TV Ratings and Baseball's Post-Season

It is true, of course, that a lot of folks are cheating themselves by missing a great series. But it is also true that for years now, MLB has been signaling to the market that baseball is a sport that you enjoy in the summer for hot dogs and a fun time out with your friends, not a sport where actual winning and losing is all that important.

As I've repeatedly pointed out, this season the Phillies were far and away the best team in the National League. The notion that they could be eliminated in a best-of-five series by a team that won 12 fewer games than they did over the course of the season is so unfair that an intelligent person can justify it only by concluding that the MLB playoffs are not, in fact, designed to identify a worthy champion. (And don't even get me started on the ludicrous notion that home-field advantage in the World Series should be determined by whichever league wins the All-Star Game.) If the games aren't really helping us identify the best team, then what are they for? In fact, it seems clear that the lengthy and unfair post-season exists solely to boost ticket sales during the regular season by keeping more teams alive down the stretch. This decision to prioritize the regular season over the post-season is, in my opinion, the main reason the post-season has lost significance for most fans.

In fact, MLB conducts the playoffs as though they don't expect anyone to watch them. If MLB really wanted big numbers for the post-season, they would make sure that every game was on ESPN (the real ESPN) or one of the major broadcast networks. That's where the NFL is. That's where people go to watch big-time sports. And, in fact, ESPN does carry a lot of baseball during the regular season. But MLB puts most of the post-season on TBS, with only two series (the ALCS and the World Series) on Fox. I have friends who sat down to watch the playoffs, only to realize that they didn't know where the games were being shown and didn't want to spend time scrolling through every channel looking for them.

Also, the games start at ridiculous times. During the regular season, baseball games almost always start at 7 PM local time, or 1 PM if it's a day game. But in the playoffs, night games (and they are almost all night games) start after 8 PM. This means that people on the East Coast -- where almost every baseball fan outside of Chicago and St. Louis lives -- can't see games unless we stay up past 11. How many kids can do that? How many grown-ups? And once you've missed a few games, you lose interest in the whole thing. Besides, by conceding Saturday and Sunday afternoons to football, MLB has already signaled that their playoffs are not as important as football's regular season.

Also, the announcers for the MLB playoffs are simply terrible. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver are the worst announcers to do any big-time sports broadcast all year -- they are boring, long-winded, and tiresome. And the guys on TBS are mostly third-tier broadcasters who wouldn't be hired to do a regional college football game for ABC. For years, I've worked around these problems by turning down the sound and listening to ESPN's very good radio announcers. But fans shouldn't have to do that.

The bottom line is this: I watch every playoff in every major American sport all year (except for hockey). Only baseball forces its fans to: (1) accept results that are patently unfair, (2) watch games in the middle of the night, (3) search all over the place just to find the games, and (4) put up with third-rate announcers. For years now, I have felt that MLB regards the regular season as its primary focus, and that the playoffs are just something that they put on for the few geeks who still care about the actual, you know, championship.

If MLB really wanted to build TV ratings for their playoffs, they would: (1) reduce the number of teams who make the playoffs, thus making September more important and ensuring that only truly worthy teams participate; (2) accept lower money (at least for now) to get every game on a major network or ESPN; (3) play weekend day games to make it easier for families and kids to enjoy the games; and (4) get some better announcers. These measures might cost money in the short run, but they would be a powerful statement that MLB respects the integrity of its game, and that they trust its ability to build an audience.

For the record, I don't expect MLB to take any of these steps. In fact, they have already signaled plans for a second wild card, and a one-game playoff between the two wild cards -- a formula that will make September baseball even less interesting, and make October baseball even more unfair.

It's a real shame. I think baseball is, in many ways, the very best American sport, and I wish it would take itself more seriously.