Yankees set to bring A-Rod back - on their terms

[rockin500]

yes, adding 2 playoffs games is just too much Yes, it's over because you say it is hilarious!

adding two games adds at least two more days to the schedule (more likely 3, as they would probably include a travel day) do you really want the playoffs to end November 3rd or 4th? It gets cold in places like Chicago, St. Louis, Boston, NYC in november.

hell, they are starting the season in March. if that doesnt say the season is whacked out long, i dont know what does.

[Providence A's]

eliminate all of the unnecessary off-days in the playoffs. Why the hell are there off-days when the teams aren't traveling?

[love_that_reefer]

A 7-game series requires more depth and endurance...especially, with the pitching. a 5-game series is shorter and teams don't have to use as much of their depth (i.e. only have the 2 or 3 best starting pitchers go). a 7-game series victory is more of a team victory than a 5-game series since it will require more of the team to contribute.

If MLB got rid of all these off-days in the playoffs, it could easily make the opening round a 7-game series. There's no need for all of those off-days. Baseball is meant to be played pretty much every day.

Well now we are agreeing on something. I too think these off days and days in between series is ridiculous and hopefully MLB officials see this after two years in a row of long layoffs. A 7 game series does require more depth and endurance but doesn't change the fact that the best team should win a 5 or 7 game series. I do disagree with you view of a seven game victory being more of one than a 5 game victory. Its still the team winning these games. Rotations, lineups and bullpens are set the same in a five or seven games series. Seeing two or three extra relievers doesn't make it any more victorious.

[Veovis]

I can't really stay away from this argument, so I'll go back on my "agree to disagree" thing.

I understand where you're coming from. I understand you think that because a team wins a series, it means it is the better team. While I think that is generally the case, I disagree that it is always the case; it is more complicated than that. The playoffs are no different than regular season series in which inferior teams sometimes beat substantially better teams. The postseason is a small sample size. In small sample sizes strange things happen. For instance - Jeter batting .176 against the Indians this year, when he was a career .314 hitter in the postseason.

For instance, take a look at the 2005 Baltimore Orioles - a team that ended the season with a 74-88 record. The Orioles went 16-7 in April of that season. Does that seem indicative of their true ability? What about the Devil Rays going 20-6 in June of 2004? Small sample sizes my friend.

In the case of the Cardinals, they were a vastly inferior team to the Tigers. Detroit's ERA+ was 118, giving up 675 runs. The Cardinals gave up 768 and had an ERA+ of 98 - below league average. The Tigers scored 822 runs. The Cardinals scored 781.

The Cardinals were the worst team to make the playoffs out of the NL. In fact, the Phillies were a better team than them as well, but unfortunately played in the same division as the Mets. Those same Mets - the best team in the NL - won the season series against them 4-2.

Now when the Cardinals defied all odds and actually reached the WS, they took advantage of a team that hadn't played in over a week, sweeping the rusty Tigers. The Cardinals were a mediocre team that got extremely lucky, facing an opponent that had breezed through stronger AL competition and then found itself with too much off time.

The regular season is so long because baseball is a volatile game in which upsets occur often. It takes a season this long to sort out the good teams from the bad. With eight teams in the postseason, there is again a great deal of volatility in which lesser teams can achieve upsets - meaning the best team might not always win.

[love_that_reefer]

But those eight teams are the eight "best" teams. That one team did something the other seven best teams didn't do and that's get a ring. That's makes them better. You come up with these examples and I can come up with a ton more myself. Those teams you mentioned (Devil Rays, Orioles) aren't playing the best teams in the league. The Mets were the best team of the regular season. The playoffs is a different ballgame and a brand new start. No one cares about the season series at that point. No one cares about win/loss records either except for home field advantage. If the best team can't win with home field advantage, how can you still call them the best? When the Cards beat the Mets they became the best team in the NL. When they beat the Tigers in the WS, they became the best team in all of baseball. And a 40 run differential with the Tigers having an extra hitter is hardly impressive. To say teams get lucky and win World Championships is just disgraceful.

[Veovis]

But in the case of the 2006 Cardinals, the 2000 Yankees, etc that is the case. As I said, the Cardinals were not even one of the four best teams in the NL that year.

Regular season performance is I believe a far more accurate judge of teams than the playoffs. Over the course of a 162 game season, the cream rises to the top. Now, this is not to say that I advocate just handing championships to whoever wins the most games over the course of the regular season. I simply mean to say that the sample size is much larger, giving a more accurate depiction of a team's ability.

The playoffs are exciting because of their volatility. In such a short span of games, any team in the tournament could win the whole thing. That does not necessarily mean that the team that does win it all is the best though.

My point of looking at stretches of the regular season is merely to demonstrate the problem of small samples in judging a team's ability.

[love_that_reefer]

Yes but that is flawed. In the regular season and we will use your Yankees as an example, they play teams like the Devil Rays and O's 18 games each and these are horrible teams. When you are in the playoffs, there are no scrubs just the best teams. The only way you can judge the regular season is to see who gets homefield advantage and who gets in the playoffs. Saying a team is the best (using your Yanks still) because they play in a division with three awful teams has no merit. There are no best teams going in, just favorites. The Tigers were favored to win but in order to be the best, they had to win it all. The Cards did becoming the best team in baseball.

[love_that_reefer]

The Yankees and Alex Rodriguez have agreed on a $30 million marketing package that could raise the total value of his new contract to $305 million over 10 years.
Under the agreement, Rodriguez would receive $6 million each for tying the home run levels of Willie Mays (660), Babe Ruth (714), Hank Aaron (755) and Barry Bonds (762), and an additional $6 million for breaking Bonds' record. Technically, it's illegal to tie incentive clauses to such statistics as home runs, but the Yankees have worked around that by declaring reaching said marks as historic events, enabling Rodriguez to receive the added money in exchange for additional personal appearances and signed memorabilia for the club

If he stays healthy, I don't see how he will not make his extra $30 mil. Wonder why the Schilling didn't think of this when he asked for a bonus for winning the WS. The first WS in Boston's history since 1918 was a historic event I would say