Graham Blog: MLB Playoffs On the Right Track but Needs Fixing
Submitted by Carson Now Reader on Wed, 10/24/2012 - 4:07pm
Event Date:
October 24, 2012 (All day) Major League Baseball revealed a new playoff format this year by adding an additional team to the wild card mix. It has some potential in my mind after being extremely skeptical about it.
Before this year, only one team won a wild card spot in both the American and National Leagues and they went straight into the Division Series. This year the playoff format allowed one additional team in each league to play for the wild card spot in the division series.
It was basically a ‘play in’ game to the playoffs. That is what I did not like about it. If you are going to allow one more team into the playoffs then you must make it a series and not just a one game ‘winner-take-all’ game. To me, that is not fair. They should change it to a three-game series to give teams more of a chance.
MLB did this to create more revenue in their pockets, so why not make it a small three-game series? That would obviously put even more green-backs in the league’s pocket. If they decided to keep it as is, the league will be facing a lot of angry fans. This year the Atlanta Braves finished with a 94-68 win/loss record. That was 6 games better than the St. Louis Cardinals finished with (88-74). Yet, the Cardinals won the one-game playoff game in Atlanta, and eventually went on to come within one win away from reaching the World Series before being eliminated by the San Francisco Giants.
Again, Major League Baseball has said that changes could be made to this format, and that this year was just a test to see how it went. It is not fair to a team that fights all year long to get a better record to only see their season end on a one-game playoff. I just think they deserve more of a chance at extending their season especially if they compiled a better record.
If it was last year, the Atlanta Braves would have made the playoffs straight into the best-of-five Division Series and the St. Louis Cardinals would have just stayed home. Instead, this new format hindered the Braves and helped the Cardinals. I agree with the format, but it needs to be extended to an actual series and not just a one-game playoff to make it more fair.
