A's Sweep M's Retain Top Spot in Alphabet

I’m nuetral towards the Giants… :] (I think).

REC’D!!!!!

And if you don’t want to hear it at all, just move on down to Nico’s post.

With no real wild card or pennant races this September many will argue that means the system is broken and should be changed. The 5-team system would indeed mean there were post-season spots up for grabs still.

But I just don’t agree that just because you don’t have any races right now means the system is broken. It’s a long season, your record over it means a lot. In my opinion the teams that aren’t in have shown they don’t deserve to be in. And giving them a chance just because it makes September more perilous wouldn’t be just.

That’s enough for me to say, “What a great idea!!!!111”

i don’t know much about NBA, but i do remember having fun one year watching my then-home team. so, on the argument for “fun,” i give you the ‘99 knicks. they’ve had the best run as an 8-seed to date (i think), reaching the finals before getting shut down by the spurs. it was a fantastic run of 4 series, some tougher than the others. but i do think the best team won in the end. and that, perhaps, is the one thing to be said about long playoffs: less of a crapshoot. i may be proven wrong via mathematics on that point, but i do think in straight elimination, more rounds are a way to sift for the best team. this is me, finally getting to my point.

my proposition would be not to add a team to the elimination rounds, but to change the format that the 4 teams play toward the WS. i think a basic, fatal flaw in the current format is that it’s completely possible for a weak team to hide under the cover of favorable matchups, get lucky on a couple games to eliminate better teams, or having other teams eliminate better teams for you, and reach the WS without really deserving it. i mean, how fair is this?: out of the 4 teams going into the post-season in each league, 3 don’t ever see each other (in a bracket of A-plays-B, C-plays-D, and A-C both go to the next round, A never sees D, B never sees D, and B never sees C).

i’d make it so 4 go in and every team faces each other in 5-game series. instead of 3 eliminations series to arrive at a WS contender, you have 6 series played round robin. yes, that doubles the number of series, but it doesn’t extend the time-line that much, and timeline is really the only problem i see with the NBA championships—so while the current MLB format lasts through one 5-game series and then a 7-gamer (12 possible games); my proposed would take as long as a 5er, then a 5er, then a 5er (15 games). it DOES increase the number of games by a lot (but who’s against that?, not the fans, not the owners selling tickets… maybe the teams/players if they’re worried about attrition, but hey, it ain’t easy being a gladiator-millionaire). it DOES avoid the issue of having crappier teams join the party. and finally, and perhaps the best aspect, it DOES do greatly reduce the crapshoot aspect.

They noted the runners would have scored anyway.

Let’s face it, the big argument at 1B recently has been the old saw “Barton would have got that”. Well, we don’t hear that much anymore.

If Allen has any deficit in range something he’s sure working hard to do everything he can to mitigate it. He’s play so well at first base already. Imagine what he’ll be like after a few straight months at 1B?

It’s nearly impossible to imagine how the As have anyone in their system (or will soon) that could challenge what Allen can do for us as a 1Bman (at the plate, between the bags and in the field). The guy is a slam dunk.

I just want to mention again how amazingly right the guys at fangraphs look right now and how astonished I am the D-backs let him go so easy.