Avoiding The Arbitrary: A Shockingly Simple System

Winning a division doesn't have to mean playoff doom

Aside from reporters doing their job, the main complaints from Atlanta and Dodger fans (but weirdly not Oriole fans) seems to be that wahhhhh, it is not fair, wahhhhh, the playoffs are not reseeded after the wild card round, or wahhhhh the division winners had to face teams in the very division they won in the division series, or wahhhhh five games is not nearly enough to make a proper determination of which baseball team is best. 

These complaints ignore that a reseeding, or not allowing division rivals to face one another right away, would not have mattered: a best-of-5, like a best-of-3, is tilted heavily towards teams with #1 and #1A starting pitchers, so the Diamondbacks would have probably just beaten Atlanta and the Phillies would have likely dispatched L.A. And guess what? A best-of-7 series doesn't properly determine the true better team either. Nor a best-of-9. When you suggest a best-of-5 series isn't enough to be accurate in figuring out the absolute best, what you're really saying is the team that has the best record after, say, 162 games, should be awarded the championship. I don't believe Major League Baseball fans are ready to dare to be so European as to do away with the postseason altogether. The league itself is likely not to forfeit billions of dollars either. 

There are solutions to the problem of having a really successful regular season only to get bounced quickly in the playoffs. Besides crying about it, of course.

Get pitching. Lots of it. If you don't think pocket aces are enough, you're probably right. Four aces is a much more impressive hand. The Dodgers admittedly kind of did this, it's just that a lot of their really good hurlers got injured, like Walker Buehler. Although nobody told them it was a good idea to rely on Clayton Kershaw to start Game 1, even if nobody saw that terrible, soul-saddening disaster of a performance coming. Atlanta meanwhile basically relied on Spencer Strider and a cast of dozens, with Max Fried compromised by a blister. Maybe they're regretting signing a bunch of position players to those so-called team-friendly long-term deals instead of with some young pitching right about now. 

Here's one I haven't seen around: schedule some home games at the weird hours Fox and Turner insist upon giving to teams in the playoffs. If you're the Mets or Yankees you don't have to worry about such things — you're definitely getting all the primetime slots. But if you're literally anyone else (especially Minnesota) get ready for big time baseball! First pitch: 3:42 p.m. Natch. Everyone but Keith Hernandez believes start times like those are hell on batters because of the shadows. It'd be much less of a burden if you got used to those conditions. 

Layoffs are another complaint, ignoring that the Houston Astros took a one week vacay and still did their job just fine in their division series. Even though Ted Williams critically got injured in a warm-up game prior to his only World Series, Atlanta was smart to play an intrasquad contest, with fans in the seats, during their week off. The problem was the Barves should have played even more of those. This regular season, Atlanta went out of their way to have their top hitters play virtually every day, ignoring the current MLB trend and making Adam Silver smile from ear to ear. Austin Riley and Ronald Acuña Jr. played 159 games. Matt Olson was in the lineup for all 162. When you do that, then tell the workaholics to take a seat for a week, what do you think will happen?

Whining and moaning could be therapeutic. Solving your problems with logic is more satisfying.