Series ends. There has been no positive from the fan's perpective other than maybe having a couple of other mediocre teams "in contention" in September.

 

[joe dokes]

The first round is heavily slanted to the team with the better record, ie, all three games at home.

And two favorites lost and got swept at that.

The next round is a best of 5, the Dodgers, Braves, LET'S GO O'S!! all stumbled out of the gate and never made up that ground, all three lost, two of whom got swept.

Not sure what can be done differently to avoid that, upsets are part of sports.

If you want to get rid of one wild card team and go back to a one game play in, or get rid of two wild card teams, best of luck with that, not going to happen.

Short of that, enlighten me as to how you would "fix" this.

A change that *might* address the perceived problem is making the DS 7 games as well.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Too many people lost money on the favorites.
This sort of complaining occurs whenever "better" teams lose, but the intensity seems higher. Part of that is that sports coverage generally is little more than a firehose of rage and grievance about *anything* remotely rage-worthy. ("Watch Steven A. shit in his pants and throw it at Shannon Sharpe because Don Orlovsky thinks that LeBron is only the 2nd best athlete in the history of the world.")
But considering the vast increase in the number of people placing bets, I find it hard to believe that the increase in hotness of the takes isn't related to that number.

Related, but non-glib, answer...are there sources that track legal gambling losses? Like "how many draft kings bettors lost money in the ML divisions series"?

Ignoring the weirdness of assuming that people's reaction is because of gambling (?): I think the increased volume of these complaints is because

1.) Nearly every favorite came out flat after a week off, and largely because of that
2.) Most of the series have sucked.

Did they come out flat because of the week off, or was that just an accident of timing? I have no idea. But watching all the best players on the league's top-rated (by seeding) teams collectively forget how to hit and/or pitch isn't fun for anyone, and I think it's fair for people to ask if there's something in the system that makes this occur. Sure, we can just tell them to "suck it up" and/or prepare differently, but I don't tune in to see whether they can suck it up - I tune in to watch the best players play at the highest level, and that isn't happening.

(And after watching Acuna miss multiple cookies thrown by Kimbrel, I'm not particularly willing to chalk it up to "the pitchers just shut them down!")