The Injustice of the One-Game Play-In

Think about packing a box to send a birthday gift to a friend. It has six sides, all of them solid. We want to fill the box as much as possible to maximize the gift. 

We're going to place stacks of flat objects in the box that nearly fill it. Then we're going to squish some fist-sized items the consistency of bean bags into the box. They can be molded to any shape but they still take up room. We're running out of room, but we can tear open a couple of those bean bags and disperse most of the beads before tying back up the bag and stuffing it inside.

Man, we really want to cram more stuff in there. It's a flat fee for shipping, so the more we get in, the better the value. But the box is groaning at the seams. In fact, some of the bean bags are poking above the fold. We'll tape it up best we can. It's pretty jerry-rigged.

We could just bring the gifts to our friend but it wouldn't be the same. Every year since forever we have been shipping a box of goodies and it's a nice tradition we want to keep. We could send fewer gifts too, but that's another great tradition.

And that is the baseball's dilemma in a nutshell, or a box.

Baseball is stuck on a 162-game schedule because it's been that way for 54 years. There's nothing magic about 162 games; in fact, with the elimination of double-headers, they don't really fit between harvests in Northern climes with the populations to support Major League teams. They shouldn't be playing baseball in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee or plenty of other MLB cities in early April or October, particularly at night. But they must. A more sensible 140-game schedule is a non-starter, like Republicans acknowledging that they don't understand science.

So the season spans the months that can barely support a warm-weather sport, and then the playoffs begin and stretch into November, at night, often in places whose winters are debuting. World Series games in those cities are deplorable nonsense. The box is stretched beyond its limit.

Beyond that, baseball has encountered another conundrum. Fans turn tail when their home nine is eliminated in August. It makes for a soul-crushing season and induces them to turn their attention to their alma mater's minor league football team. With the number of baseball teams doubling since 1960, they want more opportunities to get into the post-season tournament. We need to fit ever more into the box.

But the game reveals itself only through the long slog of the season. Any cellar dweller can rattle off a week's worth of wins; any pennant contender can slip up over half-a-fortnight. The tournament, though sometimes enthralling, has lost its ability to determine the "best" team. It merely asserts a champion, whose crown fetches diminishing amounts on ebay.

For the first 68 years of the previous century, the two league winners competed unencumbered by "playoffs" for the World Series crown, with the victor reasonably claiming superiority over all. For another couple of decades, the league split into divisions and each World Series team was forced to defeat its foe from across the Mississippi to earn a slot in the championship. That led to some questionable World Series opponents, but still, they had won a segment of the marathon.

And then the Wild Card, and the playoffs devolved into a series of coin flips. So the regular season is more thrilling but the race to the championship is dishwater. The last teams in are winning the tournament with disturbing regularity. Moreover, the post-season has begun to tear the sides of the box.

To counteract the playoff success of the Wild Card, MLB gave it a twin and ordered a sudden-death play-in. Even more value to the fans and a sense of advantage to the division winners. Alas, the box cannot expand any more. 

There is time for but one game, a winner-take-all. It's that last bean bag, drained of most of its beads. The drama builds but the fairness declines.

After the 98-win Pirates succumbed to Jake Arrieta Wednesday night, voices rose again about extending the play-in to at least three games. But the calendar is inflexible. And so Baseball is pushing up against all six sides of the box. It wants more games than the calendar will hold. It wants more teams in the playoffs but that dilutes the championship. Short playoff series accommodate the seasons but eliminate the best teams more often. Longer series present the opposite dilemma.

The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. 

And under-girding the entire enterprise is the constant drumbeat of economics, which is never satisfied with too much and must always demand more, more, more. And so the box is splitting and the sensible course of action -- remove some of the contents -- cannot be considered. 

That is the injustice of the one-game play-in. And it is not going away.

And Now, The Tournament Begins

In case you thought the 2013 baseball season is over, the Rangers and Rays beg to differ. They will battle tonight in Arlington for the right to fly to Cleveland and challenge the Indians Wednesday for the opportunity to fly to Boston and face a rested Red Sox team Friday with their best pitcher (and possibly second best) unavailable.

On Tuesday, the Pirates and Reds will join the fray. Earning one of the Wild Card berths is certainly a substantial achievement, but the euphoria gives way to disappointment with jarring speed for the loser of the play-in game.

Only then does the tournament begin. Like hockey, baseball does not have a championship; it has a tournament in which a team's regular-season exploits are largely meaningless and the results essentially random. Hockey's playoffs are doubly disconnected because they are open to half the league, including the disappointments, the rebuilders and the inconsistent. In baseball, at least, only the best teams are afforded opportunities to compete for the title.

Still, only three of the last 17 World Champions have had baseball's best record over the 162-game season, while five Wild Cards have won the title.  

You will hear ad naseum (actually, hearing this once is ad naseum, because it's patently false) that teams need to have "momentum" or a "hot hand" or simply be playing well entering the playoffs in order to emerge victorious. This shibboleth is repeated despite the 2006 World Series in which both teams (St. Louis and Detroit) entered with sub-.500 second-half records. The Tigers were swept in the season's final series by last-place KC to drop into the Wild Card. The Cardinals lost seven in a row the week before the playoffs commenced.

Last season, the eventual champs fell behind in the best-of-five division series two games to none before storming back, then dropped four of five in the NLCS before sweeping the remaining three games. That's not so much "hot" or "cold" as random.

In fact, research shows that there is almost no correlation at all between playing well at season's end and winning it all. Indeed, there's little correlation between anything and playoff magic, which is why the playoffs are both a lottery and impossible to predict except by dumb luck.

When the Rays and Rangers tussle tonight in their loser-go-home affair, both teams will enter the series "hot" and "cold." Texas lost its grip on the division and then the Wild Card by dropping 12 of 13 in the waning weeks of the season. In the final week, they rebounded for six wins in a row. Tampa Bay charged to the top of the Wild Card standings with a seven-game win streak before losing a pair that dropped them into a tie with Texas. One of these teams will survive and will thus be dubbed, ex post facto, on a roll. If you're a betting person, caveat emptor.

Except for the Cardinals, every team is at least six years from a championship and has suffered at least one indignity since. After St. Louis (2011) and Boston (2007), the most recent champion city is Atlanta (1995), followed by Cincinnati (1990), Oakland (1989), L.A. (1988), Detroit (1984), Pittsburgh (1979) and Cleveland (1948). Texas and Tampa Bay have never tasted the sweet fruit of victory. So for all but Cards and Red Sox fans, a World Championship would be a refreshing novelty. 

Let's go all of them!