Christine Brennan of USA Today writes that the format for the baseball playoffs needs to be redone.
To pique fan interest, lure sponsors and maximize TV ratings, MLB has, over time, adopted a three-tiered playoff system — four divisional series leading to two championship series to, finally, the World Series — which by definition diminishes the meaning of the regular season.
Talk about your mixed messages. On the one hand, the game is at its pastoral best when it is played out over time, when it meanders through the summer like a lazy river, when patience is rewarded, when one game by itself may mean so little.
Then, once we hit October, baseball becomes manic. The marathon turns into a sprint, especially in the division series, which still are the quirkiest of arrangements, just a quick, best-of-five-games test.
Of course, every team knows what the rules are. None of this is new to them. And what infuriates purists delights the masses. When teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers, who were only six games above .500 and had the 15th-best record during the regular season, are potentially just four games away from the World Series, that’s the kind of story that brings people running to their TV sets.But let’s examine that sentence again. A team with the 15th-best record in baseball is four games away from the World Series. And the teams with the two best records in the game are at least 169 games from the World Series — next year’s World Series.
Like all other big U.S. professional sports, baseball elongates its season not necessarily to crown the year’s best team, but to meet and perhaps exceed all financial, marketing and entertainment goals.
But not every last bit of regular-season integrity need be lost. It’s time for MLB to go back to two divisions in each league, with the top two teams in each division making the playoffs. In other words, no more 15th-best teams allowed.
Brennan makes a great point that in the end, baseball wants to market itself in the best way possibly to make more money. But MLB is a business, so of course it wants to make more money and will continue to think of ways to do so.
Where she misses the point is that it’s not the league’s fault that every infielder for the Cubs made an error in the same game against the Dodgers, or that the Red Sox continue to own the Angels in the postseason. And only four teams in the postseason? How is this fun for fans? Without a salary cap, more times than not the teams that spend the most will go to the playoffs. (And before anyone says anything, I know that the Rockies and Rays made the playoffs the last two years with small pay rolls. But look at the Rockies – they couldn’t sustain their World Series momentum this year because they don’t spend enough to compete year in and year out.)
The postseason format is fine. It’s getting a cap in place that should be the league’s top priority. But that will never happen.
