Article: Enjoying The New Playoff Format, Twins Fans?

[Craig Arko]

I'm down for it. More baseball is better than less baseball.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

I like Wild Card teams but I'm not sold on the one-game playoff. I'd prefer three games but I understand why MLB is resistant to that idea. First, it extends an already too long season and second, it forces other postseason teams to sit too long and possibly get rusty.

And as I mentioned above, a 3 game series completely misses the point of the wild card game.  It guarantees a "win or go home" game (actually two, one for each league) every year.

 

Despite having 7 series, the MLB postseason is not immune to droughts of such excitement.  2005-2010, over 6 postseasons, there were only 5 such games, and no more than 1 per year (with none in 2009).  Even adding in the 3 tiebreaker games during that time, there was a lot of unmemorable October baseball those years.

 

The excitement of the 2011 regular season finish and postseason showed how exciting (and profitable) those kind of games can be, and I still think that was the primary reason for the change.

[Loosey]

I like it. . . . ALOT.  It makes winning a division much more important now too.  If we are having fun watching the Twins try to get into that 2nd Wildcard spot, imagine how much fun the Astros and Ranger's fans are having watching them fight between a 1 game wild card game birth and winning the division to secure at least a 5 game playoff series. 

 

 

[spinowner]

Bud Selig never really considered the integrity of the game in his decisions, IMO. It was only what he felt would maximize revenue. That said, I think 10 teams making the post season is about right. Letting everyone in would make for too long of a postseason, plus the regular season would be almost meaningless. Playing 162 games just to establish seeding for the postseason is ridiculous.

[spinowner]

 

How does it cheapen the game, and ruin the integrity? It is entertainment, there is no "integrity" of the game when it comes to saying who is the best. Really, the playoffs as a whole are a silly way to crown a champion. There is no way to agree on what the "best" team is. There are hundreds of articles on line about figuring out the "best" at something, in sports, in chess, in pinewood derbies. Is it the team that does the best game after game? The team that is the "best" in some kind of playoff where only some of the teams get to play? The team that finished with a better record than a division winner, but is excluded because their division had an even better team?

 

Really, if you have some kind of belief that there is a "best" team.....that probably isn't a real thing.

 

edit:

as for the current playoffs, I like the 1 game deal. It gives some more good teams a chance, but makes winning a division more valuable than being the 2nd or 3rd best team in a division.

This is a really good point. The postseason determines which team gets to be called the champion, not which team is the best.

[spinowner]

 

The 1991 World Series ended on October 27, and the 2015 World Series -- the latest ever, I think, due in part to a late start to the regular season -- is scheduled to run through Nov. 4.  There isn't a meaningful difference in expected/predicted weather between those two dates.

 

Day games might be nice, especially on weekends, although I admit it would be harder for me to watch them on TV.  I honestly don't care about the temperature, though -- it's more baseball!

Many of us remember Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 of 1991. I believe playing baseball at Target Field after such an event would have been impossible.

[Mike Sixel]

 

Many of us remember Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 of 1991. I believe playing baseball at Target Field after such an event would have been impossible.

 

And there are thunderstorms in the summer, and earthquakes in CA, and hurricanes on the east coast......and it isn't really colder here than Chicago, Detroit, NY, Boston in October/November, not in a way that matters for sports.

 

I remember Halloween very well, first date with my future wife!

[spinowner]

I am on the side of the argument in favor of the 1-game WC series because it gives more incentive to win a division. I think having 2 WC teams is the correct approach because it makes it more likely that the teams with the best records qualify for the postseason.

 

[TheLeviathan]

 

I don't like the new WC format - it cheapens the integrity of the game and the 162 game schedule. It turns the MLB playoffs into something that resembles a beer league softball tournament. I do agree with you that we are experiencing the WC benefits this year with the Twins but the few teams it impacts positively every year does not compensate for the negatives of the extra WC team. Mind you, I still think the DH is sacrilege.

 

A 162 game season broken down into any short playoff series "cheapens" in the same way.  There is simply no way to both have an end of year playoff and still honor the larger 162 game sample unless you suggest a "Best of 363" World Series or something.

 

People just have to accept that the World Series winner is rarely the "best" team.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

Many of us remember Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 of 1991. I believe playing baseball at Target Field after such an event would have been impossible.

Sure, but there is nothing magic about those dates.  The odds of a major snowstorm hitting Minneapolis are about the same on Oct. 27, 31, and Nov. 4.

 

The fact that the postseason has shifted by a week at its most extreme (late season start) since then has not meaningfully increased the chances of cold-weather or snow baseball.

 

You'd probably have to go back to pre-division play (pre-1969), or shorten the regular season, to get a meaningful reduction in the chances of cold-weather or snow baseball.  I, for one, would not make that trade.  More baseball, please!

[puckstopper1]

 

The 2009 game was a contributing factor, perhaps, as well as the Padres-Rockies tiebreaker in 2007, although I think the Twins 2008 tiebreaker is largely forgotten.

 

 

I believe that Thome's blast off of Blackie is still in orbit!

[spinowner]

 

A 162 game season broken down into any short playoff series "cheapens" in the same way.  There is simply no way to both have an end of year playoff and still honor the larger 162 game sample unless you suggest a "Best of 363" World Series or something.

 

People just have to accept that the World Series winner is rarely the "best" team.

Correct, although the winner is almost always one of the best ten teams.

[theBOMisthebomb]

 

How does it cheapen the game, and ruin the integrity? It is entertainment, there is no "integrity" of the game when it comes to saying who is the best. Really, the playoffs as a whole are a silly way to crown a champion. There is no way to agree on what the "best" team is. There are hundreds of articles on line about figuring out the "best" at something, in sports, in chess, in pinewood derbies. Is it the team that does the best game after game? The team that is the "best" in some kind of playoff where only some of the teams get to play? The team that finished with a better record than a division winner, but is excluded because their division had an even better team?

 

Really, if you have some kind of belief that there is a "best" team.....that probably isn't a real thing.

 

edit:

as for the current playoffs, I like the 1 game deal. It gives some more good teams a chance, but makes winning a division more valuable than being the 2nd or 3rd best team in a division.

If that's the case then why not run it like the high school playoffs and have everybody make the playoffs and just seed them 1-30 and be done with it. 

 

Of course there is some subjective line drawn to determine who makes the playoffs, there could be no other way. 

 

The one game playoff is what cheapens the game and ruins the integrity.  They play 162 games for 6 months and it comes down to one game?  In baseball?  Maybe in football that is a legitimate solution to determining a champion but not baseball.  There is a reason why they have played 5 and 7 game series over the history of playoff baseball - any valid big league club has a pretty decent chance of beating another big league club on any given night (more so than in any of the other major sports).  It never has been a one game series in the playoffs until this second wild card team was introduced. 

 

If we have our hearts set on expanding the playoffs, why not shorten the regular season back to 154 games, expand the playoffs to 16 teams, and then play a full and legitimate playoff series the first round.  Byes and 1 game playoff series make MLB seem to me like a slow pitch softball tournament run on a weekend on the fly by people making the rules up as they go along.     

 

I get the reasons why MLB keeps expanding the playoffs but don't agree with the rationale.  Again, I am still against the DH in the AL so realize I am old school and probably going against the grain of what the majority of the casual fan supports. 

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

I believe that Thome's blast off of Blackie is still in orbit!

Oh, I haven't forgotten it (or Griffey's throw to the plate -- arg), but in terms of national importance as a factor in adding the wild card game for 2012 as Seth suggested, I think the 2008 tiebreaker's contribution is about zero.

[spinowner]

I certainly get the "More baseball, please!" viewpoint. But certainly there could be fewer off-days during the postseason and I favor moving forward to the next series as soon as both teams are ready. I can understand the reasoning behind having set scheduled dates but in this era where teams don't share stadiums with football teams (except Oakland?) the schedule can be flexible. I think completing the postseason as quickly as possible is desirable because of the increased risk of adverse weather conditions as October progresses into November.

[spinowner]

 

If we have our hearts set on expanding the playoffs, why not shorten the regular season back to 154 games.

I was going to make this point myself, although I would still keep the postseason at 10 teams. Finish the regular season 1 week sooner. In that scenario I think the WC series could be three games, with seven game series from that point onward.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

The one game playoff is what cheapens the game and ruins the integrity.  They play 162 games for 6 months and it comes down to one game?  In baseball?  Maybe in football that is a legitimate solution to determining a champion but not baseball.

The one-game playoff doesn't determine the champion, it determines the wild card from two teams, based on their 162 game season record, that gets to participate in the postseason championship tournament.

 

I can't see how the "ruins the integrity" line could logically be drawn between having a wild-card in the postseason, and having two teams play one game to determine the wild-card in the postseason.  The 1969 and 1994 postseason realignments were orders of magnitude larger than the 2012 one.

[rghrbek]

I go back and forth on the one game wild card.   As I read these comments, there are some really good points being made.

 

One thing I would add, is to adjust the unbalanced schedule.   The Twins benefited from this in all 6 of their Division titles under Gardy.   That's fine.   I would argue, that since the division was the weakest at those times, that we did not have a realistic view of how we stacked up against the East or West.   It kinda played out that way in the playoffs.

 

If we lessen the unbalanced schedule, not get rid of it completely,  we would have a few more games against each team in the East/West and that could make those games more meaningful (especially in Aug/Sept).  

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

The present system is better than the one it replaced, where the 4th best team began the postseason on essentially equal footing as the best team. And like other people said, there's no going backwards to fewer games or teams.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

I certainly get the "More baseball, please!" viewpoint. But certainly there could be fewer off-days during the postseason

To MLB's credit, they have eliminated the silly mid-series, non-travel off days in recent years.

 

 

I favor moving forward to the next series as soon as both teams are ready. I can understand the reasoning behind having set scheduled dates but in this era where teams don't share stadiums with football teams (except Oakland?) the schedule can be flexible.

Again, this has never been done in baseball, dating back to the start of divisional play in 1969.  It's not really a matter of sharing stadiums, or even TV (although TV has plenty of control), it's the logistics of trying to plan and carry out major events.  You need more than 1 day advance notice to staff a stadium, for example.

 

Imagine the Twins finishing off an ALCS sweep on Oct. 20 this year, knowing they are going to host World Series Game 1... but not yet knowing whether it will be Oct. 23, 24, 25, 26, or 27 (or possibly later, depending on NLCS weather), and only getting 1 day notice when the date is final.  It's just not practical.

 

As it is, the Twins already know exactly which days they will host potential games for the entire postseason (aside from weather delays, which they deal with in the regular season too).  They can make all of the arrangements now, contingent only on their postseason qualification and advancement (and "if necessary" games are much easier to deal with than "we don't know if OR when the heck this is happening" games).

 

(And yes, I have worked in stadium concessions, so I am the world's foremost expert on this subject )

[TheLeviathan]

 

The one game playoff is what cheapens the game and ruins the integrity.  They play 162 games for 6 months and it comes down to one game?  In baseball?  Maybe in football that is a legitimate solution to determining a champion but not baseball.  There is a reason why they have played 5 and 7 game series over the history of playoff baseball - any valid big league club has a pretty decent chance of beating another big league club on any given night (more so than in any of the other major sports).  It never has been a one game series in the playoffs until this second wild card team was introduced. 

 

The difference between a one game series and a seven game series isn't nearly as large as you're making it.  They both are a MUCH smaller sample than the regular season and offer the same problems.  

 

That's just a natural consequence of having a playoff system to crown a winner.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

One thing I would add, is to adjust the unbalanced schedule.

Yeah, I don't mind most of Selig's schedule/postseason changes, except this one (and its cousin interleague play).  I really liked seeing league teams more often in the regular season, and enjoyed extra late-night west coast baseball as well as earlier-evening east coast baseball.  The interleague novelty, and tons of division "rivalry" games have just never appealed to me.

[Wookiee of the Year]

I didn't like the 2nd WC when it was announced, but the first season I saw it in action, I immediately changed my mind and saw it as an improvement. I, too, was turned off by the idea of a one-game play-off in baseball, but then I realized it actually serves a purpose.

 

I will say I prefer the imbalanced schedule and the rivalries it creates, but I think if you do that, you need at least one Wild Card team. And the current Wild Card format is the best I've seen so far.

 

1) It adds September excitement. This is obviously true for the extra teams battling for a Wild Card spot, like the Twins this year. But just as importantly, it adds excitement in division races, because it makes winning your division extremely important. In divisions like the AL East historically (Yankees-Red Sox) and the NL Central (Cardinals-Cubs) this year, that's not present because both are assured equal play-off berths. Now, if you lose the division, you don't get an equal starting point compared to the other teams--you have to win a coin flip game.

 

2) It properly penalizes Wild Card teams. As I said earlier, with an imbalanced schedule (which I prefer for the divisional rivalries it fosters), it's important to have offsetting Wild Card teams to level the playing field. In the old format, there was no penalty for being a Wild Card team. Now, there clearly is: Your World Series Champion chances are cut in half by the one-game play-off, and you're likely to burn your best pitcher just to get through that coin flip. That strikes me as an appropriate calibration of Wild Card penalization.

 

3) It adds a shot of excitement from the start. There's immediately an "advance or go home" game that gets people's attention and says, "Postseason Baseball has begun!" I have to think this is good for the sport, both for Joe Casual Fan who might not have tuned in to the play-offs until later, and for Joe Super Fan, who gets an exciting game to kick things off.

 

That's my case, anyway.

[nowheresville]

I'm a big fan of the 1 game wild card, for all the reasons others have mentioned. It rewards division winners, and a winner take all game is always going to have extra excitement. That's a whole lot more "fair" and adds more meaning to the regular system than giving a wild card team equal footing as a division winner. If you don't want to being eliminated from the post season after 1 game, then win your division.

 

To me, the biggest problem with the post season right now is there are just too many off days. Teams never play more than 2 days in a row, From the start of the 5 game Division Series to the start of the LCS, a team gets a bare minimum of 3 days off. That's what really creates a completely different dynamic than a 162 game season. I'd start by dumping the second travel day of the DS and LCS. Even if the series goes the full 5/7 games, and you have a rain-out, there is still a travel day built in before the next round that can be used. It only eliminates two days off, but it's an easy place to start in a system where the fixed date World Series isn't going to change.

[spinowner]

 

To MLB's credit, they have eliminated the silly mid-series, non-travel off days in recent years.

 

 

Again, this has never been done in baseball, dating back to the start of divisional play in 1969.  It's not really a matter of sharing stadiums, or even TV (although TV has plenty of control), it's the logistics of trying to plan and carry out major events.  You need more than 1 day advance notice to staff a stadium, for example.

 

Imagine the Twins finishing off an ALCS sweep on Oct. 20 this year, knowing they are going to host World Series Game 1... but not yet knowing whether it will be Oct. 23, 24, 25, 26, or 27 (or possibly later, depending on NLCS weather), and only getting 1 day notice when the date is final.  It's just not practical.

 

As it is, the Twins already know exactly which days they will host potential games for the entire postseason (aside from weather delays, which they deal with in the regular season too).  They can make all of the arrangements now, contingent only on their postseason qualification and advancement (and "if necessary" games are much easier to deal with than "we don't know if OR when the heck this is happening" games).

 

(And yes, I have worked in stadium concessions, so I am the world's foremost expert on this subject )

Point well taken.

[Mike Sixel]

Here is my complex proposal (I realize logistically, this is impossible to pull off). Also, yes, 2 AL teams could play for the playoff championship this way. Also, you need to cut 1-2 weeks off the regular season for this to work......

All 30 teams make the playoffs.

 

Round 1:
The 10 worst teams in each league do a 1 game playoff. That gets you to 10 teams remaining.

 

Round 2 (one off day for travel after round 1, games played on back to back days, better team chooses what city they play in first):
The winners and the next 3 teams in each league play a 2 game series……if the better team in the regular season wins one game, the series is over. The worse team needs to win twice. That leaves 6 teams in each league remaining.

 

Round 3 (one off day for travel after round 2, 2/2/1 for home games):
The remaining 6 teams play a 5 game playoff. Each league sends 3 teams to the WS playoffs.

 

Round 4:
The 4 lowest seed teams play a 5 game series (AL2 vs NL3, NL 2 vs AL 3)

 

Round 5:

The remaining 4 teams play a 5 game series (AL1 vs NL2, NL1vsAL2)

 

Round 6:
The remaining 2 teams play a 7 game series.

 

this greatly increases the rewards for better records after 162 games, gives EVERY fan something to look forward to, and gives sports radio a chance to be amazed that a number 13 seed is still playing (and everyone a chance to talk about "fairness"). The only real issues are logistics, but someone who wants to could figure out a pretty set schedule for this.....

 

like.....rounds 1 and 2 are week 1, every other round is a week also. Post season is now 5 weeks long, with set days to start and end each round.

 

Edited September 16, 2015 by mike wants wins

[spinowner]

 

I go back and forth on the one game wild card.   As I read these comments, there are some really good points being made.

 

One thing I would add, is to adjust the unbalanced schedule.   The Twins benefited from this in all 6 of their Division titles under Gardy.   That's fine.   I would argue, that since the division was the weakest at those times, that we did not have a realistic view of how we stacked up against the East or West.   It kinda played out that way in the playoffs.

 

If we lessen the unbalanced schedule, not get rid of it completely,  we would have a few more games against each team in the East/West and that could make those games more meaningful (especially in Aug/Sept).  

I think I agree about the schedule being too unbalanced, but I'm going to withhold further comment until after the season ends and I can make an analysis I have in mind. I'll probably start a thread about that in a month or two.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

To me, the biggest problem with the post season right now is there are just too many off days. Teams never play more than 2 days in a row, From the start of the 5 game Division Series to the start of the LCS, a team gets a bare minimum of 3 days off. That's what really creates a completely different dynamic than a 162 game season. I'd start by dumping the second travel day of the DS and LCS. Even if the series goes the full 5/7 games, and you have a rain-out, there is still a travel day built in before the next round that can be used. It only eliminates two days off, but it's an easy place to start in a system where the fixed date World Series isn't going to change.

And there you save 2 days.  If that's the biggest problem, that the postseason is 2 days too long, it's probably a pretty good setup.

 

It is a different dynamic than a 162 game season, and there's nothing wrong with that.  You get to enjoy the 162 game season with 5 man rotations and backup catchers, then you get to enjoy a postseason tournament focused more on aces and starters.  As a Twins fan, I am pleased as punch that Allan Anderson and Joe Niekro didn't have to start postseason games in 1991 and 1987.

[Craig Arko]

 

I certainly get the "More baseball, please!" viewpoint. But certainly there could be fewer off-days during the postseason and I favor moving forward to the next series as soon as both teams are ready. I can understand the reasoning behind having set scheduled dates but in this era where teams don't share stadiums with football teams (except Oakland?) the schedule can be flexible. I think completing the postseason as quickly as possible is desirable because of the increased risk of adverse weather conditions as October progresses into November.

Think of the possibilities of a World Series - Super Bowl doubleheader. Ad time would be even more expensive.

[SweetOne69]

Back in the day when there were only 2 divisions per league, it made sense to only have the division winners make the post season.

 

But when they expanded and went to 3 divisions per league, it required at least 1 WC team.  It wouldn't have be right to have a team get a buy when the play series and not just games.  But this took away the importance of winning the division as you only had to be 1 of the top 4 teams in the league (for the most part) to make the postseason.

 

By adding the 2 WC and a 1 game playoff it brings back the importance of winning the division.