Is the Best of Five the Worst of Series?

The Case for Going Longer

by Mike Carminati

I can’t write five words but that I change seven.
—Dorothy "Don't Call Me Dave" Parker

Even though they comprise just a quarter of the playoff teams each year, we have not had a World Series without a wild card since 2001. Since the wild-card experiment began in 1994 there have been seven World Series out of 12 with at least one wild card, and one with two (2002, San Francisco and Anaheim). Wild-card teams have won four of the 12 World Series.

The odds that a given wild card would win a Series are one out of four. The odds that at least one World Series team got in via the wild card are seven out of sixteen and that both were wild cards is one out of sixteen. All of these numbers have been exceeded, and when you consider that the wild card cannot have the home-field advantage in either of the first two rounds, the results are even more improbable.

It makes one wonder if there is something inherently wrong in the playoff system that favors the wild card. Then again, the Cardinals had the 13th-best record in baseball this year. In fact, the last season in which the two best teams per league met in the World Series was 1999 (Yankees vs. Braves), and the only other in the wild-card era was in the strike-shortened 1996 season (Braves vs. Indians). So maybe the system does not help just wild cards, but underdogs in general.

The prime suspect is the five-game Division Series. It seems that the shorter series make it easier for apparently inferior teams, like wild cards, to reach the next round. Remember that baseball used the best-of-five for the League Championship Series for many years until it was expanded to its present best-of-seven format in 1985.

Major League Baseball is reportedly investigating changes to the Division Series format, though fewer home games to the underdog is the present direction, not expanding the series. This even though there will be three more open dates during the playoffs starting next year.

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