Roy Halladay won 169 games, struck out 1,714 batters and finished in the top five in Cy Young voting five times — winning in 2003 — all before he made his first postseason start.
And the top pitcher of the past decade made the best of his long-awaited playoff debut by pitching the second no-hitter in postseason history.
But the 33-year-old’s memorable performance brought one of baseball’s biggest issues to the forefront: Why have baseball fans been robbed of watching one of the most dominant pitchers in the game perform on the biggest stage for so long?
Baseball is the only sport in which elite players can spend the prime of their careers not making the playoffs. Since 2000, five MVP winners played for teams that missed the playoffs — including Alex Rodriguez, who played for a Texas team that finished 20 games under .500. Imagine if LeBron James and Kobe Bryant or Peyton Manning and Tom Brady or Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby spent every postseason at home.
The problems lie in the low number of playoff teams and lopsided divisional breakdowns.
After 162 regular-season games, eight teams make the postseason in Major League Baseball (26.7 percent). The NFL (37.5 percent), NBA (53.3 percent) and NHL (53.3 percent) reward a much higher percentage of teams with postseason appearances.
For Halladay, his long playoff absence was because he spent the first 12 years of his career in Toronto competing against a pair of teams that have payrolls twice as high as the Blue Jays.
Not that low-budget teams can’t make the playoffs. Tampa Bay has shown how to compete in the AL East with a low payroll — lose the most games in the majors, draft well and develop those top picks in the minors. That’s not the easiest strategy to emulate — although the Nationals are trying it in the NL East.
But it’s much harder for small-market teams to compete in the money-driven AL East and NL East than, for example, the NL West — which doesn’t have a single team in the top third in payroll.
So it’s no surprise that the AL East’s Blue Jays and Orioles and NL East’s Nationals have three of the top five longest playoff droughts.
Since there will never be a salary cap, divisions should be abolished to level out the competitive field.
Six of the top seven highest payrolls in 2010 were concentrated in just three divisions.
Unlike any other sport, even the number of teams in each division is different. The NL Central has six teams, while the AL West has only four competing for a playoff berth.
Without divisions, the same number of teams would compete for a playoff spot, and the Blue Jays and Orioles wouldn’t have to play against the top two payrolls 36 times a year.
Changes need to be made in a sport that is so reluctant to do so, as shown by the minimal use of instant replay.
Baseball fans have been robbed of watching Halladay compete on the biggest stage for more than a decade. Imagine what else we’ve missed.
Jeffrey Tomik is the assistant sports editor for The Washington Examiner. Reach him at [email protected].
