Mains: Why baseball is better during the regular season
From SABR member Rob Mains at Baseball Prospectus on October 1, 2019:
I’m not trying to persuade you. You prefer October baseball to April through September, fine. It’s a matter of taste. Here’s mine.
Let’s start with the name. If you look at the Official Baseball Rules, the word playoffs doesn’t appear. You’re supposed to call them post-season (not postseason) games. Wild Card, Division Series, League Championship Series, World Series. But not playoffs. Never playoffs.
By the same token, the phrase regular season doesn’t appear, either. Those 162 games are the championship season. Unlike the prohibition on playoffs, I like that term. Championship season. It expresses the whole of the season. It’s a six-month, 162-game slog to determine champions. This year, they’re the Yankees, Twins, Astros, Braves, Cardinals, and Dodgers. End of story.
So let’s discuss why I think the regular season (sorry, championship season) is better than the playoffs (sorry, not sorry).
Read the full article here: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/53845/flu-like-symptoms-an-anti-playoffs-rant/
Originally published: October 2, 2019. Last Updated: October 2, 2019.