The Mets Police

Ed Coleman posts his thoughts on the Wild Card:  WFAN - The Fan - A Wild Thought

The real solution is the Bob Costas Solution which he wrote about in his book, oh, 10 years ago.

Add a second WC team in each league.

The two wild cards play a ONE GAME playoff on the Monday.  Boo-hoo about the travel.  Play better.  You had 162 games to win the division, you should have tried harder.

The one game do or die forces you to use your ace to stay alive.

Then, after you've won the one gamer, on the Tuesday you get to travel to the city of the #1 seed and you play again.  You are tired, you wasted your ace, and you are on the road.   Too bad, you should have played better during the 162 games.

This solution also eliminates teams from coasting once they clinch a WC under the present scenario...you'd try darn hard to avoid a one game do or die.

Costas gets ripped but he's dead-on about such things.  In the book he also suggested moving the Astros to the AL so each league would have 15 teams (and Texas would have fewer TV-unfriendly start times on the road)...and also thought it was odd that all the great home run hitters of the 20th century decided to play between 1995 and whenever the book came out.

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The other day Hank said this (during a backhanded rip of Joe Torre):

"The biggest problem is the divisional setup in major league baseball. I didn't like it in the 1970s, and I hate it now,"

About that, I agree.   I despise Wild Cards, even when the Mets win them.   I hate the division series.  I can barely stomach the playoffs.   Win the league, play a best of 7 and move on.  Let teams finish 14th.  Too bad, play better.

Nice sweep of the Brewers!  I don't know why Jerry is still "interim."  He's done a great job with tape and glue and guys we never heard of.

What? It's only May! How can I make such a bold and rash statement. The Mets obviously don't believe it, they keep saying it's still early and thay aren't panicing yet.

Well wake-up guys, baseball is a game of numbers and the numbers don't lie. The chances of you making the playoffs at this point are slim.

Since 1996, the first full season under the expanded playoff format, 63 of the 96 playoff teams were already in a playoff position (division leader or wild card) on Memorial Day. Only 34% of teams that made the playoffs in the last 12 years overtook other teams after Memorial Day.

It doesn't get better. Teams that were able to come back and make the post-season were an average of 4 games back in the Wild Card standings on Memorial Day. As of Monday, the Mets found themselves 5.5 out. Only 10 of the 96 playoff teams were 5.5 or more games out at this time - or 10.4%

What about if we look at just the National League, because we know the leagues are very different. At first it does look a bit better - there has been slightly more more volatility as almost 40% of playoff teams were not in position on Memorial Day, including all 4 last year.

But just like before, if we look deeper at the numbers the story only gets worse for the Mets. The average position for these 19 teams was 3.5 games out of the WC. Furthermore, only 5 NL teams - the 96 Cards (6.5), 03 Marlins (8.5), 05 Astros (10.0), 07 Cubs (6.5), and 07 Rockies (5.5) - overcame deficits equal to or greater than the Mets current position.

It's not just about how many games behind you are though, but also how many teams are in front of you. The 19 NL teams that came back after Memorial Day held an average of 5th place in the WC standings - the Mets are currently in 8th.

What does all this mean? Unless management does something dramatic to turn this team around (such as getting rid of Willie for starters), the last game at Shea Stadium really will be September 29th.