I’m pleased to present the following guest post from friend-of-the-blog Lenny Vaisman. Lenny’s a die-hard Yankee fan and was actually a semi-regular contributor to my initial foray into Yankee blogging, Save Phil Hughes, posting as HitMan23. Lenny comes to us today with a great (and fairly radical) argument for how baseball can vastly improve the regular season and playoffs.
To paraphrase Howard Bryant from Ken Burns’ “The Tenth Inning,” there are two ways to measure the success of Major League Baseball: If your only criterion is money, then MLB is more successful than ever. But if you measure baseball’s ability to maintain its mythic qualities and capture the hearts and minds of its fans, then baseball has become a depressing failure.
The point is not to mock capitalism. After all, baseball is an industry like any other. What I am trying to highlight is the feeling that Bud Selig and his cronies at both MLB and MLBPA have given making money an infinitely higher priority over their custodial duties relating to what used to be America’s Pastime. The attitude, at least from an outsider’s perspective, is “the fans pay, so who cares?” But the more I talk to knowledgeable and passionate baseball fans — some of which romanticize the game and its past and some who don’t — the feeling seems to be pervasive.
There are many ways that this is evident but with the recent conclusion of the latest postseason, there is one particular facet of baseball that I want to focus on here: the method by which baseball crowns its annual champion. My biggest problem with the current structure is that it rarely crowns the best team and effectively wipes away the longest season in professional sports with a roll of the dice. While the playoff entrants are often the best teams, the eventual World Champion is almost always the hottest team.
The regular season is, in and of itself, an effective playoff structure for MLB. Seems to me that baseball waits for the first eight competitors to finish the 26 miles of a marathon and then subjects them to a 100-yard dash to decide who wins. The season is a long, arduous grind — and then it gets decided by whoever has the least noticeable limp. There’s a reason why blow World Series games out of the water: MLB is selling a watered-down crapshoot tournament which rewards teams that are better at dealing with attrition and managing their starting rotation based on the given schedule rather than actually playing good baseball.
And now Commissioner Selig is talking about adding two more Wild Cards to the postseason. I’ve heard the arguments in favor of this idea — that it makes it a fairer, more balanced sport. I’ve even heard that adding another layer, the single play-in game that would be played by the two Wild Cards in each league, is incentive to play for the division. However, if you want to create incentive to win the division, wouldn’t eliminating the Wild Card accomplish that? And why does baseball have to become fairer and more balanced? Is this youth soccer in the politically correct 1990s, where every kid gets a trophy? And someone please tell me why the justification is always to point at the NFL? Baseball doesn’t have to be anything but baseball, with its own charms. But more games equals more revenue, so Bud and Co. will continue to degrade the sport, using that empty logic as long as the fans keep showing up and paying.
My agenda as dictator of baseball would be to reverse the “NFL-ing” of MLB. I love football, but I breathe baseball and I want it to become special again. My plan would be as follows:
1) Eliminate the divisions. The divisions were created as a response to the growth of the league and the need for more playoff entrants, as well as to make geographical sense of arduous travel. Travel is much more commonplace, simpler, and quicker than it was in the 1960s, and MLB franchises are much wealthier. We can go back to two whole leagues without horizontal divisions, without geographic boundaries and without unbalanced schedules – another horrible concoction (Editor’s Note: I’m completely on board with all of this). Furthermore, I’d really love it if they stopped selling me this bag of goods about regional rivalries and how they affect the composition of divisions — the Yankees and Tigers used to be huge rivals, as were the Yankees and Indians. Your rivals are whoever you have to go through to get to your goal.
2) Create tiers. Most major sports league outside of North America operate in a promotion and relegation system. It’s time for MLB adopt this practice. As I’ll get to in a minute, my plan involves having only one layer of playoffs – the World Series. However, there are too many teams in each league for there to be only one prize to compete for. Promotion and relegation divides the teams into vertical tiers that are based on performance during the past season. Using the final regular season standings of the American League in 2010 as an example, the tiers would look like this for 2011:
Top
Tampa Bay
New York
Minnesota
Texas
Boston
Middle
Chicago
Toronto
Detroit
Oakland
Los Angeles
Bottom
Cleveland
KC
Baltimore
Seattle
Under this system, every team would play every other team an equal number of times, but only the five teams in the “Top” tier would be competing for a spot in the World Series in 2011. The teams in the “Middle” and “Bottom” tiers (I’m open to more creative names) would by vying for the top spot in their tier, which would entitle them to a promotion to the next-highest tier for the following season, as well as a larger share of MLB’s shared revenue. Concurrently, the team that finishes last in its tier gets relegated to the next lowest tier, swapping places with the team that is promoted from the lower tier.
I recognize that this system’s major downside is that it does away with baseball’s time-honored tradition of spring renewal, since two-thirds of teams will literally have no chance at a title that season. But all that does is effectively acknowledge reality and give the fans of teams in the bottom and middle tiers something real to root for: A promotion and accompanying financial windfall that would make it more difficult for them to be relegated just as quickly. So now the drama wouldn’t be reserved for only the top teams vying to win something, as teams will also fight tooth and nail down to the wire to not be relegated and lose shared revenue. This is also a more intelligent way to share MLB revenue si
nce the current system just allows the Pirates and Marlins to pocket their shares without plowing it back into their teams.
3) Eliminate every round of playoffs prior to the World Series. No longer do we have to watch a field of the walking wounded stumble to the finish line. No longer do we have to watch baseball, a summer sport, play its most important games in the cold. No more inferior teams winning their way to the crown with three starting pitchers. No more drawn-out playoffs with unnecessary off days. No more uninteresting matchups, only the season’s true heavyweights playing for a title. MLB will play a long season and just as the dog days of summer are winding down and the cool, crisp autumn rolls in, the winner of the top tier of each league will match up in the World Series.
4) Get rid of Interleague play. Another half-baked idea that makes more money but hurts the sport in the long run. Bring back the sacredness of separate leagues – it creates a youthful, exciting energy when those beams do finally cross.
It’s not like baseball’s playoffs can get worse. I find them boring and drama-free – a side-effect of a number of things, parity included. Allowing more entrants into the field will make more money for the league and will involve more regions, but it won’t create a better fan experience. On some level, I suppose I’m railing against parity. But the parity baseball is trying to create is an artificial, socialist one. Baseball — or any professional sports league, for that matter — is better off with a consistent and familiar upper class.
Admittedly, the changes I propose here are drastic, but the idea is to address the length of the playoffs (too long), the number of entrants into what should be a select field (too many), and the crapshoot nature of the playoffs (too fractured). In conjunction with limiting the playoff field, the point of implementing vertical tiers is to hang an economic carrot in front of lesser teams that can lead to long-term, sustainable success, which is a better solution for the sport than a system that gives everyone false hope and rewards mortgaging the future for limited opportunities.
Look no further than the Milwaukee Brewers, who began to develop a successful foundation in the middle of this past decade and found themselves in the midst of a playoff race in 2008, compelling them to put together a package for a rental. There is something inherently wrong with a system where a small-market team that hasn’t made the playoffs in decades feels that it should mortgage the future for one shot at reaching the postseason instead of building for sustained success. Sure enough, the Brewers floundered in the divisional round, CC left as a free agent, and while none of the parts the Brewers moved have panned out thus far (, , Rob Bryson and ), the team hasn’t come close to competing since falling short in 2008. And even if the Brewers had managed to go on a magic carpet ride through the playoffs, can anyone outside of Wisconsin honestly say they would have been interested in, say, a Brewers-Rays World Series? So instead of having a team like the Brewers become an annual player, and have the ability for the club and MLB to market the likes of and Ryan Braun, the team is mired again in neutral mode after taking their one shot.
Would anyone be shocked if the Reds, a team with limited financial resources (read: regenerative ability), were nowhere to be found next year? Sure, the run was great for Cincinnati this year, just as it was for Colorado last year, Milwaukee in 2008, Cleveland or Arizona in 2007, etc., but wouldn’t it be better for these teams and regions and MLB if they had the ability to sustain a level of success? When those perennial also-rans break through temporarily, we end up with watered-down, drawn-out, and generally forgettable playoffs, boring matchups that no one outside of the immediately involved markets really cares about or will remember. It’s better for these teams to achieve success and sustain it, something that would be fostered by the tiered system I propose.
As a Yankee fan, it’s easy to cite recent playoffs where I was riveted (most of the time, it was actually desperation more so than pure enjoyment, but that’s just what the Yankees experience has become to me), and 2001 and 2003 stick out as particularly dramatic postseasons. It’s been far more challenging to get wrapped up in other teams’ recent postseason runs, something I didn’t find as challenging in the past. I recall being gripped by the 1986 postseason during the 1986 postseason, with the unbelievable magic and drama behind both the Mets-Astros NLCS and the Red Sox-Angels ALCS, not to mention the World Series; the 1988 postseason, where Tommy Lasorda’s Dodgers, led by , , , and a hobbled battled through and the powerhouse Mets, leading to an all-time classic World Series against the upstart Oakland A’s of Bash Brothers fame; the 1989 NLCS battle between ’s Giants and ’s Cubs, leading to the Bay Area Series; the 1990 Cincinnati Reds, who went on to shock and sweep the A’s; the best World Series any of us will ever see, where two well-built teams, the Braves and Twins, battled down to a -, 10 inning, 1-0 classic Game 7 in 1991; and in 1992 and 1993 when the Toronto Blue Jays, who fi
rst defeated an emerging Braves team and then a strong Phillies team, capped their run on a season-ending bomb.
My memory may serve me poorly, but I don’t remember any of these playoffs being decided by who got the most rest, who had the hottest three starters — the things that regularly decide champions today. They were decided by recognizable, marketable teams playing two rounds of exciting baseball. The Yankees of the mid- to late-’90s were good for baseball in that they were a consistent enemy for all yet they played a brand of baseball and fielded players that garnered respect. But the end of the Yankees’ dynasty, ushered in by a Luis Gonzalez bloop single, signaled the end of an era for me.
Stepping out of my Yankees fan shoes for a minute, I have to ask – which playoff series has been a truly memorable one, on par with the ones mentioned above, since 2001? There were some great moments for the Yankees since, namely 2003 and 2009, but one of those ended in losing the title to the 2003 Marlins, the model for short-term success. And there have been some great moments for baseball, namely the Red Sox’s comeback in 2004, which ended in quite possibly the most anti-climactic World Series ever played. Outside of that, the MLB playoffs have drummed up local support at times, but have created very little drama and have done very little to coalesce the sport and its fans. It’s time we try reversing course.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
To begin, I want to offer my hearty thanks to Lenny for taking the time to contribute a thoughtful and well written contribution to our blog. This is a thought provoking piece. There is certainly a lot here that I agree with, but there is also much that I disagree with.
I too feel that it is time for MLB to eliminate divisions, but I am firmly against a relegation system, such as the one that exists in European Soccer. Such a system would exacerbate baseball's problems because teams that struggle currently would enter the season, as you point out correctly, already out of contention.
Relegation isn't necessary to build these teams back into contention, as the Rays and Reds have correctly demonstrated. A better method that would avoid turning off fans from much of the country is to allow the top four teams from each league to make the playoffs and embrace your idea of increasing revenue sharing for those teams or other successful teams (say a team that greatly improved its record), coupled with something that forces those teams to invest the money in players.
Such a system would help build up both the Rays and Reds. It would, for example, allow the Rays to keep some of their high-priced fee-agent talent. It does all of this, and continues to reward teams that succeed, without eliminating the possibility of an exciting, 2008 Rays team from emering on opening day, something that certainly excited me as a storyline once the Yankees were eliminated.
On a personal note, I disagree with your assessment of the playoffs. I find the stress and randomness exciting. Once a team, warts and all, has proven it can endure a 162 game schedule it has to prove again that it is also built for a short burst of sustained performance. Just as a short series may eliminate the strengths of a team that can club its way to 101 wins without much pitching so too can a full season obscure the talents of a team with some of the best pitchers in baseball. As we like to say, that's why they play the games. Lets see who really is the best once the 92 win team and the 101 win team have both punched their tickets to the playoffs. If the little guy wins, so be it – sometimes the best team doesn't have the best record. Just ask the Mariners team that won 116 games.
I also want to mention that some of the teams you cited from the earlier era are known to be among the weakest champions who got hot at the right time, including the 1990 Reds, who were predicted to lose miserably to the A's, and certainly the 1988 Dodgers, who rate as one of the weakest champions ever. Both teams are said to have won precisely because they got hot at the right time. I perceive that as a good thing.
Hot spurts matter in the playoffs, in every sport, just ask fans of the 2007 Giants in the NFL. This is not a bad thing because it encourages in season adjustments, and creates exciting story lines.
I'm delighted to see such a well-reasoned and thought provoking proposal about changing baseball's playoff rules on our site. I certainly agree that the divisions must go, and I am strongly against adding another Wild Card team. That would not make the playoff system more fair, whereas allowing the top four teams from each league to compete would. Although I disagreed with some of the ideas presented the measure of a strong piece of writing is its ability to inspire others, and this post absolutely inspired me.
Thanks for the kind words. The goal of the post was certainly not to fight for promotion and relegation – the essence is that I'm sick of Bud degrading the game in the name of generating more revenue. And insulting our intelligence to boot. He's hurting the game in the long run. Baseball is losing its charm and appeal through his measures.
A day of reckoning will come when he is looked at as the worst commissioner ever – and not just for his role in steroids, but more because the precious network contracts will go away once the networks come to their senses and realize that the postseason ratings are plummeting.
Maybe the owners and players make more money, but something is amiss when the playoffs generate less public interest than they did before bud's tenure.
I agree. I don't like Bud messing with the system the way he has and I do not feel he is a good commissioner at all.
Baseball has a sizeable revenue floor because it is the only sport being played from June-Sep1, when Football begins. Selig has nothing to do with that and many of his changes make baseball more like other sports.
I hate, hate, hate this idea of adding more playoff teams while ignoring other major flaws in the system. I hope that day of reckoning never comes.
He's not a true commissioner. Somehow the owners got to put a puppet in the commissioner's office "temporarily" and then pulled the wool over everyone's eyes, giving them free reign to do as they please. Baseball is a public-private partnership that's been completely privatized. The players complied because they made more money. Basically something everyone always wanted – owners and players to play nice – ends up hurting the game.
Let me address your plan point by point:
1. No, do not eliminate the divisions. Rather, eliminate the wild cards by creating four divisions of eight teams each, for a total of 32. This would require expansion, and before you say it, let me point out that the talent pool, because of international growth, is bigger than ever, and not diluted. So only the eight divisional champions would advance.
2. No way. Relegation and promotion might be a good idea, and would penalize David Glass, the Wal-Mart heir who refuses to spend a slightly higher percentage of his massive family fortune on the Kansas City Royals, while possibly promoting, say, the Buffalo Bisons or the Salt Lake Buzz. (The problem then is, you might have a situation where a major league club might be in a lower league than one of its own farm clubs.)
But if eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox were punished for losing World Series games on purpose, why can’t we punish team owners for refusing to attempt to improve their teams? Trying and failing is one thing, but the owners in Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Oakland are refusing to try. (No, Oakland’s Billy Beane is NOT a genius, he’s a coward for not demanding more money from his owner, lest he quit and seek employment with an owner who wants to win.)
3. No, do not eliminate the Playoffs. Rather, go back to a 154-game schedule, and schedule doubleheaders, the way it was done when baseball was played by men. The regular season can end on the third Sunday in September. And cut the LCS back to a best-three-out-of-five like it was from 1969 to 1984. Anybody grumbling about a “short series” needs to be reminded that nearly every regular-season series is one of three or four games. Two games is a short series, three is not. And if you can’t win three out of five games against one of the top eight teams in baseball in October, then you don’t deserve to be in the World Series.
By following this plan, the Division Series would have begun on September 21, the League Championship Series would have begun on September 28, and the World Series would have begun on October 6 and ended no later than October 14, barring rainouts, just as it usually did in the single-division era. No more snowfalls at the World Series, not even in Minnesota, unless Montreal returns to the majors and builds an outdoor ballpark.
4. I do agree with getting rid of interleague play. We already had interleague play: It was called the World Series. Regular-season interleague play existed for one reason and one reason only: To get the Yankees and Mets to play games that actually mattered. Since they have now done so in a real Subway Series (always capitalized, no quotation marks necessary), the regular-season version only has meaning for Met fans, who know that they can never match us anyway. Cub and White Sox fans can’t mock each other for losing interleague series, because both teams are legendary losers and don’t really gain much by beating the other. Dodger and Giant fans hate each other much more than they hate the Angels and A’s, respectively.
Uncle Mike – I'd like to refer you to my comment above: "The goal of the post was certainly not to fight for promotion and relegation – the essence is that I'm sick of Bud degrading the game in the name of generating more revenue." Also, not once did I mention anything about promoting AAA teams. That's an assumption that you made, and you know what they say about…..never mind. Trust me, I'd be fine with going back to two separate leagues with two divisions each and only division winners advancing. I'd also be thrilled with a 154 game schedule and loads of doubleheaders. Again – the point was NOT to rail for promotion and relegation. It's that Bud Selig is making baseball more and more like other sports instead of protecting its uniqueness.
Nice article man, really well written. Not sure I agree with you though, at least not on all you points. I would get rid of both interleague play and the unbalanced schedule. And for the the playoffs I would take out all the rest days, just one travel day like it used to be. And I would also go back to a 2-2-1-1-1 format for the seven game series. I also don't understand why the season has to start so late. By April 1 there should be baseball.
I also disagree with the guy who thinks baseball needs to end by mid-october. Baseball ended around 2 weeks ago… and I already miss it! For me, I could watch baseball all year long. I really don't understand what the obsession is with thinking the season is too long. I agree, the playoffs are way, way, way, too drawn out. But other than that and starting the season a few days later in April, what has really changed since they went to the 162 game schedule?
I do like the comment that suggested a single division, with the top four teams going into the playoffs. That's an interesting idea. By the same token, they could go to east/west divisions, with a balanced schedule and the top two teams from each division could advance to the playoffs.
PS… you can tell all the yankees fans, I hate the mets-yankees crap
here are some reactions to various bits of Lenny's post:
I think the reason NFL regular season games get better ratings than World Series games is there are only 16 regular season NFL games – it creates intense demand for football. and if ever there was a crap shoot, its every game in the NFL
I have to reject on principle the idea that two thirds of the league have no chance to make it to the world series. that seems kind of… i dont know… dictatorial?
I'm with you on the unbalanced schedule and getting rid of Interleague play, though – worst ideas ever.
I find the playoffs to be exciting and full of drama, but i guess that's just me.
Just because the Brewers don't know what they're doing doesn't mean the playoff system is broken. The Giants and Rays have figured it out. I predict Baltimore and Toronto are right behind them. Colorado competes almost every year of late.
I do think that MLB needs to go back to a 154 game schedule, get rid of the horrendous All Star Break and yes, get rid of the divisions while at the same time expanding to a 12 team playoff structure.
You enjoyed watching a "hobbled Kirk Gibson…" but I thought one of your central points was that you didn't want to watch the "walking wounded stumble to the finish line"?
didn't the 2001 Dbacks beat the Yankees because they had the hottest two starters? Its the only reason they won the series!
I think it's also worth mentioning that the Rays are planning on operating with a ridiculously low payroll in the $50 million dollar payroll… they need to move out of Tampa, it's obvious the greater Tampa area doesn't care about them, no matter how good their product is.
~jamie from BomberBanter
Wow, that's going to require point-by-point responses.
1) We can discuss ad nauseum what makes the NFL more popular on paper. I've heard (and happen to agree with) that fantasy football is so popular that NFL fans have skin in the game – so many people would probably rather tune in to a meaningless NFL game to see how many TD's Maurice-Jones Drew has because it affects their week more than an MLB playoff game might.
2) Re: Brewers – I agree that small-market teams have shown that they can find a way to compete. My point is that familiarity breeds interest. To go back to the NFL, look at the Rams-Patriots Super Bowl. No one cared, everyone watched because it was the Super Bowl but everyone was bored to tears with the matchup. But when the Patriots proved to be more than a fluke, they became an interesting draw. So that's my point with the Brewers – I am not interested in seeing the Brewers get into the postseason once and then fade away. Once means its uninteresting and flukey. Regular postseason appearances means we've let them into our lives and have started to develop an interesting storyline to follow. The Rockies got to the World Series and haven't sniffed it since, despite being somewhat competitive during the regular season. So we got one good look at a team, a crappy World Series, and a bunch of Rocktober t-shirts, and then bupkis.
3) Your Kirk Gibson point is a bit of a reach. All I am trying to say there is that the postseason is too long now and the teams "hobble" to the finish line, not that a hurt star can't come off the bench for one of the most dramatic moments in the history of baseball. I found all of those matchups and playoffs generally more interesting because they were shorter and had less entrants, which led to better matchups. No Brewers-Phillies, Reds-Phillies, Rockies-Red Sox, etc.
4) D-Backs – Another reach. I never said that a postseason CAN'T be great if a few starters carry a team, just that's an uninteresting and flawed way for baseball to award a title. It was a great WS for so many reasons and in spite of Randy Johnson-Curt Schilling.
Right, fantasy football! that's a good point! However, I "play" fantasy baseball, and it doesn't make me watch any more games than I already do.
I still think everyone watches the super bowl more than the world series because it's only one game. any nfl team should be a huge draw because it's the NFL… if you can't sell out 9 home games a year, you should move your team ASAP
I was pretty happy with the 2010 world series – were you bored with it? I guess so, right?
Both the Red Sox world series wins were totally boring series, I'll give you that one!
I do agree the system is super flawed; hopefully they won't screw it up more. I'm not sure if the proposed system screws it more or not…
I am late to this party. Thanks for the thoughtful post. But I disagree about the World Series and playoff games being boring (yes, I am a Ranger fan and this is all new to me). I think that the playoffs this year were as exciting as any in history.
You can't injury-proof any playoff system. There is always a chance that your key cog goes down due to a September injury and you have to limp into the playoffs.
But I would argue (despite seeing my Rangers thumped in the Series) that the best team DOES win the playoffs no matter how strong the teams were in July.
To come to that conclusion, you have to ask how do we measure strength? Is it by overall record? If so then you have to factor in strength of schedule. As a Ranger fan, I have told my friends and relatives (we live closer to Houston than D-FW) that my Rangers might barely finish above .500 in the AL, but they would win the NL Central most years if they and the Astros swapped divisions. It is hard to prove that assertion, but the fact that the Rangers routinely kick the stuffing out of the Astros and other NL Central lackies makes a strong case. So I like the idea of stripping away the divisions.
Yes, MLB is a grind that doesn't excite kids today the way that NFL and Xtreme Sports do. I don't know how to fix that. I don't want to see more intense collisions or less games. I don't want to see Elvis Andrus grind his skateboard to home plate on a rail.
I think that one of the biggest problems with the playoffs is the late start times and the season running into the miserable November weather. Cut the regular season back to 154 games by whacking 2 weeks.
I am in the minority, but I like the wildcard.
I guess the bottom line is that any system will leave a significant proportion of fans thinking that we need to revise it. You just have to decide what sort of regrets you are going to have before you put plan in place.
The best proposals are:
1. Shorten the regular season to 158 or 154 and schedule some double headers. The season won't drag as much and the playoffs would definitely start by Oct. 1 at the latest.
2. Keep three divisions and one wild card, with all series 7 games. But no more than two days off in a series, and no more than one day off to the start of the next series when the teams are determined. At the very latest, even with all seven-game series, you would still be done in October. Tighter series would put more emphasis on fourth pitcher and reward stronger teams, and keep momentum through playoffs. Main problem now is that they preschedule all series with excessive days off to please the television sponsors–that has to stop (in the NBA as well).
3. Get rid of interleague play (and the DH of course).