It’s the Playoffs and We’re All in Misery

I’ve experienced my nightmare Super Bowl (Pete Carroll vs. the Patriots).  Last year I feared that we might get my nightmare NBA Finals (Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant vs. the Lakers), but instead we got my ideal NBA Finals matchup that didn’t involve the Celtics (Pat Connaughton vs. Monty Williams).  Going into last night, my nightmare World Series was a possibility (Giants vs. Astros).  I watched Pete Carroll vs. the Patriots because I couldn’t imagine not watching the Super Bowl (although if that happened again or if we got Tom Brady vs. the Patriots, I think I wouldn’t watch at this point).  I didn’t watch my almost nightmare NBA Finals in 2020 (Lakers vs. Heat).  And I would not have watched the World Series if it ended up being Giants vs. Astros.  And I love baseball more than any other sport.  It would have been miserable having a World Series that I couldn’t watch.

Last night’s game wasn’t fun.  I loved the result, but it was three hours and 26 minutes of stress.  My favorite Dodger podcast likened the experience of watching playoff baseball to this line from the best Christmas movie ever made:

Sometimes you get the rare game like Dodgers scoring 11 in the first inning in Game 3 against the Braves last year or the Dodgers beating the Cubs 11-1 in Game 5 of the NLCS in 2017 to go to the World Series and it’s enjoyable, but usually it’s just stressful.  But when things end the way they did last year for the Dodgers, it’s all worth it.

I thought the Dodgers winning the World Series last year would make the next time the Dodgers get eliminated easier.  And I think it will if the Dodgers lose to the Braves or maybe the Red Sox, but it definitely would not have made losing to the Giants or Astros any easier.  I despise those two teams.  The Astros are more of a temporary thing because they don’t have that many players from 2017 left.  I’ll always despise (from a sports standpoint) Jose Altuve, George Springer, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, Yuli Gurriel, Josh Reddick, Marwin Gonzalez, Carlos Beltran, Alex Cora, and AJ Hinch, but I can’t despise the current Astros who weren’t on the 2017 team.  But the Giants are a team that I will always despise.  They took the number 3 spot on my Sports Hate Power Rankings (much of that is out of date, but the top 7 holds up pretty well).  At one point, they showed Barry Bonds on the screen at the game.  I thought he was going to inject himself with steroids to pump up the crowd.  The second biggest rival for the Dodgers is the Cardinals (none of the other NL West teams have been consistently good enough to matter).  Being eliminated by them also would have been miserable, but more because of how silly it was that the Dodgers faced the possibility of being eliminated from the postseason in their first game of the postseason.  Instead, the Dodgers have eliminated the Cardinals and the Giants and it has been awesome.

But anyway, congratulations to the Giants on finishing the season with the second most wins in Major League Baseball (the Braves, Red Sox, and Astros have no possibility of catching them) and probably the fewest losses (they are tied with the Dodgers and it’s not that likely that the Dodgers are just going to win their next eight games to finish the season).  The Giants were really good.  But they weren’t as good as the Dodgers.  Yes, the Giants were one game better in the regular season, but the Dodgers had a better run differential by a pretty significant margin (+269 to +210, which were the best run differentials in the Majors) and the Dodgers outscored them 18-10 in this series.  That series should have been the NLCS, but I’m glad it’s over.  The pitching for the Dodgers was awesome.  Mookie Betts has been awesome when the Dodgers are facing elimination or trying to finish off the World Series.  Cody Bellinger had a terrible season, but much like Game 7 against the Brewers in 2018 and Game 7 against the Braves last year, Cody Bellinger came through when it mattered most.  The Dodgers didn’t get a whole lot from the Turner brothers against the Giants.  I just don’t think you’re going to keep them down so that gives me confidence for the rest of the playoffs.

What about the check swing?  Yeah, it was probably the wrong call.  But there are a lot of things to say about that.  First of all, it wasn’t the obvious bad call that the TV angle showed.  I’ve always wondered where that camera is exactly.  Because if it’s not perpendicular to the hitter, it’s deceptive.  And then I saw this picture that you can tell is perpendicular to the hitter and it’s much closer than it seemed on TV:

I’ll give the Giants credit for the way they handled the situation.  They were obviously disappointed, but they didn’t blame the umpire for their loss.  It was the anniversary of the Steve Bartman incident and they handled it much better than the Cubs did (the Cubs blaming Bartman was absurd, they still should have won Game 6 and they could have won Game 7).  But even if it wasn’t ruled a swing, it’s not like it would have been ball 4 with the bases loaded, it would have been ball 1 with a runner on first.  Max Scherzer would have just struck out Wilmer Flores on the next pitch.  Also, if the Giants hadn’t gotten the benefit of a missed check swing call against the Dodgers in the regular season, Game 5 would have been at Dodger Stadium.  If crazy wind didn’t knock down Gavin Lux’s game-tying home run in the bottom of the ninth in Game 3, there might not have been a Game 5.  It’s all part of the game.

And maybe it was a way to rectify a 70-year-old injustice.  In 1951, the Giants were the Astros before the Astros were the Astros.  They cheated to beat the Dodgers to win the pennant.  And after the Dodgers lost two World Series against teams that were cheating (they definitely would have beaten the Astros, maybe they wouldn’t have beaten the Red Sox), it’s okay if one call goes the Dodgers’ way.

So the Dodgers are back in the NLCS for the fourth time in five years.  In more playoff format silliness, the Braves have home field advantage even though the Dodgers won 18 more games than them because the Braves won a terrible division.  But if the Dodgers make it to the World Series, they would have home field advantage against either the division-winning Astros or the wild card Red Sox.  The Dodgers should have home field advantage against everybody other than the Giants this season, but whatever.  If the Dodgers get to the World Series, there’s nobody I’d want to beat more than the Astros.  But of course, the Dodgers could lose to the Braves and I would much rather see the Braves play the Red Sox than the Astros.  If the Dodgers do beat the Braves, playing the Astros would be another series just as stressful as playing the Giants.  So I’m hoping for a rematch of the 2018 World Series.  It would be pretty cool to see Mookie Betts win MVP in the World Series against the Red Sox.

Let’s Go Dodgers!

Fixing the Playoffs

Today is the anniversary of the Brooklyn Dodgers winning Game 7 of the 1955 World Series.  If I could back in time, that’s probably number 2 on my list of days to experience.  Number 1 is the greatest day in the history of Western civilization, October 15, 1988 (Notre Dame beat Miami and the Dodgers won Game 1 of the World Series on Kirk Gibson’s home run).  The next two might be May 5, 1969, which is when the Celtics beat the Lakers on the road in Game 7 of the NBA Finals in Bill Russell’s last game and January 2, 1978 when Notre Dame won the National Championship thanks to their win over number 1 Texas in the Cotton Bowl and number 2 Oklahoma’s loss to Arkansas in the Orange Bowl.  And if I could relive being a sports fan in October-November 2020 (and no other aspects of that time), that would be right after the fall-winter of 1988-1989 on the list of things during my lifetime that I would want to experience again.

But that’s all in the past.  Now I hope that we have a great month of baseball ahead of us.  But there’s a chance that October could be ruined for me by Wednesday.  The Dodgers had a great season and tied a franchise record with 106 wins.  It was the second most wins in baseball this year.  Unfortunately, the Giants were the team that won more, with 107 wins.  So the Dodgers have to play in the Wild Card Game on Wednesday, against my second least favorite team in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals.  If they beat the Cardinals, the Dodgers will face the Giants.  I’m thinking back to what Yankees-Red Sox was like back in 2003 and 2004.  If we get Dodgers-Giants, it’s definitely different from Yankees-Red Sox back then since those Yankees-Red Sox series were in the ALCS and both the Dodgers and Giants have won the World Series recently.  But it would probably be as stressful as a first round series could be.   But also, it doesn’t make sense to have the possibility of having the 107-win Giants and the 106-win Dodgers play in the first round.  So I thought about how to fix the playoffs.

One of my favorite ideas that is completely unrealistic was to have the number of teams in the College Football Playoff be variable.  Like back in 2004, three teams deserved a shot at the National Championship.  USC, Oklahoma, and Auburn all finished undefeated (let’s assume for the sake of this blog post that USC wasn’t cheating back in 2004 and 2005 by having professional athlete Reggie Bush on their team).  USC and Oklahoma played for the National Championship and Auburn didn’t get a shot.  Texas was ranked fourth in the final BCS rankings. They lost in the regular season to Oklahoma.  They didn’t deserve a shot at the National Championship.  Three was the right number in 2004.  The next year, USC and Texas were undefeated.  Penn State was number 3 in the final BCS rankings with one loss.  If there had been a playoff that year, it would have been silly.  USC and Texas deserved to play for the National Championship and nobody else deserved a chance.

This year in baseball, the American League kind of worked out so that it was a variable number of teams based on how the season ended.  You had the Rays, Astros, and White Sox winning their divisions.  The Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, and Mariners were all competing for the Wild Card.  It could have been a three or four-way tie.  We had the possibility of having a Game 163 (or two Game 163s) and even a Game 164.  Those would have counted as regular season games officially, but in reality they just would have been another round before the Wild Card Game.  As it worked out, our current playoff format was exactly right for the American League this year.  The division winners had the three best records and you have two Wild Card teams that finished the season tied.

But the National League is a different story.  Unlike last year’s silly playoff format, we all knew what the format was going in.  So if the Dodgers lose to the Cardinals, it’s unfortunate, but at least we knew what we were getting into by not winning the division.  But that doesn’t mean that the format makes much sense or that it can’t be improved.  The Dodgers won 16 more games than the Cardinals.  But if the Cardinals beat them in one game, the Cardinals move on and the Dodgers are done.  What did we play 162 games for?  Both of the Wild Card teams have a better record than the Braves, who won a terrible NL East (the Dodgers were 17.5 games ahead of the Braves).  And if you’re the Giants, you finished with the best record in baseball.  What’s your reward for that?  You might have to play the team with the second bast record in baseball in the first round.  How does that make sense?  If we could have a variable number of teams, I think four would be the right number of the National League this year.  I would cut the Cardinals.  Yes, they were a game and a half ahead of the Braves, but it’s close enough that I’m fine with giving the Braves that reward for winning their division.  Also, the Braves had no incentive to care about finishing with a better record than the Cardinals.  If they had any incentive to do so, maybe they finish with a better record than the Cardinals.  But they were so far behind the Dodgers that they don’t deserve any advantage over the Dodgers.  I know the National League this year is very unusual (the Dodgers set the record for most wins by a second place team), but we can fix the playoff format so that it makes more sense.

So how would I fix it?  I like my variable number of teams idea, but it’s completely unrealistic (unless it happens accidentally with ties).  So here’s a realistic proposal:  I would go to six teams in the playoffs from each league (I don’t want to go past six because you’d be getting to some very mediocre teams if you go beyond that).  You would have three division winners and three wild cards.  The top two seeds in each league to to the top two division winners.  The rest of the seeds would be based entirely on record.  The Wild Card round would be a best of three at the home of team with the better seed.  And after the Wild Card round, you reseed.  So here’s what it would look like this year:

America League Byes:

1 Rays

2 Astros

American League Wild Card Round:

6 Blue Jays at 3 White Sox

5 Yankees at 4 Red Sox

National League Byes:

1 Giants

2 Brewers

National League Wild Card Round:

6 Reds at 3 Dodgers

5 Braves at 4 Cardinals

That doesn’t change much in the American League because of how this season worked out, but it would fix the National League.  What did the Braves do to deserve an advantage over the Dodgers this year?  Nothing.  The Dodgers get rewarded for having a great season by having a three-game series with the Reds instead of one game with the Cardinals.  And if they win, they play the Brewers rather than the Giants.  But the Dodgers still don’t get the reward of a bye because they didn’t win their division.  The Giants get rewarded by facing the Cardinals, Braves, or Reds in their first series rather than possibly facing the Dodgers.  Also, if baseball expands to 32 at some point (which they should do as soon as they figure out the stadium situations for the Rays and A’s), you don’t really need to change anything about this playoff format.  The only adjustment I would make for four divisions would be that division winners are only guaranteed a spot if they go over .500 (with only four teams in a division, you could have a really bad division with nobody over .500).  So it would be four division winners (as long as their all over .500) and two wild cards, but possibly three division winners and three wild cards.

Baseball isn’t the NBA or NHL.  We don’t need more than half of the teams making the playoffs.  They play 162 regular season games and those games need to matter.  I could totally imagine baseball expanding the playoffs at some point.  And I could imagine Rob Manfred coming up with something that makes much less sense than what I came up with.