All MLB Playoffs Should Be Best-Of-Seven
First Round Of Baseball Playoffs Is Best-Of-Five Games
Sep 20, 2009
The Major League Baseball season is about to end.
With two weeks and 14 games to play in a 162-game season, the race for division championships and wild-card winners will be winding down.
The baseball season is by far the longest of all the sports.
The 162-games covers six months of a day-in-day out grind.
Major League players are lucky to get two or three off days per month. If there is a rainout, some games have to be made up by playing doubleheaders.
Prior to divisional play, which started in 1969, there was only one first place team in each league, the one’s with the best records from the American and National Leagues played in the World Series.
Most World Series has been a best four of seven formats, and a few have been best five of nine.
But no World Series was ever played with a best three of five formats.
That kind of series is just too short and does not really serve to determine a better team.
MLB Playoffs Change In 1994
Yet the first round of the Major League Baseball playoffs is a best three of five. It has been that way since MLB went to three divisions in 1994 with one wild card entry.
The World Series and League Championship Series from each league is still best four of seven.
The first round should be the same way.
There is too much pressure in a best of five series. A team that loses the first two games finds it impossible to make a comeback.
Pete Rose once made the remark that all the pressure is in the first playoff round because teams can’t afford to lose not even one game.
MLB Commissioner Bud Selig is against the first round being best of seven for one very questionable reason.
MLB Avoids Play In November
Somehow, there is a baseball taboo that the season should not carry past October
Selig said that if the first round were to be best of seven, then the regular season would have to be cut to about 154 games, which was the standard prior to 1961.
Baseball owners will not go for axing eight games out of the schedule because it would mean lost revenue.
But even with a 162-game schedule, a best of seven in the first round can be played and still have all the playoffs over in October.
If all rounds of the playoffs were best of seven, that would take 21 days minimum to complete.
Since there are 31 days in October, you still have 10 games to play with.
And so what if the playoffs creep into November.
It already happened in 2001 when the 9/11 attacks forced postponement of one-week of games.
