Bigger! Bolder! . . . Uh, better?
Baseball's postseason enters a new era. Plus enough facts and figures about MLB and its second season to make your head spin.
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Is baseball’s new playoff format the best way of determining the best team? In a word: No
In the final week of the 1967 season, the Red Sox, White Sox, Twins, and Tigers each had a chance to win the American League pennant. It was even possible that all four would finish in a tie for first place.
It was exciting and dramatic, one of the greatest pennant races ever. And the American League club owners met that week and were determined to make sure that . . . NOTHING LIKE THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.
The American League owners wanted to change the format of their league beginning in 1968 switching to two divisions with some sort of playoff for the league championship. The National League owners were happy enough with the status quo, but they persuaded the owners from the other league to wait until MLB added expansion teams in 1969 or 1970.
“In short, does the best team in baseball win the World Series? Do expanded playoffs reward the greatest teams, or the hottest ones?”
The expansion year for teams and the postseason turned out to be 1969.
Through 1968, the team with the best record from the American League would meet the team with the best record from the National League in the World Series.
Starting in 1969, the two 12-team leagues each had two divisions. The winner of each division would in the League Championship Series and then go on to the World Series.
The League Championship Series were best-three-of-five affairs until 1985. when they became best-of-seven.
The leagues went to three divisions with the best second-place finisher in each league making the playoffs as a wildcard for the 1994 season. (It wasn’t actually used until 1995 because the strike killed the postseason.)
A second wildcard that would meet the other wild card in a one-game playoff was added in 2012.
Brave new world
Now for the fourth time since 1969, MLB is altering its format - — not counting the changed-on-the-fly playoff formats used in 1981 (split season after the strike) and 2020 (COVID-19).
“In short, does the best team in baseball win the World Series?” Gabe Lacques asked in USA Today last summer. “Do expanded playoffs reward the greatest teams, or the hottest ones?”
Lacques is no dummy. He provided the answers with the rest of his reporting.
Clearly, under expanded playoff formats teams that get hot at the right times are rewarded. Thus clubs that are talented and underachieve — say the 2019 Washington Nationals who won the Series — or a young team that is gelling at the right time — think the Royals in 2014 who got to the Series, took it to seven games and had the tying run on third in the deciding game — are rewarded.
Simple truth
The best way to determine the best team is simple. Put all 30 teams together. Everybody plays six games (three home, three away) against each of the other 29 teams. At the end of the 174-game season, you total up the most wins and the team is the champion. In the off chance of a tie, you have a short playoff.
But where is the fun in that?
The second best way is the way MLB did it from 1903 through 1968 (except in 1904 when John McGraw of the Giants refused to play). Two leagues, no interleague games. Champions meet in the World Series (best-of-seven, except 1903 and 1919-1921 when it was best-of-seven).
One of the league champions might have won considerably more games than the other. But as the leagues didn’t play each other, you could make the argument that you couldn’t tell which league was stronger in a given year.
Under this format, you got a fair test of who was best over 154 or 162 games and then a great event that captured the attention of the nation.
So why did the American League owners want to back off of that?
The times they were a changing
In 1950, polls showed baseball was the favorite spectator sport in the country. By 1960 it was debatable a to whether it was football or baseball. By the mid-1960s, t was obvious that pro football was overtaking MLB.
I believe there were two main reasons for this. First TV — especially in the 1950s and 60s — could capture football better than baseball. A sideline camera could get the whole tackle box. Even today, baseball is a challenge for TV.
Second, there was a huge change n the education level of Americans. By about 1950, the majority of Americans had at least attended high school. That hadn’t been the case before. Of course, the percentage grew more each year.
Football benefited because that sport is a big part of the high school culture. High schools were imitating colleges where the game first took hold. This also worked in basketball's favor, another sport that came to us from colleges.
Baseball added to its problems in the 1960s in two significant ways, in my humble opinion.
After the 1961 season when Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s record for home runs in a season with 61, Commissioner Ford Frick and friend and biographer of Ruth, decided to enlarge the strike zone to cut down on offense. It worked so well that after 1968, MLB was looking to increase the offenses and changed the strike zone back, and lowered the pitchers’ mound from 15 inches to 10 inches (except, it seems, at Dodger Stadium.
And after the 1965 season, MLB decided to go with a package that cut the number of national TV games from as many as 123 games per season to 28. For the next 20-25 years, baseball’s TV strategy seemed to mostly be about limiting national exposure.
But the development that might have gotten the attention of American League owners was the 1965 season. Attendance in the AL dipped that year to 10,939 per game, the lowest since the last year of World War II. The National League averaged more than 16,000 a game, so those owners were not as alarmed.
For the 1967 season, the NFL — there was also an AFL that operated separately — went to four divisions for its 16 teams. The NFL teams would now have three rounds of playoffs, including the second Super Bowl.
(Commissioner Pete Rozelle tried to name the big game The AFL-NFL Championship — but everyone except at the NFL offices and the announcers at CBS, called it the Super Bowl. So the next time you hear Joe Buck talk about how the first two Super Bowls were “known then as The AFL-NFL Championship,” you can . . . well, rage at the TV screen just like me.)
The AL owners saw divisions as their salvation. More teams would be in contention under the division format - — keeping fans going through the turnstiles in September — and there would be a new round of the postseason and more TV revenue.
The Road to Salvation or Perdition?
I think overall, two divisions give you slightly more chances at exciting pennant races than having everyone lumped together. But not always.
The 1971 season gave us a good example. The AL divisions were both runaways as the Orioles and A’s each won 101 games. If the Orioles and A’s were lumped in one league, it would have been a classic pennant race. That same season the Dodgers and Giants fought to the final night of the season with the Giants winning the NL West title by a game.
As for the League Championship Series, they provided little drama the first three years. They were all sweeps except for the NLCS in 1971 when the Giants managed to win one against the Pirates.
In 1972, we finally got some drama from the NLCS ad ALCS, both series going five games.
Then in 1973, we got what I thought was an abomination. The Mets won 82 games and stumbled into the NL East title. They managed to beat the Reds, winners of 99 games, in five games in NLCS and then went seven games before bowing out to the A’s in the World Series.
I have often wondered how this would have been perceived if the Reds had been the 82-win team knocking off a 99-win team from New York. Anyway, the Mets’ postseason run was largely seen - — at least by networks and the national magazines that had such a role in shaping public opinion — as a feature, not a flaw.
That’s Entertainment
This gets to the heart of the matter: Just because a playoff format is not the best way to determine a true champion, doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.
MLB is in the entertainment business.
Take the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, Call me crazy, but if you finish sixth in a conference — even in a strong conference — I don’t think you have much claim to being the national champion. But that kind of team makes the Big Dance every season and people don’t seem turned off by this at all.
As Kaley Cuoco says on those vodka ads: “Sometimes you just gotta give the people what they want.”
Now there may be a limit to all this for MLB, which has a marathon season. Rendering it meaningless — as college basketball has done with its regular season — would have consequences.
The player sense this I think. That is why they balked at MLB going to a 14-team playoff format. For now.
And you may have seen that at Citi Field. As the Mets and Braves fought for the NL East title in September the crowds were somewhat disappointing. Could it be the fact that both teams would make the playoffs no matter what killed some of the in-season drama?
I still think I have come up with a better system.
33 things you should know as MLB heads into the playoffs
Dodgers’ run difference — the stat you should hear over and over again: The Dodgers outscored opponents by 334 runs. That ties the 1936 Yankees for the third most since 1900. Only 10 teams have outscored their opponents by 300 runs or more in a season in the past 123 seasons. The last team to before the Dodgers? The Mariners did in 2001 when they won 116 games.
The last time the Mariners made the playoffs: Was 2001. They clinched a spot on Sept. 3, eight days before the Twin Towers came down.
The curse of winning too much? The Dodgers finished with 111 wins. Three of the four teams that previously won 111 or more games in a season, failed to win that year’s World Series, The 2001 Mariners tied the record for the most wins, 116, in an MLB season. They lost to the Yankees in NLCS. The other team that won 116 games was the 1906 Cubs, who lost the Series to the White Sox. The team with the third most wins was the 1998 Yankees (114 wins), who captured the World Series title. The Cleveland Indians, as they were then known, won 111 games in 1954 and were swept by the New York Giants.
The Albert of old or old Albert?: At the All-Star break, Albert Pujols was hitting .215/.301/.376. and it looked like his utility in the postseason would be limited to serving as a right-handed pinch-hitter late in games when the Cardinals were hoping for a miraculous homer. Since then he has hit 323./388/.715 with 18 homers.
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Cardinals continuity: This is the 15th Cardinals team to make the postseason since 2001. Each of those teams included Yadier Molina. or Adam Wainwright or Pujols, St. Louis columnist Bernie Miklasz points out.
It pays to complain — if you are a Met: The Mets entered the final day of the season having won almost 80% of their replay challenges. MLB's average is 49%.
The last time Cleveland won the World Series: Was 1948. Harry Truman was president. The team was known as the Indians. The year before, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Dodgers, and the Indians became the first American League team with a black player — Larry Doby.
The last time the Phillies made the playoffs: Was in 2011. There were only eight teams in the baseball postseason. The final night of the 2011 season was a thriller with six games involved in deciding the final two playoff spots in each league. The Phillies had already clinched a playoff spot, but they plaid a role. They beat the Braves, who at one time held an 8½-game lead for the wildcard spot. The Phillies’ win allowed the Cardinals to make the payoffs. The Cardinals knocked off the Phillies in the division round and went on to win the World Series.
The last time the Cardinals won the World Series: Was in 2011. Albert Pujols was about to become a free agent. ESPN, I believe, showed the post-game press conference after Game 7. Pujols doesn’t care much for sports writers. Joe Posnanski has theorized that this dates back from high school when Pujols transferred into a school in the Kansas City area. Pujols was already built like a man, and there were whisperings about if he was perhaps a bit old for prep sports, and young Albert didn’t feel he received his due in the local press. Anyway, Pujols isn’t a guy who declines to speak to the media. But he only talks when he has to, and they only seek him out when they have to. So at the press conference, there were questions about impending free agency, this possibly being his last game with the Cardinals. He answered, but it was in a cold and annoyed fashion.
Shortly after the press conference, Pujols appeared with the Baseball Tonight crowd. They asked him the same questions. They got the same answers, only Pujols was warm and relaxed.
As Posnanski, probably the best sportswriter of our time, puts it, fans don’t care because “nobody is all that crazy about sportswriters anyway.”
Dominating the division: Maybe this is just me, but I was surprised to learn that when the Braves won the NL East, it was their fifth consecutive title. That is the longest active streak of division titles in baseball. Maybe it is because they fell flat in the postseason until last year when they won the World Series. In the previous three seasons, the Braves were bounced in the division round.
Big Six: The Marlins’ Sandy Alcantara went 14-9 with a 2.28 ERA, but what has really impressed people is he had six complete games. He will probably win the NL Cy Young in large part because of his complete games. That is the most since Chris Sale completed six in 2016. James Shields, who had 11 in 20011 with Tampa Bay, is the only pitcher to reach double figures this century.
Don’t sleep with the fish: Or on the fish. Miami’s starting rotation finished eighth in MLB in ERA (3.70). Of the Marlins’ six pitchers who started 10 games or more, only one will be older than 25 next season. The old man of the bunch is Pablo Lopez, who went 10-10 with a 3.75 ERA. He will be in his age 27 season. Alcantara will be in his age 25 season. The Marlins’ offense was awful. They scored the third-fewest runs and batted .230, third worst in MLB. Still, the Marlins were quite effective as spoilers as the season wound down. They split two games with the Mets Sept. 27-28, took three of four in Milwaukee over the last weekend of the season, and then denied the Braves their first chance to clinch on Monday.
Among the worst ever: The Athletics’ finished with the worst team batting average (.216) in a full MLB season since the 1968 Yankees (.214). Special mention needs to the Reds in 2020 (.212), but that was shortened season.
Averages were bad: Overall MLB hitters batted .243, the fourth-worst figure complied since 1900, and the worst since the record low of .237 in 1968. But there is more to offense batting averages. Teams averaged 4.28 runs per game. That is the lowest since 2011, but nowhere near a historic worst.
Watchability: Low batting averages don’t necessarily mean super-low scoring. But the game is more fun to watch if you have more baserunners getting on via hits.
Long ball: Teams hit an average of 1.07 homers per game in 2022. That is the first time since 2016 that teams have averaged under 1.15 homers per game. But the 2022 homer average is the 14th highest ever.
What is the ideal amount of scoring?: No one ever talks or writes about this. But I happen to think it is around 4.5 runs per team per game. That would mean, in theory, your typical game would be 5-4.
Astros stars: Ony 11 qualifying players (minimum of 3.1 plate appearances per number of games played by the team) hit .300 or better. Only the Astros had more than one — Yordan Alvarez (.306) and Jose Altuve (.300), unless you count Andrew Benintendi. Despite that, the Astros only had the 12th-highest team batting average. Benintendi finished the season with a. 304 average overall. He hit .320 in 93 games with the Royals, then was traded to the Yankees, where he hit .254. He injured his wrist Sept. 2 and missed the rest of the season, There is a small chance he will be available for ALCS if the Yankees get that far
Lonely at the top: Unlike Roger Maris and Mark McGwire, Aaron Judge had no rival to join in the chase as he pursued history. The Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber was second in the majors and the NationalLeague leader with 46 to Judge’s 62. Maris had teammate Mickey Mantle, who hit 54. McGwire and Sammy Sosa engaged in a nip-and-tuck contest in the final week of the 1998 season. McGwire finished with 70 and Sosa finished with 66. That season, 13 players hit 40 or more homers. This season there were four.
Bonds outdistanced the pack when he hit 73 in 2001. Sammy Sosa was second with 62. There were 13 players to hit 40 or more. In 1927 when Ruth hit 60 and pursued his own record, only he and Yankees teammate Lou Gehrig with 47 home runs
Enjoying the season: Judge was refreshing in that he seemed to enjoy his best season. “I tried to enjoy every single moment,” Judge said. “I didn’t think about, ‘Hey, they’re all on their feet to see you hit a home run.’ I tried to think about, ‘Hey, they’re here to see an exciting ballgame and see something special.’ Having that mindset helped me stay pretty calm, but there was definitely a little pressure in there.” Maris was so nervous in 1961 that his hair reportedly fell out. People forget what a sourpuss McGwire was for much of the 1998 season. When Sosa — who always seemed so joyous — got close, it forced McGwire to drop the martyr act.
What about Bonds in his record-setting season? Well, at mid-season in 2001 there were two questions: Could he break McGwire’s record? And would Bonds get any endorsements out of it because he was considered so dislikable? The answers turned out to be yes and no. Barry of course took full responsibility — and fired his marketing team after the season.
Schwarber is a player for his time: I never thought I would see a contending team with a leadoff man who: a) led the league in homers and b) hit .218. He is the king of the so-called “three true outcomes” — a strikeout, a walk, or a home run. In 2022, 49.6% of his plate ended with one of those three results.
Struggling pens: The Padres ranked 26th in team ERA in the ninth inning or later (4.46). The Phillies are 27th (4.52).
Some progress: The Phillies bullpen overall finished 23rd in ERA. That is progress for the Phillies who in 2020 had the worst bullpen ERA (7.06) in 90 years.
A trade that was supposed to help both teams: In hopes of fixing their bullpen, the Padres dealt Taylor Rogers to the Brewers for Josh Hader on Aug 1. The Padres had just demoted Rogers or . . . rather announced that he was getting “a break from closing’” Rogers had been solid through June but was a trainwreck in July, compiling a 9.31 ERA and blowing three saves in 10 appearances. Hader had a rough time in July as well. In a stretch of seven appearances, he gave up 12 runs and lost his job as a closer. Why not give everyone a clean slate?
Rogers never regained his footing with the Brewers. Hader became the Padres’ closer and did a complete faceplant. In his first seven games with the Padres, he again up gave up 12 runs and lost the closer’s job. But he pitched has pitched better lately and enters the playoff as the closer, according to the authoritative site Closer Monkey. Yes, there is a site called Closer Monkey. Yes, it is authoritative - — at least on matters such as this.
Class of 77: The Blue Jays and Mariners were American League expansion teams in 1977. The clubs have something else in common - — executive Pat Gillick. Gillick was the GM of the early Blue Jays, and he stayed with the franchise through their successful World Series titles in 1992 and 1993. In 2000, he took over the Mariners, The Mariners lost three of the best of the best players of their era between 1999 and 2000. Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez left the club, Somehow Gillick was able to cobble together a team that in 2001 had one of the best regular seasons in the game's history.
Exciting talent: I don’t know if the Mariners’ Julio Rodriguez is the most exciting young player in the game — he might be. But he certainly provided me with the most exciting movement I have seen this year, an inside-the-park homer in spring training game. The Athletic called him the “new ‘king of Seattle’ ” in a profile. Rodriguez hit .284/.345/.509 with 28 homers and 25 stolen bases, and I think he will win the AL Rookie of the Year.
Experience matters: Mr. Met first saw action in the postseason in 1969. The mascot was originally a cartoon that showed up in programs and promotional materials when the Mets played at the Polo Grounds. When the Met moved to Shea Stadium, the baseball-headed mascot made the leap from the drawing board to real life. Mr. Met is believed to be the first live-action MLB mascot.
Can Mr. September become Mr. October? Mets third baseman Eduardo Escobar was having a wretched season through August. In 106 games, he was hitting .218/.269./383. with a .652 OPS, and 12 homers. Then he had a September to remember. Escobar hit 340/.393/.650 and a 1.042 OPS and eight homers.
The brothers Naylor: Bo and Josh Naylor are on the Guardians’ playoff roster. Josh. who hit 20 homers this season, is expected to start at 1B. Bo Naylor made his MLB debut on Oct. 1. If Bo gets into the game, it will mark the 13th time brothers have appeared together in a postseason game.
When you have your health: The Guardians have been the healthiest team in MLB this season, losing just 710 days to Injured Reserve. The Rays? Not so much. Rays players spent 2,306 days on Injured Reserve, the third-highest total in MLB.
Who needs the long ball? The Guardians won 31 games in which they did not hit a home run, tops in MLB. The Rays were second with 28.
Not done yet: Clayton Kershaw has enjoyed a brilliant career. He has gone 197-87 with a 2.48 ERA in 15 seasons, won the Cy Young Award three times, and the MVP once. He is still going strong in his age 34 season. He went 12-3 with a 2.25 ERA this year. For some reason, there has been speculation at the end of the past two seasons that he might hang it up. “I do think I’m leaning towards playing over not, for sure. . . . I hold the right to change my mind, but as of today, I think that I’ve got at least one more run,” Kershaw told the LA Times on Sept. 25