Why I Hate the Wild Card Game

I feel like I've railed against the new one-and-done playoff round before, but this year is a perfect example of why I dislike it.

I know people love to say that the Wild Card is the "easy" way in to the playoffs, which is why it's okay for the top two Wild Card teams to fight for the spot. But look at the NL. This year, the 94-win Pirates and Francisco Liriano get one game to "prove" that they're better than Johnny Cueto and the 90-win Reds. How does that make any sense? Why does this one game mean so much more than the previous 162? Or the 19 other games the Reds faced the Pirates this year (of which the Pirates won 11)? One false slip (like, say, this) and that 4-win difference means nothing.

People always come back to that with "well, they should have won their division." That's still awful reasoning to justify an unfair system. Why do the Pirates' 94 wins (in a division with three playoff teams, one of whom had the best record in the NL, no less) count for less than the Dodgers' 92 (and in a division where the second best team went 81-81*)? Why is it the Pirates who have to justify their place in October? Why not have a one-game playoff between the Reds and Dodgers? Is it just because the Dodgers had the foresight to move west fifty-odd years ago?

*Although, strangely enough, the Dodgers actually carried a losing record against their NL West opponents.

This happened last year, too, when the 88-win Tigers (sixth-best record in the AL) snuck in through the weak AL Central while the 90+ win Orioles and Rangers had a one-game playoff (to be fair, since they had the same record, that would have happened in the old system too). But I think this one is an even better example of the ridiculousness of it, given that 1) one Wild Card team surpassed a division-winner; 2) the Wild Card teams play in the same division, so there's no "unbalanced schedule" argument; and 3) the race for top Wild Card wasn't particularly close. The only argument against actually having the two worst playoff teams play each other seems to be the divisions, a completely arbitrary assignment.

I probably shouldn't be as worked up about this. The World Series stopped being about crowning the best team in baseball long ago. But maybe the fact that so many people pretend it is is what annoys me. Or maybe it's just the awful logical reasonings that get thrown around to justify it, as if this is a better, more exciting, or more fair system than what existed before. It very clearly is not.

International Baseball: Growth in Europe, Brazil, and the World

Well, I was working on a response to another ESPN piece, but this one will be quicker and require a little less prep. Michael Baumann writes about Alex Liddi, the first European born-and-raised MLB player from Italy, and what he means for the game and it’s future.

Liddi is more than likely not a star, so it seems like it would be difficult for MLB to put too much on him right now. If they hype him as a sign of the game’s success in Europe and he then flops, it might have negative long-term effects.

But what can major league teams do to ensure the overseas cultivation of the game? I think one of the biggest things would be to get a star from overseas, like the first Italian/German/Netherlands-born All-Star and hype them, like what happened with Ichiro (and later, Hideki Matsui and others). Except that was a totally different situation; there isn’t some European league making Ichiro-type players, where the best might hold their own in the pro circuit. Getting to that stage will take time.

 

The Problems of the Second Wild Card

In case you don’t know, I have several problems with the latest Collective Bargaining Agreement. Most of the draft and international free agent changes and restrictions are bad enough, but the second wild card in each league was an unnecessary and ridiculous change to something that not only didn’t need fixing, but which actually affects the quality of the game at the Major League level.

Are AL East Teams Being Cheated From the Playoffs?

As it stands right now, the AL East, the so-called “best division in baseball”, would only get one playoff team. The Orioles and Rays are tied for fourth in the Wild Card right now. Take that, East Coast Bias, right?

Except the AL East probably is the best division in baseball. The Yankees do have the best record in baseball. Against non-AL East teams, the AL East is 175-147, a .543 winning percentage. And that’s the division as a whole. They have a 122-110 record (.526 win percentage) against the other AL divisions. The AL Central is 55-72 (.433) against AL East teams. The AL West has a winning record against them at least 55-50 (.524). However, given all the bad luck Tampa Bay, Boston, and Toronto have had, I think it’s very possible that the AL East may have two or three of the five best teams in the AL. However, since they don’t get any easy in-division teams to beat up on in the unbalanced schedule, their records look a little worse. If so much is riding on the Wild Card spots (and especially since there are two of them), maybe MLB should consider more inter-divisional games.

On Drafted Players, and the New Slotting System

The Pirates are still negotiating a contract with this year’s no. 8 pick (and formerly presumed-no. 1) Mark Appel. The problem is that, under the new slotting system, Appel is only recommended to receive $2.9 million, and can only receive up to $3.8 million before incurring penalties, including loss of a top draft pick in 2013. The Nationals are apparently facing similar issues with no. 16 pick Lucas Giolito.*

More Contract Talk, and Some Thoughts on the Expanded Playoffs

So, this was originally going to go with my last post until it kind of spiraled out of control into an ode to Ryan Zimmerman (not that I regret it). It fit in so well with the topic of contract talks, though. Apparently, Josh Hamilton got some people upset when he said that he wasn’t going to give the Rangers a discount, and a lot of people seemed upset with that. I actually don’t really see any reason for animosity in this scenario.

MLB's Borderline-Insane New Draft Gimmick

So, did you hear that MLB has a new draft pick lottery thing? Yep, as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, Selig made sure to fix that much-squabbled about problem of who gets the picks after the first round of the draft.

I don’t want to say this is the dumbest thing in baseball history; baseball has had numerous dumb things in history. There’s this. These. Most of these. This and this (you’ll know them when you see them). Yeah, not to beat the point into the ground, but if you’re looking for dumb things, there are worse. But I’m not sure how many of them rival the Competitive Balance Lottery on things like poor planning, inexplicability, or sheer out-of-nowhereness.

Granted, people had issues with the draft. The Free Agent type rankings were a mess, most of the owners wanted to curb spending on amateurs, some people wanted to add countries to the draft or remove them, and so on. Nowhere did I hear anything about teams needing more picks or less picks or anything like that.