Shyzer.com

I want to get something off my chest. The baseball playoff structure is so horribly wrong, it’s bordering on ruining the game. To suddenly go from a 162 game season to a few 5 and 7-game playoff series is stretching it, but acceptable. However, when there are off days in between the games during the series, it makes it much easier for a weaker team to beat a stronger team in a fluke series. In fact, the weaker teams are actually rewarded for having a roster built with with 25% star players and 75% mediocre players. Meanwhile, the team with 100% above average players are more or less penalized.

Take for instance the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks. Granted, the World Series that year was probably one of the most memorable rounds in the past few decades, but look at how Arizona won. They had two absolute ace pitchers in Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, yet after those two they had nothing. Their starting rotation was awesome-awesome-crap-crap-crap. The New York Yankees were a much better and more evenly built team that year, yet thanks to the way MLB allows teams to get so much rest during the playoffs, Arizona was able to ride the hell out of their two aces and go for all or nothing. There’s no way Johnson or Schilling pitches 2 1/2 games each in a eight day span during the regular season, but in the playoffs? Sure, why the hell not.

And we’ve got more and more teams building their rosters in such a fashion to where they hope to squeak into the playoffs, because they know once they’re in, it’s all a crap shoot and they have just a good a chance as anybody. We’re moving from an era of teams building their roster to incorporate balance all around the field to an era where teams are overspending on high-priced star free agents in the hopes that they won’t start to suck any time soon. Because if they do, it’ll make the fact the rest of the roster is filled out with scrub players and kids who should still be in AAA glaringly obvious.

MLB needs to stop giving teams so much rest during the playoffs and keep the games going at a smooth, quick pace. Give all teams one days rest after the season and then play the first round of the playoffs in five straight days. One days rest after that and then have the next seven days contain the entire next round. Teams will be rewarded with extra rest if they manage to win a series in less than five or seven games and this would help keep the World Series from going into November. The NFL doesn’t give their teams extra rest during the playoffs, so why should MLB?

They’ve just played 162 games in a marathon run, so why the hell are we suddenly asking them to sprint for the finish line? It makes no sense.