Spencer Strider defends MLB playoff format despite top-seeded Braves’ early exit from NLDS

Major League Baseball’s playoff format has come beneath scrutiny this October, in particular the day off given to the 2 most sensible groups in every league. At least one member of the Atlanta Braves, MLB’s very best workforce all the way through the common season, is not keen in charge the format or the rust issue for his workforce’s contemporary defeat within the National League Division Series as opposed to the Philadelphia Phillies. 

“The people trying to use the playoff format to make an excuse for the results they don’t like are not confronting the real issue,” Strider told reporters. “You’re in control of your focus, your competitiveness, your energy. If having five days means you can’t make the adjustment, you have nobody to blame but yourself.”

The Braves, for reference, wrapped up their common season slate on Sunday, Oct. 1. They didn’t play their first playoff recreation till Oct. 7. The Braves did host plenty of intrasquad scrimmages all the way through that point. It’s unclear if the majors’ very best offense would have fared higher with none leisure duration.

The Braves unquestionably are not on my own in questioning about that. Three of the 4 groups who won first-round byes q4 — the Braves, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Baltimore Orioles — had been eradicated within the divisional around. The Dodgers and Orioles had been each swept. Those had been the one 3 groups this season who received greater than 100 common season contests. (The Astros, the opposite workforce to obtain a bye, will compete within the American League Championship Series in opposition to the Texas Rangers starting Sunday.)

Last 12 months, two of the 4 groups who had a first-round bye reached the LCS around, with the Astros happening to win the World Series.

“I don’t think that five days is ideal, but that’s the playoff structure,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters this week. “The world’s not perfect. A couple-day break would have been nice. But five’s a little …” 

This is the second one 12 months this model of the playoff format has been used. MLB and the MLB Players Association agreed to make bigger the postseason to twelve groups as a part of the final Collective Bargaining Agreement. As such, commissioner Rob Manfred does now not appear open to the speculation of constructing tweaks already.

“It’s only Year 2,” Manfred advised ESPN on Thursday. “I’m sort of of the view you need to give something a chance to work out. I know some of the higher-seeded teams didn’t win. I think if you think about where some of those teams were, there are other explanations than a five-day layoff. But I think we’ll reevaluate in the offseason like we always do and think about if we have the format right.”