Baseball 2012 - Post-Season Thread

[sporthenry]

I'm a Braves fan and I'm sorry they lost, but I'm still not knocking the one-game playoff.

It worked out the way it should -- the wild card teams SHOULD have to face a major hurdle. The regular season does mean something -- the 162-game schedule determines the division champions and they in turn deserve an edge over the second-place teams that are graciously allowed into the playoffs. Yeah, over the last 15 or so years, the Braves would have had a best of 5 playoff before they were eliminated ... but for most of baseball history they would have been done at the end of the regular season.

I do wish they would return to a balanced regular season schedule ... but I also wish the NL would adopt the designated hitter, they would ban interleague play and get rid of the salary cap. I'm not likely to see any of those things happen.

As for the infield fly rule in today's game -- I think it was called incorrectly (the rule says that it's called when the infieler can "easily" catch the fly and this one was opbviously not easy ... he just deaked the ump into thinkiong so), but it WAS called and that's a judgment call that can't be overturned. The Braves made three errors and couldn't get any key hits with runners on base ... that's why you hate to be in a one-game playoff. So next year, they can win the division and not have to deal with that.

But it is a paradox, you make the regular season mean more but at the same time mean less. Braves were 6 games better than the Cards in a much tougher division. ESPN says the Braves had 11th hardest SOS in baseball, Cards were at 28. So as you bring up, a more balanced schedule would be the only fair way but you'll never see that b/c MLB needs the East rivalries and rivalries in general.

I agreed that the importance of winning the division was minimized but there should be an alternative. I'm sure wildcard teams would much rather face a 3 game series, that way they are at a bigger disadvantage but don't have to worry about one call or one uncharacteristically bad performance to knock them out. Perhaps just go to 4 divisions or maybe just scrap divisions and have a completely balanced schedule with top 4 teams in each league advancing, etc. but I just don't see how this works other than making excitement/money until your 90+ win team loses when it was one of the best teams in the league.

As an aside, I have no problem with any of your recommendations save for the salary cap. It isn't a real salary cap and if anything I'd say baseball needs a hard cap or at least something like the NBA. Sure, you have what seems to be a competitive balance and MLB loves to use the different teams winning/making the playoffs but it seems only a matter of time until this trend seems bucked. Grantland ran an article saying the Dodgers might change the landscape showing no care for the bottom line something the Yankees have shown since Steinbrenner passed away. As many successful MLB teams get new TV deals, money will be less of an issue as shown by the Dodgers, Angels, Rangers, etc. One team in the bottom 10 of the league salaries made the playoffs and building a team like the Rays/Nats takes lots of losing (being the worst team in baseball actually) to get that talent and it remains to be seen how fans will react to losing top talent or if they can keep it.

And I'll clarify I'm a Phillies fan who just thinks Chipper deserved better and a fan of a team looking at perhaps the biggest new TV deal.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...dodgers-regime