Baseball: The New Exciting Playoffs and The New Pointless Regular Season

The Giants are World Series champs for the third time in five years.  The series against the Kansas City Royals was nothing short of a barn burner.  It had all the plot twists of an instant classic: close match-ups, exciting comebacks, and nail biting finishes.  Madison Bumgarner turned in a spectacular pitching performance for the ages.  And when all the dust has cleared the Giants make for the least convincing baseball "dynasty" of all time.

Such is the new age of baseball that we live in.  One where two teams can carry a sub .550 winning percentage all the way to the World Series.  Baseball, more than any other major North American sport requires time to determine excellence.  It is why it has the longest regular season of any sport and why up until the 90s only 4 teams progressed to the playoffs.

Now, with the twice expanded playoff system allowing for 10 teams in each league to compete for the World Series in the post-season, teams like the Giants need to build a roster that can play just well enough to get in and then pull out all the stops in a short series.

It is what it is.  Are the Giants a dynasty?  I don't think so, but that's mostly a subjective term anyway.  What isn't subjective is that they won three World Series in a stretch that saw them have only the 7th best winning percentage (.538) behind the Yankees, Cardinals, Braves, Tigers, Rays, and Rangers.

If these Giants teams had been playing in pre-playoff expansion they would have only even made the playoffs once in the last five years (2010).  And the Giant's World Series opponents?  They've never faced one that finished the regular season with a record better than fourth in the American League (2010 Rangers 4th, 2012 Tigers 7th, 2014 Royals 4th).

Royals fans loved a postseason run, but their team finished with only 89 wins and a run differential of +27.

All of this points to a truth that has been unquestionably apparent in Major League Baseball for a few years now:  Being the "best" doesn't matter.

No sport has the perfect playoff system for finding the truly best team.  I a way, that's the whole point.  But at a certain point, 162 games feels a bit redundant if they don't really matter.  Parity is fun, but if you're going to make the MLB post-season into March Madness, something should probably be done about that pesky regular season.

As logical as it would be, it's unlikely MLB would walk away from all the money that have 162 games every season brings in.  Maybe the league could try separating the season and playoffs from each other into two separate trophies, like European soccer leagues.  The switch would add value to the regular season but it would also challenge the playoff system in a country where playoffs are all anyone has ever known.

There aren't any easy solutions and as long as the playoffs remain unpredictable and exciting it is unlikely MLB is going to look very hard for one.  So, just sit back and cozy up to the idea that you're about to care about June baseball even less than you already do.  But keep the popcorn ready when October rolls around.

Why Derek Jeter is so Important

If you follow sports at all you probably saw something about Keith Olbermann's recent rant against Derek Jeter and baseball's celebration of his career.  Olbermann rails against the pomp and ceremony like a college freshman after two sociology classes and three beers going off on white collar crime.

Olbermann's primary argument is that Jeter was statistically not an impressive enough player to warrant such worship.  That might be true, if all of the praise was based solely on his statistical value.  What the statistics won't show is what Jeter means to the Yankees and to baseball as a figure.  I wouldn't expect a blowhard like Olbermann to bother diving into that (it'd get in the way of his pre-nap tantrum), but that is really what all of this pageantry is recognizing.

Stats

Olbermann, so obnoxious, of course he's a Yankees fan.

Now, I know I just opened with a big thing about how Jeter's stats don't matter, but lets take a minute and see just how undeserving he is.

Olbermann spends a lot of time making the point that Jeter was never the best player in the league any given year he played.  Essentially taking two minutes to say, "He never won an MVP".  This is true, but he did also finish in the top ten of MVP voting eight times and accrued four Silver Sluggers.  It is also true he has a lot of strike outs for a non-power hitter (I'd rather a guy strike out than ground into a double play like Cal Ripken Jr.  the all-time leader in that category), but if Olbermann wants to cherry pick stats why stop there?  Jeter is going to finish his career with a better OPS than Pete Rose, more runs scored than Carl Yastrzemski, a higher batting average than Hank Aaron, and more stolen bases and with a better stealing percentage than Willie Mays.  Not bad.

Olbermann finally closes out his assault by making the earth shattering observation that Jeter is still batting 2nd in an anemic Yankees line-up despite having crappy numbers.  Wow, Jeter isn't that good anymore and the Yankee's offense stinks this year.  Nice work, detective Olbermann.

*One final side note about Olbermann.  What is up with the intermittent chuckles from the crew?  Do you think his crew is instructed to laugh at his quips to stroke his ego?  I bet they are.

Now, that we've gotten that out of the way...

No One Like Him

I was recently talking with my dad and two of my siblings about Jeter and if there were any other baseball players in the league that could truly boast superstar status.  My sister, who spent some time living in St. Louis while Albert Pujols still played there, suggested Pujols, but my brother and father struggled to name anyone.

In the last decade, Major League Baseball has seen a mass exodus of the baseball superstars.  Fifteen years ago, MLB was overflowing with household names.  McGwire, Sosa, Ripken, Clemens, Arod, Bonds, Maddux.  Now, most of those players are not only gone but disgraced (they still have Arod, unfortunately for them).  The league has seen a steep drop in popularity over the last decade and Jeter very well could be the last true super star with nation wide recognizability for a while.

It isn't just how well he plays.  It's that he's a good-looking, clean cut, bi-racial, charismatic, five-time champion that plays in the biggest sports market in the country.  A player like that isn't easy to find.

Other big name ball players from the last 10 years have seen their profile's wane with team changes, dips in productivity and injuries because they don't have the persona Jeter has built for himself to fall back on.

Albert Pujols saw his popularity fade into a shell of itself the last few years thanks to injury and changing teams.  Even when he was one of the best players in the league he was famous for his lack of personality (his nickname was "The Machine").

Jeter has been healthy and on the field almost his entire career.  He's always been there and he's only gotten more popular as his career has gone on.

If there was a stat for intangible value, Jeter's would be among the all-time greats.  Even rivals and their fans acknowledge his leadership and otherworldly composure in high pressure situations.  

He has mastered the art of positive press like no other athlete of his generation.  All the time you hear people wonder just how popular super stars like Michael Jordan or Mickey Mantle might have been if they had to navigate the minefields of 24-hour news and social media today.  Jeter was just as popular as any of them and skated through his entire career unscathed by scandal.  A feat all the more impressive when you look at the very long list of starlets he's dated.

My boy is scandal PROOF.

The endless Derek Jeter admiration train is probably overkill and no one with an ounce of sense would ever claim he is the greatest ball player to ever wear pinstripes, but he is the most important person in baseball today by a very wide margin.

In a time where baseball could desperately use a profile boost, losing Derek Jeter is a very big deal.  In a couple of years a player like Mike Trout or Bryce Harper could take up the mantle, but neither of them are yet to establish much of an identity beyond "really good at baseball" (and in Harper's case, cocky) and neither play in New York City.

The Yankees have been a great team for the overwhelming majority of Jeter's career.  This season will mark only the second time he didn't play post season baseball.  He was never THE reason these teams were great, but one of the reasons.  Jeter's ability to recognize and accept that helped him to become the great leader he is so often lauded as.  He wasn't the best player on the Yankees every single or even most of the years he played, but he was always someone you could count on, someone you wanted to see come to the plate in a big moment.  To other teams and other fans he was someone you respected, no one has been the recipient of more begrudged ovations in my life time than Jeter.  He's a player that little kids could consistently look up to and one that embodied what a sports star is supposed to be.  Particularly in an era of idol slaying, Jeter exits as admirable as ever.  

Here in the home stretch, brace yourself for lots replays of fist pumps, back-handed tosses to home plate and crowd dives.

In this, the last week of Derek Jeter's playing career, the celebration is sure to be as excessive and gratuitous as ever.  With everything he means to the game and everything he's taking with him, even if you still believe all the praise is a bit much, you can at least admit it is understandable for a man like Derek Jeter.

Overrated: ESPN Coverage for the Little League World Series

Late summer truly is the lowest of low points for sports fans.  Outside of Major League Baseball there is nothing, LITERALLY NOTHING, to sustain a person's need for sporting sustenance.  Or, at least, that must be how ESPN feels.  How else could you explain their inexplicable airing and promotion of the Little League World Series?

For about as long as I can remember ESPN has aired the Little League World Series, and not just on ESPN 2 but their flagship channel.  As if that is something people want to watch!  In case you are unaware, the Little League World Series pits a bunch of pre-teens (13 and under) against each other for the title of who is the best bunch of children at baseball from one specific part of the world (but mostly the United States).

Want to watch a bunch of kids play a sport? No? How about a bunch of kids from Canada play a sport?

Seriously, what other sport would even dare try to subject the general public to watching a bunch of babies unironically competing?  The audacity is disgusting.

This year, there is a mildly interesting storyline in Mo'ne Davis, one fo the very few girls to ever compete in the LLWS and maybe the first with her ability to compete.  Even so, these stories have little more than novelty value.

I just can't wrap my head around the motivation for ESPN to air this?  It certainly couldn't be in anyway just a cycnical attempt to cash in on a bunch of kids playing a sport masked as tradition, that sentiment is nonexistent in today's sporting world.

This is a real thing, Wow.

Just look at this recent 30 for 30 short detailing the rise and fall of Danyy Almonte.  Almonte was the center of quite a bit of attention and subsequent controversy in August 2011 for playing in the LLWS overage.  It is fascinating in large part because of how much people cared.

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Seriously, who really cares?

Still a part of me has to tip my hat to ESPN for so shameless trying to make a buck from sponsors by airing little babies playing a sport.  Eric Cartman would be proud.

Little League World Series and ESPN:  OVERRATED!