Quote:
Originally Posted by kq76
I'd much, much, rather see byes in baseball than the 8th best team in the league take out the best team in a 7, or worse 5, game series after the 162 games of a regular season. Wild card teams taking out the best team in the league in 5 game series are bad enough.
This layoff decline you speak of is over-played and inescapable anyway. Yeah, I'm big on momentum coming in to the playoffs, but hot teams can go cold fast too. And time and again you'll have one series finish early and the other late giving one a lot of time in-between anyway.
If you gave a team the choice of taking a bye and getting the advantages and disadvantages of it vs playing an opening series and possibly losing it, what do you think they'd take? You'd just be being silly if you think they'd rather play the series.
I think I like the playoffs okay enough the way they are (I'd prefer 7 game 1st rds), but if they did insist on expanding, I'd hope they would give the best teams byes like the NFL does rather than have them play teams that really don't deserve to be there and be knocked out.
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I'm not so sure I agree with that. Sports is often times a game of momentum, and if you ask most players when the play-offs start, the last thing they want to be doing is practicing everyday and waiting/watching other teams play to see who their opponent is. I bet if you ask, most will say "Let's Play", not "Let's Take the Bye". That's been my experience over many years of watching pro sports and listening to interviews with players who are sitting waiting, they all want to play.