Long season longer?
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Commissioner Bud Selig’s special committee for on-field matters discussed both expanded playoffs and increased use of video review by umpires without making any recommendations.
The committee of managers and executives met Tuesday on the second day of the winter meetings. The group will meet again in conjunction with owners’ meetings scheduled for Jan. 12-13 in Paradise Valley, Ariz.
There appears to be strong sentiment for adding two wild-card teams to create a 10-club postseason, most likely for 2012. But the details have to be worked out, and the players’ association said last week that it preferred that management bargain over the matter before formulating a detailed proposal of how an extra tier of playoffs would work.
“I don’t think anybody’s in favor of having a setup where you have 16 teams make the playoffs or 14 teams make the playoffs,” said Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia, a member of the committee. “But there seems to be balance there that hopefully would be explored.”
Former Dodgers and Yankees manager Joe Torre, another member of the committee, wants to make certain division winners get rewarded for first-place finishes.
“I felt that winning a division didn’t have as much clout as it probably should have,” Torre said at a news conference with Lou Piniella and Cito Gaston, two other longtime managers who retired along with him in 2010.
“Three games in one place, two games in another, I don’t think that’s enough of a detriment,” Torre said, referring to the current best-of-five division series format. “I’d like to make winning the division, because it is tough to do, I’d like to see them have a little more of an advantage.”
Piniella backed expanded playoffs, as did Gaston.
“It will cause more interest at the end of the season,” the former Blue Jays manager said. “Teams that are not in it could be in it.”
Retired Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox also was scheduled to be at the news conference but left the winter meetings because of a family illness. Braves president John Schuerholz, like Torre a member of Selig’s committee, took Cox’s chair,
A new wild-card round likely would be best-of-three or single-game elimination.
“We’ll make what we think is the really best decision for baseball,” Schuerholz said. “There’s a lot of issues to contemplate.”
When they met last month, more general managers appeared to favor best-of-three over a winner-take-all round.
“In baseball there has to be a balance of having 162 games mean more than just seeding, like it does in some other sports,” Scioscia said. “I would think a longer series obviously favors a deeper team. But logistically, there has to be some balance to how many games you’re going to be able to get in.”
As for replay, it hasn’t been determined whether to increase its use. It began in 2008, limited to reviewing whether potential home runs crossed fences or were fair.
“The sentiment is pretty much the full spectrum,” Scioscia said. “It’s about what degree. There’s a lot of stuff to talk about.”
