Post by Fish Troll on Oct 2, 2008 22:21:58 GMT -5
For fans of the Cubs and Angels this morning, fear -- that their dream seasons may be nearing a premature end -- is no doubt their overriding emotion. A close second is likely anger. Both are justifiable.
The Angels, with 100 wins, and the Cubs, with 97, led their respective league in victories this season yet a loss in their Division Series openers has left them facing a must-win in Game 2, just one game into what both surely imagined would be a long and memorable month.
The blame for their precarious situations lies first and foremost on their own shoulders -- after all, they're the ones who didn't win -- but they are done no favors by baseball's illogical first-round set up. The Division Series format gives teams who often should just be grateful for the expanded postseason that gave them a chance to keep their World Series hopes alive a disproportional chance to win the series.
In the wild-card era, 15 teams who entered their Division Series with a better record but lost Game 1 eventually lost the series. Only four teams in a similar situation (three of them Yankees squads) rallied to win. The reason is that these inferior teams only needed to win three times to win the series. By winning Game 1, often on enemy territory (at the start of the wild-card era, baseball gave wild card teams home games to open the series, then sent them on the road for, potentially, the final three games), they not only put themselves one-third of the way toward winning the series, but stole home field advantage as well, further easing their burden.
Overall, teams who win the first game of the LDS, regardless of record, are 35-17 entering this season, including 4-0 last year.
Granted, regular-season schedules are unbalanced now and there are mitigating factors at play (like the midseason acquisition of a certain dreadlocked hitting savant) to level the gap between first-round opponents, but the Cubs proved over the course of six months of play to be a superior team to the Dodgers. Are they 13 wins better, as their final records indicate? Maybe not, but they earned the right to not have their entire season resting on a must-win just one game into the postseason.
The solution is obvious: make the Division Series a best-of-seven. If it's good enough for the League Championship Series and the World Series surely it's good enough for the series that will determine who advances to those championship rounds. Stealing Game 1 would still be a nice accomplishment, but it would not shift all the pressure back to a team that just spent six months playing for the very advantage that it has now given away with a single game. Besides, more games means more television appearances and that means more money. And if that's not enough to get baseball to do the right thing, then nothing is.
So what do you think? Should the Division Series be a best-of-seven?
The Angels, with 100 wins, and the Cubs, with 97, led their respective league in victories this season yet a loss in their Division Series openers has left them facing a must-win in Game 2, just one game into what both surely imagined would be a long and memorable month.
The blame for their precarious situations lies first and foremost on their own shoulders -- after all, they're the ones who didn't win -- but they are done no favors by baseball's illogical first-round set up. The Division Series format gives teams who often should just be grateful for the expanded postseason that gave them a chance to keep their World Series hopes alive a disproportional chance to win the series.
In the wild-card era, 15 teams who entered their Division Series with a better record but lost Game 1 eventually lost the series. Only four teams in a similar situation (three of them Yankees squads) rallied to win. The reason is that these inferior teams only needed to win three times to win the series. By winning Game 1, often on enemy territory (at the start of the wild-card era, baseball gave wild card teams home games to open the series, then sent them on the road for, potentially, the final three games), they not only put themselves one-third of the way toward winning the series, but stole home field advantage as well, further easing their burden.
Overall, teams who win the first game of the LDS, regardless of record, are 35-17 entering this season, including 4-0 last year.
Granted, regular-season schedules are unbalanced now and there are mitigating factors at play (like the midseason acquisition of a certain dreadlocked hitting savant) to level the gap between first-round opponents, but the Cubs proved over the course of six months of play to be a superior team to the Dodgers. Are they 13 wins better, as their final records indicate? Maybe not, but they earned the right to not have their entire season resting on a must-win just one game into the postseason.
The solution is obvious: make the Division Series a best-of-seven. If it's good enough for the League Championship Series and the World Series surely it's good enough for the series that will determine who advances to those championship rounds. Stealing Game 1 would still be a nice accomplishment, but it would not shift all the pressure back to a team that just spent six months playing for the very advantage that it has now given away with a single game. Besides, more games means more television appearances and that means more money. And if that's not enough to get baseball to do the right thing, then nothing is.
So what do you think? Should the Division Series be a best-of-seven?
www.fannation.com/si_blogs/for_the_record/posts/10621
