I now believe we will have national health care legislation before an ALCS game is played.
We might be blaming Mother Nature over the weekend. But this is a man-made problem. Greed, after all, is one of our deadly sins.
If tonight’s Game 1 is played without postponement, it will represent the Yankees’ fourth game in 12 days. That is partially about the Yankees sweeping the Division Series. But more of it is about major league baseball being beholden to its TV benefactors.
The schedule is constructed this way: Fox tells MLB when the best days to host the World Series are, and then MLB works backward to fill in the rest of the postseason dates. That leads to far too many artificial off-days before dealing with the realities of weather, especially in open-air, northeast cities.
Strategy and roster construction become far different during the postseason than the regular season. You play one way to get into the playoffs and another to win in the playoffs.
Consider that major league teams have 19 scheduled off-days during the regular season, 162 games jammed into 181 days. Last year the Phillies had 15 off-days in the postseason, playing 14 times in 29 days. Cole Hamels pitched enough to register five of Philadelphia’s 11 wins.
So you go from needing five starters to reach the postseason to a maximum of four in the postseason and — more and more with the rigged schedule — to three. You shorten the number of players used. At this time of year, we crown a champion in a team sport, yet create schedules that allow clubs to avoid using their whole teams. Best 16-man roster wins.
The Yankees, in particular, are getting advantages this postseason. They might avoid using a feeble fourth starter in Chad Gaudin. Also, with so many off-days, Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes and Mariano Rivera could be used almost every game; avoiding weaker links from the pen. Also, the Yankees have many older players who are getting a bunch of extra rest.
If I could wave a magic wand, I would: Start the playoffs on the Tuesday after the regular season ends. Two days after both Division Series end in each league, the LCS starts up; and the same pattern is employed to start the World Series after the LCS.
This will never happen. Enough network and MLB honchos told me of the logistical and financial nightmare that would occur. But we are dealing with another nightmare now: Baseball is a momentum sport and the momentum is lost each postseason by all this downtime. A sport played daily all season loses flow and attention at its most critical juncture.
Those extra off-days after the regular season are in case one-game playoffs are needed to decide a postseason berth. So? Play it on Monday and the winner has to be ready to go as early as Tuesday. You don’t want that penalty, then win during the 162 games.
What if one league has, for example, both of its Division Series end in three games while the other league ends in five? Well then one league will start its LCS much earlier, and potentially create downtime later. But at least that would be from the natural flow of winning and losing a series rather than artificially creating the down time.
The biggest problem, of course, is that the networks want a set schedule to promote their fall programming and that the postseason is when they recoup their hefty rights fees. I see their point. But the networks and MLB need reasonable minds to deal with complicated issues and find a way to cut some of this down time.
If not, MLB should do what is best to maintain the integrity of its playoffs and have the self-confidence that if it plays the games at the proper times, then some networks will pay a huge sum to televise the biggest games.
Maybe the big experiment will come in 2013 when the TBS and Fox deals expire, and the Commissioner’s Office could use the MLB Network to televise its postseason without infringing on a fall schedule.
Until then, enjoy the down time — there will be a lot of it.