Tag: Wild Card

Have You Heard About This Proposed Change to the MLB Playoffs?

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ESPN – Major League Baseball is mulling significant changes to its postseason, including increasing the number of teams from 10 to 14 and adding a reality TV-type format to determine which teams play each other in an expanded wild-card round, sources told ESPN.

MLB is considering a move in which each league would have three division winners and four wild-card teams making the postseason starting in 2022, sources said. The best team in the league would receive a bye into the division series. The two remaining division winners and the wild-card team with the best record of the four would each host all games of a best-of-three series in the opening round.

Once the teams clinch and the regular season ends, the plan gets congested:

  • The division winner with the second-best record would select its wild-card opponent from the three wild-card winners not hosting a series.
  • The division winner with the worst record would then choose its opponent from the remaining two wild-card teams.
  • The final matchup would pit the wild-card winner with the best record against the wild-card team not yet chosen.
  • All of the selections, sources said, would be unveiled live on television the Sunday night of the final regular-season games.

I don’t like the idea of nearly half the league making the playoffs, but I do love that MLB is considering shaking *something* up. Baseball has been painfully slow to adopt any significant changes. Remember when they put in the rule that batters had to stay in the batters box and players immediately ignored it and MLB did nothing? Remember when MLB was testing a pitch clock in Minor League Baseball with the plan of then implementing it in the major leagues? That was in 2015. Whether it’s rules to improve pace of play or ideas of how to combat the culture of rampant sign stealing; baseball is afraid of change. So I am intrigued by this pretty radical shift in the playoff format. Baseball needs to become more like the NFL and try things out. Hell even the NBA tested a new ball in 2006, which was a complete and utter disaster, but the point remains; at least they tried something new.

My favorite part about this new format is it gives teams a real incentive to play for the No. 1 seed, which there isn’t really any of currently. Too many teams these days play out the string as they’d rather get their rotation set for the playoffs than try to win as many regular season games as possible. The new Wild Card format of the past few years has helped negate that a little bit, but a first round bye would have teams gunning for the top seed.

Another aspect that would be great is we would no longer have to hear the song and dance about how players don’t care who they’re playing in the playoffs. Bullshit! Now we’ll know exactly who you want to play and who you think is an easy out. Just imagine the Red Sox winning 100 games in 2022, 5 games out of the No. 1 seed behind the Astros, selecting the 90 win Twins for obliteration in the Wild Card round. How awesome would it be to see team officials cringe on live TV as their fates are sealed like an NBA Draft Lottery special? The reality TV aspect of it all just has me picturing Kramer hosting the Merv Griffin Show.

I am far from a baseball purist so count me in.

Not everyone is sold on the idea including Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer.

To be fair though, this is the guy who got scolded (and traded) by Terry Francona for launching a ball over the fence after getting yanked from a game. Seems like a guy who doesn’t take it well when things don’t go his way.

People who complain about changing the game forget just how much the rules have actually evolved, some faster than others, over the years. In 2011 the MLB added the new Wild Card format, the Astros changed Leagues in 2013, balls have been juiced and unjuiced, steroids were encouraged ignored then banned, the mound was lowered, and on and on we go. So testing out a little tweak to the playoff format is not going to have Branch Rickey rolling in his grave. It’s baseball, lets have a little fun.

2018 MLB Playoff Oddities

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No playoff system in American sports is perfect and there will always be debates about ways to improve them. Major League Baseball has long had the smallest field of playoff teams among the North American professional sports leagues, and the most straight-forward postseason format. This October, though, could be one of the strangest MLB postseasons in memory.

Today in the National League, the teams with the four best records in the league will play two tiebreaker games. The winners will take their division’s respective crown and head to the League Division Series. The losers will square off tomorrow in the National League Wild Card game. It will mark the first time in baseball history that a loser of a tiebreaker game won’t be eliminated. The 90-win Atlanta Braves have the fewest wins of all National League playoff teams and will be the only National League team that does not have to play an extra tiebreaker and/or Wild Card game before the Division Series.

Meanwhile in the American League, the New York Yankees and Oakland A’s will face off in the American League Wild Card game Wednesday. Both teams have more wins than the AL Central Champion Cleveland Indians. The Indians will take on the Houston Astros in one American League Division Series while the winner of the Wild Card game will take on the 108-win Boston Red Sox in the other American League Division Series. The Red Sox, with the most wins in a season by a team since the Seattle Mariners won 116 games in 2001, will have to face a tougher Division Series opponent than the second-seeded Astros.

Change is slower in baseball than any other professional sports league in North America. The 2018 playoffs, no matter how they play out, likely won’t spur a change to the MLB playoff format in the near future. They will make a great case for going to a system more like the NBA, though, where the top five teams make the playoffs and get seeded by record regardless of division. Again, that probably won’t happen soon but probably in the next decade or so.

The Minnesota Twins Don’t Get No Respect

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twins respect

CBSSPORTS.COM – Now that the postseason field has been finalized, we can look ahead and figure out which potential World Series matchups are most intriguing. There are 25 of them.

  • 25. Colorado Rockies vs. Minnesota Twins
  • 24. Arizona Diamondbacks vs. Minnesota Twins
  • 23. Minnesota Twins vs. Washington Nationals
  • 21. Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Minnesota Twins
  • 20. Chicago Cubs vs. Minnesota Twins

Yahoo! Sports – We’re down to 10. Ten teams have a chance to reach the 2017 World Series. Slowly, over the next month, that number will dwindle down until it’s just two teams. And then one. But right now, 10 teams are still alive and that gives us 25 possible World Series matchups.

  • 25. Twins vs. Diamondbacks
  • 24. Twins vs. Nationals
  • 23. Twins vs. Dodgers
  • 22. Twins vs. Cubs
  • 19. Twins vs. Rockies

The MLB Playoffs start tonight with the American League Wild Card game in New York, and it’s pretty clear that no one wants to see the Twins make a run.

The Twins squeaked into the playoffs as the second Wild Card team a year after losing 103 games and after selling at this year’s trade deadline. They have lost 12 straight playoff games, but their last postseason win did come at Yankee Stadium in 2004.

The Yankees won 91 games this year and enter the playoffs as a more traditional Wild Card team. They went 4-2 against the Twins this year, and swept the Twins in a three-game series at Yankee Stadium just two weeks ago. The Yankees have also defeated the Twins nine straight times in the playoffs.

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So why all the apathy, if not hate, toward the Twins? It is hard to say they look like a typical playoff team. Ervin Santana had a very good season and Big Sexy was a fun addition, but it’s hard to name much of their staff after that. They also traded their All-Star closer at the trade deadline. Their most recognizable player, Joe Mauer, had his best season since 2013 but is still a shadow of the first-ballot Hall of Famer he looked like at the end of the 2000s.

But the Twins franchise has been here before. The franchise won its first World Series in Minnesota in 1987 after getting outscored in the regular season. They won the AL West that year at 85-77 (the same record as the 2017 squad)  while three teams with better records from the AL East went golfing in October. They won the division on the strength of a 56-25 home record at the much-maligned Metrodome.

So while people can criticize the 2017 Twins and say a team like this shouldn’t make the playoffs, they are not the first team to squeak into the playoffs after a run-of-the-mill regular season. Mediocre teams made they playoffs long before the Wild Card was invented.

With all the Yankees Haters out there, I have to imagine at least some folks will be pulling for the Twins tonight. Who doesn’t like to root for an underdog? And don’t tell me a Dodgers-Twins World Series isn’t even in the top 20. A Dodgers-Twins World Series would feature an historical rematch, a David vs. Goliath feel, an iconic stadium, and one of the best modern stadiums in the game. I’m not saying it will happen, or that it would go past five games if it did happen, but don’t tell me the Twins aren’t worth rooting for.