#4 Starting Pitchers - Rust Never Sleeps

[philliesfiend55]

One good argument for expanding the ALDS & NLDS to seven games is that the #4 starting pitcher is often skipped in the first round of the post-season. It wasn't the case for Texas, Tampa Bay or San Francisco this year, but it is the case for two prominent teams - the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees. In most years skipping the #4 guy is the norm. That means that for the Phillies' Joe Blanton and the Yankees' A.J. Burnett it will be about two and a half weeks (18 days) since their last starts during the last weekend of the regular season. As Neil Young once stole a line from an auto parts TV commercial, "Rust Never Sleeps". It will be unlikely to see Blanton or Burnett at the top of their forms when they make their NEXT long-DELAYED STARTS.
CERTAINLY a seven game opening series would be a better test than the current five games. The better team ought to win in seven games and the winner is less likely to win by some type of fluke that is more common in a shorter series.
You could still complete a World Series 31 days after the completion of the regular season and prevent the World Series from being played in frigid November weather, where the winner is likely to be the team that survives best an adapts best to the colder weather.
First of all, you would have to strip the Post-Season off-days to the bone. Get rid of the unneccessary daysoff used in the present system. The World Series was always scheduled to be seven games in nine days. (Occasionally, if teams were crosstown rivals or short distances apart like Philadelphia & New York they skipped the off days entitrely, but that's besides the point). Seven games in nine days was the usual practice. Couldn't we have four games per day in the opening round with start times at 12:30 PM, 3:30, 6:30, and a West Coast game at 9:30. Or if that's impractical and you need to start the first game later, then in the middle time slot you could run two games simultaneously on separate networks (Take Your Pick) . Also you could have just one off day between a Game 7 of one series and the opening game of the next series.
If you left just two off days between the end of the regular season, one day for a possible division or Wild Card playoff game you could have:

2 days between end of regular season and start of playoffs
9 days for a 7 game ALDS & NLDS
1 day in between series
9 days for A 7 GAME nlcs & alcs
1 day between series
9 days for a seven game World Series

31 total days between end of the season and Game 7 of the World Series.

Emphasizing my initial point: With a seven game opening round all teams would be able to stick to a more natural pitching rotation. The #4 starters would not have a lengthy layoff and would get a start in each post-season round.

Schedule the regular season to end no later than September 30 and The World Series will end in October or at the latest November 1, before the Mid-Autumn cold weather becomes too much of a factor.

-philliesfiend55-

[dominik]

I think this is two sided. I would have loved to see a hard series over 7 games (like tampa rangers or even giants braves since the series was not close but the individual games were ), but on the other hand it would be painfull to watch a one sided beatdown (like yanks twins or philly reds) over more games.

It's normal that the first round has the weakest matchups (because the 3rd and 4th team of each league are still in). so you don't need so many matches to find out who is better