2022 MLB Playoffs Format

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by WestCoastGuy

They never should have gotten rid of keeping same-division opponents apart in the Division Series. (Same thing for the NFL for the corresponding round.)

Yet that is so easy to do. Super easy. Just don't have Wild Cards.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

I watched "Boomer and Gio" yesterday and they went to 'Stub Hub' to find out what the cost would be to see the Phillies at Braves games and found that the cheap seats were going for $11. Then they looked at the next tier of seating and they were going for $14.

Atlanta's never been a strong market for pro team sports. Ask their two hockey teams, fled to Calgary and Winnipeg, respectively. Or go to a Hawks game and marvel how you can pretty much walk to a courtside seat. (Co-owner Jami Gertz is lucky that her venture-capital husband is a billionaire; they ain't getting rich off of the Hawks' attendance.)

The Bravos had several playoff games in the 1990s that didn't even sell out. And it's not as if this place (tucked over a hill in Julia Roberts's old home town) is hugely accessible. I'm not surprised the demand is a bit soft.

Georgians, AFAICT, love college football and NASCAR. Everything else is on thin ice, it feels.

[Westheim]

[reconsidered]

[Brad K]

Mookie Betts on Dodgers 111 wins and losing in the playoffs.

"It was super cool to win that many games, but it means absolutely nothing if you lose in the postseason."


So with this realization, are teams like LA going to stop spending big money and just spend enough to make it as a wild card? That seems to be the smart strategy.

[cephasjames]

So far only one of the 1 & 2 seeds has advanced. While two have been eliminated and a third is on the brink. Not sure if getting a bye is good or not.

[Déjà Bru]

I started to type this the other day, then faltered. I will try again, appreciative of any assistance that may be rendered in order to develop the thought.

The thought being this: If, somehow, we made a bigger deal of winning a league title, then this discussion about the value and viability of the playoffs would be moot. Any postseason play would then be merely a tournament, not the determiner of "the best team in baseball" when said team could merely lose two games in the first round or three games in the second and be eliminated.

But how to accomplish establishing the concept of a league title (with, perhaps and by the way, a separate World Series between the two winners, played before the postseason "tournament")? How to publicize and glamorize it? Even more difficult, how to determine the winners?

Would said winners in 2022 be the Houston Astros and L.A. Dodgers merely on the basis of win totals? For want of anything else, I would be willing to accept this. But do we factor in other aspects, such as quality of competition, and come up with a point system?

For, I am coming around to the opinion that the playoffs, when all is said and done, are no determiner of the best teams in baseball, much less the very best one.

No aspersions upon the current competitors, and watching a couple of them is exciting, but when the crowd roaring is over, one does wonder whether all of this really means anything.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by cephasjames

So far only one of the 1 & 2 seeds has advanced. While two have been eliminated and a third is on the brink. Not sure if getting a bye is good or not.

Small sample size, IMO. Over a long haul, I have to think it's easier to win 11 games than to win 13. Any "rust v. rest" issues can be coped with once managers determine an optimal strategy, instead of this being a new structure.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Small sample size, IMO. Over a long haul, I have to think it's easier to win 11 games than to win 13. Any "rust v. rest" issues can be coped with once managers determine an optimal strategy, instead of this being a new structure.

I agree completely that this is a small sample size. For this new setup. But the rust vs. rest conversation has been out there for decades. This year is not the only time a team that has had to sit for 4-5 days has been eliminated by a team that is fresh off a series win.

I don't have any numbers in front of me, but, historically, I wonder how one team fairs when it sweeps its series and then has to wait while its future opponent goes seven. Of all the times that a team that sweeps a series ends up going against someone who had to go all seven, how many times does the team that swept lose their series?

[cephasjames]

I'm not the only one to bring up byes potentially being an issue.

Why have there been so many MLB playoff upsets? Three factors behind baseball's surprising October

...the addition of first-round byes for the top two teams in each league meant they had to endure longer-than-usual layoffs. The Dodgers, for example, finished their regular season on Oct. 5 and did not play again until Oct. 11, or nearly a week later. That time off should be a good thing since it allows injured players to heal and gives those teams a chance to set up their rotations. But it's inevitable that a layoff followed by an inept offensive showing will raise questions about whether or not the time off caused a team's lineup to fall out of their hitting rhythm.

[thehef]

From CBS Sports' Tom Fornelli:

Something incredible is happening tonight. Two professional sports teams who played a postseason game Sunday night drove to the airport, flew to another city, and will play another postseason game tonight. All without two or three days off in between games.
I had no idea that was possible. I don't know if any other leagues should notice this -- perhaps one that begins its regular season tomorrow -- but this is clearly an incredible scientific breakthrough. It's up there with figuring out the Earth revolves around the sun, curing polio and landing on the moon.
Kudos to everybody at MLB and Mother Nature for making it happen.

[pilight]

Perhaps baseball is no more athletic than golf, another sport that plays multiple days in a row on a regular basis

[WestCoastGuy]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

I started to type this the other day, then faltered. I will try again, appreciative of any assistance that may be rendered in order to develop the thought.

...

Your thought is sort of like soccer, whether in Europe with the regular season being the be-all and end-all and the cup (e.g. FA Cup) being the closest thing to domestic playoffs. Or a better example would be MLS, which gives value to the regular-season champion although the playoffs winner is definitely the more valued of the two. Still, the MLS regular-season champion receives a lot more appreciation than the best record in MLB does, who is often mocked and ridiculed by many if they don't win the World Series.

As for MLB, the vast differences in schedules until 2022 is a factor as that makes it much more difficult to compare records between teams not from the same division. However, that will be much simpler from 2023-on since the schedules will be a lot more balanced.

Regardless, I just can't imagine MLB fans appreciating any sort of regular-season title to the degree that soccer fans do. But it would be nice if they did since the playoffs in this sport are such a crapshoot. So, as for "how to accomplish" this ... I don't know.

There was an L.A. Times article that was ridiculed by so many, but it does make a valid point that should be considered. Not all the way as I don't see the playoffs ever being canceled, but in a general sense.

https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1581332723053973505

And as a dual Mariners/Giants fan who lived in the Seattle area for the 2001 season and attended eight Mariners games that season, I was so much more impressed by that regular season than I was by either of the three World Series wins that the Giants had in 2010, 2012 and 2014. To be able to be that good for six months ... it's just so rare in this sport.

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

but when the crowd roaring is over, one does wonder whether all of this really means anything

Well put.

[Déjà Bru]

Thanks for the response. I took the liberty of reproducing that tweet here, because even though I live on the east coast and root for the Dodgers' antithesis, I cannot help sympathizing:



How could it be accomplished? By talking more about it and spreading the word around. Perhaps it would catch on. The real World Series would have been played already between the Astr*s and the Dodgers. We would now be in the opening rounds of the postseason "tournament."

Now, besides how to pick the two league winners if it's not just on the basis of total wins (i.e., a point system?), a whole host of issues would need to be resolved.

First of all, although the WS would still be best of seven games, the "tournament" that comes after it would need to be shortened so that it didn't bleed into November.

Second, do the WS teams get invited to it? On the one hand, I would say yes, for interest's sake. On the other hand, however, doing so would elevate the "tournament" back up into "championship playoff" status again and the WS would lose its meaning.

Third, there is the players association to be mollified. How to share the wealth of all this extra play to make it worth their while?

Fourth, how to generate enough interest in the "tournament" to make it worthwhile to MLB and its owners? The World Series would be held up as sacrosanct: up to 7 games to determine the champion! But, oh, don't go away after the WS is over, we have this "U.S. Cup Tournament" the following week.

Hmmm. Maybe, that last part is the answer. A tournament of the best players, not teams, picked by some combination of fans, players, and media. All teams share in the net revenue (i.e., after shared costs), the players get bonuses, and we all get some good baseball to watch instead of groaning about the possibility of Guardians vs. Padres.

[pilight]

Maybe Fornelli should have waited to make sure the game would actually be played today...

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by thehef

From CBS Sports' Tom Fornelli:

Something incredible is happening tonight. Two professional sports teams who played a postseason game Sunday night drove to the airport, flew to another city, and will play another postseason game tonight. All without two or three days off in between games.
I had no idea that was possible. I don't know if any other leagues should notice this -- perhaps one that begins its regular season tomorrow -- but this is clearly an incredible scientific breakthrough. It's up there with figuring out the Earth revolves around the sun, curing polio and landing on the moon.
Kudos to everybody at MLB and Mother Nature for making it happen.

What a dingbat.

Can't wait for next Monday, when he's griping about how lousy the (possible) Game 6 of the NLCS is. Maybe he's smart enough to realize that having the teams fly 2695 miles from Philadelphia to San Diego without getting a proper day's rest isn't conducive to top-drawer baseball, after all.

But, on form, I'd have to bet against it.

[Ragnar]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Sacrilege! You…purist!!

(No, I have no idea why that's supposed to be an insult, either. But it's certainly been used as one.)

I'm really not a purist. I'm ok with 25-33% of league's making the playoffs. But since baseball has 162 games, I'd limit it to 8 playoffs teams overall.

There's no reason to have 3 wildcards. The Phillies and Padres shouldn't even be in the playoffs IMO. I don't believe they earned the right.

[Brad K]

Baseball wants lots of teams in the playoffs but doesn't want inferior teams to win. But forcing inferior teams to play more games and play more games on the road isn't enough to prevent them from winning.

[Westheim]

I'm not even sure it's about more playoff TEAMS rather than more playoff GAMES.

But they could have had that cheaper. Anybody else able to imagine Joe Buck droning "Welcome to Game 9 of the Best-of-13 NLDS ...!"?

[WestCoastGuy]

Originally Posted by Westheim

I'm not even sure it's about more playoff TEAMS rather than more playoff GAMES.

Hmm ... scale back to four playoff teams per league and expand the series lengths to seven-game Division Series and nine-game LCS and World Series. And, if I did my math right, that results in a maximum of 55 playoff games, which would be more than the current 53. And TV networks would likely be happy with bigger draws being more likely to be in later rounds.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Westheim

I'm not even sure it's about more playoff TEAMS rather than more playoff GAMES.

Of course it's about more teams. Which is why they added more teams. More teams in the playoffs means more teams getting more money. Fewer teams than there currently is means fewer teams getting more money.