Quote:
Originally Posted by mytreds
Fascinating, I did not know that!
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Yeah, there were a lot of critics of the switch to 3-divisions + wildcard because of fears that a below-average team would make the playoffs and get hot. The 1973 Mets were the vanguard for this, coming within a single game of winning the World Series after scraping by in a weak division with an 82-79 record. It was just 4 years after the NLCS playoff system was introduced.
So when the leagues switched to even smaller divisions, having the Rangers leading their league while a full ten games under .500 vindicated those concerns.
But expanded playoffs just bring in too much money for the owners to ignore, and so 1994 sort of marked the end of old school baseball, imo.