MLB News: Don’t Expect the Postseason Format to Change Any Time Soon
Both the American and National Leagues are down to their final two teams after the Phillies clinched their spot on Thursday night by beating the Braves in four games.
Atlanta joins the Dodgers and the Orioles as teams who earned a 2023 first-round bye thanks to their regular season records now on the couch after they lost their respective divisional series’ to Wild Card teams.
Questions about the long layoff for higher seeded teams have been floated across the baseball sphere as baseball’s three best regular season teams won’t get to compete for the World Series this season.
Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred shot down any discussions about the current format and instead mentioned patience from angry fans upset at the current results.
“It’s only Year 2,” Manfred said. “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.”
via Jesse Rogers, ESPN.com
The Dodgers, Orioles and Braves all have understandable gripes with how this season ended for each of them, yet it sounds like an excuse for not playing well enough in the most important games of the season.
While the Diamondbacks, Rangers and Phillies all lost one game or less en route to the Championship Series, the bottom line is that all three teams had their best when they needed it most.
LA specifically won’t have any excuses due to their putrid offense and starting pitching over their three-game destruction to their division rival.
Clayton Kershaw set the tone in the first inning of the Dodgers’ defeat by Arizona thanks to the shortest start of his entire career.
The Hall of Famer gave up as many runs in his lone outing of the series as the entire Dodger lineup scored all series.
Manfred may be extremely unpopular for numerous reasons though LA can’t pin the blame on anyone but themselves for their most recent postseason collapse.
And with the postseason format not changing anytime soon, the Dodgers are going to have to figure out how to succeed in October, no matter the format.
Photo Credit: Stephen Brashear-USA TODAY Sports
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Manfred is such a clown. You have teams, players and fans all saying how big of a deal the layoff is and this guy is just like ‘iT woRkS FInE!’ This isn’t just a 2 year thing either, it goes back decades. Just off the top of my head I can think of two teams that were devastated by a long layoff. The ‘07 Rockies had 8 days off before the World Series and got SWEPT by the Red Sox. The ‘12 Tigers had a week off before the World Series and got SWEPT by a no where near as good Giants team. And now in the last 2 years with this new format you have 7 of the last 8 teams to win 100 games go a combined 7-23 and 6 of those teams did not even make it past the Divisional Series. How anybody can look at that and say the layoff doesn’t matter is beyond me.
Well said! I agree.
I agree with Jay. When, after 162 games, a bunch of second-place teams move into the finals, something’s not right. Manfred can say what he wants, but most who give this full thought realize it doesn’t make sense, except to those who are in it for the money. Follow that, right, MLB? My concern is not nearly as much about layoffs but the entire playoff system that does not adequately reward the season division champions.