A bit of World Series snark and a suggestion
Cue the announcer:
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the 2023 Major League Baseball Meaningless Series. A best of seven contest between two teams of talented players that played 162 regular season games to end up 11 games behind the best team in the AL, and 20 games behind the best team in the NL. For those who are playoff fans, but not necessarily regular season fans, it will hopefully be an exciting contest between the best of two mediocre teams from the regular season that will entertain you enough to stick around and watch.
For the season ticket holders, the MLB thanks you for your meaningless support over the long, regular season. Without it we could not have put together such a pointless exhibition of baseball talent.
What could be done to make the regular season (more) meaningful?
Currently, once the playoffs start, the Games Behind (GB) stat/score at the end of the regular season, essentially becomes irrelevant. It needs to become more meaningful to the competition. Here’s a suggestion for all the series, except for the final:
If Team B was four games behind Team A at the end of regular season, then for Team B to win the series, they must not only win the majority of the games, but the total winning run differential must be at least one more than the GB number, or in this example, at least five. In a five-game series, that could happen in three games, but it may take an additional one or two games to meet that threshold. More games, more offense, more drama, and as far as the MLB is concerned, more revenue to help pay for the insane cost of player contracts.
Now that World Series viewership numbers are way down, and some teams are now borrowing money to make payroll because that can’t squeeze any more money from their supporters, this may be a step in the right direction.
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