wildcard - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Rob Manfred strikes again!
MLB entered its last series of the season on Monday, and there wasn’t a game on the schedule worth watching. Wild-card seeding doesn’t really get the blood going, y’know....
If expanding MLB playoffs was about keeping people interested, why does no one care?
The concepts of “parity” and “fairness” in sports were exposed as fig leaves long ago. The idea that fans would care more, i.e. buy more tickets and watch more games on TV, if more teams had a chance at playoff berths and championships was never as important to owners. What was important was not bei...
This is Aaron Judge’s year, but if Yankees win a title, Giancarlo Stanton will be the reason
Make no mistake about it, this season belongs to Aaron Judge and his historic run through MLB America....
Should the Rays, Jays, and Mariners race to the bottom?
We knew the new baseball playoff system, with the addition of a third wildcard team, would create quirks. In a vacuum, it works because all division winners are considered equal. But in reality, where people play the games, they very much are not. Teams are hard to judge on just their record, becaus...
Deadspin Fixes: the MLB playoff format
I noticed Dodgers fans were already bitching to protect themselves even before first pitch about the unfairness of the playoff system that saw their team win 106 games yet faced with the indignity of having to play in the Wild-Card Game. Followed nicely with Yankees fans complaining last night, beca...
No wild-card chaos
Most seasons, on the last day, we hope for some kind of chaos to hit MLB’s playoff system. I think, deep down, it’s because people want to see the wild-card sham proven to be just that. Because having teams play a game just to play a game to get into the playoffs after 162 games and six months is pr...
Four-way wild card tie still very much a possibility
So, this is the scenario that Major League Baseball dreamed about when it scheduled all the games on the last day of the regular season for 3 p.m. Eastern....
Order out and settle in: Today is gonna be a really good baseball day (and night)
All of the games in Major League Baseball are scheduled for 3 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, so that if and when playoff races come down to Game 162, nobody has an advantage of taking the field already knowing what their pennant race rivals have done....
We are witnessing a multi-team choke for the ages
When August began, the Mets were in first place in the National League East, which was the fifth-best record in the Senior Circuit. The Padres were right ahead of them, holding the second wild-card position as the Giants and Dodgers battled at the top of the West. And the Reds, though seven and a ha...
Congrats to the Giants! (Now you might get to face the Dodgers)
The San Francisco Giants are the first team to clinch a playoff spot this year, and congratulations to them for that, especially given that it’s a rare case in sports when a team can do something like this and really play the “nobody believed in us” card....
Down the stretch they come: Here’s what to watch out for as the MLB season hits final run
We have less than a month and a half before the MLB postseason starts on October 5. We know most of the teams that will be involved. The White Sox are pretty much locked in as either the two- or three-seed in the American League. The Brewers could potentially make a run at the top seed in the Nation...
Deadspin Fixes: The NHL schedule
Yesterday over at ESPN, Greg Wyshynski put forth a report that says the NHL is looking to start next season somewhere around October 12. It’s a little later than a season would normally start, thanks to this season ending in the middle of July for two teams at least, and maybe more if the league has...