the logic of baseball's postseason

Baseball's regular season is over, which means that it's time for me to look at the StoopidStats that I'm into. I will likely be posting about the 2016 season a few times over the next few days or weeks.

For this first post, I'd like to say that I have finally achieved some level of comfort with the concept of interdivisional play, interleague play and the wild card. These are all concepts that I have, for years, found to be intellectually displeasing.

Let me elaborate.

Let's start with the world series. The basic idea behind the world series was that there were two leagues, each with a champion. Since there was no interaction between the leagues, they instituted a championship series to determine bragging rights. That worked through 1969, when the leagues were split into divisions. Now, before the world series, they had a playoff within each league to determine the league champion. That would have made sense, except that they also had interdivisional play, which destroyed the conceit that you need the playoff to determine a league champion. In the intervening years, the structure has been repeatedly changed -- almost always in ways that reduce what I will call the "logical purity of the postseason structure." The unbalanced schedule. Interleague play. Wild cards.

Wild cards are the worst. It never made sense to me that you can be the major league champion without even winning your division. I took it as a sign in 1994 when, the year the wild card was instituted, the postseason was cancelled for the first time in 90 years. At least now there are two wild cards who have to play an extra one-game playoff. At least that creates a disadvantage to getting in through the back door.

While I'm ranting, please don't bother pointing out that it's all about money. Of course I know that. And still...

Anyway, this year I finally came up with a way of looking at this that doesn't offend my sense of logic. I have finally started viewing the baseball season (including postseason) as one huge game. The object of this huge game is to win the World Series. The rules of the game are such that there are different ways to achieve that goal. You can do it by winning your division. But you can also do it by winning a wild card spot.

I can live with that.