This morning I agreed with Jeff Francoeur’s take on that “Team of Destiny” rebop, and now I’m finding him to be 100% on-point when it comes to the idea of expanding the playoffs:
“Obviously it’s going to get more people in the postseason. But baseball’s so unique because only eight teams go. In football you get 12, in basketball and hockey you get 16. I mean, you’ve got more than half the teams going to the playoffs. I think that’s what’s so cool and so special about baseball is that you only have eight teams that go, four teams from each league, and that means a great deal. You start adding wild cards – How do you do it? Who gets the bye? I love the way baseball’s set up right now. Sometimes you can do too much to make the sport worse, and I like where our sport’s at.”
What are the odds that Francoeur is really some sage who has set off on this baseball career as George Plimpton-style cover for an epic writing project? On some level I’d find that far preferable to the simple solution that he and I see the world fairly similarly in most respects.