But holy hell what a great game and atmosphere last night. Congrats to the fans of Kansas City. Waited a very long time to get a taste of the postseason.
I hate it when my team is in it but it's good theatre when you're not emotionally attached. I also got a boner seeing a team steal 7 bases in a game.
Also can't help but think Oakland shook up too much when they made those deadline deals. Easy to say now in hindsight.
And that's why I do in fact somewhat appreciate what they've done. It gets people to watch that ordinarily never will. But it's also a horrible way to decide a team into the playoffs after a 162 game schedule.
I wish they would just go to 6 teams with two best of three series played at the higher seed for wild card. I hate the one game. If you want to knock 6 to 8 games off the schedule to make it work, have at it.
To get totally radical, I wish they'd do away with divisions too. Two 15 team leagues, top 6 get in. Top two get byes. I actually mapped the whole thing out in my head once of how it would work.
Balanced schedule in league, 10 games against everyone, 140 games. 16 inter-league games. 4 against your "rival" and 3 game sets with the other 4 on a rotation basis.
I thought it was great ... stayed up way too late watching. Salvador Perez damn near cost them the game about 10 times.
Feel the need to comment because this is so good. I'm all about advanced stats and such to a degree, especially in building a team and roster on a budget. But there comes a point where you just have to use the eyeball and common sense tests for who goes out there.
When you have guys in your system that can legitimately look at a pitcher and tell you within a MPH how fast each pitch is, or break down a hitter on pitches he doesn't even make contact on; there's no need in relying on any other concoction.