Why-ld Card?

[TheOldRoman]

Complaining about sports being arbitrary doesn't work. It's all arbitrary. It's a game we made up. Why 5 and not 10? Because 10's too many. Artificial excitement? What does that mean? IT'S ALL ARTIFICIAL. Baseball is not an organic crop that sprouted up from the Earth. It is a creation of man, and is thus artificial.

Well it's arbitrary by baseball standards. For over 120 years, since the dawn of the professional game, you had to be a champion in the regular season to potentially be crowned the champion. Then some numnuts realized they didn't have large enough mansions and made it so you only have to be good, not great for 6 months and then be over .500 in one month and...bam! "World Champions".

No sport should have it where the second best team, after a freaking marathon season, could potentially miss the playoffs just because they were unlucky enough to be in the same division as the best team. Baseball needs to have fewer playoff spots than other sports to preserve the regular season, but four playoff teams out of 30 would be just silly. The 1993 Giants missed the playoffs when winning 103 games. That's a great story. The 85 win Twins riding homefield advantage to a game 7 championship win after winning the playoff spot from the Island of the Misfit Toys? Not so great.

Tough luck if you were second best, this is (or was) a big boy's league, whoever wins wins. The Giants missing with 103 wins is a great story because it just shows the enormous battle there used to be in the regular season, intense to the end, unlike now where they'd both be comfortably in a playoff spot. And yeah you'll have team like the 87 Twins, which is why I'd rather they abandon divisions altogether, but they at least did win something, their division, even if it was less impressive due to it being an off-year within it. Heck, there could be years where one League is way off compared to another, but there should still be a World Series to decide a pennant winner.

A team "winning something" is largely coincidental. If you have a 103 win team who finishes one game back of the best team in baseball, they shouldn't be punished just for being unlucky. A 85 win Twins or an 83 win Cardinals team were lucky to be in a crappy division, otherwise they wouldn't be there to begin with, but sometimes divisions suck in a given year. So it's silly to say "you have no claim to a championship because you couldn't win your division" when a hypothetical team that won TWENTY fewer games would have a claim on the basis of having won a trash-heap division.

You bemoan teams going .500 and riding one hot month to a championship, but the original division format gave such teams a greater chance of winning it all. Here are the win totals for all wildcard winners from 96-11: 90, 88, 92, 96, 90, 92, 97, 94, 94, 91, 93, 102, 95, 99, 91, 95, 92, 98, 89, 95, 88, 95, 90, 94, 90, 95, 92, 95, 91, 95, 90, 91. Out of 32 teams, three won fewer than 90 games, while five won more than 95. Weak teams have won weak divisions in that span, but nobody got the wildcard by being mediocre. You can't say the 2006 Cardinals had a right to be there, but the 2001 A's should have been told to piss up a rope because the Mariners set the all-time AL record for wins.

[Phils Phan]

Complaining about sports being arbitrary doesn't work. It's all arbitrary. It's a game we made up. Why 5 and not 10? Because 10's too many. Artificial excitement? What does that mean? IT'S ALL ARTIFICIAL. Baseball is not an organic crop that sprouted up from the Earth. It is a creation of man, and is thus artificial.

Well it's arbitrary by baseball standards. For over 120 years, since the dawn of the professional game, you had to be a champion in the regular season to potentially be crowned the champion. Then some numnuts realized they didn't have large enough mansions and made it so you only have to be good, not great for 6 months and then be over .500 in one month and...bam! "World Champions".

No sport should have it where the second best team, after a freaking marathon season, could potentially miss the playoffs just because they were unlucky enough to be in the same division as the best team. Baseball needs to have fewer playoff spots than other sports to preserve the regular season, but four playoff teams out of 30 would be just silly. The 1993 Giants missed the playoffs when winning 103 games. That's a great story. The 85 win Twins riding homefield advantage to a game 7 championship win after winning the playoff spot from the Island of the Misfit Toys? Not so great.

Tough luck if you were second best, this is (or was) a big boy's league, whoever wins wins. The Giants missing with 103 wins is a great story because it just shows the enormous battle there used to be in the regular season, intense to the end, unlike now where they'd both be comfortably in a playoff spot. And yeah you'll have team like the 87 Twins, which is why I'd rather they abandon divisions altogether, but they at least did win something, their division, even if it was less impressive due to it being an off-year within it. Heck, there could be years where one League is way off compared to another, but there should still be a World Series to decide a pennant winner.

A team "winning something" is largely coincidental in this place. If you have a 103 win team who finishes one game back of the best team in baseball, they shouldn't be punished just for being unlucky. A 85 win Twins or an 83 win Cardinals team were lucky to be in a crappy division, otherwise they wouldn't be there to begin with, but sometimes divisions suck in a given year. So it's silly to say "you have no claim to a championship because you couldn't win your division" when a hypothetical team that won TWENTY fewer games would have a claim on the basis of having won a trash-heap division.

You bemoan teams going .500 and riding one hot month to a championship, but the original division format gave such teams a greater chance of winning it all. Here are the win totals for all wildcard winners from 96-11: 90, 88, 92, 96, 90, 92, 97, 94, 94, 91, 93, 102, 95, 99, 91, 95, 92, 98, 89, 95, 88, 95, 90, 94, 90, 95, 92, 95, 91, 95, 90, 91. Out of 32 teams, three won fewer than 90 games, while five won more than 95. Weak teams have won weak divisions in that span, but nobody got the wildcard by being mediocre.

That's why it's better to just have one per League, but I'd rather a regular season champion win it all even if it's "conditional"

The big problems are that a team shouldn't win a World Series when they only finished fifth in the regular season, and divisional races have been ruined by these Wild Card cushions.

[Sport]

My biggest problem with the current setup is that teams are competing for playoff spots while playing very different schedules. Here's how I'd solve it.

reel line mint:

Move the Astros back to the NL, go back to 4 divisions,

NL East: Mets, Braves, Nationals, Marlins, Phillies, Pirates, Reds, Brewers

NL West: Cardinals, Cubs, Astros, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Padres, Giants

AL East: Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays, Orioles, Rays, Indians, Tigers

AL West: Twins, Rangers, A’s, Mariners, Angels, Royals, White Sox

Play a balanced schedule within each league. Interleague can still exist, but everyone plays the same teams. That means some years you won’t play your “rival”, but those match ups have gotten stale anyway. If the Reds only play the Indians every other year, for example, the novelty will return.

The top two teams in each division make the playoffs and play a best of 7 division championship series to determine the division champion. The best team in the division gets the last 5 home games in the 7 game series to preserve the prestige of winning your division in the regular season.

If you finish third in your division, but you have a better record than a team in the other division, then sorry, shouldn’t have finished third.

If I were king of baseball this is how it would’ve always been starting in 1994 1995

[OnWis97]

My biggest problem with the current setup is that teams are competing for playoff spots while playing very different schedules. Here's how I'd solve it.

reel line mint:

Move the Astros back to the NL, go back to 4 divisions,

NL East: Mets, Braves, Nationals, Marlins, Phillies, Pirates, Reds, Brewers

NL West: Cardinals, Cubs, Astros, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Padres, Giants

AL East: Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays, Orioles, Rays, Indians, Tigers

AL West: Twins, Rangers, A’s, Mariners, Angels, Royals, White Sox

Play a balanced schedule within each league. Interleague can still exist, but everyone plays the same teams. That means some years you won’t play your “rival”, but those match ups have gotten stale anyway. If the Reds only play the Indians every other year, for example, the novelty will return.

The top two teams in each division make the playoffs and play a best of 7 division championship series to determine the division champion. The best team in the division gets the last 5 home games in the 7 game series to preserve the prestige of winning your division in the regular season.

If you finish third in your division, but you have a better record than a team in the other division, then sorry, shouldn’t have finished third.

If I were king of baseball this is how it would’ve always been starting in 1994 1995

I like most of this. Particularly the balancing of the schedule, which makes races (be they wild card or division) more true.

And, yes, drop the phony interleague rivalry. Mets/Yankees is not special anymore. Treat it like the NFL with a rotation.

[TheOldRoman]

That's why it's better to just have one per League, but I'd rather a regular season champion win it all even if it's "conditional"

The big problems are that a team shouldn't win a World Series when they only finished fifth in the regular season, and divisional races have been ruined by these Wild Card cushions.

My point is, by eliminating the wildcards, you would actually increase the chances of a worse team winning the title after catching fire in the playoffs. That said, the line should be drawn at one WC per league. I can accept letting in the Angels because they had a 100 win team in their division, but I'm not willing to extend that courtesy to a second team, especially if it finished in third place.

If you think it's in the best interest of attendance, viewership and league interest as a whole that you would have told the rest of the 1984 or 2001 AL to get bent and play out the string on Memorial Day, I don't know what to tell you. The regular season is important, but not that important.

Divisional races aren't as important as in the past, but they aren't ruined. Since the advent of the wildcard, teams are still playing down to the wire because the WC winner almost always has a better record than one of the division winners. We've had three divisional tiebreaker games in the WC era, where one of the teams would go home because they had a worse record than the wildcard. Teams rarely ever had the option of resting and effectively ceding the division crown because they'd get the wildcard anyway, and when they DID, they didn't give up because they wanted the home-field advantage. And if Bud was really so concerned that it wasn't fair to division winners that WC teams won so much, then the solution was to give them no home games in the LDS, not add a second WC to tire them out. But it's understood that the "make them waste their ace in the WC game" reasoning bull, and it was all about getting more revenue.

[dbadefense1990]

Let me try defending the wildcards, despite their un-sexiness.

There have been 46 teams who've been eligible for baseball's postseason since the inclusion of wildcards into the playoffs in 1995. Of these 46, only 10 of them (22%) have reached the World Series:

1997 Florida Marlins

2000 New York Mets

2002 Anaheim Angels

2002 San Francisco Giants

2003 Florida Marlins

2004 Boston Red Sox

2005 Houston Astros

2006 Detroit Tigers

2007 Colorado Rockies

2011 St. Louis Cardinals

Of these 10, five have actually won the Series. Three of the five have won it despite having an inferior record against their opponent (all three of these team's opponents won their division):

2003 Florida Marlins

2004 Boston Red Sox

2011 St. Louis Cardinals

But since there have been pre-wildcard World Series where the inferior team opens at home, let's rid ourselves with the "HFA determined at the All-Star Game" crap and go back to when HFA was rotated yearly between the leagues.

From 1903 to 1993, the NL had it in even years and the AL in odd ones. Thanks to the 1994 strike, the order was reversed from 1995-on, in that the AL had it in even years and the NL in odd ones. This was until 2003, when HFA was awarded at the All-Star Game, so for practicality of this post, let's use the 1995-2002 rotation to see who would have had HFA involving wildcards with inferior records against their opponent:

2003: Marlins over Yankees

Rotate: Marlins

Actual: Yankees

2004: Red Sox over Cardinals

Rotate: Red Sox

Actual: Red Sox

2011: Cardinals over Rangers

Rotate: Cardinals

Actual: Cardinals

It's all eventually a moot point. The point is that, more than not, wildcard teams deserve more slack than what their reputation actually is. I've heard more claims of the 2002 Angels and 2004 Red Sox as illegitimate champions, despite the 1987 Twins and 2006 Cardinals existing because the latter two won divisions. The Marlins are labeled as "baseball's ultimate wildcard gamers," yet, they had a better regular-season record in 1997 against the Indians, and beat the Yankees in 2003 despite having an inferior record and starting the series on the road. More often than not, wildcard teams were saddled with being in a monster division at their time, and the system compensated for that. Likewise, in this wildcard era, there have been joke teams who've steered clear of being ridiculed, just for winning divisions in laughable years.

[dbadefense1990]

post deleted

[Phils Phan]

Let me try defending the wildcards, despite their un-sexiness.

There have been 46 teams who've been eligible for baseball's postseason since the inclusion of wildcards into the playoffs in 1995. Of these 46, only 10 of them (22%) have reached the World Series:

1997 Florida Marlins

2000 New York Mets

2002 Anaheim Angels

2002 San Francisco Giants

2003 Florida Marlins

2004 Boston Red Sox

2005 Houston Astros

2006 Detroit Tigers

2007 Colorado Rockies

2011 St. Louis Cardinals

Of these 10, five have actually won the Series. Three of the five have won it despite having an inferior record against their opponent (all three of these team's opponents won their division):

2003 Florida Marlins

2004 Boston Red Sox

2011 St. Louis Cardinals

But since there have been pre-wildcard World Series where the inferior team opens at home, let's rid ourselves with the "HFA determined at the All-Star Game" crap and go back to when HFA was rotated yearly between the leagues.

From 1903 to 1993, the NL had it in even years and the AL in odd ones. Thanks to the 1994 strike, the order was reversed from 1995-on, in that the AL had it in even years and the NL in odd ones. This was until 2003, when HFA was awarded at the All-Star Game, so for practicality of this post, let's use the 1995-2002 rotation to see who would have had HFA involving wildcards with inferior records against their opponent:

2003: Marlins over Yankees

Rotate: Marlins

Actual: Yankees

2004: Red Sox over Cardinals

Rotate: Red Sox

Actual: Red Sox

2011: Cardinals over Rangers

Rotate: Cardinals

Actual: Cardinals

It's all eventually a moot point. The point is that, more than not, wildcard teams deserve more slack than what their reputation actually is. I've heard more claims of the 2002 Angels and 2004 Red Sox as illegitimate champions, despite the 1987 Twins and 2006 Cardinals existing because the latter two won divisions. The Marlins are labeled as "baseball's ultimate wildcard gamers," yet, they had a better regular-season record in 1997 against the Indians, and beat the Yankees in 2003 despite having an inferior record and starting the series on the road. More often than not, wildcard teams were saddled with being in a monster division at their time, and the system compensated for that. Likewise, in this wildcard era, there have been joke teams who've steered clear of being ridiculed, just for winning divisions in laughable years.

At the same time some low win Division winners have only had that record because the division was very competitive without a clear cut team separating themselves from the pack. And like I've said, I don't care that the Marlins did well in a six game series, I care more about the overall record which, in total, deem them as far from the best. And I also don't care if a team does great and misses out because of a better team, boo hoo, you weren't as good as them, so they get to go on. Yes with the division format weaker teams might get a chance to win as well, but they were the very best of something, second to no one in their division. And races were truly epic, as there were no cushions, just a year long battle for the crown. That's why back then winning your division was a huge deal, now no one remembers who won in the regular season, just the October bonus round.

[rams80]

Yes, money, but there's also excitement. It keeps more fans involved and excited right up to the end of the season, even after division titles are wrapped up. Plus it rewards good teams who might happen to be in a tough division. Is it fair that a hypothetical 95-win team that's not a division champion misses the playoffs while an 85-win team that is the best of a weak division does?

There's also alignment. As soon as MLB went to three divisions per league, they pretty much had to add a wild card team. The second wild card seems a little pointless, because like the A's this year, you play 162 games only to play one more, but it's not that bad.

Artificial excitement. Why stop at 5? Why not 10? Then everyone would be excited!

And is it fair that one team can win 95 games and another only win 85 yet that 85 win team merely has to win one game and then they're at the same stage.

They didn't have to realign, and even if they had to a bye for the best record in the League and a quick best of 3 between the other two would be far superior.

Every league has non-division champions. Why should baseball be different? Whoever wins the championship is the champion. It doesn't matter where you are once you're in the playoffs.

Well that's not counting leagues that care about tradition like the EPL. And it sucks in every sport, but in baseball it's especially worse since they already play 162 GAMES. And no that's not remotely fair, why should one month be all that really matters when the other team was so much better the other 6?

Because the economics of baseball are so ed up that if we went with tradition and kept the single table, the Yankees would have won probably 12 of the last 15 AL pennants. Which is boring and tends to kill fan interest and eventually markets. Playoffs induce parity in baseball, which is, quite frankly, healthy for the entire league.

[Phils Phan]

Yes, money, but there's also excitement. It keeps more fans involved and excited right up to the end of the season, even after division titles are wrapped up. Plus it rewards good teams who might happen to be in a tough division. Is it fair that a hypothetical 95-win team that's not a division champion misses the playoffs while an 85-win team that is the best of a weak division does? There's also alignment. As soon as MLB went to three divisions per league, they pretty much had to add a wild card team. The second wild card seems a little pointless, because like the A's this year, you play 162 games only to play one more, but it's not that bad.

Artificial excitement. Why stop at 5? Why not 10? Then everyone would be excited!And is it fair that one team can win 95 games and another only win 85 yet that 85 win team merely has to win one game and then they're at the same stage.They didn't have to realign, and even if they had to a bye for the best record in the League and a quick best of 3 between the other two would be far superior.

Every league has non-division champions. Why should baseball be different? Whoever wins the championship is the champion. It doesn't matter where you are once you're in the playoffs.

Well that's not counting leagues that care about tradition like the EPL. And it sucks in every sport, but in baseball it's especially worse since they already play 162 GAMES. And no that's not remotely fair, why should one month be all that really matters when the other team was so much better the other 6?

Because the economics of baseball are so ed up that if we went with tradition and kept the single table, the Yankees would have won probably 12 of the last 15 AL pennants. Which is boring and tends to kill fan interest and eventually markets. Playoffs induce parity in baseball, which is, quite frankly, healthy for the entire league.

Actually even including 2002 (which isn't a given since the Yankees were only 0.5 games up of the AL record lead with 161 games played) they'd have won less than half of the pennants in the last 15 years, and if parity is so crucial than even a salary cap (God forbid) would be better than the Wild Card.

[rams80]

Yes, money, but there's also excitement. It keeps more fans involved and excited right up to the end of the season, even after division titles are wrapped up. Plus it rewards good teams who might happen to be in a tough division. Is it fair that a hypothetical 95-win team that's not a division champion misses the playoffs while an 85-win team that is the best of a weak division does? There's also alignment. As soon as MLB went to three divisions per league, they pretty much had to add a wild card team. The second wild card seems a little pointless, because like the A's this year, you play 162 games only to play one more, but it's not that bad.

Artificial excitement. Why stop at 5? Why not 10? Then everyone would be excited!And is it fair that one team can win 95 games and another only win 85 yet that 85 win team merely has to win one game and then they're at the same stage.They didn't have to realign, and even if they had to a bye for the best record in the League and a quick best of 3 between the other two would be far superior.

Every league has non-division champions. Why should baseball be different? Whoever wins the championship is the champion. It doesn't matter where you are once you're in the playoffs.

Well that's not counting leagues that care about tradition like the EPL. And it sucks in every sport, but in baseball it's especially worse since they already play 162 GAMES. And no that's not remotely fair, why should one month be all that really matters when the other team was so much better the other 6?

Because the economics of baseball are so ed up that if we went with tradition and kept the single table, the Yankees would have won probably 12 of the last 15 AL pennants. Which is boring and tends to kill fan interest and eventually markets. Playoffs induce parity in baseball, which is, quite frankly, healthy for the entire league.

Actually even including 2002 (which isn't a given since the Yankees were only 0.5 games up of the AL record lead with 161 games played) they'd have won less than half of the pennants in the last 15 years, and if parity is so crucial than even a salary cap (God forbid) would be better than the Wild Card.

If you honestly don't think the Yankees would have basically bought there way to better regular season success if it was necessary, you have little grasp of how MLB actually functions. They expanded playoffs mean it is less critical for the Yankees to have such a dominant regular season.

[Mac the Knife]

I don't have a problem with Wild Cards in baseball (or any sport), but I wouldn't mind seeing the total number of postseason qualifiers modified in each...

In baseball...

Have 3 division champs and 3 wild cards per league. The wild cards and the worst of the division champs go to sudden-death, lose and go home games. If they survive those, they're then paired up in the NLDS/ALDS against the top two division champions... but with only Game 1 of each series played at the Wild Card winner's home. They finally incentivized winning a division with the addition of the second wild card, now add incentive to finish with the best or second-best record in the league.

In football...

Add two more qualifiers, then eliminate wild card distinctions between conferences, seeding teams league-wide from #1 through #14. Top two teams get byes while everyone else has to duke it out from the first round. Also opens up possibilities of an intra-conference or potentially even intra-divisional Super Bowl. Think Bears-Packers, Browns-Steelers or Cowboys-Redskins wouldn't draw a rating?

In basketball...

Return the number of overall qualifiers to 12, going back to the format it had prior to the current one. Make all series but the finals best of fives.

[Kramerica Industries]

Look, here's my most compromised idea. I'd rather go back to having two playoff teams per league, but we're never going to reduce the playoff field.

1) Scrap divisions and balance the schedules. Whether you have a 16-team AL (+ Milwaukee) or 16-team NL (+ Houston), I couldn't really care.

2) Scrap interleague. It's old hat seeing the AL prove it's better every single year, anyway.

3) Top four teams in each league go to the playoffs.

4) Make the Division Series round a best-of-7.

Somehow, the idea got mixed along the way that it is the Wild Card team that is the real poison and affront on baseball, and it is one of the most parroted (and wrong) arguments that exist. I haven't done the research on the NL, but I have on the AL, since 1996 and through to 2011, ~75% of the time, the Wild Card recipient had a better record than at least one of the division winning teams. Only once did the AL Wild Card team fail to win 90 games ('96 Orioles). Furthermore, answer me this - which teams are the bigger affront on the MLB playoff system?

A. The 2001 Oakland A's (102-60), 2002 Anaheim Angels (99-63), and 2004 Boston Red Sox (98-64)

OR

B. The 2005 San Diego Padres (82-80), 2006 St. Louis Cardinals (83-78), and 2007 Chicago Cubs (85-77)

Here's a hint - one of those choices are Wild Card recipients. The other are division winners. (Also, the good group is AL teams and the bad group is NL teams.)

Old Roman is on the same wavelength and already made many of the same arguments so I've been beaten to the punch here, but I feel like all of the above still needed to be said. More than ever, the MLB playoff structure has come to be more about entertainment and randomness than actually maintaining the integrity of trying to find the best team to win the championship. Maybe the Braves playing the Indians and Yankees in the World Series every year would've gotten boring to people who weren't fans of those teams, but at least it would've still been an MLB in search of trying to find the best teams to win the title. Not teams like the g-ddamn 2006 St. Louis Cardinals or the 2000 New York Yankees and their piss-crappy records. The affront reaches its peak when there are teams who miss the playoffs with better records than a team in their own league who went on to win the World Series. I don't see how that can logically be argued.

[The_Admiral]

More than ever, the MLB playoff structure has come to be more about entertainment and randomness than actually maintaining the integrity of trying to find the best team to win the championship.

I'm with you to a large extent but you're walking around the fact that MLB is in the entertainment business.

[Phils Phan]

Look, here's my most compromised idea. I'd rather go back to having two playoff teams per league, but we're never going to reduce the playoff field.

1) Scrap divisions and balance the schedules. Whether you have a 16-team AL (+ Milwaukee) or 16-team NL (+ Houston), I couldn't really care.

2) Scrap interleague. It's old hat seeing the AL prove it's better every single year, anyway.

3) Top four teams in each league go to the playoffs.

4) Make the Division Series round a best-of-7.

Somehow, the idea got mixed along the way that it is the Wild Card team that is the real poison and affront on baseball, and it is one of the most parroted (and wrong) arguments that exist. I haven't done the research on the NL, but I have on the AL, since 1996 and through to 2011, ~75% of the time, the Wild Card recipient had a better record than at least one of the division winning teams. Only once did the AL Wild Card team fail to win 90 games ('96 Orioles). Furthermore, answer me this - which teams are the bigger affront on the MLB playoff system?

A. The 2001 Oakland A's (102-60), 2002 Anaheim Angels (99-63), and 2004 Boston Red Sox (98-64)

OR

B. The 2005 San Diego Padres (82-80), 2006 St. Louis Cardinals (83-78), and 2007 Chicago Cubs (85-77)

Here's a hint - one of those choices are Wild Card recipients. The other are division winners. (Also, the good group is AL teams and the bad group is NL teams.)

Old Roman is on the same wavelength and already made many of the same arguments so I've been beaten to the punch here, but I feel like all of the above still needed to be said. More than ever, the MLB playoff structure has come to be more about entertainment and randomness than actually maintaining the integrity of trying to find the best team to win the championship. Maybe the Braves playing the Indians and Yankees in the World Series every year would've gotten boring to people who weren't fans of those teams, but at least it would've still been an MLB in search of trying to find the best teams to win the title. Not teams like the g-ddamn 2006 St. Louis Cardinals or the 2000 New York Yankees and their piss-crappy records. The affront reaches its peak when there are teams who miss the playoffs with better records than a team in their own league who went on to win the World Series. I don't see how that can logically be argued.

I think a league that plays baseball the right way is the best, not some league that exploits a dumb gimmick rule to win.

Also BOTH AL Wild Cards had less than 90 wins this year.

At least the mediocre division winners were the best of something, the Wild Card teams straight up weren't as good as someone period. They don't deserve to be crowned World Champions if they couldn't best even their own division in 162 games.