Baseball Playoffs

I love baseball, especially the Redsox. Even though the sox have been eliminated, I will still try and watch some of the remaining games. It seems to get harder and harder every year to keep my interest, and some of it is due to the fact that with family and work obligations, my viewing time is limited. The other problem is the schedule of the playoffs.

The baseball season is setup to be a grind. Teams that play consistently well and have a deep team do well. You usually need to have solid pitching from your 1st through 5th starting pitchers as well as have depth in your bullpen to succeed. Most relievers can only appear in about 80 max. So these guys can only pitch about once every two days.

The baseball season last approximately 180 days, during which they play 162 games. So they get about 18-20 off, or once every 10 days. But once the season ends, the teams in the playoffs get more days off than they do play games. So the playoffs are no longer a grind they are a sprint. What you looked for as winner in the regular season is no longer what you look for in the playoffs. What if they played the football games every 3 days during the playoffs? All of a sudden, preparation and game planning for the next team would be out the window.

So now teams that succeed are the teams that have 2-3 great pitchers (instead of 5 good starters) and 3 good bullpen guys (instead of 5 good guys) since the relievers only have to pitch every other day. The game has now changed. Who cares that the Yankees 4th and 5th starters are completely ineffective and that the Angels are solid 1-5. You might never see them those 4th or 5th starters. And as a fan, the rhythm you were in during the season is now completely gone. Who knows if your team is playing on given night.

Its frustrating as a fan to see the playoffs stretched out like this (and that goes for you too basketball playoffs!). And to make matters worse, Nick Cafardo in the Globe recently was advocating going to best of 3 and best of 5 game series to determine the WS opponents since the playoffs take so long. Great, now it really would be a sprint and depth of rosters would mean nothing. He argues that reducing the regular season to 154 games in order to accommodate the long playoffs would make single season records irrelevant. But most single season records are just about untouchable and is that why we play the game? For the records?

Enough ranting. Lets eliminate some of the days off during the playoffs, allow multiple networks to show playoff games at the same time, and make the playoffs a bit more similar to the regular season. Oh, and lets make sure the Angels beat those damn Yankees.