Time to dump the Wild Card?

If you don't mind, I'd like to throw out another question: When a wild card team wins the World Series does it prove that the wild card was a good idea or does it somehow taint the World Series title because a team that had proven itself better over the course of 162 games didn't make it to the World Series?

 

I don't think anything's necessarily tainted. Teams can only play within the system that MLB provides. I just think the system is silly and doesn't sufficiently reward teams for what they did over six months.

 

To me, personally, it doesn't taint anything. (Doesn't really prove anything, either.) Like I posted before, I think the playoffs in baseball are a totally different test than the regular season -- I think that's unique among the major sports, and what makes it special.

It's almost like two different sets of rules, because the strategy is so different. How you manage your team over 162 games is so vastly different from how you manage your team over 7.

Two completely different tests, but you have to be very good at one to qualify for the other, and you have to be great/hot at the other in order to win the championship. I think it works.

But as Boomer and others have said, I'm certainly an advocate for a stronger reward going to the best teams over 162. I just don't think eliminating the wild card is the right way to do it.

 

Oh, I know. It's just for the sake of arguments. Half the teams are still alive entering the next-to-last weekend. Who are the jackasses that thought two-thirds of the teams had no chance to compete on Opening Day?

 

The "problem," as it were, is that American sports have a season-ending format (playoffs) that a) creates extraordinary drama and excitement, yet b) detracts from the importance of the regular season. You can't beat a best-of-7 series between the Sox and Yankees, but why the hell did they even bother facing each other 18 times in the regular season?

I love the soccer model where you play each team twice -- once at home, once on the road -- and the team that finishes with the most points at the end wins the big trophy. Eminently simple and couldn't be more fair. But the other prizes that keep the much of the rest of the league playing hard until the end (Champions League and UEFA Cup berths at one end of the standings, avoiding relegation at the other) aren't elements that U.S. leagues have equivalents for (nor will they).

I'm not sure how baseball could find a way to give a greater reward to teams that fare the best in the regular season. Owners will fight tooth and nail to ensure that each postseason team gets at least one home date. Giving the top team(s) a bye might do more harm than good, given the rhythms of baseball. Coming up with a big, shiny trophy for the top regular-season team won't mean much (the NHL's Presidents Trophy still has little cachet, two decades later).

 

Well, one of them is taking a break. Because he lost a bet. To me. About Josh motherfuckin Beckett.

 

But the question is: so the fuck what?

What's the point of a postseason if we overload the regular-season champions with rewards to make it easier? They're supposed to earn it. And baseball's system is designed to test teams over the long haul AND the short term, in vastly different ways. That's what makes it great.

Is the system really that broken (or inferior to something like the EPL, where only three teams are true contenders year in and year out)? I don't think it is. Over 104 years, that system has been tweaked, and tweaked again, then radically tweaked. ... But I think the current system is the best it's ever been, because a team really does have to be superior at both "tests" in order to win a championship.

You have to beat out your divisional rivals to qualify, then you have to beat out your league rivals to win the pennant, then you have to beat the other league's pennant winner to claim the title.

I don't think it detracts from the regular season at all. Would we rather have one 1967 or a decade full of 2001s and 2003s and 2004s? Me, I'll take the latter.

 

I just love starting a thread, going and working, and coming back to see all the turns it has taken. That's all I have to add. Maybe when my brain is working again in the morning I'll have something actually constructive to contribute.

 

The Rockies are thankful there's an NL wild card to play for right now.

 

Keep the wild card because in the old two-division system, it would take the Pirates at least 15 years to make the playoffs.

Oh, wait...

Seriously, the wild card gives more teams hope. Anyone has a punchers chance in a seven-game series, and the three divisions keep more teams alive later into the season.

 

Well, you did say, "I'm certainly an advocate for a stronger reward going to the best teams over 162. I just don't think eliminating the wild card is the right way to do it." And then someone mentions a few options and you say, "So the fuck what?" Whatever.

 

Your suggestion was the EPL model of a balanced schedule (fair enough, but how does that make the playoff format better?), Champions League and/or relegation models (which you said was impossible) or an NHL-model Presidents Trophy (which you said was irrelevant) ... whatever indeed.

How do any of those better "reward the best teams over 162"? I don't see how any of those options apply.

I ask again: what's so wrong with the current model -- which I consider one of the most demanding tests of a championship team in any sport; and unique to baseball -- that we should consider eliminating the playoff format (EPL) or heavily emphasizing the regular-season champion (NHL)?

You say it de-emphasizes the importance of the regular season. I think it does exactly the opposite, because we've got more teams than ever before that are still fighting for a playoff berth. I think it's de-emphasized one series, between two popular teams that both happen to be virtually assured of playoff berths with two weeks left ... but, shiiiiit, it's not like we have to worry about interest/self-importance being low with those two, right?

In Detroit, in Los Angeles, in Seattle, in Denver, in Milwaukee, in Atlanta, in St. Louis ... all of their teams have had something to play for this month, when they'd all be playing out the string under the old 26-team format that BYH posted on page 3. How is the regular season less important for them? How is it less important in San Diego, which has to fight off a half-dozen teams -- all of whose games matter still -- to qualify for the playoffs instead of the only games with relevance being theirs and Arizona's, in the old format?

Yes, I'm in favor of rewarding the regular-season champ in the playoffs. Put 'em in a 1-1-3 format to give that team a better home-field advantage (and less chance of an upset in a best-of-five series). But overhauling the entire system to give more relevance to a late-season series between two playoff-bound clubs? No effin' way.