"Rumblings from the labor front suggest there's a clear split between the two sides on expanding the playoffs, with owners pushing hard for a one-game sudden-death playoff between the two wild-card teams and players holding out for a best-of-three. The more we've thought about it, the more we've concluded that anything but a one-game, winner-goes-on-loser-goes-home format would be a huge mistake." -- Jayson Stark (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&page=rumblings110412)
The intensity of a matchup like this would be huge. In baseball, anybody can beat anybody on a given day, so this would truly be a "wildcard" game if there ever was one. Plus, if neither of these teams was good enough to win their division, we shouldn't have a problem with one of them going home after one game, right? Yeah, I think that's right. While it permits the unfortunate situation where a 2nd place, 95-win wildcard team from a division might go home after one game, in favor of a 90-win wildcard team that otherwise wouldn't have made the playoffs, it rewards division winners even more. As someone who watched the Braves only win one championship despite 14 division titles and also watched the Marlins win two wildcards and two World Series, I can't fault the logic of making wildcard teams earn it in a one-game playoff.
As far as adding a playoff team, I think it's great. With a season as long as baseball's, it benefits the game as a whole to keep as many teams in the fracas as possible. I think I'm looking forward to this new format.
No comments:
Post a Comment