In a recent story by the Associated Press, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig indicated that he is strongly considering expanding the playoff system to ten teams, saying, “It’s more fair than eight.”
Where art thou, baseball purist?
MLB has always resisted change, evolving more slowly, to its own detriment, than the other major sports.
When you think about it, of all the major sports, it should be baseball offering the largest and longest playoff tournament.
There are close to 5,000 regular season MLB games, but it only yields a maximum of 41 playoff games (close to 118 to 1). In football, you have 480 regular season games and 11 playoff games (43 to 1). In the NBA, there are 2460 regular season games and a maximum of 105 playoff games (23 to 1 ).
In both the NFL and the NBA, the playoff format corresponds to its regular seasons equitably. If the playoffs are a refined representation of the regular season, the NFL and NBA (and NHL) models work.
The MLB offers up two separate, incongruent seasons.
The things that make an MLB team a playoff team are different than the things that make an MLB playoff team a successful playoff team — unlike the other major sports.
