Gamblor and His Neon Claws

Baseball is back.  Tonight the Dodgers are on Apple TV+.  It’s not even April and I’m already mad about Major League Baseball making baseball difficult to watch.  But this post is going to be mostly about another issue that sports need to deal with.  I’m not optimistic that they’re going to deal with it.

The biggest story in baseball is the Shohei Ohtani interpreter gambling situation.  This reminds me of the Manti Te’o situation 11 years ago.  Immediately there were people who wanted to jump to the worst possible conclusion.  I am totally fine saying that if Shohei Ohtani bet on baseball, then he should get the Pete Rose treatment.  I seriously doubt he was betting on baseball.  There hasn’t even been any word about his interpreter betting on baseball.  Obviously I’m rooting for everything to get sorted out as quickly as possible and for Ohtani to be cleared of any wrongdoing.  I suspect it will take a while to get everything sorted out.  And like I said, if there’s evidence that he was gambling on baseball, that should be the end of his baseball career.  As long as he wasn’t gambling on baseball, I doubt he’s going to be in any real baseball trouble even if he’s not totally innocent in this situation.  There might be some legal issues, but I would guess that if he broke any laws, he could probably testify against people and he would be fine.

It is not surprising that the biggest story in baseball involves gambling.  Recently, we’ve had NFL players suspended for gambling, a Temple basketball gambling scandal, and a Jontay Porter gambling scandal in the NBA.  There might be other stories that I missed.  Sports have embraced gambling and that is a huge mistake.  If Pete Rose is banned from baseball (and he should be), then sports should not be embracing gambling.  They used to not have teams in Las Vegas.  If the A’s do move to Las Vegas and the NBA expands with a team in Las Vegas, all four professional sports will have a team in Las Vegas.  I know gambling laws have changed in many places, but no other city with professional sports teams was built on gambling.  Gambling ads are everywhere.  You can’t watch professional sports without seeing them.  I listen to a lot of podcasts and gambling ads are everywhere.  There are some podcasts that I won’t listen to in the car because I want to make sure I can skip the ads as quickly as possible (not just gambling ads, but I definitely do want to skip those).  How can anybody be surprised that we have these gambling scandals when sports have embraced gambling the way they have?

I’m not totally against gambling.  If people want to gamble responsibly and make friendly wagers, that’s fine.  If people want to be involved in some pools for the Super Bowl or the NCAA Tournament, have fun.  If two random Dodger fans have a podcast and they want to have gambling ads, then go right ahead.  I’m not against those things, but I am against casinos and FanDuel and Draft Kings and stuff like that.  Those things are all built on people not gambling responsibly.  If a podcast has any official connection to a team or league, they shouldn’t have gambling ads.  There shouldn’t be gambling ads in stadiums and arenas and on TV broadcasts of sporting events.

How likely is any of this to get fixed?  It probably won’t get fixed.  It will probably just get worse.  I am all for making money, but people shouldn’t make money by making things worse.  College sports are being destroyed by bad decisions being made because of money.  The murder of the Pac 12 by the Big 10 and the expanded college football playoff are the best examples of this.  The SEC commissioner wants to destroy the NCAA Tournament, the only thing that is universally loved in college sports.  It obviously shouldn’t happen, but I’m expecting it to happen at some point because that’s the direction college sports have been moving in.  So they absolutely get the influence of gambling out of sports, but I don’t expect that they will.

Speaking of making sports worse for more money, I have a solution to another problem created because they made something worse for more money.  The baseball playoffs have too many teams.  We’ve had the two best teams in the NL not make it to the NLCS in back to back years.  I already covered this in October, but I came up with another idea.  Baseball should use the NBA’s play in tournament format.  The 3 and 4 seeds play each other in one game.  The winner plays the 2 seed.  The loser plays the winner of the 5 vs. 6 game.  And the winner of that game plays the 1 seed.  I can’t imagine them doing that because they won’t want to use the same format as the NBA and it would also reduce the number of games in that round (3 games per league instead of 4-6).  But it would make the regular season more important.  Finishing third or fourth is definitely better than finishing fifth or sixth (two games to win one instead of needing to win both games).  And it would reduce the amount of time that the 1 and 2 seeds have to not play baseball while they wait for their opponent.

It’s the spring (well, I had my first Summer Ale yesterday for Opening Day, so maybe it’s summer already) so I’ll finish by updating my sports villain power rankings (my most recent rankings are at the end of this post):

25.  Logan Webb

I feel like I should have a Giant since baseball season just started.  Gabe Kapler isn’t their manager anymore, so Logan Webb gets the spot that would have gone to him.  Maybe somebody else will emerge this season.

24.  Luka Doncic

23.  Ime Udoka

22.  Stephen Curry

21.  James Harden

Doncic complains too much.  It’s also not fun to watch him dribble the ball all game.  Udoka and Curry both have the potential to get off of this list if either one of them eliminates the Lakers in the play in tournament.  Harden was Doncic before Doncic.  He’s not fun to watch.  It was funny how people talked themselves into the Clippers when they played well for a while.  They’re not going anywhere in the playoffs.

20.  Caleb Williams

19.  Lincoln Riley

Caleb Williams is still the most dislikable quarterback in football, but he’s not at USC anymore and it’s not football season.  In my sports villain power rankings last spring, I said, “I hope Jordan Botelho sacks him a few times and Benjamin Morrison intercepts him a few times in October.”  Well, Botelho didn’t sack him, but other Notre Dame defenders sacked him six times.  And Morrison only intercepted him once, but Xavier Watts intercepted him twice.  That was fun.  Lincoln Riley will always be unlikable.

18.  Brian Kelly

It’s another college football coach who will always be unlikable.

17.  Damian Lillard

16.  Kevin Durant

15.  Anthony Davis

14.  Jimmy Butler

13.  Draymond Green

It’s a whole bunch of unlikable basketball players.

12.  Manny Machado

11.  Fernando Tatis

And now we have some unlikable San Diego Padres (Tatis is also a cheater).

10.  Kyrie Irving

He hasn’t done anything terrible in a while.  It’s probably coming at some point.

6.  (tie) Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Correa, and Alex Bregman

The most dislikable active baseball players will always be the hitters from the 2017 Astros.  Yuli Gurriel isn’t on a team right now so he’s been taken off this list (he’ll be right back on if he ends up on a team).

4.  (tie) Tony Petitti and Greg Sankey

The Big 10 and SEC are destroying college sports so their commissioners need to be on this list.

3.  Rob Manfred

Rob Manfred is retiring in 2029.  Why not five years ago?

2.  LeBron James

Until the Lakers are eliminated, he needs to be very high on this list.

1. Jim Harbaugh

He cheated to win a National Championship.  His championship is as valid as the 2017 Houston Astros World Series Championship.  Whether or not it gets vacated, nobody should ever forget that he needed to cheat to win a National Championship.

And I’ll induct a new member into my Sports Villain Hall of Fame.  My original class last year was Barry Bonds, Tom Brady, Reggie Bush, Phil Jackson, and Rafael Palmeiro.  Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll are no longer coaching.  They are Hall of Fame locks, but there has to be a waiting period (I know there was no waiting period for Tom Brady, but I’m making up my rules and they could conceivably end up coaching again).  There are a lot of good options.  But if I’m only adding one, it has to be the Barry Bonds of pitching.  Roger Clemens is our newest member of my Sports Villain Hall of Fame.

Anyway, it’s good to have baseball back.  I hope someday sports will renounce the gambling monster that has enslaved them.  It’s time to snatch sports from Gamblor’s neon claws!

The End of a Long Winter

As we all know, winter ends when I attend the Big East Tournament.  It’s one of my favorite sporting events of the year.  I went almost every year in whatever the decade before the 20s is called.  And then I didn’t go in 2020.  In fact, I haven’t had a blog post in March since 2020 when I lamented the demise of that college basketball season.  I was supposed to go to three nights of the Big East Tournament that year (Thursday-Saturday).  I had already decided not to go, but it ended up getting canceled on Thursday afternoon before any of the sessions I was supposed to go to.  I’ve been wanting to get back to the Big East Tournament ever since then.  I hadn’t really thought about it much this year until a few weeks ago.  I typically went multiple nights to the Big East Tournament, but when I checked the prices, they were pretty high.  Thursday night was reasonable though so I decided I would go if I could get somebody to go with me.  My first text was to Vin who has attended many Big East Tournaments with me and he was in so I was getting back to the Big East Tournament and the winter that never ended was going to end. I’ve gone to many Big East Tournament games with Vin over the years. Of course, the last Big East Tournament I went to was in 2019. I went Thursday and Saturday that year and Vin joined me for the championship game when we saw Villanova beat Seton Hall.

My last indoor sporting event that I needed a ticket for was an NBA G-League game with the Maine Red Claws (now Maine Celtics) taking on the Long Island Nets in January 2020.  Since then, the only indoor sporting events I’ve been to had been girls basketball games that I was coaching (we had our best season ever this year with a 9-4 finish and a loss in the semifinals) and a couple of volleyball games and boys basketball games at my school.  It felt really good to be going up those escalators in Madison Square Garden again.  We were seeing Creighton against Providence and Marquette against Villanova.  I have pretty simple rules about who to root for in the Big East.  I always root for Villanova because of their heroism in preventing North Carolina and Michigan from winning National Championships in 2016 and 2018.  I root for Catholic schools against non-Catholic schools.  I root for old Big East Teams except for UConn against new Big East teams generally.  Now I have to root against St. John’s against any other Catholic school because of Rick Pitino (I’ve always wanted St. John’s to be good because that would definitely make the Big East Tournament more exciting, but I can’t root for Rick Pitino). And I root for Butler over UConn.  I might make exceptions to those rules to root for results that would help get the Big East more teams in the NCAA Tournament (unless the team that might be helped was UConn).  But in this case, my rules all lined up to root for Providence and Villanova.  Creighton and Marquette were going to make the tournament.  Providence and Villanova were bubble teams.

The first game was exciting.  Providence led for most of the game.  They had a double-digit lead in the second half.  And then they let it slip away.  It felt like they were going to lose, but they executed late and won 78-73 despite being even in rebounding and three pointers and Creighton making nine more free throws.  Devin Carter had 22 points and 11 rebounds.  Vin had to leave to get his ferry back to New Jersey after the first game.  I stayed for the first half of the second game.  Villanova led by one at halftime.  I wanted to stay for the whole game since it was close, but I was already looking at getting home after midnight and I had to go to work the next day.  In my younger days, I probably would have stayed.  I missed an exciting finish.  Marquette made a shot at the buzzer to seemingly win the game, but it was overturned (it didn’t look like it should have been overturned).  Marquette ended up winning anyway in overtime 71-65.  The game ended just shortly before I got home around 12:15.  So that was a disappointing result.

My current phone definitely takes higher quality pictures than the one I had the last time I went to the Big East Tournament in 2019.

Actually almost everything after Wednesday in the tournament was a disappointing result.  On Thursday afternoon, Connecticut won and St. John’s beat Seton Hall.  It seemed like the winner of St. John’s-Seton Hall had a good chance of making the NCAA tournament and the loser probably wouldn’t make it.  If Seton Hall had no chance of making the tournament, I could bring myself to root for St. John’s since they are a Catholic school that was a bubble team, but I’m not going to root for Rick Pitino to keep another Catholic school out of the tournament.  Then on Friday, I was rooting for St. John’s because they were playing Connecticut and another win would solidify their position in the tournament.  And I was rooting for Providence against Marquette because Marquette was definitely making the tournament and Providence was a bubble team.  Well, Connecticut and Marquette won.  And of course, I was rooting for Marquette over Connecticut in the championship game, but Connecticut won.  So in the last seven games of the tournament, the only one that went the way I wanted was Providence-Creighton.

As it would turn out, Saturday and Sunday were disastrous for the Big East.  They had three teams that were definitely in and four bubble teams.  Of the four bubble teams, it seemed like Villanova was out and St. John’s, Seton Hall, and Providence had a chance.  With all the upsets in other conference tournaments and bids getting stolen, none of the Big East bubble teams made it.  Hopefully next year a Catholic school that isn’t St. John’s will win the Big East tournament and they’ll get more teams to the NCAA tournament.

It was great to be back at the Big East Tournament with Vin.  Although I didn’t see Connecticut in person, this was my first tournament since Connecticut rejoined the conference.  Obviously, Connecticut has strengthened the conference.  Eleven teams seems like a weird number.  I know it works well for scheduling since they all play each other twice.  But 12 or 16 teams would make for a better conference tournament.  Twelve would give you a full day on Wednesday.  Sixteen would give you a full day on Tuesday and Wednesday with some pretty good games on Wednesday.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Big East does expand at some point.  When the ACC inevitably falls apart because the Big 10, SEC, and ESPN are committed to destroying college football, I hope Notre Dame stays independent in football and goes back to the Big East for everything else.  That’s pretty much been my dream ever since we left.  So we would be the 12th team.  If we’re getting to 16, I would then add Syracuse (I despise them, but much like Connecticut, they belong in the Big East), Boston College (or Holy Cross because it would be funny to take them and not Boston College), Dayton, and some other Atlantic 10 team (VCU, Richmond, Loyola Chicago, Duquesne, or somebody).

Speaking of the Big Ten and SEC trying to destroy college football, it seems like they also might want to destroy college basketball.  Greg Sankey has been talking about ruining the NCAA tournament.  This is the one thing that everybody agrees is awesome about college sports.  And the SEC commissioner wants to destroy it.  If you’re going to do anything with the tournament, I would expand it slightly.  I’ve heard the suggestion to go to 72 teams and have eight play in games with all at large teams.  The argument is that it would make the play in games more interesting and any conference champion should get the experience of playing in the round of 64.  If they did that, I would be totally fine with it.  I am sympathetic to the idea that the worst team should get to be a sacrificial lamb for a 1 seed instead of losing a play in game.  But if it was up to me, I would make it 72 teams with four play in games for at large teams and all four 16 spots determined by play in games.  What I like about that idea is that it would improve the quality of 16 seeds a little bit because two teams that would have been 15 seeds under the current format would get bumped down to play in games.  But I’d be fine with doing all at large teams in the play in games also.  Either way, I think 72 is the right number and I would have a second play in site so that you could get two games going at once instead of having everything in Dayton.

So we’re into the NCAA tournament now.  There are seven Catholic schools in the tournament.  As I’m writing this, things are not looking good for Dayton (update: Dayton came back from down 17 in the second half so that’s awesome).  It seems like Marquette, Creighton, St. Mary’s, and Gonzaga are the Catholic schools with a chance to make a run.  But Duquesne already won their first game in the tournament in 55 years or something like that so that’s cool.  Hopefully Micah Shrewsberry will have Notre Dame back in the NCAA tournament consistently soon.  I’m optimistic as everybody said our team was going to be horrendous this year, but we had a pretty solid finish despite not having much talent.  Until then, I’ll be rooting for the other Catholic schools.

And I’ll just finish with one other thought.  The CBS college basketball music is very very good.  But the best basketball theme music ever (maybe the best of any sport ever) is Roundball Rock.  Of course, I grew up with it on the NBA on NBC in the 90s.  It’s taken a little while, but I’ve gotten used to it being used as Fox’s college basketball theme.  I wish Fox would use it just for one day with its lyrics (since it is a lyrics-first song):

There’s a lot not to like about Saturday Night Live, but sometimes they nail it (this season they had a George Washington skit that was absolutely fantastic).  Anyway, even though the tournament isn’t on Fox, this is pretty much what’s been going on in my head ever since the conference tournaments started:

A Very Jim Christmas

I don’t think I’ve ever done a true Christmas blog post so I’m doing one now.  I’ve made some Christmas top five lists and a bottom five list.  I tried to make this short, but it turned out to be longer than I was planning. Anyway, let’s get to it.

I’ll start with half-hour TV shows/specials:

5.  South Park Season 4- There are good South Park Christmas episodes.  The season 4 episode has the kids making the animated film and Mr. Hankey’s family so I would rank that one ahead of the Christmas in Canada episode and the Woodland Critter Christmas episode.

4.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas- It’s a Christmas classic.  The Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge always get remembered for what they’re like at the beginning of the story.  People should remember how they changed.

3.  The Office Season 2- If we’re looking at Christmas episodes of the Office, I think it has to be between season 2 and season 3, I would go with the season 2 episode, but season 3 is also excellent).  It’s a shame there was no season 4 Christmas episode (because of the writers strike) because it would have been awesome (the first half of season 4 is fantastic).  If I was ranking the Office Christmas episodes, it would go 2, 3, 6, 7, 5, 9, 8.  Season 8 and 9 are obviously the worst because there’s no Michael.  Season 8 is the worst because there’s no Michael, but there is Robert California.  Season 9 is Dwight Christmas, which is pretty good for a season 9 episode.

2.  Seinfeld Festivus- Seinfeld episodes are harder for me to differentiate from episodes of the Office because you get a lot more stand-alone stories rather than the long story arcs that the Office is built on.  I know there are other Seinfeld Christmas episodes that are good.  Mickey and Kramer working at a department store as an elf and a communist Santa is good.  But Festivus is an all time classic.  It has endured as much as anything from Seinfeld two and a half decades later.

1. Charlie Brown Christmas.  It gets the number 1 spot because it’s good and it actually deals with the true meaning of Christmas.  When Linus recites Luke’s Gospel and he gets to the part where the angel says, “Fear not,” he drops his blanket.  You might not have noticed this detail before, but if you know the character Linus, the significance of this is clear.

I’ll get to some bad stuff before going back to good stuff. There are a lot of good Christmas songs, but I’m going to do the five worst:

5.  Band Aid- Do They Know It’s Christmas?  This is definitely not a good song, but I can tolerate it because it’s unintentionally funny.  The line “Well tonight thank God it’s them in stead of you” is very strange.  What does that mean?  I should thank God that there are poor people in Africa?  What?

4.  Baby It’s Cold Outside- It doesn’t matter which version it is.  This is not a good song.

3.  Wham Last Christmas- As Fr. Mike Schmitz has pointed out, the only thing that makes this a Christmas song is that the first two words of the song are Last Christmas.

2.  John Lennon Happy Xmas- We’ve gotten to the songs that I absolutely refuse to listen to.  I don’t need to hear protest music for Christmas.

1. Paul McCartney Wonderful Christmas Time- I can’t stand this song. It’s horrendous.

Let’s get back to stuff that is good.  Here are my top five Saturday Night Live Christmas skits:

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

I’ll finish up with my top five Christmas movies:

5.  Scrooged- It’s Bill Murray in the most 1980s Christmas movie imaginable.  If Scrooged didn’t exist and you asked AI to write a script for a 1980s Christmas comedy, it would write Scrooged.

4.  Elf- Elf reminds me of Wedding Crashers.  It starts off so good, but the end leaves something to be desired.  Once they leave the island in Wedding Crashers, the rest of the movie stinks.  Elf is fantastic for most of the movie, but it’s not great after the fight with Myles Finch.  Santa has a feud with the Central Park Rangers?  Why?  They could have come up with something better for the end.

3.  The Muppet Christmas Carol- It’s Michael Caine and Muppets.  And it’s everything you want Michael Caine and Muppets to be.

2.  It’s a Wonderful Life- I remember watching it for the first time when I was a junior in high school because my US history teacher did It’s a Wonderful Life trivia on the last day before Christmas vacation.  I think that was the only time I watched it until a couple of years ago.  It really is a wonderful movie.

1. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation- Unliked Scrooged, this is a timeless Christmas classic.  It came out only a year after Scrooged, but it feels like it could be from any year.  It’s the Festivus of the Vacation movies in that it has endured much more so than the other ones.  I’m not going to say it’s a better movie than It’s a Wonderful Life, but it’s the most fun Christmas movie.

The Celtics beat the Lakers today. It was appropriate for NBA good to prevail over NBA evil on Christmas Day. But congratulations to the Lakers on winning a tournament that means absolutely nothing. Happy Birthday Jesus!  Merry Christmas!

Tournament of Meaninglessness

Congratulations to the NBA on brainwashing people into caring about the in season tournament, or as I like to call it, the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  It was entirely predictable that the media would eat up this tournament and make a big deal about it.  But the truth remains that it means nothing.  I refuse to be brainwashed by the NBA.  I’ve been against this tournament from the start.  It was inspired by European soccer and American sports definitely don’t need to be more like European soccer.  There were other people who seemed to be against it also, but now everybody seems to care for some reason.  People compared it to the play-in tournament, but there’s a huge difference.  There is a purpose to the play-in tournament.  You can advance to the playoffs by winning in the play-in tournament.  But winning this tournament means absolutely nothing.

It makes me angry that the NBA has tried to make this tournament into a big deal when it means absolutely nothing.

Let us not forget that the only reason this tournament matters is that the games count as regular season games.  I’ve wanted the Celtics to win their games because they count in the standings.  But once the Celtics lost a Tournament of Meaninglessness game, they were going to need to advance on the tiebreaker.  So in their last game of group play, they ran up the score to advance.  I would have been 100% fine if they won without running up the score and didn’t advance.  What would have happened if they didn’t advance?  Instead of playing two games that count in the regular season standings, they would have played two games that count in the regular season standings.  Now their reward for advancing is playing a road game for a chance to advance to the semifinals in Las Vegas.  So if they win tonight, they lose a regular season home game.  But tonight counts in the standings and the semifinal game counts in the standings.  So I hope they win their next two games.

If the Celtics win those next two games, they play in the Tournament of Meaninglessness championship game.  And that game would mean absolutely nothing.  It’s the only game of the tournament that doesn’t count in the standings.  They’re playing for rich basketball players to be slightly richer.  Why would any fan care?  If the Celtics make it, I will watch the game and the only thing I will be rooting for is for the Celtics to get through the game without any injuries.  If it was up to me, I would sit Tatum, Brown, Porzingas, Holiday, White, Horford, and Pritchard.  Let the players who haven’t gotten a good contract in their careers try to make some extra money and don’t take any chances of their best players getting hurt.  The only way I would care about whether or not the Celtics would win or lose would be if they were playing the Lakers.  And that would be entirely because I want the Lakers to lose every game they play and not because I care about the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  I would still sit all of the Celtics’ best players.  Kevin Durant is one of my least favorite athletes, but I would be totally fine with losing the last game to the Suns as long as no Celtics got hurt.  If the Celtics do win this tournament, I would be mad if they hang a banner for it.  They should just have a certificate in an office somewhere.

If the NBA wanted me to care about this tournament, it should have meant something.  I will preface this by saying that this is a stupid idea, but they could have made advancing in the tournament the first tiebreaker for the playoffs.  So the eight teams that advanced would have a tiebreaker over the other 22 teams.  The four teams that make it to the semifinals would have a tiebreaker over the other 26 teams and so on.  That would have been a stupid way to break ties, but it would have given me a reason to care about this tournament.  But as it is, the tournament is the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  So go Celtics.  Win the next two games that count in the regular season standings and then just don’t get hurt in the last game.

The best thing about this tournament ending is that nobody will care about it anymore and I won’t have to hear about it anymore.

Baseball’s Playoff Problem

Much like college football’s playoff format that starts next year, baseball’s playoff format for the last two years is really stupid.  This is in no way sour grapes because the Dodgers lost.  All year long I thought that the Dodgers weren’t that good.  Under a different playoff format, the Dodgers probably would have been quickly eliminated also.  But this playoff format makes no sense.

Why do people making decisions insist on trying to destroy my two favorite sports?

I do have some more thoughts about the Dodgers before I get back to the playoff format.  There are some really crazy fans out there.  Dave Roberts is not a perfect manager, but he did an outstanding job this season.  Winning 100 games with that team was special.  They had two superstars, some solid role players, a broken legendary pitcher, some promising young pitchers, and a solid bullpen.  They were not the Atlanta Braves (who are absolutely loaded with talent).  I thought they would probably make the playoffs and maybe win the division, but that was about all I expected out of this team.  By the time they got to the playoffs, they had one and a half starting pitchers (Clayton Kershaw was pretty much half of a starting pitcher after he returned from the injured list, he was pitching once a week and never went more than five and a third).  The Dodgers won their last five regular season games against the Diamondbacks (in August) by a combined score of 30-9 so I thought they would beat the Diamondbacks and lose the NLCS, but this outcome was not completely surprising.

I’ve heard criticisms of Roberts in the playoffs this year and most of them are insane.  One mistake that I think was made was going with Kershaw over Bobby Miller in Game 1.  But that was probably as much of an Andrew Friedman decision as it was a Dave Roberts decision.  And when you saw the way Bobby Miller pitched in Game 2, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.  I heard people criticizing him for leaving Lance Lynn in too long in Game 3.  And he probably did, but the series was over by then anyway.  Dave Roberts managed a masterful Game 2, but the Dodgers couldn’t score enough runs.  Their starting pitching was terrible and their two superstars were terrible.  It didn’t matter what Dave Roberts did, they weren’t winning that series.  From 1989-2015, the Dodgers got to the NLCS three times and didn’t make it to the World Series at all.  In eight years under Dave Roberts, they’ve been to the NLCS five times, they’ve made it to the World Series three times, won it once, and were cheated out of it another time.  In the last seven years, they’ve won 100 games five of the last seven years.  In the other two years, they made the World Series both times and definitely would have won 100 games if there had been a full season in 2020.  Obviously they’ve had more talent under Roberts than they did most of the time from 1989-2015, but they did have some good teams that didn’t come close to doing what the Dodgers have done under Roberts. So yeah, I will gladly take Dave Roberts back next year.

Anyway, yeah, the playoffs are stupid.  If you play 162 games, they should matter.  We’ve pretty much accepted that the regular season in the NBA is meaningless.  It’s going to be really stupid in college football when we start getting teams with three or four losses into the College Football Playoff.  And it’s really stupid that three teams with 90 wins and a team with 84 wins are the last four teams with a chance to win a championship while teams with 104, 101, 100, 99, and 92 wins had their seasons come to an end because of a bad stretch of two-four games (those five teams went a combined 1-13 in the playoffs).  Why did we play 162 games if they mean so little in determining the champion?

So what can be done about it?  I have some ideas, but no great answers that are also realistic.  The first thing I would do would be to expand to 32 teams and go to two divisions of eight teams in each league.  Expansion is probably coming.  I would be fine with two divisions per league or four divisions per league.  But I am also terrified of how they will realign.  I have no confidence in Rob Manfred.  We might end up with the Dodgers and Giants in different divisions or Eastern and Western conferences like the NBA and I’m not interested in something like that at all.  But anyway, I would go back to the pre-1994 playoff format with only the four division winners making the playoffs.  Let’s have the Rangers and Astros play Game 163 to break their tie and then the winner plays the Orioles, the Dodgers play the Braves, and teams that weren’t that good don’t get a chance to play for a championship.  That will never happen though.  I would be fine with going back to having four teams from each league make the playoffs like it was from 1995-2011.  But that’s not going to happen either.  I think it’s more likely that they would expand the playoffs to seven or eight teams per league making it (I think Manfred wanted seven teams per league during the lockout because Manfred is an idiot).  If it was eight teams per league this year, there would have been two teams with 82 wins and a team with 83 wins in the playoffs.  If you go 82-80, you do not deserve a chance to win the World Series.  And the problem is that it’s entirely possible that a team that won 82 games could win a short series against a team that won 100+ games.  In basketball, the 8 seed winning a series is so rare that you can live with it when it happens.  But it would happen way too frequently in baseball.

So I don’t want the playoffs to expand and they’re not going to contract, so let’s try to figure out what can be done if we leave it at six teams per league.  You could try to get rid of off days.  Baseball is a sport that’s played pretty much every day for six months (longer than that if you include spring training).  But then if you’re one of the two best teams in your league, you have to sit and wait for an extended period.  The Dodgers won 100 games and then had their season come to an end after playing three games in 10 days.  So you could get rid of the off day between the end of the regular season and the start of the Wild Card series.  I doubt they would do that though because they probably want to keep a day open in case you need to make up any rainouts at the end of the season if they could determine playoff spots.  You could also eliminate the day off between the possible third game of the Wild Card series and the next round.  But again, they probably want to keep that day open in case a game gets rained out in the Wild Card series.  So if you can’t get rid of those off days, I would go back just having a Wild Card Game instead of a three-game series.  When it was just one game, it was a bigger disadvantage for the teams that had to play the game.  You would probably use your best starter and then he wouldn’t be available to pitch in until Game 3 in the next round (and you might even use other starters if necessary to win that one game).  But with the three game series and off days, you have a chance to really line up your pitching for the next round (especially if you can win the Wild Card series in two games).  If Dodgers-Diamondbacks had gone five games, the Diamondbacks would have had their top two pitchers start four of the five games.  I know probability says that it’s an advantage to not have to play the Wild Card series (since you can’t get eliminated in that round), but I think it actually becomes an advantage for the team that manages to survive that series.  If they can line up their pitching and they haven’t had an abnormal number of off days, that’s an advantage.  But they’ll never go back to the one game Wild Card round instead of a three-game series because that would mean less TV money.

I do have a few ideas to give more advantages to the teams that get the byes (or at least limit the disadvantages).  The most obvious thing is to give a bigger advantage to the number 1 seed by reseeding.  I don’t know how they haven’t figured this out yet.  The Braves had the best record in the NL by four games.  When the Diamondbacks pull off the upset in the Wild Card series, the Braves should get to play them.  Why do the Braves have to deal with the Phillies while the Dodgers get the worse opponent?  That makes no sense.

You could make everything after the Wild Card round best of seven.  That would reduce randomness and give the better teams a better chance to win.  But you would still get weird results.  It’s fairly likely that none of the results would have been changed this year if they were best of seven instead of best of five.  So I’m not opposed to making it best of seven, but I’m okay with best of five.

I would make the winner of the Wild Card Series go on the road for every game in the next round.  The higher seed gets the whole Wild Card series at home.  Do the same thing for the next round.

Neither of those ideas do anything to help with all the days off.  But I came up with something that probably sounds unrealistic, but it would make money and these decisions are all driven by money so maybe it isn’t unrealistic.  You have four teams who get byes.  Have the 1 seed in each league host a two-game exhibition series against the 2 seed in the opposite league while the Wild Card round is going on.  So it would have been Dodgers at Orioles and Astros at Braves.  Teams would definitely be able to sell tickets for those games and you could throw them on MLB Network as possible World Series previews and everybody could make money.  If teams think it’s a disadvantage to have their hitters sitting around not facing pitching in a game for five days, here’s your opportunity to have them play actual baseball instead of batting practice or intrasquad games.  Maybe teams wouldn’t take those games seriously, but it would certainly take away an excuse.  If you want to choose to not play your best hitters in those games, then you couldn’t complain about being off all that time when you had a chance to play games before your playoff games.

So yeah, there are way too many teams in the playoffs.  I try to enjoy the regular season as much as I can.  If you’re going to play that many games, they should mean something.  So I enjoyed the Dodgers winning 100 games this season.  And between my low expectations and the stupidity of this playoff format, the Dodgers getting eliminated in the playoffs this year was their easiest elimination for me to deal with out of all the times they’ve been eliminated from the playoffs over the last 15 years.  The worst at the time was 2019 and the worst in hindsight was 2017 because they were cheated out of a World Series championship (and one that wouldn’t have been random baseball playoff flukiness because they were the best team in baseball that year).

Anyway, Rob Manfred is in charge so if anything is going to change, it will probably just be him making it worse.  As for the rest of the playoffs this year, I will absolutely be rooting for 2020 World Series hero Corey Seager to beat the Astros and win the World Series.  Speaking of the Astros, it’s time to bring back my Sports Villain Power Rankings. This is the fourth time I’ve done this (previously in April 2022, October 2022, and April 2023).

25.  Sidney Crosby

24.  Ime Udoka

23.  Damian Lillard

22.  Kevin Durant

21.  Anthony Davis

20.  James Harden

19.  Jimmy Butler

18.  Kyrie Irving

17.  LeBron James

Hockey has started and Sidney Crosby will always be a villain.  Basketball is about to start.  Ime Udoka is a good coach, but the Celtics couldn’t keep him because of his own stupidity.  Lillard was all about loyalty until he wasn’t anymore and he only wanted to go the the Heat (my least favorite NBA team other than the Lakers).  Durant, Davis, Irving, and James are obvious.  Harden is an obvious villain, but he has to rank behind Butler because he disappeared and lost to the Celtics in the playoffs while Butler transforms from good NBA player to superstar NBA player in the playoffs and he eliminated the Celtics last year.  If I went to a number 26 on this list, it might have been the Heat’s PA announcer because whenever Jimmy Butler scores, it’s not Jimmy Butler, it’s “JIH MEE BUTLER.”  It gets very annoying during a seven game series.  Many of these players will rank much higher when we get to the spring.

16.  Lane Kiffin

15.  Dabo Swinney

14.  Ryan Day

13.  Deion Sanders

12.  Pete Carroll

11.  Bill Belichick

10.  Jim Harbaugh

9.  Lincoln Riley

Lane Kiffin has pretty much been a villain for this whole century.  For some reason, people decided to start liking him over the last five years.  I don’t get it.  Dabo Swinney has been a villain since 2020.  He would rank higher, but Clemson has taken a step back.  Ryan Day is a new villain for two reasons.  First of all, he’s let Michigan turn the tide in that rivalry.  Second of all, he had a completely insane reaction to beating Notre Dame.  When you’re making me think of Pedro Martinez throwing Don Zimmer to the ground, that’s a problem.  Everybody loves Deion Sanders, but not me.  He pretty much ran off Colorado’s entire team and brought in a whole team of mercenaries.  That is not what college athletics should be.  If you’re a new coach, you should do everything you can to help the players who were already there.  They should be able to graduate from the school they committed to and be coached to be the best players they can be (even if they’re not very good players).  But I will give Deion Sanders credit for one thing.  When Henry Blackburn was getting death threats after his late hit on a Colorado player, Deion Sanders handled that very well.  Carroll, Belichick, Harbaugh, and Riley are obvious.

8.  Jack Swarbrick

He probably should have been on my previous lists for allowing home games to be broadcast on Peacock only (forcing people to pay to watch one of our worst home games each season is stupid to begin with, but the streaming experience was absolutely terrible this year).  He also enabled Brian Kelly’s nonsense by allowing him to get rid of the pregame Mass (which Marcus Freeman fortunately brought back) and putting in fake grass in the football stadium.  He’s allowed Adidas and Under Armor to dress Notre Dame’s football team up in silly outfits for Shamrock Series games.  He deserved to be considered a villain for all of those reasons, but the reason that I finally put him on this list is because he completely bungled the hiring of Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator.  This is entirely his fault and not Marcus Freeman’s.  He put Freeman in a bad position.  Fortunately he won’t be our athletic director for much longer.

6.  (tie) Trevor Bauer and Julio Urias

The Dodgers were down to one and a half starting pitchers because these guys were terrible people who will never be allowed to pitch for the Dodgers again.

5.  Brian Kelly

4.  Rob Manfred

They’re always going to be near the top of the list, but probably not number 1 (although Kelly could be much closer to number 1 if he ever made a national championship run at LSU).

1. (Tie) Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, and Caleb Williams

It’s the cheating Astros who are still in the playoffs plus the most dislikeable college football player since Reggie Bush.