Dodgers Analyst Suggests Out of the Box Solution for Struggles with 5 Day Layoff in Playoffs
The 2023 Dodgers followed up their 2022 season with an eerily similar result of a first-round bye and 100-win regular despite some significant roster turnover.
Unfortunately for the Boys in Blue their postseason also followed a similar script with an NLDS exit to a divisional opponent as a Wild Card team for the second year running too.
MLB's new playoff format introduced last season has faced its fair amount of criticism especially as the 2023 Fall Classic will feature two Wild Card teams.
One Dodgers analyst suggested a possible solution to the format that punished three separate teams with early exits despite great regular seasons.
As it turns out, Oct. 2-7 wasn’t a game day for nearly every professional baseball team on the planet. That includes the champions of each of the four independent “partner leagues” of MLB: the Atlantic League, the American Association, the Frontier League and the Pioneer League. How practical would it have been for Fargo-Moorhead to divert its journey through, say, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Baltimore or Houston for a few days? Very, said Joshua Schaub, the commissioner of the American Association. “We’re more than willing to get on a plane to play an MLB team,” he said. An American Association team typically travels “29 or 30 people” on a road trip, Schaub said. He estimated it would cost no more than $15,000 to fly them all into any major airport. That’s pocket change for an MLB team. To participate in a three-game exhibition series after the regular season, the current Collective Bargaining Agreement only requires that players get permission from their team and the commissioner. Staging an early-October series against a team full of indy ball opponents with something at stake, in theory, should not be a tough sell to players.
Though the Dodgers and Braves both held scrimmages before their NLDS series, the regular seasons of the NL both fell to divisional opponents to end their 2023 season.
Hoornstra's solution seems fun in theory but likely won't be implemented as MLB's desire for profit will trump any argument this season.
