Added playoff rounds, one game play-ins, reduce the chances of the best 2 teams meeting in the World Series. THese play-in games are exciting and fun for the baseball fan that doesn’t have a specific rooting interest but the fans of the losing team have a legit gripe about playing 162 games (163) this year and having your post season reduced to a single game.Now the Rockies go into the next series having burned their best starter and a bullpen which will stressed from the beginning of the next series. THat is a hard handi-cap to overcome in today’s game.
The 5-seed has no gripe even if it loses. Even the 4 seed really doesn't. They had 162 games to win their division. They're lucky they get to keep playing at all.
Dems the breaks.
See also: Records of NBA West teams going home at end of season vs. teams in the East in the playoffs.
This is a problem that’s resolved by winning the division.
If there were two divisions for each league as would be sensible, the American League would be quite clear cut with the Astros playing the Red Sox. The National League would be more complicated, depending on which division had the eight teams and which the seven, but it might have been that the Cubs and Brewers one-gamer would've sent Milwaukee on to play the Braves.
This is a problem caused by division alignments. Cleveland won its division with the worst record of all 5 AL playoff teams. And with the scheduled weighted to play its division rivals more than any other teams, they won by beating up 4 teams without a winning record and 2 of those teams lost 100+ games. Each 3rd place team in the 5 other divisions had a better record than the 2nd place team in the ALC.
