Every Twins fan should hate this idea, and it’s just one of several ideas Major League Baseball proposed to the players association this week, according to The Athletic.
Some of them I agree with, such as reducing the number of games played to 154 from 162.
But don’t shorten the season so that you can expand the number of playoff games in the divisional series; shorten the season, so that you can expand the number of teams that make the playoffs.
Rather than 12 teams qualifying for the postseason, make it 16, or eight teams from each league, just like they do in the NBA and the NHL.
But the one idea that really needs to be jettisoned — one that I first learned of during the COVID-19 2020 season — is having teams pick their opponents, The Athletic reports.
(MLB) did propose that, beginning in 2027, the highest-seeded teams in the sport’s first two rounds, the Division Series and the Wild Card Series, could pick their opponents.
… The top two teams in each league get a bye during the Wild Card Series, the first round of the postseason. That means the top seed in the opening round is the No. 3 seed overall, a division winner. That club would be allowed to choose between two Wild Card opponents: the fifth or sixth seed.
Then, in the next round, the Division Series, the team with the best record in each league — the top overall seed — can choose which of the two Wild Card-round winners it wants to play.
Bottom line: Here’s what I fear this idea would mean for the Twins.
The Yankees are almost always going to be in the playoffs, and most likely will gain entry to the postseason by winning the AL East, while I think the Twins are close to being a consistent wild card team. In fact, they came close to do doing just that this past season.
But if the Yankees make the playoffs as the higher seed to the Twins, wouldn’t they pick the Twins to play every time? And why wouldn’t they? Every Twins fan knows that the Yankees have absolutely dominated the Twins/Senators for at least a century.
The result? Just another first-round loss and first-round exit to the New York Yankees. Didn’t we see enough of this in the 2000s? Feel free to push back on this idea, players association.
Extra innings…
–Something I missed: “Sudden” Sam McDowell, a hard-throwing lefty for the Cleveland Indians in the 1960s, died Oct. 5. He was 84.
His overall career numbers don’t immediately jump off the page, but take a closer look at some single seasons and he had a few that were Cy Young worthy, such as in 1965 when he pitched to a 2.18 ERA and fanned 325 batters over 273 innings, or 10.7 strikeouts per nine innings, according to Baseball-Reference.
Against the Twins, he went 11-11 with a 3.70 ERA and struck out 199 batters in 201-plus innings, per Baseball-Reference.
One of those wins came Aug. 14, 1965, at Cleveland Stadium. McDowell went the distance, allowing just a run on three hits with 11 strikeouts to beat the Twins, 3-1.
The Minneapolis Tribune was there:
“I’ve never seen a left-handed pitcher throw the ball harder,” confessed Andy Kosco of the Twins.
He (McDowell) leads the American League in strikeouts with 227 in 185 innings pitched. You can count on one hand the number of pitchers in all baseball history who have claimed more strikeout victims than innings pitched. Cleveland’s now-retired hero Bob Feller was one, with 348.
Source: Newspapers.com