"Inexorable" Movement to Expanded Playoffs

[El Supremo]

Selig: Expanded playoffs coming for 2012

NEW YORK (AP)—Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig expects the playoffs to expand from eight teams to 10 for the 2012 season.

Selig went public last fall with his support for expanded playoffs, and the matter is subject to collective bargaining with the players’ association.

“I would say we’re moving to expanding the playoffs, but there’s a myriad of details to work out,” Selig said Thursday at his annual meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors. “Ten is a fair number.”

(snip)

“The more we’ve talked about it, I think we’re moving inexorably to that,” he said.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-expandedplayoffs

Holly Mother of God! I want to ______(fill in the blank) this shithead right now!

[joeybee12]

1. I want to BLANK the BLANK out of the Asshole Selig! nt

[LisaM]

3. Me too!

He's such a dictator, he might as well be a Republican governor!

[El Supremo]

2. Olbermann pegged it last year ->

[dakota_democrat]

4. 10 teams means a bye in each league, right?

Baseball doesn't seem like the sport where a bye is something you'd want to shoot for.

[Renew Deal]

15. Maybe

Or a very short play in for the last spot.

[Auggie]

5. If the article is correct, the players support this too...

as do, most likely, a majority of owners

BUT NO ONE ASKED THE FANS

[El Supremo]

6. For 63 years there were only two teams that made the "playoffs".

That was with 16, then much later, 20 teams. Now we have 30 teams and 8 make the "playoffs". Why do we need more? Just for more greedy fucking revenue.

I'd like it go back to just 4 teams making it to the post-season series. Like it was in 1994.

[Upton]

7. In 1994 there was a strike..

but in 1993, the Giants won 103 games, the second best record in MLB, but didn't make the playoffs because of no wildcard...I don't want to go back.

[JonLP24]

9. Me neither

4 from each League is fine the way it is. Any more teams, why play such a long season?

I imagine they would cut down the season? Either way, I support 4 teams per league only.

[wilt the stilt]

10. the last great pennant race

Baseball lore like the Giants winning the pennant in'51 is what I believe made baseball the game of legend. No other sport has ever captivated cities like baseball. I remember the '93 race vividly. Atlanta ran down the Giants coming from behind. Danny Glover was interviewed after a 3 game series in SF where Atlanta swept the Giants and he would say was any other team would not worry him but the Braves scared him. Going to the wild card ruined months of tension. The '91 Braves won almost the same exact way against the Dodgers and with Atlanta being in the west and people watching into the wee hours literally everyone in Atlanta was sleep deprived. We called it Braves fatigue syndrome.

I believe many baseball fans miss this. Selig is the worst commissioner ever.

162 games is a long season and if you can't finish first you don't belong in the playoffs.

[Upton]

13. Yeah I remember..

the Giants led to the division practically all year. They had a tremendous middle of the lineup, with Will Clark, Bonds, and Matt Williams. The Braves took off after they acquired Fred McGriff and had a great second half. If memory serves, they passed the Giants sometime around mid-Sept and opened up something like a 3 game lead, but the Giants came back and tied them in the last week.. only to lose it all on the last game of the season.

Here are the 5 best records in MLB for 1993:

Braves: 104-58
Giants: 103-59
Phillies: 97-65
Blue Jays:: 95-67
White Sox: 94-68

Now what is wrong with that picture? You've got the 4 playoff teams, plus a Giants club that had the second best record in all of baseball, and one of the top Giants teams of all time, not even getting into the playoffs. I'm sure there were some other teams that suffered similar fates prior to the Wild Card being introduced. It's why I support the present playoff system....though I don't really think it needs to be expanded. Seems to me, it's working pretty well the way it is.

[wilt the stilt]

19. that is just the way it was

The Giants knew what they had to do to tie and they didn't do it. 162 games is enough. These were great pennant races. Let me quote Russ Hodges "The Giants win the pennant" The shot heard round the world. The Giants came back from 13 and 1/2 games in August. It is what lore was made from. Phillies collapse in "64. Yankees catch Boston in '78. Legendary.

I say add 2 teams make 4 divisions per league and the teams that finish first are in the playoffs. First nothing and back to pennant races.

Selig is an idiot- used car salesman

[madinmaryland]

8. What a douchebag. What are they going to do, play baseball to Thanksgiving??

:wtf:

Absolutely DISGRACEFUL!

[Kingofalldems]

11. WS would have to move to a neutral site in Fl or CA

[El Supremo]

12. My paper today said it would be a 3 or 1 game wild card series. WTF?

Sure it would probably eliminate the possibility of one team not getting in (if you could call it that) who has a better record than another division champ (like Texas in 2009), but we could likely have the scenario where the team with the second best record in a league loses a crappy little series and is out for the LDS.

This really sucks!

[HuckleB]

14. I thought this was plan was to have the six division winners get byes...

and the four wildcards play off in a three game series.

This makes the luck of the pitching match-ups far too important, IMO. Further, it means the wildcards will likely start the division series in the middle of their rotation, while the division winners start at the top of their rotations. This makes the whole playoffs less appealing.

[Liberal_Dog]

16. I Hope That This Doesn't Happen

The current playoff format works pretty well.

[El Supremo]

17. This ESPN poll doesn't look good:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/fp/flashPollResultsState?sportIndex=frontpage&pollId=111287

[Auggie]

18. Morons!