Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it's free, and you are allowed to click away.
If you stay, you'll get smarter, though. That's a money-back guarantee. If the playoffs had started on Monday, the three seed in the American League would have been the Houston Astros, by virtue of winning the tiebreaker (they have gone 9-4 head-to-head) over the Texas Rangers.
At the time, the Astros and Rangers were both 65-66. Not to be outdone, the sixth seed would go to the Rangers, as they have won the tiebreaker over the Guardians. Let's lay that out more clearly: If the regular season ended before games yesterday, the American League would have two playoff teams with losing records.
What's worse, those two teams would face each other in the Wild Card Series, meaning at least one team with a losing record would make the ALDS. Unfortunately, we have too many playoff teams. I understand the playoffs are great fun and everyone loves watching playoff baseball and the owners love the extra gate money and extra TV money and the players love having more chances to make the postseason.
This is what we get as a punishment from the baseball gods, though. Major League Baseball has the longest marathon of a regular season in sports. They play 162 games to sort out the deserving playoff teams.
We aren't going to end up with 12 deserving teams every single season. I don't believe a team with a losing record after 162 games deserves a chance -- even a small one -- at the World Series. It might sound radical -- it sure as hell isn't worse than a 79-win playoff team -- but I'm proposing teams with a losing record be disqualified from playoff consideration.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
