Welcome to Snyder’s Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it’s free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you’ll get smarter, though. That’s a money-back guarantee. Let’s get to it.
If the playoffs had started on Monday, the three seed in the American League would have been the Houston Astros, by virtue of winning the tiebreaker (they have gone 9-4 head-to-head) over the Texas Rangers. At the time, the Astros and Rangers were both 65-66. This is pathetic.
Not to be outdone, the sixth seed would go to the Rangers, as they have won the tiebreaker over the Guardians.
Let’s lay that out more clearly: If the regular season ended before games yesterday, the American League would have two playoff teams with losing records. What’s worse, those two teams would face each other in the Wild Card Series, meaning at least one team with a losing record would make the ALDS.
This is unacceptable.
Unfortunately, we have too many playoff teams. I understand the playoffs are great fun and everyone loves watching playoff baseball and the owners love the extra gate money and extra TV money and the players love having more chances to make the postseason. This is what we get as a punishment from the baseball gods, though. Major League Baseball has the longest marathon of a regular season in sports. They play 162 games to sort out the deserving playoff teams. We aren’t going to end up with 12 deserving teams every single season. We just aren’t.
I don’t believe a team with a losing record after 162 games deserves a chance — even a small one — at the World Series.
It might sound radical — it sure as hell isn’t worse than a 79-win playoff team — but I’m proposing teams with a losing record be disqualified from playoff consideration.
Yes, I want a firm rule. If you don’t win at least 81 games, you’re out. I could even be talked into making it 82 wins, requiring a winning record.
Either way, I’m open to one of two plans.
The replacement team(s)
Again, this is a radical idea, and I expect many people would hate it. My proposal here is that however many teams are clipped from the playoffs due to being losers (I’m not name-calling! If they lose more than they win, this is a fact!), we draw from elsewhere to fill out the playoff field, even if a team comes from the other league.
To illustrate, let’s look at how things would have shaken out if things had ended before Monday. We’d be eliminating the Astros and Rangers from the AL West champion spot and also the Guardians from the final wild-card berth. That would mean the American League playoff field has the Rays at the No. 1 seed, the White Sox in the two, the Yankees at the four and Red Sox at five. The Yankees would get bumped up to the three seed with the Red Sox moving to the four. The final two spots would go to the best non-playoff teams. The AL has none. Look over at the NL, though. The Diamondbacks and Marlins are left out in the cold and have winning records. So we’ll adopt them.
That would mean the American League playoff field would be:
1. Rays
2. White Sox
3. Yankees
4. Red Sox
5. Diamondbacks
6. Marlins
Since we’ve scrambled the seeding with no AL West champion, I’m open to slotting the Yankees and Red Sox above the White Sox, too, as they have better records. Regardless, the key component is filling out the field with NL teams.
The extra bye(s)
The alternative here is just to eliminate the losers and go with what is left. This means that if only one team of the six playoff slots has a losing record, that team gets eliminated and the remaining five teams have three byes and one Wild Card Series. The way things currently stand, only four AL teams are worthy of making the playoffs, so they’d all simply advance to the ALDS and we’d just skip the Wild Card Series on the AL side entirely.
Again, I’m expecting a lot of people to hate this idea.
I can assure you, however, that you definitely don’t hate either of these ideas as much as I hate the idea of a losing team making the playoffs.
Again, you have 162 games. If you can’t win 82 of those, you deserve a zero percent chance at the World Series.
