Postseason Proposal

I've never been a great fan of the postseason. Yes, the games are more intense, and we all like that, but so often a team that has obviously been inferior for most of the season is crowned champion, which isn't just. March Madness is the most obvious example. In this baseball season, is there any doubt that the Cardinals are a much better team than the Astros? Didn't they prove that by winning the division by eleven games? They why are they playing this series? It's not fair for a short series to negate the dominance of an entire season.

That being said, I've come to appreciate the Derek Jeter's of the world, doing what they have to to win a postseason game. Sometimes it seems that two champions should be crowned, one for the regular season, and one for the postseason, with the greatest teams taking both titles. This is exactly what is done in almost every soccer league, with there being a regular season champion and a cup champion. Hockey does it as well, but nobody cares about the President's Cup. Assuming that we will never accept two champions in this country, how do we combine the two to find the best team overall?

Here's what I'd do with the baseball postseason, changing the regular season by necessity. I've thought about this for some time, because I think the current system is unfair. I'll touch on why throughout. First of all, expand two teams, if only to make the number of teams in each league even. There are two communities out there that can support a team. It simply isn't fair that my Redlegs have to play in a division with six teams, while the Braves have only five, and the Angels only four. With a two team expansion, there would be sixteen teams in each league, with two divisions of eight. Eight is a good number, assuring that at least one quality team will be in each division, unlike the NL West this year. Also, eight is the number of teams that were in the two major leagues before expansion, which I like.

Teams play every other team in their own division twelve times, and the other division in their league six times. Teams also play one of the other league's divisions three (or four) times, with the divisions matching up, like in the NFL (AL West vs. NL East; AL East vs. NL West; and vice versa the next year). This totals 156 (or 164) games. And, unlike our awful current system, every team plays the same schedule within a division. For inter-league play, teams only come to town once every four years, so it's a big event.

Next we have to work out playoff structure. 156 games is a pretty good sample size, and from that a decent determination can be made of who the better team is. But, there will be a margin of error. Chris likes to point out the year that the Giants won 103 games but didn't get to play in the postseason, and it's a point worth considering. If a team finishes close enough to the division leader, you can make a case that they might be just as good, if not better.

I propose this; in order for a team to win a division outright within the regular season, they must win it by four games or more. This means that when a team wins the division by ten games, like the Cards this year, they have won the division and advance to the LCS. But, if a team is only one game ahead, the top two teams enter a best of seven playoff, with the team that finished first place in the regular season given an advantage based on the number of games they finished ahead of the other team. For example, this year the Braves finished two games ahead of the Phillies. In this system, they would enter a best of seven playoff, with the Braves being staked a 2-0 lead. Winner goes to the LCS as their division champion. This way, we still have the excitement of several teams being involved in a playoff chase at the end of the season, but still reward the better team. No more teams finishing second in their division, but first in all of baseball.

I have played around with a round robin final series in October, with the four division winners playing each other eight games each for 24 games total, but I'm not sure I like the idea of a team with nothing to play for going against a team still in the hunt. If the Astros are out of it, and the White Sox only have to win one more game to win it all, do they pitch Clemens against them and risk hurting his arm for no reason? I think many managers wouldn't, and that would ruin everything. So I propose we keep with the simple best of seven formats, with the two LCS series and then the World Series, determining the true champion.

One final change; playoff series need to be more compact. Baseball isn't a game that you have to take off days to play well, and by only having playoff games every other day you change pitching rotations and unfairly punish teams with a deep rotation. Each seven game series should be completed in eight days, television be damned.

I also think we could make all races a best of nine, which appeals to me (for a larger sample size). This would mean a team must finish five games ahead instead of four in the regular season, leading to even more interest. But that may be too much.

Oh, and abolish the DH, of course.

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With football, I'm not sure we can do much better. I don't like having only four teams in each division, but can we do anything else with 32 teams? Possibly four divisions of eight teams, but many wouldn't like having their rival only come to town once every other year instead of every year. Football seems to work best with five or six teams within a division.

The playoffs are a pretty good system as is for a league that can only play so few games. Wild cards don't annoy me as much. I like the first round bye rewarding the two best teams. I haven't thought about a football system as much as a baseball one, so maybe we could give it more thought later.

Here's one change I'd make, though. If you don't have a winning record, you don't make the playoffs, division winner or not. Simply pick another wild card team from one of the other divisions. If the Vikings go 7-9 and win the division, they don't deserve to be a playoff team. I'd say the same thing for baseball.

So... what does everyone think?