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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4789977, member: 289"] The best regular season teams are going down like flies. The Phillies’ series MVP, Nick Castellanos was asked why and said, “What I’ve found out is that the regular season and the post season are two different things.” Two years ago the Giants won a great race for the NL West title the Dodgers, 107-55 over 106-56. It meant nothing. Both were in the playoffs and the pennant was World Series were won by the 88-73 Braves. Last year the Braves and the Mets tied for the NL East title, 101-61. Again, both made the playoffs and neither made the World Series. The 87-75 Phillies, 14 games behind both in the same division, did. This year the Phillies again finished 14 games behind the 104-58 Braves but beat them and the 100-62 Dodgers finished 16 ahead of the 84-78 Diamondbacks, who will play the Phillies to see who gets in the World Series. They won’t play the 101-61 Orioles. Instead, they’ll play either the Astros or Rangers, both 90-72. This is either a good thing or a bad thing. I’ll just point out that baseball’s regular season is twice as long in games as basketball and hockey and ten times as football and baseball is the sport where an upset is most likely because 1) you don’t always have your best pitcher on the mound or your best batter at the plate, 2) physical contact between the teams, always minimal, has been virtually eliminated so you can’t overpower your opponent and make them lose and 3), the core skills of the game, throwing a moving round ball to a particular spot and hitting it with a round bat, are inherently unpredictable. Thus, the potential to have an inferior team win a series or even the championship is much higher than the other sports. Put that with the fact that we don’t have pennant races anymore, but we do have November baseball and I have to conclude that expanding baseball playoffs beyond the old four division set up with the division winners going right into the league championship series was a bad idea. I’d like to see two expansion teams and four 8 team divisions, just like we had from 1901-60 with two leagues. We never had a team in the World Series with a record less than 90-72. And the series should be played in mid-October weather, which is usually fine. [/QUOTE]

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