Scholarship table
Ummm, a 1300 OPS is super prime Babe Ruth territory. I don't think anyone was suggesting that the type of play to be expected of Granderson.
I have more confidence that the Brewers can win a best of 5 and best of 7 series than I have in the Brewers winning a do or die game to get into those longer series.
I don't think that's a brewers exclusive. The single game wild card elimination isn't a very 'baseball-y' thing to do.
Crapshoot, aina?
No, just win your division.
Yep. I have very little sympathy for the teams that have to play 1-game playoffs. Don't like it? Win more games. The Brewers certainly had many chances to beat the Cubbies (and other teams) to end up with one more win than their rivals.It's why I never whine about NCAA tournament bubble teams getting "screwed," either. Don't wanna get screwed? Win another game or two!
While I agree with your NCAA opinion, not sure I do with your MLB one. I just think that rolling into the wildcard, a sub par team to you shouldn't have the opportunity to take you down due to a single rotational stud. Baseball is one of the few sports that plays enough games to truly effectively demonstrate the results and I think it is dumb that they base advancement on the same number of games as a league that plays 16 regular season matchups. Then again I am just a simple finance guy.
Logically I agree with you. But playoffs aren't really about logic.
The problem with the argument of "win your division" or "win more games" is that in both leagues this year the team with the 2nd best record in each league is probably going to end up playing in the Wild Card game, and then the 2 teams with the best records in each league are going to match up in the Divisional Series if each of those teams win the Wild Card game.
This is where I come out as well. Any MLB playoff design will suffer from a "too small of a sample size" problem. There just isn't a good way to shrink a 162 game, 600 AB per player, 200 IP per pitcher, season into an abbreviated playoff structure. Maybe a 3 game short wild card series could make some sense vs the single game. But then the winner would be able to bring their ace back for Game 1 of the Divisionals - and having to burn your ace on the WC is my favorite thing about it.
TAMUI do know, Newsie is right on you knowing ball.
Personally, I think the MLB playoffs could use a little watering down. Only 33% of your teams making the postseason always seemed crazy to me. And if they add two more expansion teams...
Less regular season and more post season would do MLB some good. If you ended it after last weekend, you would have some time for two, three game Wild Card series in each league. Division series could start next Monday. It's never going to happen though.
Looking at Yelich and Baez, it's pretty tough to parse the two. WAR is similar, Yelich has the edge in the averages, Baez the edge in many raw stats (HR, RBI, total bases).While many partisan fans have their guy, it feels like it will come down to best player on the best team for national voters. Am I the only one that thinks the player that is on the NL Central winning team will also be MVP?
That leaves the division winners sitting for a while, which could be problematic for their timing, etc. If you have hitters going a week or more without seeing live pitching, it may give an advantage to the wild card team, which doesn't seem right. And even with more teams making the playoffs in the NBA, for example, the number of teams with a legit shot a making the finals is what 4-ish usually? Those first round match-ups are seldom very compelling.
I'll stick with my opinion on Gold. He'll be in foul trouble within the first eight minutes.