Major League Baseball is taking important steps toward being hockey. Firstly, the number of black players keeps declining, and by 2025 the American League will be a 47-year old Milton Bradley and 349 white guys. Secondly, Bud Selig and The Owners (a great name for a band) are once again talking about expanding the playoffs, adding a second wild card team and allowing ten clubs (1/3rd of baseball) to compete. Right now there are 30 teams in the NHL and 28 of them make the playoffs, so you pretty much have to be the worst thing ever to miss out.
“I would say we’re moving to expanding the playoffs, but there’s a myriad of details to work out,” commissioner Bud Selig said Thursday at his annual meeting with The Associated Press Sports Editors. “Ten is a fair number.”
A few of the details to be worked out include:
1. Is this a thing you honestly want to do, or do you keep allowing more teams in because the Red Sox can’t finish higher than third place?
2. If we’re letting everybody into the playoffs, why are we still playing 162 g.d. games?
3. Do we really want the Rockies in the playoffs every year? The Rockies?
4. Eventually we’re going to have to have a bunch of “best of one” series and Roy Halladay will have to pitch eight times a week.
5. Is ten a fair number if five of the ten come from the AL East?
6. Who gets to cover the Royals/Indians Double Wild Card playoff tiebreaker? HGTV? Can they stand to lose the carryover ratings from their infinite House Hunters marathon?
I miss the good old days, when baseball was a culturally-exclusive work and “two” was a fair number.
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Terrible idea. Fuck, I remember when the AL and NLCS was a best of five series, and we liked it!
Hopefully this means the Indians can still finish fourth in the Central and make the playoffs.
Two positives:
1. It gives more people in more cities a chance to be excite4d by playoff baseball.
2. I think it would be better for wild card teams to really have to earn their spot as opposed to being put into a series with the number one teams despite (and this is admittedly arbitrary) not being a number one team.
PRO: hey, you know what would really suck? more baseball
CON: literally everything else
The NHL has 30 teams 16 of which make the playoffs.
Only 16 teams make playoffs from NHL there Brand brand.
@Puck Fan and jonath – No, I’m fairly certain that I’m factually accurate. I don’t see the Quebec Nordiques or the Hartford Whalers in the playoffs this season, but everyone else is there.
I for one wish the Flyers had drawn the Kansas City Scouts or the California Seals.
Cut out Interleague, add a best-of-3 series between the best two non-division winners and be done with the World Series by Halloween every year.
And for the record, hockey’s playoffs are identical to the NBA’s. Except it is far more physical, less scripted, less whiny and games are played more often.