Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
No it wouldn't. Using a tournament to decide a champion works great for hockey and basketball. In baseball where your starting pitcher only plays once every four games, it's not so good.
I want that long season to decide as much as possible when it comes to baseball. Give me 4 playoff teams in each league, make every series a best of 7.
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I'd be in favour of a smaller playoff...but then you need to have more balanced schedules.
Problem with how it's set up now is you have these weird division imbalances, and the imbalanced schedule means that the regular season records are misleading.
Are the records of AL East teams really comparable to the records of AL Central teams? Not really due to the large imbalance in the schedule of who you are playing.
Sports where the regular season decides the champion make sense because they play a perfectly balanced schedule. If the schedule is imbalanced though then to me relying on the regular season is flawed. (I actually think European Soccer has it right - have a perfectly balanced regular season schedule to decide one title, then have a separate "Playoff/Cup" tournament to determine a different champion).
You want to have an 8 team playoff - 4 in each league. Then move to a balanced schedule.
14 teams in your own league - 8 games against each team - 112 games
15 teams in the other league - 3 games against each team - 45 games.
At least everyone in each league is playing the same strength of schedule in that equation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DoubleK
10 teams make the playoffs, not 8.
Mentioned this before, but making the playoffs in baseball used to mean something special. Adding teams to the format makes it less special and doesn't really get you anything other that a bit higher TV ratings.
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I don't really like the Wild Card and don't count that as real playoffs. 1 game is random and decides nothing.
Either have a real playoff with 16 teams and 7 game series in each round (give the higher seed a 1-0 lead in round 1 if you want to reward the regular season).
Or move to a more balanced schedule with only the top 4 teams in each league advancing (should still be 7 game series in each round).
Right now it's bit of a random mish mash of play in games, short 5 game series, and an imbalanced regular season schedule deciding the outcomes.