By Jeff
When the Philadelphia Phillies lost, the town of Philadelphia was pretty crushed. Their radio stations jumped all over this and asked their callers to call in the week following to share how sad they were about the loss.
This week is something new. Now some of their popular radio hosts and the callers are crying about the Major League Baseball playoff format.
What are they crying about? The best-of-five series in the Divisional Round. Apparently it's not fair that a team that won more than 100 games only gets one more home game than the wild card team with 90 wins.
My favorite complaint of a radio host here, Mike Missanelli, is that the five-game series doesn' let the No. 1 seed comeback if they lose Game 2. His example was Cliff Lee not getting an opportunity to pitch two games, especially after blowing Game 2 this year.
You have to be kidding me. The advantage the Phillies had was they were playing the team with the worst record in the playoffs. They had one more home game and a better team. What more of an advantage do you need? To blame the format for the loss is a joke. The offense couldn't score a run in their biggest game of the season. That's why they lost.
Also, even if it is a seven-game series, the higher seed would still only have one more home game. You have more time to come back, but if they played to the level they should have and were capable of, it would have never got to Game 5.
As annoying as it is to hear these excuses, and I'm finding there is always an excuse for Philly sports teams, it's fun hearing these members of the sports media and the fans talk up their teams so much, only to watch them choke.
Bad Company - Shooting Star
I understand your point. Philly fans will always fine something to blame a loss on. Usually it's officiating, but they'll find something if they keep digging. But I actually agree with them on this one.
ReplyDeleteIn my long list of things I hate about MLB, the five game division series is a close second behind not having a salary cap. How can you play 162 games to determine which teams are in the playoffs, then have a short series to start the postseason? There's too much luck and randomness to have a short series. That's why they play so many games in the first place: to make sure everything evens out in the end. Three of the four division series went to five games. We were robbed of some amazing game sevens.
Missanelli needs to wrap his head around the fact that the Phils came up short because after the second inning of Game 2, their bats stunk and two of the "Big Four" were not all that great in the five-game series (Cliff Lee and the recently declined option of Roy Oswalt, we are looking at you.) You can't win a series when five of your everyday eight hit less than .215 in the series. And if you do, your pitching has to be flawless and in two of the games, the Phillies pitching was average to mediocre at best. Add all those things up and it cost them.
ReplyDeleteIf anything, Missanelli and others need to be championing for the format that is supposedly close to a done deal for 2013, I believe. Where two wildcards face off in a one-game playoff.
Yes, while in reality in would rob us of the final night of the regular season having the same meaning as it did this year, since all parties involved would have been guaranteed the one-game. But there would finally be penalties for wild card teams. In theory, they would not have be able to set their rotations for a best of five, since they would need to win a game just to get there.
And I am with Greg, the sport still needs a salary cap but that is a plea that will fall on deaf eyes, with one of the most powerful unions in control and commish who would never even dare mention it (instead he will talk about luxury tax and revenue sharing until he is blue in the face.)
and that should be blind eyes or deaf ears, not the combo I created in the last graph.
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