MLB '11

[Alex]

Would the five games playoff be the thing Selig was talking about were essentially there'd be two wildcard teams that have a one game playoff to see who gets to go to the real playoffs. That could be converted to the 4th and 5th place teams doing that.

As for realignment and eliminating the divisions, I think I could get behind that. Though I'll pretend that they need to eliminate interleague to get my support.

[Ghoulish Delight]

The way they were talking it seemed like it would probably mean more interleague games since teams would no longer be playing 18 games against in-division teams.

[Alex]

Yeah, thinking about it more I think odd-number of teams would mean that interleague would have to pretty much be continuous throughout the season.

Either that or teams are gong to have to have regular weekend days off (since at least one team has to be sitting every day) and I doubt owners would go for that.

So, unless that is resolved I retract any tentative support.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex

Either that or teams are gong to have to have regular weekend days off (since at least one team has to be sitting every day) and I doubt owners would go for that.

I never could quite figure out the reason for the 16-14 imbalance. Thank you.

[Ghoulish Delight]

The more I think about doing away with divisions the less I like it. While it probably technically puts more teams in contention (well, having 10 playoff teams instead of 8 clearly does that), I think from a fan's perspective, teams are going to feel out of contention much earlier in the season. It's one thing if a team is 10 games back in a division. With only 2 or 3 teams ahead of them they can get past one or two of those teams with 1 good win streak. But in a 15 team league, that same team would have to leapfrog past 5, 6, 7 teams to reach the playoffs. While their statistical odds might be better, from a psychological standpoint I think fans might loose interest quicker.

[Alex]

That doesn't seem to hurt the NBA does it?

[Ghoulish Delight]

NBA has more teams in the playoffs (8 from each conference). Plus, fans don't have the other system to compare to. I guess that's only an issue for the first few seasons until people readjust, but fans have spent a long time viewing their mediocre teams' chances the current way, it could be a pretty big shock to the system, attendance could suffer in those markets for a while.

[Alex]

I wonder how often this system would produce a better chance for a cellar dweller than the existing.

Currently the A's are 8 games out in the AL West (ugh) and 10 games out of the wild card. Under the system above the A's are 8 games out of 5th place. So it's a wash.

Whereas Toronto is currently 7.5 games back in the AL East, 5.5 games out of the Wild Card and only 3.5 games out of 5th place in the AL so it would somewhat improve their hopes.

Anyway, if they kept it a 14-16 split so that there was no need to increase interleague I guess I'd support it (and no, that wouldn't be entirely fair to NL teams since they'd have more competition, but that's true now it is just that the penalty isn't split evenly through the league.

[Strangler Lewis]

Any fan of the NBA East 5-8 seeds that was excited about their team making the playoffs should be embarrassed. Four teams in the baseball playoff is more than enough. You can't remove the exquisite agony from fandom, (see 1993 NL West division race,) and you certainly shouldn't do it on behalf of mediocre teams.

[Alex]

I agree. I'd happily go back to eliminating the divisions and then going back to 1963 and sending the top team from each league directly to the World Series.

Or elimination of the Wild Card altogether. But so long as the Wild Card does exist, I do kind of like the extra playoff game for determining who the Wild Card is and putting them at a little bit of a disadvantage to the other division champions. Plus, there's no way in hell baseball is every going to reduce the playoff schedule so I'm judging among the imperfect options.