There's Only One October

Jim Caple, before Game 4 of the World Series:

This is the seventh series this postseason and it likely will be the fifth to end in a sweep (of the 22 previous teams to take a 3-0 World Series lead, 19 swept it). Of the other two series, one ended in four games. Even the one series that went the limit scarcely had a good game -- the average margin of victory in the American League Championship Series was five runs, with Boston outscoring Cleveland 30-5 the final three games. And let's not get into all the days off without any game at all.

You know a postseason is bad when the most interesting moment is an invasion of insects.

Obviously, I'm not complaining about the outcome, but Caple's right. Buster Olney has similar thoughts, behind the ESPN firewall, and he makes the larger point that really, there hasn't been a good World Series since the Tribe-Marlins tilt of 1997.* (And that one involved the Marlins depriving the Indians of a championship, so I've basically stricken it from my memory.) I would add that the postseason as a whole hasn't produced any really memorable series in the three years since the Yanks-Red Sox war in '04 (and the neglected, but likewise excellent, Cards-Astros battle the same year). Yes, the Sox-Indians went seven games this year, as did the Mets-Cards semi-final in '06, but I wouldn't call either one a series for the ages, and beyond that it's been a sweep here, and a sweep there, with precious few of the extra-inning marathons and shocking turnarounds that you look for in postseason baseball.

Not that this has hurt baseball's popularity; far from it. But I think that mediocre playoffs may be a predictable consequence of the very thing that's driving baseball's revenues sky-high: The wild card system. In the regular season, the wild card has been a great success, the death of the classic pennant race notwithstanding: Joined to revenue sharing, it's made many, many more teams dream contending dreams deep into the season, which not only keeps fan bases excited in cities like Milwaukee and Denver but also improves the overall quality of play, since more teams have something to play for in August and September, and fewer teams dump salary at the trading deadline and turn the last third of the season into a battle between haves and have-nothing-but-prospects. I'd still probably vote for expanding the leagues by two teams and creating four four-team divisions, but I'm crotchety and old-fashioned; it's hard to argue that the wild card hasn't been a good thing for the sport overall.

But the expanded playoff system, while it's had its moments, comes with an awful lot of built-in problems: The 3-of-5 first round is engineered to produce sweeps and injects an enormous crapshoot effect into an already overly-random system; the sheer number of teams that make the playoffs prevents postseason rivalries from taking shape (not just the ancient Dodgers-Yankees rivalries, I mean, but also the great '70s battles between the Orioles and the A's, or the Yankees and the Royals or the Phillies and the Dodgers); you end up with too many series where a mediocre team, having lucked into a victory in the preceding round, is wildly overmatched against its next opponent; the built-in off days, which increased this fall for no good reason, create enormous amounts of momentum-sapping dead time (hello, Rockies!); the plethora of games makes each individual contest and series less memorable, even if it's really good; and finally, the whole thing just seems too damn long. Yes, MLB's postseason has fewer rounds than any other major sport, and fewer games than basketball and hockey, but the combination of multiple rounds with the uniquely-interminable length (and late starts) of postseason baseball games made me weary and bleary-eyed this month, and I had a rooting interest all the way through.

These are problems that either can't or won't be fixed, because doing so would involve killing various golden gooses. But they're problems nonetheless.

* Not being an ESPN Insider, I don't know if Olney includes this caveat later in his piece, but obviously, the 2001 World Series was fantastic.

Comments

C'Mon, the 2001 World Series wasn't exciting enough? Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson knock off the Yankees. President Bush throwing out the first pitch in New York after 9-11? Byung-hyung Kim giving up two game-winning homers in New York? The invincible Mariano Rivera goes down in the ninth inning of Game Seven. The only thing wrong with that series is that it was won by a no-history team like the Diamondbacks, but how is that any different from 1997 and the Marlins?

Posted by Matthias Cicotte | October 30, 2007 3:06 PM

What Mattias said. 2001 was one of the best of the last 30 years. I see that our host has tacked that point on to the end of his post, though.

I think any series that goes seven games is automatically pretty exciting, if not necessarily classic, so I'd throw in 2002 as well.

Posted by The Navigator | October 30, 2007 3:39 PM

The 2002 WS was also pretty good. It had the same number of 1-run games (4) and also went 7. No extra inning games, though, and no last at-bat wins.

Since 2002, pickings have been unbelievably slim. Marlins in 6, and then it's been Red Sox, White Sox, Cardinals, and Red Sox again — all sweeps. They should start spotting the losing team a couple of runs.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | October 30, 2007 3:47 PM

If I were dictator of MLB I'd:

1) Start the season around March 26th. Yes, the weather sucks in places like Boston and Cleveland that time of the year, but it sucks in early April anyway, and you can schedule most northern teams to have away openers.

2) Build in five or six two-game (non-doubleheaders) days in every team's schedule. No, the players wouldn't like it, but it wouldn't kill them, either.

3) Reduce the off days during the post season.

4) Doing steps 1-3 could potentially carve out an additional 12 days or so. I'd take a portion of those days and add an extra wild card team for each league. Let the two wild card teams play a best of three one ballpark series for the right to advance to the division series.

Doing all the above would create more revenue, create even more excitement by adding two additional playoff cities, and arguably make the regular season even more relevant because winning the division would now get your team a bye. Oh, and World Series would wrap up no later than the about the 27th of October.

Okay, one more, and this one's sheer crazy fantasy but, what they heck: I'd make both leagues follow both NL practice (no DH) and American (use the DH). Thing is, I'm a Red Sox fan, and I've grown up following the American league. And in some respects I think the DH is the more modern, sensible, natural evolution of the game. It's certainly fan friendly, and it certainly appears to be giving the American League an advantage. On the other hand, watching the Sox play in Denver this weekend really gave me an appreciation for the NL style -- all that pinch hitting and double switching stuff. It's a lot of fun, and adds a considerable element of strategy to the game. So, how about each league plays by "old school" rules (no DH) on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and "new school" (using the DH) on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Saturday games would be played without the DH before the All-Star break, and with the DH afterwards.

Posted by Jasper | October 30, 2007 4:02 PM

Jasper,

Don't forget "Ponies For All!" while you're just imagining things that will never happen.

And Ross, I don't really see what the problem is, here. How long has it been since there was a really great Super Bowl, with two great teams really just beating the crap out of each other for 48 minutes and one team winning at the last minute? And don't even talk about the Patriots - Great, dynastic team, but their 3 Super Bowls thus far were all Uglyball, big time.

Like most athletic contests, more often than not, baseball series aren't going to be all that close. We might be missing the yearly rivalries, but those of us who don't live in Boston, New York, L.A., etc. appreciate that fact.

As a Johnny-come-lately Rockies fan, I was pleased with the excitement of the postseason, and the fact that I got to go to game 4 of the NLCS. Yes, of course I would have appreciated a modicum of competetiveness in the World Series, but it was still a fun, successful year.

And anyone who thinks that a bug attack is more exciting than a heretofore unknown team winning 21 of 22 to blast its way into the World Series? Either that person has no soul, or he simply hasn't seen enough insect attacks.

Posted by David | October 30, 2007 4:15 PM

The 2001 WS was a classic, of course.

Underrated, because a bunch of Midwesterners won, is the 1991 WS. (I'm not disagreeing with anyone, just sayin'). No one threw a ten-inning shutout in the regular season again till Halladay did it around 2003-- and Jack Morris did it in Game 7! Gene Larkin will live forever in Valhalla for that game, too.

And Manny's walk-off HR in Game 2 of the LDS was pretty rad, I think. And an LCS comeback from down 3-1 is better than bad (it's good). And 2 of those WS games were darn close. That said, I won't argue with people who claim that it wasn't generally the world's most excitingest ever postseason.

I will, however, lace my sentences with confusing double negatives.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | October 30, 2007 4:16 PM

Yes, 2001 was an outstanding World Series and one of the all-time great Game Sevens as well. I can't read Olney's article, so I don't know why it didn't rate as a great series for him.

I never liked the wild card in my heart. The Red Sox' 2004 world championship was a wonderful thing that featured the all-time greatest playoff comeback, saved us three years of additional agony, and got a ring for Pedro, Trot Nixon, and others who deserved to get one, but I'm really glad that the Sox now have a world championship in a first-place season to go along with it.

Posted by James Kabala | October 30, 2007 4:22 PM

This might be unethical, but what the heck. Here is the rest of Buster Olney's article for those of you interested:

Over the last nine seasons, however, this is how long the World Series has lasted:
Seven games: 2
Six games: 1
Five games: 2
Four games: 4
And if the Red Sox win Game 4 on Sunday night, that'll be five sweeps in the last 10 years.

You can always find good stuff. The Angels' thunderstick-driven championship in 2002 was terrific. The 2001 World Series was incredible, partly because it was built on the emotion left over from 9/11 -- something none of us ever want to experience again. From a fan's perspective, it was fun to see the Yankees' dominance in 1998 manifested, and to see the Red Sox celebrate something in 2004 that they hadn't been able to celebrate in 86 years. Beckett's performance for the Marlins in 2003 will stick with us forever.

But the competition of the World Series -- the inning-by-inning drama -- has been like a jousting match between a knight on a stallion and a jester on a pony. Is anybody to blame? Not really, although there is one significant adjustment that could make even a bad series infinitely more watchable. There are some reasons why the World Series has been lousy:

• The National League is inferior to the American League: There is no getting around this. All four of the sweeps have been accomplished by AL teams. In the last 10 World Series, from 1998-2007, there have been 49 World Series games played, and the AL has won 33 of them. If you were to privately poll executives on what they consider to be the five best teams in the majors, most of them would probably list four or five AL teams.

The Red Sox and Yankees began engaging in their superpower arms race, and it has effectively forced other AL teams to spend money in an attempt to keep up. The AL teams have generally been more aggressive in spending big dollars in the free-agent market in this decade.

And the two most adept small-market general managers over the last decade, the Twins' Terry Ryan and the Athletics' Billy Beane, inhabit the AL. Perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way, with Arizona and Colorado now having accumulated a lot of talent -- but remember, the Red Sox and Yankees have, in recent seasons, adopted some of the development philosophies of teams like the Indians and Twins. So the AL might be better for years to come.

• The layoff: The Tigers clinched the ALCS quickly last year, and the Rockies wiped out the Diamondbacks in the NLCS in four games, and then sat and waited for more than a week -- and they looked sluggish at the outset of this series. It's a problem that really has no solution; no team is ever going to extend a series in effort to stay sharp for the next round.

• The batters slow down the game: I love to watch Youkilis hit, to see him dig in with two strikes, to fight through every pitch like it's the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series. But he steps out constantly, and so does just about every hitter in the game these days. Youkilis's memorable 11-pitch at-bat against the notoriously slow-working Rafael Betancourt in the ALCS reportedly lasted more than 10 minutes. In that spot, it was drama, for sure, but when one-sided games or even low-scoring games are dragging beyond midnight (ET), well, that's a problem.

The solution is simple. Find a way to keep the hitters in the batter's box.
The sport is thriving. The game is thriving. It would be nice, though, if it pulled us to the edge of our seats into late October, even occasionally.

For the readers: How would you rate the competition of the World Series the last decade, and if you don't like it, what changes would you want to see? I'll post some responses in the blog Monday.

Posted by torourke | October 30, 2007 4:48 PM

Yes, the Sox-Indians went seven games this year, as did the Mets-Cards semi-final in '06, but I wouldn't call either one a series for the ages

Except for the fact that the wrong team won, I'd certainly consider the Mets-Cards series a classic: Jeff Suppan (!) shutting down the Mets great offense twice, Steve Trachsel melting down in Game 3, Billy Wagner almost blowing a 4-run game 6 lead at home, Endy Chavez's game 7 catch, a series clinching 9th inning home run by Yadier Molina, and Carlos Beltran striking out to end Game 7 with the bases loaded.

Maybe you just don't like the NL, because I don't know what more a playoff series could possibly have.

Posted by right | October 30, 2007 6:07 PM

the postseason as a whole hasn't produced any really memorable series in the three years since the Yanks-Red Sox war in '04

Um, how about the Red Sox/White Sox '05 ALDS?

Posted by Steven | October 30, 2007 6:44 PM

I agree that the Mets-Cards in 2006 was fabulous (except for the outcome) and the 2001 WS was historic. For awhile I wanted to name my first born child Tony Womack. Fortunately, my wife is wiser than me in any number of ways.

Posted by Led | October 30, 2007 6:46 PM

Can anyone explain the use of the word "actober" to describe the playoffs? Is it the association with the word "action"?

Posted by Klug | October 30, 2007 7:51 PM

MLB sets up the TV schedule to ensure the least amount of viewers watch. In Denver our home games in the NLDS and NLCS didn't start until 8PM to wait for the AL games to end. When you only have one network televising the games this is a huge problem. Why punish the fans out West by making them wait. It's not like the folks on the East Coast are going to watch the Rockies/D-backs starting at 10pm on a weeknight anyway.
Stop being scared to compete against college and pro football. During the World Series it was in the 60s and 70s during the day in Denver. Instead of playing then the fans and players had to wait until night and play in temperatures in the mid-30s.

Posted by Brian | October 31, 2007 11:45 AM

Yes, 2001 was an outstanding World Series and one of the all-time great Game Sevens as well. I can't read Olney's article, so I don't know why it didn't rate as a great series for him.

Olney wrote a whole book about that series ("The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty") so I'm sure he remembers it.

Posted by Steve | October 31, 2007 2:57 PM

The 2002 series was great - lots of drama, regional rivalry, punch-in-the-gut Giants collapse, etc. It gets overlooked because no-one on the East Coast bothered to watch. Lucky for me I was in LA at the time.

2003 may not have been a great series, but it had at least one game for the ages - if you weren't completely on the edge of your seat watching Beckett pitch in Game 6 you have no appreciation for great pitching - the guy was just a kid mowing down that formidable Yankee line-up, fantastic.

Posted by vanya | October 31, 2007 4:14 PM