After the 98-win Pittsburgh Pirates were eliminated from the playoffs by the 97-win Chicago Cubs in the NL Wild Card game, the cries to reform MLB’s playoff system grew louder. One person that isn’t too enthralled with the idea is someone whose opinion matters quite a bit – Commissioner Rob Manfred.
Manfred spoke about tweaking the playoffs to ESPN’s Jasyon Stark.
“We try not to get too caught up in the individual results from any particular season,” Manfred said. “I believe this is the first time you’ve had three teams with records this strong in a single division. So redoing your system, based on a once-in-history event, seems a little excessive to me.”
“There has to be every incentive to win the division, and we think we have a format that does that,” he said. “I think we had an aberrational year this year, in terms of three really strong teams [in the NL Central]. And I think it would have to happen more frequently for us to take it as something that would merit a real rethinking.”
Despite thinking what happened with the Pirates and Cubs is a bad situation, I actually agree with Manfred – if this happens next year, maybe we can talk. But the NL was so imbalanced this year that a crunch at the top was bound to happen – something like eight of the first ten teams eliminated from playoff contention this year came from the National League.
But while Manfred isn’t too keen on playoff tweaks, he’s not necessarily opposed to reseeding the teams after the Wild Card games.
“I think the reseeding idea, of all the suggestions that have been made, is the one that has the most appeal to me,” Manfred said. “I’m not sure I would support it, but it is one that I would recognize the logic of. And I think it’s consistent with, and wouldn’t be too disruptive, in terms of additional games. And it is an idea worth talking about.
“I think there is a fairness,” the commissioner added, “to the idea that you take a look at everything after the wild-card games and say, ‘You ought to get a little something for the fact that your record might have been better than a division winner.'”
This year, reseeding would have allowed the Cubs to play the Dodgers instead of the Cardinals. In 2013, the 94-win Pirates would have faced the Braves in the NLDS instead of the Cardinals . In 2012, the 93-win Orioles would have gotten matched up with the Athletics instead of the Yankees.
The merits of reseeding can be discussed all day and night. There’s some good to it, and some bad. But one thing is for sure – baseball isn’t going to make a knee jerk change to their playoff system based on what happened this season in the NL Central.
[ESPN]
