Milwaukee Brewers (1969)
San Diego Padres (1969)
Seattle Mariners (1977)
Colorado Rockies (1993)
Tampa Bay Rays (1998)

I think he average MLB fan has gotten roughly 6 month older every year for a while now. Main reason is obviously that almost no one born in 1980 or later watches linear TV anymore. I recently read about Abbott Elementary being very popular among younger viewers on Hulu. The average age of people watching it on TV is >60.

but as we all know at best these playoff series are a bunch of 60/40 matchups.

Now the league ran pretty bad this year- all first round games were sweeps, only a few great games, Dbacks in the series etc.

But the more mediocrity they let in the playoffs the more you're likely to get bad matchups with no stars.

I mean I like Moreno a lot as an overall player-but cmon this dude should not be a #3 hitter on a World Series team, especially a world series team that shrugs its shoulders when they need a game 4 starter.

Nothing against Gallen and Merrill Kelly but that's not exactly Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson starting 5 games in a 7 game WS including Schilling twice on 3 days rest.

So now you've completely watered down the regular season, and then you have the best teams sitting around with their thumbs up their ass after the season ends waiting to plays someone. Now no doubt the #1/#2 seeds have an advantage being in the DS vs teams who aren't, but once they get an opponent they don't have much of ad advantage left over that opponent anymore.

As someone who loves baseball and watched probably 95 percent of the playoff innings live I watched 1 game in all of September. Part of that was because I was bouncing around traveling, part of it was bc my team was totally out of it, part of it was bc Ohtani got hurt (i'd try and watch all of his starts) part of it was bc I knew i'd be watching almost every game in October and big part of it was the races sucked and I don't care if the Reds and Dbacks or 2 medicore teams are "battling" for the 17th wild card. And unless you're a fan of one of those teams you don't either.

Bud Selig loved baseball but I wasn't a fan of his. Manfred I'm convinced hates the sport. Selig obviously wanted the league to make money but he loved the sport. He bought his team in 1970- it wasn't the cash cow pro sports are today. Mandred only cares about dollars and really only dollars in the short term.

But Selig would react to things like 12 year old and throw together ideas like a 12 year olds last minute science project.

For example- they run out of pitchers in the ASG now the ASG decides Home field advantage in the WS.

The last day of the 2011 season has a bunch of incredible finishes you couldn't script inluding the Red Sox pissing away the wild card and something like a 6-0 lead while Tampa comes back down 7-0 at the same time. You can't make that up. So bc that happens at the last minute he adds a second wild card for 2012 trying to artificially recreate that crazy day. If that last day in 2011 wasn't so wild, he doesn't add that slot.

Casual fans want to see stars and great teams. So 2 great teams battling for first place in late September (when first place mattered) is riveting.
The Marlins Reds And Dbacks being lumped together in late September for the last spot- nobody cares.
I honestly never saw Corbin Carrol play until sometime this summer and I watch more baseball than 99 percent of fans despite my September lull.

And on top of that the season is way too long especially with this many teams in the playoffs. But within a decade we will likely have half the league in the playoffs and the entire thing will be a joke.

You need stars and drama to bring people in. The more mediocrity you let in, the less drama the regular season has and the more likely it is nobody cares when the world series rolls around.

Congrats to our Rangers fans here!

102 losses two years ago. Crazy.

Ugh

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...n?platform=amp

What I didn’t understand is why it took so long to give home field to the team with the best record. For about 100 years they just alternated leagues.

Then they decide the winner of the ASG gets the home field and everybody says “Oh no you can’t do that home field is too important!”

But before that idea came up nobody seemed to give a s*** that the team with the best record didn’t always get home field because their league didn’t have “their turn” yet.

If the Dodgers and Yankees snuck into wildcard spots and met in the WS, nobody would be crying they don't belong, or that the regular season is watered down, or that it's not fair the best records still have to win games to advance and don't get a free pass to the WS.

At the same time, if the Dbacks and Rangers had the 2 best records in baseball this year, people would still be complaining about them being in the WS and telling us how uninteresting it is because of reasons.

The borgs of the world are going to complain regardless. It's got nothing to do with the HOW and everything to do with the WHO. Just accept that and quit trying to justify your tired narrative.

If I want to watch wild cards and mediocre teams in the playoffs I can watch other sports.

Baseball playoffs were unique when everybody in the playoffs was really good and I felt like I was watching a really high level of play. Now I get to watch teams that are closer to average because Manfred wants to give mediocrity a chance. Yay.

Maybe Ohtani should stay on the Angels. If they can improve by 10 wins they could have a shot at the World Series. Who cares about 100 win teams anyway?

If they can't beat a mediocre, undeserving wildcard team in the playoffs, why should anybody care about them?

As a Dodger fan if the Dodgers only won 84 games like Arizona, which would be their worst record since 2011, I absolutely would think they are undeserving of being a playoff team. They were mediocre for 6 months. I’m pretty sure Yankee fans expect more out of their team than 84 wins too.

I had no complaints about Arizona being in the World Series with Schilling/Johnson or the Texas teams that made it a little over a decade ago. The playoff system was pretty good back then.

Because they can beat a mediocre, undeserving wild card and they beat them by 16 games (100 wins to 84 wins). It’s a 3 game sample size which rewards mediocre teams with limited depth.

You know that baseball has high variance. It seems like your post is saying the regular season shouldn’t matter.

It’s not a “free pass” if you have to win more games than other teams in your league to get to the World Series.

How many teams do you think should be in the playoffs?

Because a 7 game series was going to end differently? Or did you just want a ticket straight to the NLCS because OMG 100 wins? I don't care if it's 2 per league or 6. But if it was 2, everyone would be complaining about how boring September is because nobody is playing for anything.

So, we should go back to the two league winners = World Series?

Some of us have been saying this playoff format is crap from the day it was announced, long before it was known what teams it would help. Baseball is just too high-variance over a 3-game series to justify the extra round. You're essentially coinflipping 4 times for the chance to create less compelling matchups for the rest of the postseason.

But the Dodgers!

I don't understand this thinking. You have the 3 wildcard winners and the worst division winner playing the first round. Who cares how high of variance that first round is? It's a bunch of teams that don't deserve to be there anyway, right? If they wanted to reduce variance, they should've played better.

What's your ideal playoff format? Go back to 2 divisions and the winners of those divisions play in the NL/ALCS? 4 teams per league and we let an undeserving wildcard team in? 5 per league and we let TWO undeserving wildcard teams play one game to see who moves on?

Playoffs, in every sport, are going to be a variance-fest. The only way to keep that from happening is eliminate the playoffs altogether and I don't hear anyone calling for that. So how much variance is acceptable?

no one complained back then. the pennant races were more compelling because the stakes were so much higher to finish first and rarely did any team run away and hide. I'm on team borg all the way regarding this.

absolutely. and we've been b**ching about the current playoff format on 2+2 for a while now (as in years). the teams don't matter at all. and it isn't just 2+2 - the TV ratings are the lowest in the history of the sport right now for the playoffs.

yes especially if u are going to have a (long) 162 game season.

if not, as far as I'm concerned they can start the playoffs in July with every team qualifying and then we will be done with MLB just in time for football to start. That would be a more exciting season.

It's not a matter of deserving or undeserving, I just want to watch the best teams play each other in the playoffs. I agree you have to find a balance of how much variance is acceptable, that's my whole point. 3 division winners per league and 1 wildcard was a fine system. When the "best teams" is nearly half the league and regularly includes teams barely above .500, that's too watered down imo.

You say that, but Twitter, Facebook, 2p2, etc weren't exactly around in 1969-1993 when they used that format. I'm sure plenty of people were complaining about it. You just couldn't hear them.


I definitely preferred that to the 5 team system with the one game wildcard round.

We don’t know how a 7 game series would have gone. I wouldn’t assume games 1-3 play out the same exact way when you make it a best of 7. And giving the top 2 seeds almost a week off is dumb IMO.

You make it sound like it’s easy to win 100 games. Pretty sure Trout and Ohtani would be saying “OMG 100 wins” if the Angels did it. They can’t even get to 80 wins.

I asked because you obviously seem okay with 84 win teams making it every year. But I can imagine a 75 win team beating an 84 win team in a short series so should MLB regularly let them in too? What about 70 win teams?

Personally I thought all the other playoff systems in baseball were good. At first i didn’t like the second wild card idea, but I quickly changed my mind and thought it was great and emphasized winning the division more
(I thought just one wild card was great too though).

Figure the max possible per inning and then multiply it by 9.

Not really. Teams used to love the role of being a spoiler and knocking other teams out of the race. The Dodgers beating the Giants on the last day of the 1993 season is a great example. The Giants knocked the Dodgers out of the 1991 playoffs.

https://dodgersway.com/2012/03/28/to...-of-93-season/

I'm assuming teams still enjoy playing the role of spoiler, especially vs a division foe, regardless of whether it's for a division title or wildcard spot. And are we now good with a 97 win team getting in over a 103 win team? Seems to go against the whole argument being made that the best teams should be the ones playing for the title, especially after the Giants went 8-4 against the Phillies that year.