Don’t Change the MLB Playoffs

Peter Gammons is one of the best sports journalists of his time, and he seems like a pretty cool dude too, but I have to disagree with his suggestion that the MLB should consider expanding the playoffs to 10 teams.  His basic argument is that baseball has been lost amid the start of football season this year, with no one paying attention because the only pennant race is between the Tigers and Twins in the AL Central.

First of all, let me say that I’ve always liked the addition of the Wild Card in 1995.  I’m not an anti-change purist.  It’s added a lot to the excitement of September and it’s made it more fair for teams that play in tough divisions, like the AL East.  But adding another wild card to each league is going too far.  Baseball teams play a grueling, marathon season of 162 games, and to further dilute the season by opening up more playoff spots just seems like a bad idea. 

Under the proposal Gammons talks about, the two wild card teams from each league would play each other in a best-of-three “play-in” series.  That’s better than giving two teams a bye or something like that, but it’s still problematic.  We’ve all seen how anything can happen in a best-of-five series, what would a best-of-three be like?  Not that I like to defend the Red Sox, but right now they’re 7 games ahead of the Rangers.  Should they really have to put their season on the line in a best-of-three series against a team that they were that much clearly better than over 162 games?  I say no.

Beyond those reasons though, the notion that September baseball isn’t exciting enough is just plain wrong.  As Gammons says in the article, “…this may be an overreaction to a September in which there are essentially no races.”  Yes, Peter, that’s what it is.  Maybe it’s just because I’m a Phillies fan, but I seem to remember PLENTY of excitement in September this decade.  To confirm, I went back and looked at the standings with 10-15 games left over the last four seasons.  In that time, there were 24 division titles won, and exactly half of them were still up for grabs at that point of the season.  Of the 8 Wild Cards won in that span, 5 of them were still undecided.  So clearly, the lack of drama this September is a pretty rare occurence.  The system is working well, let’s leave it exactly how it is.