Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiggy_12
The problem with prioritizing playoff standing based on division is that some teams, many teams, actively try to lose. Dividing teams geographically is fine to cut down on travel a bit, but why base the standings off that?
Let the best 5 teams in, period.
Or, how about if you win the division but have a worse record than a team that missed playoffs, then you have to play a play-in game for that spot against that team?
There are easy ways to fix this. But they won’t because baseball craves tradition.
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Well I don't disagree with the fact there are lots of things to fix in MLB, especially their playoff format (DO YOU NOT LIKE MONEY MLB OWNERS?? EXPAND IT FFS), however I don't think the divisional aspect is something to complain about. Right now the divisional approach (1 winner advancing) makes sense given the divisional scheduling. You play so many games against those teams, it makes sense to tie playoff births to it. If you had a really strong or really weak division, the number of wins/losses may not really correlate to "the best 5 teams". I would agree if you had no divisions and faced each AL opponent the same # times, then for sure pick the 5 best, but as long as you're scheduling a tonne of divisional games, you need to tie it to playoffs. (Which is partly why every major N.A pro sports league does this).
But again, I think its laughable that in the NBA, 20 teams now make the post-season, while only 10 do in MLB. 16 is the happy place.