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A Modest Proposal to Fix the Baseball Playoffs
This is a baseball post. If you’re a baseball person, it may interest you. If you are not, fair warning, go look at something else.
As we are, again, in a position in the playoffs where the demonstrated “best” teams are getting roasted by teams that took a couple months off during the season, there is a good deal of carping from Dodger fans and Braves fans (a little bit less than there might have been) and Orioles fans — if any — about winning 100 games in the eternal regular season and then getting bounced by “lesser” teams in the division series. Again.
As much as I enjoy seeing the Braves lose, I have to admit — this was a historically good team. I say “was” because the playoffs are an odd duck — they don’t, and never really have, represented a competition that determined the best team. Much less than football or basketball (but to an interesting degree more like hockey), the playoffs are a TV and revenue invention, one that people like, but not really much like the game itself. Tournaments are fun. They are splashy neon festivals. That’s great for football. It’s even better for basketball.
But it’s not baseball. Baseball belongs to a different era, slower, more methodical, grinding, rewarding the slightest of advantages because there is forever for those advantages to tell. In football you aren’t generally…