Playoff Picture for 2021

[monty57]

Baseball is a business. Divisions allow for geographically close teams to form a rivalry and increase fan interest in the games. Like it or not, AmFam has more seats sold during a Cub series than they do for most other series. Even over the next few years when the Cubs are likely to be down and the Brewers should be playoff hopefuls, I'll still love seeing the Brewers beat the Cubs more than I'll love seeing them win a random interleague game.

 

Take away the divisions, and you will take away rivalries. This may not matter on a spreadsheet where every game is the same, but from the viewpoint of most fans, and from the viewpoint of a business trying to get fans into the seats, that's a big deal.

 

So, under no circumstance do I see the league getting rid of divisions just so the #1 Wild Card team is treated "more fairly." As I said in an earlier post, as long as there are divisions, there are going to be stronger and weaker divisions, so some team is going to be "cheated" and some team is going to "sneak in" every year.

 

If it's really that big of an injustice, then they should go back to one Wild Card team, but again I'll repeat myself... the purpose of the second Wild Card team is to keep more teams in the race so that more fans retain interest and continue to spend money on baseball during the final months of the season. It's probably not going away.

 

There is not enough time to play a multi-game series for the Wild Card. Just having one game for each league (played on different nights to maximize TV viewership/revenue) is "unfair" to the division leaders, as they have to wait nearly a week between games. It's even more unfair to teams that wrap up their division early enough that they can line up their rotations instead of teams that have to fight to the last game and start the playoffs without their aces being rested up.

 

So, it's pretty evident that whatever they do, it will be "unfair" to someone. Playoffs bring in a lot of money, and the owners would love to expand the playoffs further and further. I kind of like the playoffs being just for the teams that won in the regular season, so I don't want them expanded any further.

[DuWayne Steurer]

I don't see a problem with a one game playoff. Every series that goes to 7 games is a one game, winner takes all. Baseball is exciting and fun when you have those one game, one inning, one at bat, one pitch moments where everything hangs on the balance.

 

Look back through B-R when there was 8 teams, and no playoffs. How many seasons did the Yankees with the AL with over a 10 game lead? That must have been incredibly boring for almost everyone. What was there to play for, or listen to the radio? Nothing.

 

Making the series a best of three doesn't do much for me. Heck, we just dropped 2 to the Tigers. Tigers aren't better than the Brewers.

[igor67]

I agree the unbalanced schedule isn't that much of a difference for fairness when compared to just having the unfairness of trying to win the division against a single strong team in the division is pretty minor. And I don't like too many low seeded teams winning championships in any sport so the 1 game wild card is perfect

[jerichoholicninja]

There's no way you can convince me the Red Sox are a better team than the Rays. A 5 game series should have no part in determining who your supposedly best team is.

[DuWayne Steurer]

There's no way you can convince me the Red Sox are a better team than the Rays. A 5 game series should have no part in determining who your supposedly best team is.

 

 

The best team is the Dodgers. There's not even a question about that.

 

But having one 32 team division, with the team with the most wins crowned champion at the end (which would have been the Giants, coincidentally) has been deemed not a money making opportunity. Even a 7 or 9 game series is too short to crown a true "best team". That's just how it is, and how it's always going to be. It's not the best team championship though, it's just the MLB championship.