Why the baseball playoffs are the worst

Fix the system!

(The Phillies)

Some time around 10 pm last night — as it became clear that the Philadelphia Phillies¹ were going to beat the Atlanta Braves and advance to the National League Championship Series — I realized something: I hate the new baseball playoffs.

My gripes are two-fold:

1. The division championship series should be a best of 7 series.

2. The division winners shouldn’t have to wait five days to play a series.

Let’s tackle them one at a time.

Start here: Baseball is, quite literally, defined by its long season. At 162 games, its season is roughly twice as long as the runners up. (Basketball and hockey play 82 game regular seasons.)

That is on purpose. The whole appeal of baseball is that it rewards not a single day (or even week) of brilliance but rather sustained excellence over time. In baseball, you can have a bad week or even month and not be eliminated.

This is EXACTLY why baseball is my favorite sport. It most closely mirrors life. Anyone can have a good day (or a bad day). The point is persevering through whatever comes your way — understanding that there are going to be ups and downs, and that you have to find a way to navigate through them.

“Baseball is a habit,” wrote George F. Will. “The slowly rising crescendo of each game, the rhythm of the long season -- these are the essentials and they are remarkably unchanged over nearly a century and a half. Of how many American institutions can that be said.”

That’s right!

Which brings me to the division series. In which the best teams in baseball over the long haul of the season — the division winners are playing. This year, that featured THREE 100+ wins teams. (Braves — 104 wins, Baltimore Orioles — 101 wins, Los Angeles Dodgers — 100 wins.)

That trio of teams proved that over the length of the season they were the best that baseball had to offer. And as a reward they found themselves in a best of five series? Huh?

All three teams lost. The Dodgers and Orioles were swept. The Braves loss Thursday night handed the Phillies the series by a 3-1 margin.

Might that same thing have happened if they were playing a best of seven series? Sure! And, you might argue, winning four games is just one more than winning three. Which, because math, is true!

But, most teams — even elite teams — don’t go four starters deep in the postseason. Which means that managers have to plan their rotations differently when contemplating a seven game series versus a five game series. And given how critical pitching is to outcomes in baseball, this is no small change.

The pushback, of course, is that the baseball season is already too long — and we don’t want the playoffs to drag on and on.

Seriously? We are already acclimated to long postseasons in professional sports. Every playoff series in the NBA is a best of seven. Every playoff series in the NHL is a best of seven.

Like, we can do this people! Plus, making the division series a best of seven functionally adds — at most — two games to the season. Which, when you consider how many games are played is, um, not a lot.

Now to my second gripe: The five day long play delay for the division winners.

This extended layoff is the result of a change made in 2022 that added a third wildcard team in each league. And the decision to make the wildcard round a best of three as opposed to a single game playoff.

The problem is that it — like the five game division series — penalizes the teams that have performed the best over the course of a season.

Baseball, as George Will noted above, is a game of habit. It is played day in and day out for six-plus months. Never, with the exception of the All-Star break, does a team get more than two straight days off.

Players, naturally, get used to that rhythm. They train themselves to perform each day. It’s what they know. It’s what they’re used to.

Which means a five day break from baseball — when you have been playing it EVERY day (or almost) for the past six months straight is a major disruption. And a major disadvantage for the very teams who have earned the right to an advantage!

Rob Manfred, the commissioner of baseball, says it’s too early to judge whether the playoff changes are a good thing or a bad thing.

“It's only Year 2,” Manfred told ESPN Thursday night. “I'm sort of the view you need to give something a chance to work out. I know some of the higher-seeded teams didn’t win. I think if you think about where some of those teams were, there are other explanations than a five-day layoff. But I think we’ll reevaluate in the offseason like we always do and think about if we have the format right.”

I mean, I guess?

For my money, I want to see baseball’s best playing deep into October (and November if necessary!) And it’s hard for me to be convinced that a championship round with NONE of the teams that won 100 games this year is that. (I could NOT be less excited for the Phillies-Arizona Diamondbacks series. And I love baseball!)

Baseball needs to embrace what makes it distinctive and great: Rewarding sustained success over a very long season. These playoffs do the opposite.

1. Probably worth noting here — by way of full transparency — that I loathe the Phillies. Mostly because they stole all of the Washington Nationals best players.