The Pittsburgh Pirates won 98 games. The Chicago Cubs won 97. These are the second- and third-best win totals in baseball this year, but they were in the same division as the St. Louis Cardinals, who won 100, so they wound up in the wild card game.
Jake Arrieta pitched Wednesday night as he has for a few months now, which is to say about as well as anybody possibly can, so the Cubs won and move on to face ... the Cardinals.
You don't have to look very hard to find people who think the one-and-done format is unfair to the wild card entries. I'm not in that camp. If the Pirates and Cubs wanted to avoid that game (and they did), they needed to win their division. The Pirates had losing records against both the Reds and the Brewers. Turn that around, and it would have been the Cardinals playing the Cubs.
The Pirates may well a better team than either the Dodgers or Mets, but their better won-loss record in and of itself doesn't necessarily prove that. The fact is, with unbalanced schedules and variations on interleague play, teams in the same league aren't playing anything close to the same schedule. And treating the Pirates as equal to the division winners is emphatically unfair to the division winners, who -- you know -- finished first.
This format isn't as good at rewarding quality as the pre-division practice of "best record goes to the World Series," but that era isn't returning. I'm old, and my fandom doesn't extend to the days before divisions. This format does give more weight to the regular season than did the previous one-wild card system.
Most years in most leagues, this format is going to wind up with something closer to the American League wild card entries -- two teams that aren't exactly medicore but flawed. The 2015 National League is atypical. There was only one genuine divisional race and five teams well ahead of the other 10.
Showing posts with label wild cards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wild cards. Show all posts
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Notes, quotes and comment
The 2015 Twins are not a particularly outstanding team. Their record (78-73) is too close to .500 for that. But they have a resilience that seems noteworthy.
After they were swept in Saturday's doubleheader, I had (again) essentially written them off as a playoff contender. Three wins-in-a-row later, they are, in the cliche phrase, in control of their own destiny. Win them all, they win a wild card spot.
Yes, they're a game out of the second wild card. But they are tied with Houston in the loss column, and that's the crucial factor. If the Twins win out, and the Astros win out, they will finish the schedule dead even -- and go to a game 163.
The odds of them winning out are, of course, incredibly thin, but they don't have to. They will have to win a lot, however. And the more whoever gets that second wild-card wins, the less pedestrian their record will be.
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Let's put the remaining schedules for the wild card contenders on the record. I'll include the Rangers, in first place in the West, because much of their remaining schedule is against the Astros and the Angels. One of those teams could catch them for the division crown, which would leave them in the WC picture.
The Twins have 11 games to play. They finish their homestand today with Cleveland, Then it's off to Detroit for three games Friday-Sunday and to Cleveland for four. They finish at home with three games against the Royals.
Houston (nine games to play) is off today. They are home against the Texas Rangers this weekend for three games, then hit the road for three games at Seattle and three games at Arizona.
Anaheim (10) is off today. They are home for three games against Seattle and three games against Oakland, then finish with four games at Texas.
Texas (10) finishes its series at Oakland today, then travels to Houston for three games before returning home for three against Detroit and four against the Angels.
Baltimore is three games behind the Twins, Cleveland 3.5 back. I'll not bother with their schedules. Nor will I bother looking at the Yankees, who are four games ahead of the Astros. If the Yanks come back to the pack, great, but I'll let them actually do so before I start thinking about them.
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A belated note on Yogi Berra, since I had a couple of people ask me about it yesterday. The Hanna-Barbara animated cartoon character was dubbed in the ballplayer's honor, not the other way around. Berra had been known as "Yogi" from childhood after a pal saw him sitting crosslegged "like a yogi." The cartoon character debuted in 1958, by which time Berra had won his three MVPs.
The initial Associated Press bulletin on Berra's death Thursday morning identified him as "Yogi Bear." Ah, the curse of becoming such a cultural icon that cartoon characters swipe your name.
After they were swept in Saturday's doubleheader, I had (again) essentially written them off as a playoff contender. Three wins-in-a-row later, they are, in the cliche phrase, in control of their own destiny. Win them all, they win a wild card spot.
Yes, they're a game out of the second wild card. But they are tied with Houston in the loss column, and that's the crucial factor. If the Twins win out, and the Astros win out, they will finish the schedule dead even -- and go to a game 163.
The odds of them winning out are, of course, incredibly thin, but they don't have to. They will have to win a lot, however. And the more whoever gets that second wild-card wins, the less pedestrian their record will be.
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Let's put the remaining schedules for the wild card contenders on the record. I'll include the Rangers, in first place in the West, because much of their remaining schedule is against the Astros and the Angels. One of those teams could catch them for the division crown, which would leave them in the WC picture.
The Twins have 11 games to play. They finish their homestand today with Cleveland, Then it's off to Detroit for three games Friday-Sunday and to Cleveland for four. They finish at home with three games against the Royals.
Houston (nine games to play) is off today. They are home against the Texas Rangers this weekend for three games, then hit the road for three games at Seattle and three games at Arizona.
Anaheim (10) is off today. They are home for three games against Seattle and three games against Oakland, then finish with four games at Texas.
Texas (10) finishes its series at Oakland today, then travels to Houston for three games before returning home for three against Detroit and four against the Angels.
Baltimore is three games behind the Twins, Cleveland 3.5 back. I'll not bother with their schedules. Nor will I bother looking at the Yankees, who are four games ahead of the Astros. If the Yanks come back to the pack, great, but I'll let them actually do so before I start thinking about them.
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A belated note on Yogi Berra, since I had a couple of people ask me about it yesterday. The Hanna-Barbara animated cartoon character was dubbed in the ballplayer's honor, not the other way around. Berra had been known as "Yogi" from childhood after a pal saw him sitting crosslegged "like a yogi." The cartoon character debuted in 1958, by which time Berra had won his three MVPs.
The initial Associated Press bulletin on Berra's death Thursday morning identified him as "Yogi Bear." Ah, the curse of becoming such a cultural icon that cartoon characters swipe your name.
Monday, March 5, 2012
On wild-card play-ins
It's official now: The baseball postseason will feature the six division winners, plus four wild card teams, two from each league, with the wild card teams playing one-game play-ins.
This idea caught momentum last winter as the new labor deal was being worked on. I would prefer a system that doesn't let a second-place team have any chance at the big prize, but I recognize that rocket has left the launch pad. This format figures to provide more incentive for teams to win their division rather than settle for a wild-card berth. That's a plus.
Ron Gardenhire, and doubtless others, dislikes the idea of being ousted from the postseason with just one loss. Tough. The teams facing that possibility will face it because they finished second.
The perfect system, as far as I'm concerned, for crowning the baseball champion was abandoned in 1969 with the advent of division play. For 67 years, the team that had the best record in the two leagues advanced directly to the World Series. But even in the days of eight-team leagues, it was difficult to sell tickets to an eighth-place team, and it just got worse with expansion.
Divisions and wild cards are a ruse to keep more teams in the running. That devalues the regular season. The more teams in the playoffs, the worse the devaluation. Making the postseason more difficult for the marginal teams might be a step toward restoring some of that value.
This idea caught momentum last winter as the new labor deal was being worked on. I would prefer a system that doesn't let a second-place team have any chance at the big prize, but I recognize that rocket has left the launch pad. This format figures to provide more incentive for teams to win their division rather than settle for a wild-card berth. That's a plus.
Ron Gardenhire, and doubtless others, dislikes the idea of being ousted from the postseason with just one loss. Tough. The teams facing that possibility will face it because they finished second.
The perfect system, as far as I'm concerned, for crowning the baseball champion was abandoned in 1969 with the advent of division play. For 67 years, the team that had the best record in the two leagues advanced directly to the World Series. But even in the days of eight-team leagues, it was difficult to sell tickets to an eighth-place team, and it just got worse with expansion.
Divisions and wild cards are a ruse to keep more teams in the running. That devalues the regular season. The more teams in the playoffs, the worse the devaluation. Making the postseason more difficult for the marginal teams might be a step toward restoring some of that value.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Big picture stuff
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| Jim Crane, approved Thursday as the new owner of the Houston Astros, got a sizable discount on the purchase price for agreeing to move to the AL West from the NL Central. |
- The Houston Astros will move from the National League to the American League. This will result in two leagues of 15 teams each and five teams per division. It will also result in year-round interleague play.
- The playoff field will be expanded to five teams per league, with a one-game playoff between the wild card teams.
- And a report, at this point not confirmed publicly by either side, that a new collective bargaining agreement has been reached between the players union and the owners. Details expected on Monday.
Taking the last one first: The NFL had a lockout this past spring and summer that threatened the season. The NBA is has its lockout and appears unlikely to have a season. Baseball's labor situation is peaceful. A bit contentious, sure, but peaceful. Why is baseball different today?
Because of 1994. The NFL and NBA sought to break their unions (and succeeded, as did the NHL about eight years ago). Baseball tried in 1994 to break the MLBPA, and failed. The players had the nerve to pick the timing of the work action and picked the time when they had leverage -- in midseason. In the other leagues, it was the owners who decided when and how the disputes would escalate -- in the offseason, after the championships were decided.
The 1994 strike damaged the game financially for a few years, and it scarred both sides badly enough that nobody involved wants to see it happen again, but baseball has largely recovered from the damage. As long as there's sufficient institutional memory, it won't happen again.
Baseball is our only major sport without a "salary cap." It also seems to be doing quite well financially.
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On to the Astros and wild cards and implications thereof:
This appears to be part of the labor deal. The players dislike the current uneven divisional set up (the AL West now has four teams, the NL Central has six), and it's blindly obvious that the current playoff field devalues winning a division championship.
LaVelle Neal of the StarTribune said in his blog (paywall, no link) that baseball has come up with solutions in search of a problem. I believe he is reacting rather than thinking.
Year-round interleague play? I'm not a fan of interleague play at any time -- I'd rather dump it altogether -- but that ship sailed long ago. Neal's complaint that interleague games in September will distort the pennant race is silly. A game in September is worth exactly as much in the standings as one in June. There's just less time left in which a trailing team can make up ground. I would think it less disruptive for an AL team with a regular DH to deal with taking him out of the lineup for one series every two months or so than to have to do it for a solid week.
LVN suspects the one-game playoff is intended to re-create annually the drama of the final day of the 2011 season. It's actually been on the table for more than a year; 2011 had nothing to do with it.
A one-game playoff between wild-card teams is preferable to a three-game series because of the schedule. A three-game series would force the division winners to sit around for the better part of a week. A one-gamer also emphatically underlines the purpose: To reward teams for winning their division.
Again, I'd prefer the old system, in which there was one pennant winner in the league who went straight to the World Series. That ended in the 1960s, and it ain't coming back.
This plan isn't perfect. It's better than what we've got.
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