Playoffs can expand if it's done right

Sporting News, The, May 26, 2003 by Ken Rosenthal

Braves general manager John Schuerholz can envision postseason utopia: playoffs that begin in early September, generate excitement through a fair but demanding format and conclude with World Series in early October.

Schuerholz knows such a plan is impractical for a sport that plays 162 games, then jams three playoff rounds into October. But Major League Baseball should expand the postseason if it can fulfill Schuerholz's vision of making the system as equitable as possible and ending the Series before the weather in many cities turns cold.

The first change should be to shorten the season to 154 games and expand the Division Series from a best-of-five to a best-of-seven format. From there, MLB should consider recent union proposals to add two or four wild cards to its eight-team postseason.

I don't like either idea, but I could accept one extra wild card in each league because it would enable the three division champions to set up their pitching while the wild-card teams slugged it out in an abbreviated first round. The team with the best overall regular-season record would face the harried wild-card survivor, gaining a significant advantage.

The addition of two wild cards in each league would give the top two finishers first-round byes but make the tournament unwieldy. The NBA and NHL allow more than half their teams into their playoffs, then stage mind-numbing postseason marathons. The wild card was commissioner Bud Selig's best innovation. He need not get carried away.

"It turns out that in spite of the few people left who want to be critics, fans love the three-division/wild-card format," Selig says. "Does that mean we should take it to the next level? I don't know. It's way too premature to say we're bound and determined to do that. I'm willing to consider it, but we've got to be awfully careful."

The current system isn't flawless, but works. In the seven full seasons since the wild card was introduced, the A.L. wild-card winner has averaged 94.6 victories, the N.L. wild-card winner 93. Hardly anyone complains about undeserving teams reaching the postseason--or deserving teams getting left out.

Last season was an exception. Both the Mariners and Red Sox won 93 games and missed the playoffs. The Dodgers won 92 and suffered the same fate. But in the six previous seasons, only three other 90-win teams failed to make the playoffs. The best of those, the 1999 Reds, finished with 96 victories, but their record was only fifth-best in the N.L.

Adding wild cards would give more teams a chance but dilute the field. If the current format had included the two teams with the next-best records, the average victory total of the extra wild cards would have been 89. But if the format had been expanded by four teams, the average victory total of the final qualifiers would have been 85.5--d the group would have included a sub-.500 club, the 1997 White Sox.

Why go there?

Interleaque play and the unbalanced schedule create regular-season inequities, but the best teams generally prevail over 162 games. The real problem in MLB is that the best-of-five Division Series is a crapshoot. In the past three postseasons, five of the six top seeds suffered first-round upsets. Team executives are nearly unanimous in their belief that the team with the best overall record should not have its season wrecked by a wildcard team in a short series.

Yet, extending the Division Series to a best-of-seven likely would mean extending the postseason into November, an idea Selig despises. "In fact, I'm not happy about the season starting March 31," Selig says. "When you start then in open-air stadiums in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago--cities by lakes--you're asking for trouble."

Which brings Selig to one of his pet notions--the return of the 154-game schedule. The A.L. abandoned the format when it went from eight to 10 teams in 1961. The N.L. followed when it expanded by the same number a year later.

"I've always loved the 154-game schedule," Selig says. "It would give us more flexibility."

Owners would blanch at losing approximately 5 percent of their revenue. Players surely would oppose any accompanying cut in pay. But who's to say that less wouldn't be more? No club sells out all 81 home games, and a reduced schedule might improve the quality of play; the best teams generally require between 15 and 20 pitchers to survive 162 games.

The continuity of records shouldn't be an obstacle; MLB adjusted in the '60s and showed little regard for historical standards when it created the current age of hitter-friendly parks and artificially created sluggers.

New comparisons would sprout as fans researched old records to compare active players with those from earlier 154-game generations--or pulled out calculators to consider "what might have been" by prorating statistics over 162 games.

The best way to achieve postseason utopia would be to play a 140-game season and six weeks of playoffs, but the game's traditions and economic realities make such an idea unrealistic. The return to a 154-game schedule not only is workable, but necessary in any new equation. Contraction never sounded so good.