MLB 2021 Season Thread

[shstpt1]

The Wild Card round should be a series, whether a best of 3 or best of 5. It's a league based around series, and for a team to have to play a singular game, when their rosters are built for series, is a little annoying to me. I get the whole, "Win your division, don't have to deal with it" mentality, but... It would also benefit the teams that did win their division if they got a few extra days off for rest. 

[DEAD!]

1 hour ago, McCall said:

Nope. Don't need half the league getting in like the NBA and NHL. Completely waters it down when you have sub-.500 teams in the playoffs, like last year. Teams have 162 games to get into the field. That's plenty to justify keeping it at 10. I'd be on board with maybe making the Wild Card a 3 game series all played at the top seed, but they do not need to keep adding teams.

If anything, I would go back to the AL and NL having two divisions with the division winners seeded 1,2, then the next three best records resulting in a 4v5 for the wild card. Under that format, you would have St Louis versus Atlanta for the Wild Card. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

3 hours ago, McCall said:

Nope. Don't need half the league getting in like the NBA and NHL. Completely waters it down when you have sub-.500 teams in the playoffs, like last year. Teams have 162 games to get into the field. That's plenty to justify keeping it at 10. I'd be on board with maybe making the Wild Card a 3 game series all played at the top seed, but they do not need to keep adding teams.

 

That's just traditionalist thinking though.

 

There were 44,000 people at T-Mobile Park over the last weekend, which is about 20,000 more than normal (and probably more than that). They could have that for a lot more games if there was an extended playoff push and an expanded playoff field. Multiple that over multiple franchises and I can't see a good reason not to expand the field outside of "we've always done it that way." And "we've always done it that way" is generally a pretty bad reason to not change in the face of a better alternative.

 

And if the idea is 162 games is enough, play fewer games. Done.

[Digby]

Some kind of Chaos Mini-Tournament like everyone was rooting for should maybe be a permanent feature. I didn't like the NBA play-in scheme all that much but maybe it would work better for MLB. Instead of top two Wild Card teams, make it "top and whomever is within 2 games" or something. We're getting the crappiest version of the one-game Wild Card thing this year, instead why not just let the Dodgers get on with their lives and give blazin' hot Seattle and Toronto a real chance? Only thing is I don't know how long you'd want to let the other teams sit.

[Sport]

Between the old format with 3 division champions and a single wildcard, the current format, and an 8 team Stanley Cup style playoff, this current format is the worst system. Yes teams have 162 games to get into the field, but the Dodgers bested the Cardinals by 16 more games during that 162 game season and are going to be eliminated thanks to the randomness of a one game playoff. That's more crazy than letting the A's try to knock off the Rays in a best of 5. 

 

The playoffs would look like this if you went full Stanley Cup:

Rays - A's

Red Sox - Yankees

Astros - Mariners

White Sox - Blue Jays

 

Giants - Padres*

Cardinals - Phillies

Dodgers - Reds

Brewers - Braves

 

*The biggest problem baseball has right now is too many teams not trying their hardest to win. The Padres are under 500, but every team in this field went out and actually tried to get better this offseason. Almost every team not listed didn't. We had two teams go 52-110 this season! That should worry everyone. If you open the gates more teams will do the math and figure it's worth it to shoot for playoff spots and fewer teams will go through 5-10 year periods of deliberate noncompeting. 

 

[SFGiants58]

The traditionalists are a detriment to the sport. The “watering it down,” “the regular season doesn’t matter,” and “too much like the NBA and NHL” arguments are just terrible. Like DG said, there are zero good reasons not to expand the playoffs and allow more teams a chance. An overly-restrictive playoff system results in messes like the current AL East. More playoff spots produces far less tanking, also.

[Digby]

The one-game playoff system is too much a crapshoot for this sport, and the MLB playoffs are delightfully breezy compared to the neverending slogs of the NBA and NHL. Those are perfectly valid arguments. 

 

I don't know what the solution is, there are a lot of issues in MLB right now, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't come down to a "traditionalist or not" dichotomy.

[speedy]

18 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

The traditionalists are a detriment to the sport. The “watering it down,” “the regular season doesn’t matter,” and “too much like the NBA and NHL” arguments are just terrible. Like DG said, there are zero good reasons not to expand the playoffs and allow more teams a chance. An overly-restrictive playoff system results in messes like the current AL East. More playoff spots produces far less tanking, also.

 

The only real problem I had with yesterday is interleague play. You have the Mariners, Yankees, and Blue Jays all playing with a DH and under AL rules - while the Red Sox were in an NL park playing without their DH. It didn't matter at the end, but it just seems a bit weird to be playing for an AL playoff spot while playing under NL rules. Save the interleague for the summer.

[SFGiants58]

1 minute ago, Digby said:

The one-game playoff system is too much a crapshoot for this sport, and the MLB playoffs are delightfully breezy compared to the neverending slogs of the NBA and NHL. Those are perfectly valid arguments. 

Maybe that wasn’t entirely fair on my part. I don’t like the one-game playoff system and I like the relatively shorter length, but the playoff system is far too restrictive and disincentives teams to be run with any degree of competency (e.g., constant messes like in Pittsburgh and Baltimore). One can have a shorter length with 1-8 (3/5/7-game series and, per baseball custom, fewer rest days).
 

A 1-8 system will get more markets in and get more people invested. 

[Digby]

Alright here's what I'm thinking. Three Wild Card spots per league. Low WC team plays low division winner, other two WC teams play each other. Best of 3, better record hosts all 3 games.

 

Top two division winners get a bye to the Division Series, but hopefully a four-day break is the right amount to be more a restorative reward and not a momentum-breaker.

 

Feels like a decent compromise to get more teams in, giving proper advantage to the best teams, keeping baseball's relative quirks, not dragging out the process too much, and axing the single-game nonsense.

[Sport]

2 minutes ago, speedy said:

 

The only real problem I had with yesterday is interleague play. You have the Mariners, Yankees, and Blue Jays all playing with a DH and under AL rules - while the Red Sox were in an NL park playing without their DH. It didn't matter at the end, but it just seems a bit weird to be playing for an AL playoff spot while playing under NL rules. Save the interleague for the summer.

 

There has to be one interleague series happening at any one time thanks to having an odd number of teams in each league. The rule discrepancies thing will hopefully be a thing of the past next season if the NL finally goes to the DH. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

The NBA used to do 1-8 with a best-of-three first round. Seems like a good-enough idea for baseball without overcomplicating things.

 

Also, having so few playoff spots absolutely provides cover for certain teams to not compete. The Mariners traded their best reliever to Houston in the middle of the season! With expanded playoffs, that doesn't happen and teams don't decide to give up in July because of math.

[Sport]

I totally understand the fear that a 1-8 format would destroy the classic baseball pennant race - you shift the races from the top to the middle and the NL West race between the Dodgers- Giants actually mattered this year because one of them was going to have to face down a win or go home elimination game. In the original wildcard format that race between those two teams would've been pointless so the Wildcard game did its job, but at what cost? I'm sure there's ways to solve for X here. If you go to 1-8 format you could build in rules like the 6 division winners get total homefield advantage in the first round best of 5, or they get to use a more expanded lineup, or they get to hide a landmine somewhere on the field. IDK. 

[AgentColon2]

I would totally be down for a Round Robin double elimination wildcard tourney for the top four non-division winners. 
 

Hell, put it in a neutral site too. I don’t care. The eventual winner faces the top seeded team.

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

That's just traditionalist thinking though.

 

There were 44,000 people at T-Mobile Park over the last weekend, which is about 20,000 more than normal (and probably more than that). They could have that for a lot more games if there was an extended playoff push and an expanded playoff field. Multiple that over multiple franchises and I can't see a good reason not to expand the field outside of "we've always done it that way." And "we've always done it that way" is generally a pretty bad reason to not change in the face of a better alternative.

 

And if the idea is 162 games is enough, play fewer games. Done.

 

162 games is ridiculous.  154 and slightly expanded playoffs is fine.  I don't think more than half of a league should get in though, so 8 per league would be off the table for me.  While the single WC game is dumb, adding that 5th team seems to have done the trick as far as keeping folks interested - and that's more important than I think some people recognize.  Baseball sucks when your team is out of it by June, but even if it's engineered, keeping most of the teams in meaningful games into September is better for the sport.

 

 

3 hours ago, OnWis97 said:

The 16-win difference between the Cardinals and Dodgers must be the most unjust pairing we’ve had in the short history of this format.  To be honest, I didn’t pay a ton of attention this weekend even with the Twins avoiding 90 losses. But I see that the Dodgers lost the division by one game so I’m not sure whether they have to trot out a fifth starter or something in their playoff. But if so it’s a perfect illustration of why this format is nonsense.

 

And it’s the Cardinals. So that makes it even more frustrating because we know they are going to win.

 

If the Dodgers didn't want to be in this situation then they should have just won their division.  No reason they shouldn't have known that 108 wins would have done it. /sarcasm.

 

The Cardinals have a tremendous advantage by having known their fate for a week or more, and being able to set up.  It's ridiculous that the Dodgers were competing to the very end but the Cardinals just got to coast, despite a far inferior record.

 

The only option for the Dodgers would be to concede the division and line up to have their ace go in the WC game.  I have no idea if that's just how it worked out anyway, but if so, it's just luck.

 

 

[ManillaToad]

1 hour ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

The NBA used to do 1-8 with a best-of-three first round. Seems like a good-enough idea for baseball without overcomplicating things.

 

Nothing says fair like a team that won 107 in a 162-game marathon having to play a best of 3 against a team under .500

[DG_ThenNowForever]

17 minutes ago, ManillaToad said:

 

Nothing says fair like a team that won 107 in a 162-game marathon having to play a best of 3 against a team under .500

 

Isn't that better than a one and done?

 

Also, people forget that professional sports are fundamentally stupid. By that I mean we spent a ton of money and time rooting for gifted people playing games.

 

Therefore they should be more fun and not less.

[tigerslionspistonshabs]

Playoff predictions?

 

AL WC Game- Yankees over Red Sox

 

ALDS

Yankees over Rays

Astros over White Sox

 

ALCS- Yankees over Astros

 

 

AL Wild Card Game- Cardinals over Dodgers

 

NLDS

Giants over Cardinals

Braves over Brewers

 

ALCS- Giants over Braves

 

World Series- Yankees over Giants

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ManillaToad]

1 hour ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

Isn't that better than a one and done?

 

Also, people forget that professional sports are fundamentally stupid. By that I mean we spent a ton of money and time rooting for gifted people playing games.

 

Therefore they should be more fun and not less.

 

Is it better than an even worse hypothetical postseason structure? Yes. It's also worse than the best team in the majors fairly being given a best-of-5 series after they outpaced everyone in the regular season. Is dropping game 3 because of a blown umpire call or a weird bounce, against a team that sucked for over half the season, fun for fans of the team that put together one of its best regular seasons in franchise history?

[dont care]

6 hours ago, shstpt1 said:

The Wild Card round should be a series, whether a best of 3 or best of 5. It's a league based around series, and for a team to have to play a singular game, when their rosters are built for series, is a little annoying to me. I get the whole, "Win your division, don't have to deal with it" mentality, but... It would also benefit the teams that did win their division if they got a few extra days off for rest. 

Actually historically more days off is less beneficial to a team because it throws off hitters rhythm.