Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is set to retire at the end of the year, and he’s presided over some really bad things for the sport: the 1994 strike (and subsequent World Series cancellation), the Steroid Era, the tied All-Star game (and worse, the ‘this time it counts!’ nonsense now tied to the All-Star game), etc., etc. And yet, despite all of that, baseball is in the best financial shape in its history. Attendance is up, revenue is through the roof (over $9 BILLION annually, and rising), and there has been labor peace for 20 years. My first instinct is always to distrust commissioners, because they are hired and fired strictly by the owners…but I think Selig’s tenure will be looked upon favorably as time passes. Why? One word: HOPE.
Before we go on, let’s enlighten the younger readers…before 1994, there were only four playoff teams at the end of the season. Now, this meant the regular season REALLY mattered – rare indeed was the 85-90 win team that made the postseason, and the goal really had to be 95+ wins to give yourself a good shot at the playoffs.
Occasionally, that made for exciting pennant races, and 100-win teams missing the postseason (the 1993 Giants come to mind). Just as often (or more), this system led to REALLY boring Septembers and a lot of disinterested fans for the other 24 teams’ fans (Tampa and Arizona were added in 1998, bringing MLB to 30 teams).
Here’s a modern-day example…let’s examine the top of the standings for 2014, if we split the leagues back into two divisions and only put the division winners into the playoffs:
NL EAST
Washington 96-66 –
St. Louis 90-72, 6 GB
Pittsburgh 88-74, 8 GB
NL WEST
LA Dodgers 94-68 –
San Francisco 88-74 6, GB
San Diego 77-85 17, GB
Now, we can be charitable and put St. Louis in the West – after all, while they were in the old NL East, they are further west than any other team in the East or Central divisions…but it still gives only a half-hearted NL West race, and makes the NL East race even more of a blowout.
Now, you say, maybe things got out of hand late in September…maybe entering the last month, things were tighter. Well, let’s see…here were the standings on the morning of September 1, 2014, in our ‘old’ 2-division alignment:
Washington 78-58 –
Milwaukee 73-64, 5.5 GB
Atlanta 72-66, 7 GB
Pittsburgh 71-66, 7.5 GB
LA 77-61 —
SF 75-63, 2 GB
STL 74-63, 2.5 GB
Still a close race in the West…but the East is just about wrapped up (six games are a LOT with less than 30 games to go), so all of those teams’ CASUAL fans would have been losing interest and gearing up for other entertainment (mostly NFL).
Instead, with the current alignment, here’s the situation on 9/1: The Nationals had the East wrapped up with a 7-game lead. The Central had three teams separated by three games, and the West was still a race with the Giants two games behind the Dodgers. What’s MORE interesting, though, are the Wildcard standings on 9/1:
SF —
MIL –
ATL , 1.5 GB
PIT, 2 GB
MIA, 5.5 GB
FIVE teams with legitimate Wildcard hope…even if you discount the Marlins (and with their stellar young talent, they will be a factor next season) that’s still four teams that carried legitimate playoff excitement through September. NONE of those teams would have made the playoffs under the old system; in fact, none would have come particularly close.
The story was even better in the AL Wildcard race:
Oakland –
Detroit –
KC – (Detroit and KC entered the month tied for the division)
Seattle, 1.5 GB
Cleveland , 3.5 GB
Yankees, 4 GB
Toronto, 5.5 GB
Now, even allowing for the fact that one of CLE, KC, and DET was going to win the Central – that still leaves six teams fighting for two spots, and in fact THIS battle went down to the last few days of the season.
I have heard the counter-arguments. Big deal, they say, that’s come at the cost of diluting the value of the regular season. Winning 100 games means nothing anymore…in the playoffs, an 88-win team is just as likely to make the World Series as a 100-win team (as has been shown this season). All of those are true statements. But let me enter into evidence one more small factoid:
PLAYOFF TEAM PAYROLLS (MLB rank out of 30) from USA Today
Dodgers $241 million (1st)
Tigers $163M (4th)
Giants $148M (6th)
Nationals $134M (7th)
Angels $128M (10th)
Cardinals $108M (13th)
Orioles $105M (14th)
Royals $90M (18th)
Pirates $77M (26th)
Athletics $77M (27th)
Now, those are opening-day figures; teams added and shed payroll through the season. However, within a small range this tells you the teams that spent huge, the teams that hardly spent, and everyone in between. What I want you to notice is the complete lack of correlation between postseason success and payroll – yes, the Giants are in the World Series, but they had to survive a 1-game playoff to do it after parlaying that high payroll into only 88 wins. They face the Royals, a team that is below-average in payroll and will likely NEVER break into the top-10. The same holds true for the Bucs and A’s.
My point here is that you CAN buy regular-season success if you’re smart. Frankly, the Yankees have done it for years, and the Dodgers have done it the past two seasons. If you have a virtually unlimited budget and a halfway decent front office, you will almost always win more games than you lose. HOWEVER, all that money gives you the same chance in the postseason as the next team…and with three (or four) rounds to win, the odds flatten out amongst all teams. In essence, this playoff system is a de-facto salary cap…the Dodgers can buy division titles, but they haven’t even bought one World Series appearance yet, much less a championship. Meanwhile the Giants have won two, the low-payroll Rays (25th this season) appeared in the WS in 2008, and many ‘middle of the pack’ spenders such as the Cardinals and Braves are contenders year after year.
This system gives fans of almost every team HOPE…not just in April as a new season dawns, not just into the dog days of August, but into the last two weeks of the season. If your team isn’t in a full-blown rebuild like the Astros or Cubs, or being run into the ground like the Phillies, Rockies, or Mets, then the odds are strong that you’ll have some legitimate hope of at least a wildcard appearance most seasons.
To those who deride the 1-game wildcard, I feel your pain – but making it a 3-game series isn’t going to make it any less random, and frankly I think giving division winners a ‘bye’ to the Division Series serves to put SOME meaning back into the long regular season. Remember, they are still only taking 10 out of 30 teams into October – a large number by historical MLB standards, but small compared to EVERY other major sport. I believe it’s important to stop short of what those other leagues have done, 10 of 30 strikes me as exactly the right number.
Let me conclude with this, which should hit home: the Pirates are coming off two exciting playoff chases and postseason appearances, which have re-energized the fan base and put the 2013-14 teams into our memories as the ones that ‘broke the streak’ of 20 straight losing seasons. Would we remember these teams NEARLY so fondly if all they did was break .500, with NO postseason appearances? Under the old system, would Royals fans – now two wins from an amazing World Series championship – really care a lick about their 88-win team this year that, for much of the season, couldn’t hit their way out of a paper bag? I say no – and in the end THAT is the magic, and genius, of this playoff system – hope.
I welcome your feedback! Email me anytime at dsglass74@gmail.com.