The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim won 100 games this season. But after only one game in the playoffs, they are immediately faced with what seems like a must-win game tomorrow to preserve their season. The same of course is true of the Chicago Cubs, who had a great and exciting season that could come to a quick conclusion if they can't earn at least a split against the Dodgers. It's bullshit.

There's nothing more exciting in baseball than the seven game series, and there is nothing more lame than seeing your team eliminated in a 5 game series, especially if they are the better team. The NBA has already gotten rid of the monstrosity of the 5 game playoff series - and IMO, the 5 game series is more justified in the NBA, where the better team really should be able to sweep the worse team most of the time. When is MLB going to do the same?

Pardon me for a one line answer, but it should be said that the preceeding comment is absolutely the truth.



Edit: I will maintain my distaste for the 5-game format, but I'll admit that some of the comments downthread from here are somewhat compelling.

Ultimately, as a Luddite, I agree with OttoC, but would you put all the current teams in two huge leagues, or would you just throw out all the teams beyond 16?

When's the last time the consensus best team in the league lost in the first round? Seven years ago. If you up it to a 7 game series, that's 3-4 extra days, and suddenly you're playing in November.

I'm sorry but shit happens and if you can't win a 5 game series with home field advantage then too fucking bad, maybe next year, etc.

If the Angels have a real gripe it's that they have the best record and have to go against the Wild Card, a team that's had their number for years, and not a team that had to play just the day before.

Besides, HFA is much more prevalent in a 5 game series than in a 7. A 7 game series almost favors the away team.

In 2002, the WC Angels beat the Yankees (103 wins) in a five game series and in 2003, the Cubs beat the Braves (101 wins). I didn't see either team complaining about the 5 game series then. The point is, it cuts both ways. Upsets happen all the time in a playoff format.

There's no reason to send the season into November to "protect" teams with better records. Their record gives them time to rest their vets, set up their pitching, open the series at home, and have the 5th game also played there if necessary. That is advantage enough.

Bah....the Angels & Cubs had 2 weeks to set up their rotation and have the home field. If they manage to lose they weren't as good as they thought they were. I like the 5 game format for the heightened sense of urgency from the get go.

It comes down to this: do you want to play a few games of the World Series in November and risk taking away Derek Jeter's crown? Didn't think so.

The entire new system is stupid. I wish they would go back to two 8-team leagues with the winner of each meeting in the World Series. Skip all the play-offs and inter-league play.

So 16 major league baseball teams? Am I reading that right?

Interleague does suck but that's another thread.

I agree with the above comments that if the two best teams in each league lost to two inferior teams, then lol boo hoo. But..something I do think the Angels have a legitimate gripe about is the stupid system where two teams from the same division cannot meet each other in the playoffs. This is clearly angling for Red Sox-Yankees/Giants-Dodgers/Cubs-Cardinals/Mets-Braves or Phillies rivalry matchups in the Championship Series in order to garner more TV ratings. Hate to say it, but the Sox should be in Tampa right now and the White Sox in Anaheim.

There's no way they'll take games off the 162 season..and November isn't baseball time..so I think we're stuck with it.

If the Angels can't beat a 2nd place team, whose fault is that?

edit: SpacemansBong got it right.

I did. I can't find the articles, but this is the closest I came:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/co...-playoffs_x.htm

I was talking about the Angels and Cubs.

And this is an over-reaction to the first game of the series. Both teams are perfectly capable of winning these series, even having lost the first game. Sox got a ton of work to do to move on to the ALCS.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sarcasm

The Red Sox are in Anaheim because the Angels had the league's best record (the #1 seed), and the Sox are the WC (the automatic #4 seed). If you want the Sox to play TB, you're not just arguing against the rule you mention above, but also that a division winner should not be afforded any advantage over the WC.

Yes, as long as none of them are west of St. Louis. That would solve the late night start time issues as well.

Yes.

I could be in the minority, but I don't understand why they have days off while in one of the cities. Couldn't they just play two in Anaheim and then have a travel day? Three in Boston, another travel day, and two more in Anaheim. This would put the last game on October 9th (instead of October 8th as it is now). Then, you just take one of the rest days off the schedule in the CSes. Are the multiple days off that important? I know it's been a long season and everyone's tired, but it just seems like people would enjoy a longer season and MLB would make more $.

It's all due to TV. You get 3 games/day over the first four days so TBS can spread them out. If you have all 4 teams play the same day, you can't get 'em all on TBS. 2 games Friday and Saturday, possibly 3 on Sunday.

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. Take away these extra off days, start the playoffs a day earlier and you can easily extend the division series to best of 7.

I think one concern of MLB is postponed games in league series. They certainly do not want to play doubleheaders so they build dome free time into the schedule. Also, they don't want four games in one day because that makes scheduling for television difficult.

5 games is enough to decide who's going on to play two 7 game series.

The longest series in baseball is 4 games, 5 is enough for the 1st round.

There is little doubt that baseball was a better game when there were far fewer teams and the AL & AL winners went directly to the Series. That said, I don't agree with Cliff on the 8-team leagues. I'd go with 10-team leagues.

The problem is everything is ratings driven. Re-alignment, dropping playoff series, etc, aren't going to happen. More divisions, more rounds of playoffs, wildcard races = "excitement" and ratings. So everybody pining for the good old days is wasting their metaphorical breath. I agree dropping a few teams would increase the talent pool and I wish sometimes that they pulled off contraction. The fact that they added 2 teams and tried to get rid of 2 teams three years later is a rant for another day though.

They wont subtract regular season games, so we'd have to find what, 3-4 more days? If we don't want the season going into November, why not just play a series in the last four days of March? For the millions they make, the inconvenience of showing up a week earlier to spring training is something they'd have to put up with. Only problem everyone's going to find in my theory, we have the first games of the LDS' would begin on Sept 28th. And we know they love 'October Baseball'

-shrug-

That said, baseball has probably built enough "advantages" in to the first round of the playoffs (AL Wins Leader deciding their series, ability to set up their rotation, strongest team getting to face the WC) that most people wont complain too much about it.

In the end, I imagine they'll make it 7 games when they find out the best way for MLB to make more money out of it.

They get an advantage, which is home field. The Angels won 100 games, they should be facing the 89 win White Sox, not the Red Sox who won 95 games. TB effectively has a bigger advantage than the Angels since they get the team that is clearly the 4th best team in the playoffs despite not winning the most games.

And contraction is stupid. What a great way to turn fans off baseball. The talent dilution thing is a canard, we have more Asian players, more Latin American players and just flat out more foreign players than ever before, the pool of available baseball talent has clearly grown. Any sort of dilution of talent - not that I'm admitting it, but to play devil's advocate - is more due to the practices of managers who have their least talented pitchers throw more and more innings because they baby their starters.

That I agree with. In the interest of "fairness," the teams should be re-seeded, like in the NBA. There have been multiple examples of this. In '01 did the 95 win Yankees deserve homefield over the 103 win A's, etc. Even this year, the White Sox, who barely squeaked into the playoffs with their 3 wins 3 teams 3 days push would get homefield against us, despite our winning 6 more games.

In this year's scenario one division winner already has the advantage of playing in an obviously weaker division (namely the White Sox who would have placed 4th and far outside in the AL East). And the seeding is basically helping the team with the worst record of all AL playoff teams by not having them play the top team.
The best team should play the worst team, and since we have no other way to determine this apart from W/L-record, the Angels should definitely play the White Sox. (and yes, I realize that the Angels' record also has a lot to do with their division and the unbalanced schedule)

My main gripe about the 5-game series is that a 5-game series may over-reward teams that have great #1 and #2 starters, since you can often set up the rotation so you only have 3 starters, with 4 out of 5 starts made by those #1 and #2 starters - so it may reward a different kind of "best" team than the 7-game series and the 162-game season.

I agree that the WC should not be the automatic #4 seed.

A seven game series would be better, but its not going to happen.

I disagree with the premise, however, that the Angels were a better team than the Red Sox this year. They were a luckier team with an easier division in which to play.

Also, while I'm too lazy to do the math, my intuition is that a seven game series is not that much different than a five game series in terms of the the predicted probability of the better team winning the series (say a team that wins a single game on average with p=.55). Obviously the longer you go, the better chance the better team has of winning the series, but when teams are relatively evenly matched adding two games is not going to make a huge difference. Its very sss either way.

Edit: My math may definitely be off, but I went ahead and did some quick calculations and found that, assuming the "better team" wins each game with probability .55, the better team wins a five game series 59.3% of the time and a seven game series 60.8% of the time. Big fucking deal.

All of them would play on Sunday, if they the Cubbies mak it that far

As far as TV ratings go, some overlapping games might cause them to lose a few viewers, as die hards who watch every game might have to make a choice. It should still bolster total ratings, though, as fans of a particular team are all but guaranteed to watch every game. Adding (potentially) two more games seems like it ought to bolster total viewership.

Weather postponements are certainly a problem, as you definitely don't want doubleheaders, but they face the same problem if a game 5 is postponed this time around. The way I described it earlier, you'd still have a few extra days off in the LCSes, which would be the first to go should weather provide a problem.

It may not mathematically provide much of a difference, but I am surprised that MLB hasn't done it as it seems like it would provide more $ for them and more of the most exciting baseball of the year for us.

The idea of course, is to 'punish' the wildcard team for not winning their division, and make it as hard as possible for them to make the world series by giving them the best team, on the road, in the first round. That way 'the division still means something.' Pandering to people who hate the WC in the first place.

Then what's the point? Why have division champs at all? Why don't we just take the 4 teams with the best record every year? Screw the NL West.

You're still arguing a different point from the one you originally cited, and missing mine. What advantage does CHICAGO get over the Red Sox? The White Sox won their division, why should they have to play the best team in the league?

There is some validity to that point, but the situation is not always cut and dried. Take for example this year's Dodgers, who had by far the worst record among NL playoff teams. They are clearly superior to the Brewers, and arguably better than the Cubs and Phillies right now. They weren't at this level all season, but since adding Manny and Blake, replacing Pierre in the leadoff slot, and getting Pierre and Nomar out of the lineup, they are now quite formidable. While the White Sox clearly seem to be the weakest team in the AL (which, it should be pointed out, doesn't mean that they couldn't win it all), the Dodgers are by no means the fourth-best team in the NL.

I like that teams from the same division don't meet in the first round. It is bad enough watching the other AL East teams for 19 games with the unbalanced schedule, and I'd rather lessen the frequency of facing them in the postseason as a result (MFY included).

What difference does any of it make, though? If Chicago or Anaheim were in the AL East in place of Baltimore or Toronto, they would have missed the playoffs completely, quite likely. The whole argument of unfairness in the first round of postseason play is specious because with unbalanced divisional play, no one really knows who the best teams are.

That's why they play the playoffs.

As I already said in my earlier post, the White Sox have the advantage of playing in a weak division, thus being able to make the playoffs. That is their reward.

I will say that the need to hold serve in the first 2 games when you're the higher seeded team adds a great deal of pressure in a 5 game series. The other team can come in with just the thought of trying to get 1. I felt this more last year, especially as G38 was giving up the lead in Game 2. The pressure is lessened in a 7 game series, as we saw in last year's ALCS.

But the need to protect the higher seeded teams is nonsense. By now every team should realize that the critical success factors in the playoffs are different than in the regular season. We've seen that with the last 5 years of the MFY's whose offense battered sub-.500 teams during the season but was less effective against quality pitching in the playoffs.

I always hear that you can't play baseball in November because the weather is bad. Well they play in early April and it is worse then. Obviously the games are more important in October and you want the best chance

I'll use Boston because it is about a far north as you get for a team that doesnt have a dome/retractable roof. Denver has a high that is a couple degrees warmer for each date and an average low that is 5-7 degrees colder. The low may be more important since we're talking about night games. But that's one city vs a bunch in the northeast, so I'm going with Boston.

April 1:
Avg High=51
Avg Low =36
Record Hi=76
Record Lo=13

October 1:
Avg High=67
Avg Low =51
Record Hi=90
Record Lo=36

November 1:
Avg High=57
Avg Low =42
Record Hi=77
Record Lo=26

To get the same temps as April 1 you have to go to November 19. Going the other way the November 1 temps are similar to April 19. There is a better chance of higher temps in April (record highs are greater).

I imagine they'll go to 7 games in the ALDS at some point. It could be a compromise point in CBA negotiations where the owners get to extend the playoffs and in turn the players get something else.

But now it takes 8 days to play 5 games. Good grief you could make it a 7 game series and really not alter the schedule much at all

People who are sitting here complaining that the "100 Win Angels" or the "Best team in the NL Cubs" haven't been given enough of an advantage in the current playoff format need to consider that they played in weaker divisions. The Angels got to play 18 games each against the Rangers, Mariners, and an Oakland team that quit half way through the season. So long as there's an unbalanced schedule, the wild card rules as they exist do a very nice job of rounding out the playoffs IMO (the only thing I would change is the ceding so that if a WC team (like the Sox) finishes ahead of a division winner (like the ChiSox) they would be ceded by record only).

I don't see a problem with the 5 game format; if the favored or "best" team doesn't win, tough shit. It's called "the playoffs" for a reason. Anything less and you may as well just not have playoffs and declare the world champion based off the regular season.

Oh, so the team with the wild card winner must be a stronger division. Of course, the Yankees got the Wild Card last year despite playing under .500 ball against the West, the Mariners were 25-19 against the East, and the West overall went 92-82 against the East.

If there has to be a WC, the WC winner should be behind the 8-ball as much as possible. Win your division, or deal with it.

Eh? That's not what I said at all.

The White Sox managed to get to the playoffs with substantially fewer wins than the WC winner. So I would say they were rewarded by making the playoffs by playing in a weak division. Why reward them again by not having them play the best regular season team?

If the WC team is the team with the 4th best record, then seed it 4th. If it is the team with the 3rd best record, then seed it 3rd.


So? Totally different point. This thread is about teams who are actually in the playoffs.

Eh, that is what you're saying. You're making a fallacious connection between number of wins and strength of a division.

Whatever, I am certainly simplyfying things. My whole point remains though: the White Sox have no business being seeded higher than a team that lost 7 fewer games. The postseason seeding needs to be based on record, not on whether you lucked into winning a weaker division (weaker as in the division winner needed a lot fewer wins than in other divisions)

And if you wanna get into strength of schedule: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/rpi
If there are any more respected formulas for this, I'd appreciate a link.

Also, using your example from before (with the Yankees and the Mariners):
BOS against AL Central: 24-7
CHW against AL East: 14-19

EDIT: Just to clarify, I say this as a Yankees fan. I have no interest whatsoever in the Red Sox winning anything, and I realize many here probably prefer to play the LAAAAAAAAAA anyway, but from a general perspective, the seeding could be done better.

Yes, you make my point. These things vary from year to year, and it's foolish to bitch and moan about a pre-determined system which all parties understand going in. Maybe we can make it more like the BCS. Let's have a media vote as well as some computerized rankings on schedule strength to decide who DESERVES the Wild Card. After that, we can have another vote on whether the WC should get home field advantage over a division winner. It'll be a fluid decision-making process varying from year to year, and in the end everyone will be happy, as opposed to cries of injustice now heard from all corners of our baseball world.

If the rest of the NL really wanted to "screw the NL West" maybe they should try beating them in the playoffs.

Fuck the whiners. Both participants in the '07 NLCS and this year's Dodgers are laughing in your face.

Let me ask you something: what the fuck are you talking about?

I argue that playoff seeding needs to be done by record, and not by who lucked into playing in what division. And you counter with this bullshit that you probably believe makes you look funny? Wow.

The playoffs are all about who goes in hot anyways. Changing from a 5 to a 7 game series isn't going to do that much. Sucks for the Brewers that CC might not get another chance though. I was hoping they were going to pitch his arm off.

Edit- Durr

I understand you're having a hard time keeping up with your own moronically inconsistent arguments, but throwing a curse-filled hissy fit will only inevitiably lead to a one-way ticket back to NYYFans where you belong, little one.

Let's try this again:
1) Judging the strength of a division based on the win total of its champion is facially retarded due to the unbalanced schedule.
2) One indication of the idiocy of this assumption is the fact that last year's WC champ and its entire division got raped by a "weaker" division. (You get this, don't you Sparky? You get that last year's craptastic Yankee team may have "lucked into" playing in the AL East, because if they had played a full schedule in the West at the winning percentage they had against that division, they wouldn't have made the playoffs?)
3) Your pointless citation to the fact that the records did not play out this way THIS YEAR does nothing more than demonstrate the inconsistency of your most wins metric.
4) Because we do not have a reliable method for determining which division is stronger or weaker, or how to adjust a team's seeding based on that weakness or strength (i.e. we don't know how much of a bump to give a 94-win team in a "stronger" division vs. a 96-win team in a "weaker" division), the most logical and certainty-generating method is to disregard such subjective considerations.
5) When one recognizes that results and opinions on these matters will vary from year-to-year, one should understand the unassailable logic and laudable certainty behind always seeding the Wild Card 4th.

Now go play nice with your other little halfwit peers.