The Worst Series…

To say that I am disappointed with the result of this year’s baseball playoffs would be a complete understatement.

Sure, I had that usual satisfaction I get when seeing the series go to a team that isn’t from New York, but if either the Yankees or the Mets won… no one would say it wasn’t well deserved. Those two teams had the top records in baseball, but this year the title went to a team that in my opinion was very undeserving. The Cardinals had a good playoff run, but did they deserve to have one in the first place? My answer to that is a loud and deafening… NO!

To make my point, here’s an interesting question for you: what do the Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Angels, Toronto Blue Jays, Philidelphia Phillies and the Boston Red Sox have in common?

Answer: They have two things in common:

1) None of them made the playoffs this year.

2) They all have better records than the St. Louis Cardinals.

This is a sad time for baseball, when a team that doesn’t break the top ten in the league standings not only makes the playoffs but wins the series. For those who didn’t know, St Louis was 13th overall with their record. This makes them middle of the pack, no where near the top class of 2006. Yet that was them last night celebrating on the field and sipping champainge. If they were in any other division at all, they wouldn’t have even had a sniff of the playoffs. It’s hard to respect a championship team that didn’t play well enough to deserve a playoff game, let alone a championship.

But this isn’t St.Louis’ fault, it’s the league that is responsible for this sorry state of affairs. They playoff system is no good, and too many good teams are being left out while teams with almost ten less wins (Chicago has 90 wins, almost ten more comparied to St.Louis’ 83)… then there is something wrong with the current playoff format. When teams barely over .500 are making the cut, something does need to be changed, cause I don’t think the fans will appreaciate seeing another sub par team take the whole thing again next year.

My suggestion, pick up the playoff system that the NFL used before they expanded to four divisions in each conference. Under that system, there would three division winners and three wildcard teams per league. Give the two division winners with the better record a bye for the first round and get the worst division winner and the three wild cards an additional round to fight it out to face the other two division winners in Round # 2.

That would make it 4 playoff rounds instead of 3, but only two more teams added to the playoff system. So more playoff games but only expanding two more teams in each league. That would make things ten times more excited in my opinion and harder for wild card and weak division winners to go all the way.

If that system were in place this year, this is what would have happened in the first round of the playoffs:

AMERICAN LEAGUE:

Yankees – bye
Twins – bye

Tigers vs. Angels
Athletics vs. White Sox

NATIONAL LEAGUE:

Mets – Bye
Padres – Bye

Cardinals vs. Phillies
Dodger vs. Astros

With this system, the division winner with the worst record would have to fight an extra round while the others get a well deserved (and earned) rest and a bye to the division finals. This is the system that I think would work cause it would punish division winners for having the worst record of the three by making their road to the series that much tougher. It would alwo make it harder for wildcards to make it all the way as well and they should have to work harder cause they didn’t win their divisions. That would be a fair system to work with in baseball.

I realize that more playoff games wouldn’t be welcomed by all, but I think that could be settled by trimming down the 162 game schedule a little to make room for the extra round so the playoffs will still end in October. This would work a hell of a lot better than the current system cause I’m tired of seeing teams with sub par records make the cut when other more deserving teams are left out.

Peter