Cool Hand Lucroy

Been thinking a lot about playoff formats lately. It's obvious to me that expansion to 32 teams will come eventually, and, with it, another expanded playoff format. The more that I think about this, the more I'd just rather go to 16 teams. No byes. You have two sixteen-team leagues, and I would do two divisions. Win your division, get a top-2 seed. The next two best records are Wild Cards and are seeded 3 and 4. Essentially, my preferred format is that seeds 5-8 go to seeds 4-1 and must sweep a 3-game series. Winners play a five-game series in the divisional round, and the standard, 7-game LCS. That rewards your four best teams in each league, allows for meaningful division titles, and still creates drama and excitement. It gets a little dicey when you talk about the 5 and 6 seeds having to win three straight on the road, as there might not be a huge difference between being 5th and 6th, but I think that flaw is outweighed by the fact that you're increasing access and rewarding teams for the long haul, even if they were only just slightly better. I also think the minor league system of dividing things by halves might have some merits. Perhaps that could be incorporated. The other option might be to just shorten the regular season to 154 (or 150) and go full-on, 7-game series all the way through a la the NHL and NBA. A big part of the problem is this paradox that baseball is SO much about the long-haul, but American sports insist on a single, winner-take-all, open-access playoff. That system just doesn't fit our sport that well. Hockey attempts to solve this with the President's trophy, which gives the best regular-season team actual hardware, even if fans don't think it means that much. Still, it's something, and that's fitting given that the NHL is our most international domestic league. The soccer system of having multiple competitions happening at once during a season (and the NBA and WNBA doing these in-season tournaments) makes a lot of sense to me. It provides multiple ways of defining a successful season. For some teams, maybe it's just staying at the top level or qualifying for a minor European competition. For others, its winning a domestic cup. For others, only league and Champions League titles will suffice. Perhaps us fans have to just make that attitude adjustment because there's no doubt the Brewers have been an incredibly successful franchise over the last decade, despite little in the way of October advancement. Basically, I think, if baseball isn't going to adopt promotion-relegation or some meaningful, in-season competition or celebrate division titles and other things at a level closer to (NOT equal to) WS appearances and titles, then I'd just as soon open the playoffs up, balance the brackets, and not necessarily "devalue" the regular season, but just mark it off as its own unique thing, separate from October.

I think intangibles are meaningful, but I'd still bet on math. I do agree about the Cubs schedule being tougher in actuality than in theory. My take is: there's SO much baseball that most of it is meaningless. In order to make it meaningful, we pile all kinds of emotional narratives on top of it. Sometimes, this makes things joyful and borderline mystical (the 14-game streak, Uecker magic, etc.). Sometimes, it makes things stressful and gut-wrenching (the last three days). In both cases, the emotional narrative is valid and meaningful but missing significant parts of the underlying reality. This is why I find baseball to be a good teacher. It is constantly forcing you to evaluate your subjective experience against things more objective. That back and forth is very human.

We have outscored them this series lol. Baseball is a funny game.

Another way to look at it is that the Cubs have a three-city West Coast trip, and the Braves and Rockies are two of the hottest teams in baseball. Even the Nats are playing better. It's not a hard schedule in theory, but the timing is better for the Brewers.

On the bright side, I thought we were only up 6 before tonight. So, no harm no foul.

Hope you're right. I'll be shocked if anyone gets one out tonight, though. Mis had 4 bad ABs, the Cubs got one big hit, and our offense left a small village on the basepaths. Frustrating results, but we haven't been that bad these last two days.

Murph has faith in the offense, I guess. Hope he is rewarded.

Koenig 7th, Anderson 8th if we don't score? Or Anderson 7th?

Perkins can switch hit, but I'm with you. I like his ABs a lot better lately.

Folks, Siegler is going to bunt. He's a great bunter, which almost no one in baseball is. This is the brand of baseball we play.

Cubs making plays and stealing outs. We've done that to plenty of people this year.

Give Mears another methinks.

Have we turned a double play this series? I recall one Monday, I think? Cubs must have 4 or 5.

I like BA, but he's driving me nuts this series. So much table-setting and trying to call it like a national event. No need to hype it up, dude. It's a few baseball games in August.

Respect, but I don't buy mentally deflating at all. Watching these guys every day, there's no way any of them believed they had this thing won. If anything, losing these games (and we're still along way from that tonight, let alone tomorrow), is a chance to refocus and know you have to keep battling because there's a lot to play for (which is a reminder they did not require).

I love Perkins, but yeah. He's a fringe bottom of the order starter/4th OF type. Kind of amazing we've managed this run without Chourio. I'll be unpopular and give the Cubs credit for their last 22 innings. The bottom of their order has really produced good ABs. They've been doing what we do. Good news is, 22 innings of a baseball season means....bupkis.

At this point, you have to appreciate the baseball gods. They are making up for the last month in three days here. That Siegler ball was scalded.

I think a lot of it is just trust the fastball. He was throwing a lot of first pitch sliders and curves, and that wasn't what got him through the first two so clean.

Alright. Have a feeling the Cubs are going to regret not getting that run in from third.

This is the thing. Gotta hit. Big K of Suzuki. Long way to go here.

As filthy as a pitch that ends up dead middle can ever be.

Great AB from Suzuki. Love the smile from Miz. He's like "if that's the wind here, I'm just throwing cheese." Seriously, though, great body language from the kid tonight. Looks dialed in.

Thought we might see an extra arm up in case innings need soaking. To ias will be back.

We covered this in the game thread yesterday, y'all. The tiebreaker is worth half a game. (mostly blue)

I hearted, but I also would not stay up until 1 AM if I were in your shoes. That's being a fan right there.