MLB 2025 Season

Wobbie

SVRDhand13 said:

Boring game last night. Too bad the AL game was first. There are no teams I like left in the NL!

I didn't find it boring.

Wobbie

Despite Giants’ win, wild-card round is a joke
By Scott Ostler SF Chronicle

Madison Bumgarner pitched a classic for the Giants on Wednesday night, delivering a shutout playoff victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. A night earlier, Jon Lester didn’t get it done for the A’s. They’re going home.

Both games were playoff openers in Major League Baseball’s relatively new, one-game wild-card format. You win or lose everything, in an instant.

Is that fair? Not from this corner. It’s like selecting Miss America based on best wink. There’s so much more to it.

Baseball’s wild-card shootout, enacted in 2012, brings a high-noon drama to the sport, but at the expense of the game’s pace and integrity. It’s an artificial and unfair round, awkwardly shoehorned into the playoff schedule for the sake of money.

So baseball. So Bud Selig.

It reminds me of when Pat Riley coached the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s. The coach came up with a plan to keep his players awake during boring film-study sessions. Riley spliced five-second porno clips into the game films.

That’s how I look at Major League Baseball’s one-game wild-card round: attention getting, but artificial enhancement.

One of baseball’s charms is its marathon nature. An extra round of playoffs, with an extra wild-card team in each league, was welcome and overdue. Baseball’s postseason had been too exclusive compared with those of the NFL, NBA and NHL.

Format is too quick

But the one-game format is too quick, a marathon followed by a jailbreak.

We can be objective here, no hint of sour grapes, because in the Bay Area we got the wild-card agony and the ecstasy.

The A’s, after slogging through baseball’s six-month season to qualify for the playoffs, were eliminated Tuesday night by the Kansas City Royals in roughly the time it takes Sean Doolittle to groom the sunflower seeds out of his beard. On Wednesday night the Giants blew out the Pirates, 8-0, to advance to the National League Division Series in less time than it takes Bumgarner to blow a brace of snot rockets.

Looking at it from my neutral viewpoint, the wild card is a bad deal. The instant joy of the winners (Royals, Giants) is greatly overshadowed by the anguish and bitterness of the losers (A’s, Pirates), who will forever believe their team got screwed.

That’s my take, and judging from casual research, the 3-year-old wild-card playoff system has a low approval rating among baseball students, critics, fans and players.

Not long ago, the playoff party consisted of four teams from each league: the three division winners, plus the winningest runner-up. Then they added the extra wild card, and because winter looms, they had to make the new round a one-and-done event.

So after hanging with your local team for half a year, if you blink, you miss the famous final scene.

Why does this quickie round exist? That’s a clown question, bro. It’s about money.

The wild-card round is pure BudBall, named (by me) in honor of outgoing Commissioner Selig. As with every new MLB wrinkle during Selig’s long regime, it’s about money.

Motivated by greed

Quick example: Virtually everyone agrees it’s a horrible idea to grant World Series home-field advantage to the team from the league that won the All-Star Game three months earlier. That twist was twisted into the Series because the All-Star Game’s viewership (and sponsorship money) was dropping rapidly, because the once-cool event was being fatally watered down by roster overstocking — again, motivated by greed.

Baseball used greed to “fix” a problem created by its own greed.

When do baseball’s decision-makers start considering the integrity of the sport? Sorry, that’s another clown question.

The main objections to the best-of-one format:

•It’s artificial, a carny game form of baseball. The one-game format calls for drastically different strategies and roster constructions than are employed during the regular season and in the longer playoffs. The one-gamer, over time, will result in far more pitching changes and lineup juggling. A facsimile of real baseball.

•It gives a significant edge to an inferior team with one great starting pitcher, over a better, well-rounded team that has a better staff but lacks one nearly unhittable ace. Baseball is a team game.

•It’s too sudden. Baseball is not suited to a one-game playoff. What next? An additional wild-card round decided by a three-inning game? Could be a money-maker! After each inning, take a 45-minute break for analysis and commercials!

The system is fixable. One simple solution: Knock one week (six games) off the end of the regular season and expand the wild-card play-in round to a best-of-three format. The season is much too long to begin with. A three-game playoff is still jarringly abrupt for baseball, but it offers a better balance of excitement and fairness. And the sponsor and fan excitement over the three-game format would make up for the money left on the table by shortening the season. Everyone’s getting rich, anyway.

Prospects of such a fix: highly unlikely. It’s a bottom-line world, and the wild-card games got good ratings. Captive audience.

Meanwhile, the Giants now skip eagerly ahead, back to real baseball, while the A’s are sentenced to stew forever in their own bitter BudBall juices.

Wobbie

don't love either of these teams......a little tired of Detroit, so.....

what a beat down this inning has turned into.

can't believe they do the whoa wawa wa whoa whoa chant in Baltimore....that is fucking awful....save it for Atlanta and FSU X(

Wobbie

the angels, their stadium and their fans are all loathsome.

and 2002 called....they want their thunder stix back.

norm

imalive said:

the angels, their stadium and their fans are all loathsome.

and 2002 called....they want their thunder stix back.

ya know, if you and i can agree on this, there's hope for the middle east lol

Cliffy6745

These Baltimore fans are just the worst. Perhaps they should have showed up once in the you know last 15 years.

Cliffy6745

Rob Neyer on twitter saying he thinks trout will be a left fielder, first base or dh in 5 years. Sounds like he doesn't like his body. Never heard this before

Cliffy6745

I think I hate the fact that they are selling cars ripping off Casey at the bat, but the fact that it got me to read Casey at the bat for first time in many years I like a lot

Wobbie

Aoki was just grinning like the Asian kids you see in the LLWS.

Wobbie

Cliffy6745 said:

I think I hate the fact that they are selling cars ripping off Casey at the bat, but the fact that it got me to read Casey at the bat for first time in many years I like a lot

not sure about the Casey at the bat one, but the Miggy Chrysler ad seems to come from the called strike three he took from Romo to end the 2012 WS....even tho he strikes out in the commercial.

Cliffy6745

imalive said:

Cliffy6745 said:

I think I hate the fact that they are selling cars ripping off Casey at the bat, but the fact that it got me to read Casey at the bat for first time in many years I like a lot

not sure about the Casey at the bat one, but the Miggy Chrysler ad seems to come from the called strike three he took from Romo to end the 2012 WS....even tho he strikes out in the commercial.

That's the one. That is all Casey at the bat, no?

Wobbie

Cliffy6745 said:

imalive said:

Cliffy6745 said:

I think I hate the fact that they are selling cars ripping off Casey at the bat, but the fact that it got me to read Casey at the bat for first time in many years I like a lot

not sure about the Casey at the bat one, but the Miggy Chrysler ad seems to come from the called strike three he took from Romo to end the 2012 WS....even tho he strikes out in the commercial.

That's the one. That is all Casey at the bat, no?

I just saw it. Never noticed the Casey thing before )

Cliffy6745

imalive said:

Cliffy6745 said:

imalive said:

Cliffy6745 said:

I think I hate the fact that they are selling cars ripping off Casey at the bat, but the fact that it got me to read Casey at the bat for first time in many years I like a lot

not sure about the Casey at the bat one, but the Miggy Chrysler ad seems to come from the called strike three he took from Romo to end the 2012 WS....even tho he strikes out in the commercial.

That's the one. That is all Casey at the bat, no?

I just saw it. Never noticed the Casey thing before )

Haha, yeah just watched it again. A straight ripoff from Casey.

Casey at the bat was my favorite growing up

Wobbie

meanwhile.....there's another terrible Thursday night NFL game going on, with the home team up 32.

WhatYouTaughtMe

imalive said:

meanwhile.....there's another terrible Thursday night NFL game going on, with the home team up 32.

That's part of their effort to make sure every team gets a primetime game. It shouldn't be like little league, where everybody gets to play. I think they had my Bills play the Browns on Thursday night a couple years in a row. I didn't even want to watch that game. Ha

Wobbie

I don't know if my liver is ready for another deep postseason run.....but we'll try

fuck the d**gers. hard.

igotid88

Damn Kershaw.

Wobbie

Fuck yeah!!!

WhatYouTaughtMe

imalive said:

Fuck yeah!!!

MVP? )

Wobbie

big shock......LA fans do that lame white stripes thing.