Sunday, November 30, 2014

Baseball Fans and the Wild Card

I followed the baseball season fairly closely this year, especially the pennant races and post-season. I picked up on some conflicting sentiments that were attributed to fans on behalf of the media.

First, during the pennant races, I frequently heard about how much fans liked the wild card format that baseball has. Now that there are two wild card teams, the fans like it even better. You see, the wild card format creates extra excitement because there are more pennant races than there used to be, and the wild card format allows more teams to be in it at the end. Their regular seasons have more meaning.

Second, during the World Series I frequently heard about how TV ratings were so low. Fans simply weren't interested in a World Series played between two sub-90 win teams. (Both the Giants and Royals were wild card teams.) They wanted the top teams to face each other.

So, let me get this straight. The teams that the fans wanted to see in the pennant races were the teams they didn't want to see in the World Series? Huh? This may seem kinda simplistic, but you can't have teams making the playoffs that have no chance of winning the playoffs.

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