Programming note: Post-massacre edition

I do not know how active I will be on the blog regarding issues concerning Israel and the war that is just getting underway. Security and war-fighting are very much not my specialty, even though I am interested (in more ways than one). I will probably write now and then about these events. To that end, a programming note.

I may lose followers here. I know of at least one person who used to offer valuable comments regularly (on electoral systems) and who stopped doing so after a post about Israeli security some years ago. I know because this person felt the need to tell me so. There may be more to come. I’d prefer you have the courtesy not to tell me so, or to push back in comments or email. Just look away if something offends you, please.

I will note flat out that I’ll have very little patience for criticism of Israel after what has happened. I don’t want a war. But as Kohelet (of which we just had our annual reading in synagogues the day of the Hamas assault) says, there’s a time for war and a time for peace…

(If you aren’t Jewish you know Kohelet as Ecclesiastes.) This is a time for war. There will be civilian casualties in Gaza. None of them will be deliberate goals of IDF actions. And it is important to understand this distinction.

This isn’t about revenge, at least not principally (to be intellectually and emotionally honest, revenge is not itself wrong, depending on how it’s directed). It’s fundamentally about ensuring something like this NEVER AGAIN happens. To that end Hamas must be utterly destroyed. The victims’ families and the rest of society likely will settle for little less after so many were killed. השם יקום דמם‎ . It will be a bumpy ride. So buckle up.

And if my saying this upsets you, please feel free to just stay away for a while. I hope you will come back, or even stay around now for the normal content here but not for posts you are uncomfortable with. It is also important for me to add that comments about specific tactical decisions of the Israeli government or about domestic politics of Israel will always be welcome. If it has not been clear, I am quite disgusted with the current government, and even more so since last Saturday than before. But for now it’s the government Israel has and it (or, please may it be so, a more competent successor) must lead Israel to victory. I just want to be very clear that I don’t wish to engage with anyone whose comments muddy the clarity of distinctions I am expressing here.

Israel will win this war. There is simply no other option. Am Israel chai.

No we are not OK

There have been memes going around this week on social media with the words, “Your Jewish friends are not OK” or similar. This is true. If you are not Jewish or not affiliated with Jewish community organizations, you might not realize. It should be obvious from the massacre of Israeli civilians, but closer to home, there’s evidence you wouldn’t see. So here are some examples.

My wife and I are members of two synagogues and still get email from at least two others of which we were members in the past. All of them are closing their offices today and some are closing their schools if they have one.

One of these synagogues has decided to move a planned outdoor service tonight indoors and to change planned musical accompaniment to something less joyous than usual even though it’s to welcome Shabbat (a time of joy!). Another will hold no on-site activities at all through the weekend (putting services only on Zoom like during the depths of the pandemic).

All are announcing what additional security measures they are putting in place. Understand that this comes in the wake of several recent increases in security due to past attacks on communities in America. We have had a steady stream of messages over the last few years about new security patrols, staff and congregant training in how to respond to a possible terrorist attack onsite, construction of enhanced fencing, contactless apps for entry, and accessibility of panic buttons, etc. This is all being further enhanced now.

So, no, we are not OK. I’m not sure we will ever again be “OK” in the way we once were.

More personally, for about seven years I’ve worn my kippah in public most places. I was out (a medical facility) earlier this week and I wore it. It felt good. No one said anything supportive, and fortunately nothing negative. But will I think twice now about wearing it openly, at least in some settings? I hope not, but probably.

Through it all we are sustained by the powerful support of our communities and the wise and comforting words that our tradition has given us, and from our allies in the mainstream society (we know who you are and are grateful). In that sense we will always be more than OK. Am Yisrael chai.

‘Al tira’ (Be not afraid of sudden terror, neither of the destruction of the wicked…), which comes right after Aleinu in some siddurim (prayer books). I’ve been adding it this week although I normally do not. More info: https://www.zemirotdatabase.org/view_song.php?id=282

The Great Shattering and How to be a Liberal Zionist when Israel is at War

I am still far too shocked by what I’ve seen in the news to formulate any coherent blog-worthy thoughts. There is also a current pressing family matter that is weighing on me. (For both these reasons, I turned down an invitation from a newspaper in my area to write something.) Among the many things I’ve read, the following two resonate with me greatly, and I want to recommend them highly:

The Great Shattering by Michael J. Koplow, Chief Policy Officer at Israel Policy Forum.

How to be a Liberal Zionist when Israel is at War by Sara Yael Hirschhorn, historian of modern Israel and the Jews.

To say nothing will be the same again would be as trite as it is true. But we have to keep hope. We Jews did, after all, invent it.

Low snow

Those who live in California or have followed news about our weather recently will know that we have had an epic rain and snow season–quite unexpected. One of the storms brought shockingly low snow levels in the Bay Area and surroundings on the night of 23-24 Feb. I took some photos from the finca and nearby.

The first picture, above, is taken from the back of the property with my telephoto. This is looking roughly due west. The next two are views slightly to the south of the first one. Wherever you looked, you saw low snow!

(Click any photo to load a larger version.) Next we shift the view from the back to the road side of the property, looking southwest in the general direction of the Berryessa Gap.

Then I went and took a short drive, finding a location where two roads meet near an overpass on the I-505 freeway, affording a view from a relatively high point. The view from here is especially striking because the almond trees were near their full bloom at the time.

We have lived at this current location for ten years now, and have never seen the slightest dusting of snow even at the top of these hills, which form the first range of hills separating the Sacramento Valley from the Capay, Napa, and other valleys farther west. Locals say there was maybe one other time about twenty years ago when there was snow on these hills, but not nearly this much. And about thirty years ago there was snowfall actually at the Valley floor where we are. That would be extremely unlikely to happen again. These synoptic conditions were probably similar to that storm, but in a significantly warmed climate. I believe I saw some snow flurries here right around sunrise, and some very nearby weather stations were reporting rain/snow mix at the time. The snow on the hills stuck for a couple of days, but was all gone before long as conditions warmed and more rain fell.

(Note: the blog’s banner photo is towards the northeast, looking at the Sierra, much farther away. Seeing snow in that direction is obviously not rare in the winter. That picture is from several years ago.)

Last day, MLB 2021

How did this come to be? We somehow have reached the final day of the Major League Baseball regular season. Unless, that is, there are overhang games tomorrow! Any tiebreakers to determine remaining postseason slots count as regular season games. And as we prepare for the start of play on this last scheduled day, there remain realistic scenarios in which we could get as many as three such games!

The AL Wild Card has turned into a mash-up, with four teams–all but one from the AL East (the Mariners, really?)–still having the potential to end in a tie for the two slots. Failing that, two or three could tie for the second WC. I am tempted to call this a crush of four mediocre teams, but that really would not be fair. All enter today with either 91 or 90 wins. If all four are tied at the end of the day, there will be two games in the AL on Monday to determine which two reach the first AL postseason game. If three tie for the second WC, there will be two games to break that tie, spread across two days, under the tiebreaker rules.

In the NL West, we could still see the Giants and Dodgers tie for the division; these two are absolutely not mediocre teams! The Giants enter the final day with 106 wins, the Dodgers 105. If you want to see mediocrity, see the NL East winning Braves, with only 87 wins but a guaranteed berth in the Division Series. While both West teams clinched a postseason berth a while ago, if they finish with identical records, they need a tiebreaker on Monday (in San Francisco, based on head-to-head records) to determine which one is the division winner and which is the first Wild Card. The latter then gets one shot at knocking off a hot Cardinals team that will have finished 14 or 15 games behind the first Wild Card. As I have said before (just click and see the series going back several years), this is a dumb format.

If the second place team in the NL West beats the Cards in the Wild Card Game, the Dodgers and Giants will play each other in the Division Series. I am tempted to say we’ve probably had enough Dodgers-Giants for the year, but I can’t deny that the old rivalry would be fun. However, it would be better if their next potential match-up (after the potential division tiebreaker) would be for the pennant itself, and not a qualifier to face the vastly inferior Braves or Brewers for the honor. That bad format again.

It will be a fun day, and with none of “my” teams in it, I am just rooting for maximum overhang!

The MLB playoff system, first (?) rant of 2021

I’ve complained many times about the MLB playoff system. In fact, when I was looking back on September, 2005 (while drafting the entry on this month’s elections) I happened upon my plea for MLB to develop an anti-mediocrity provision, on account of the Padres leading their division in late August, and thus looking assured of a postseason berth, despite being under .500. The Padres did end that season over .500, barely, at 82-80. This was the seventh best record in the National League that year, yet they ended up coasting in to the playoff with a five game lead in their division, while the Phillies (88-74), and Marlins and Mets (both 83-79) sat out. (The Astros were the single Wild Card included in the postseason at the time, at 89-73, being in the same division with the Cards who went 100-62). Every team in the NL East was at .500 or better.

Here we are in 2021, with another absurdity of the playoff format on display as we enter the final weeks of the season. There is no sub-.500 team threatening to make the playoff, fortunately. However, there is a problem potentially even worse: The team with the second best record in the NL could end up playing only one playoff game despite a THIRTEEN AND A HALF GAME lead over the team it would face in the single Wild Card Game. Meanwhile, a team with the fifth best record (currently the Braves, leading the NL East) goes straight to a Division Series.

As I write this, an important regular-season showdown series is about to begin, between the old rivals, the Dodgers and Giants. This will be exciting! The two are currently tied for best record, at 85-49. If there is one good thing we can say about the current playoff format, it is that it certainly matters which of these teams wins the division, and hence goes straight to a Division Series, while the other faces a single-elimination game against the second Wild Card.

Therein lies precisely the problem. It would be a travesty if the team with the second best record happened to lose that one game and be out. You just should not set up a baseball postseason so that one game, rather than a series, can end the post-season of one of your top two teams. Yet at the moment, the second Wild Card slot is held by a team (the Reds) that is 13.5 games behind the Dodgers/Giants. The Padres, who not too many weeks ago seemed a shoo-in for this slot, are another half game back, in a fight not only with the Reds but also with the Phillies (2.5 out in the WC as well as just 2 out in the NL East) and Cards.

It seems that even with two wild cards, there is still a need for an anti-mediocrity provision. I’d say the fundamental problem–now as it was in 2005–is with the privilege in the postseason seeding given to division winners. I understand the value MLB places on having regional representation (kind of like I understand that in electoral systems!), but there needs to be more privilege to the overall national result (again, as in my electoral-system preferences!). I have had a proposal over the years, although it was for four teams per league advancing, not the current five. Surely institutional designers could come up with a better system than one that pits a team that might be just behind–or even tied for–the best record against a mediocre team in a single-game playoff, while still giving an appropriate benefit for being the best regular-season team.

Playoff thoughts, 2020

Fortunately, the Rays recovered just in time to save MLB from an embarrassment that was a risk of the overly expanded playoffs this year–a sub-.500 team making the World Series. The Astros had only the 8th best record in the league, and after losing the first three nearly came back to beat the team with the best record. This should serve as a warning against lowering the bar to entry into the postseason too much!

For the first time since 2004, both League Championship Series are seven games. If the Dodgers win today, the World Series will showcase each league’s top regular-season winner. 

The only other time both league series went seven was 2003 (the best-of-7 format was introduced in 1985). So, in a strange year for baseball (and pretty much everything), we baseball fans get a real treat. Given that the Braves had the third best record in the NL, their winning would not be the travesty that almost played out in the AL. But it is still surprising how the Dodgers have failed to take charge of the series after their dominance in the (short) regular season. If they win today, it will be a comeback from a 3-1 games deficit. While far more common than extending a series to 6 or 7 games after losing the first three, such a comeback is also fairly uncommon.

The Rays got off to a good start in the ALCS by winning the first three. They then became the first team since 2004 to lose at least the next two games after starting off 3-0. And so they are, of course, the first ever to win 3, lose 3, then win Game 7.

The previous times a baseball postseason series went at least six games after a team took a 3-0 lead it either ended in six (Padres over Braves in 1998 and Braves over Mets in 1999) or the team that came back and tied the series went on to complete the “delayed sweep” (Red Sox over Yankees in the very memorable 2004 ALCS).

The in-series progression of team wins in post-season series always has fascinated me, and the rare series where a team wins the first three but then has difficulty completing the sweep are especially fascinating.

In both 2004 and 2020, the team needing the 4-game winning streak was rather “lucky” in the sense of winning a close game after having lost those first three. In 2020, the Rays had outscored the Astros 11-5 over the first three games, and then the Astros 3-game mid-series winning streak was made up of close wins (4-3 twice, then 7-4). Game 7 was also close (4-2 Rays). In 2004, the in-series turnaround through the first six was even more remarkable: The Yankees had outscored the Red Sox 32-16 (!) and then the Red Sox mid-series comeback consisted of two extra-inning wins (6-4 in 12 and 5-4 in 14) and another close one (4-2) before a blowout (10-3) in Game 7. That really was a series for the ages.

The 1999 NCLS was a good one, too, in that it was close all the way through at game level, despite how one team nearly swept. After the first three games the Braves had outscored the Mets only 9-5. Given that to win three games you need to outscore your opponents by at least three runs, this was about as close as it could be. Thus the initial three games were not at all dominated by a single team, despite the 3-game lead. Then all the remaining games were decided by just one run; the concluding Game 6 took 11 innings.

The 1998 series was the first time a series needed six or more games after a 3-0 lead. It had, like 2020, a moderate run differential in the first three, with the Padres outscoring the Braves 10-3. The remaining scores were then Braves 8-3 and 7-6, before the Padres won 5-0 in Game 6. Rather remarkably, given the many years of best-of-7 series in baseball, what did not happen till 1998 then happened again the very next year. And again five years after that, and then not again till this year. Baseball needed a good postseason after the delayed start of its regular season. And it got it.

Would it be too much to ask that the 2020 World Series follow the lead of the two LCS and also go seven games? That has never happened, but in a year of unprecedented things, why not?

Comment (im)moderation

It has come to my attention that sometimes over the years the comment moderation function has been overly aggressive. It is not always clear why some comments get held in the queue. Sometimes it is due to having over some limited number of hyperlinks (no, I am not sure what that limit is). Other times it is completely mysterious.

Aside from the spam filter, comment moderation is almost never on, other than whatever level the default is for my blogging software.

I recently cleared a bunch of comments that I noticed in the queue. Some of these were rather recent, and some were up to five years old. So if a comment you posted some time ago never appeared, maybe it has now. Sorry it took so long!

If you ever post a comment and it does not appear, contact me and I will try to locate the comment and clear it. (See the “About” page of this blog for contact info if you do not otherwise know how to reach me.)

How is everyone?

It has been a month since any new planting here. That is unusually long for me.

I am fine, thanks. And you? I hope readers, wherever they may be, are taking precautions during this pandemic, and staying away from harm.

For the first weeks of our local “shelter in place” orders, it was not making much difference in day-to-day life for me. I work from home most of the time, and I was not teaching or otherwise needing to be on campus during the time that the orders to avoid being on campus came in.

Now, this past week, the spring quarter has started. So all of a sudden I am teaching from home, via Zoom. I can thank our synagogue for introducing me to Zoom over the preceding weeks. I was on a committee and we were using Zoom for meetings and interviews (we were attempting to hire new personnel) even before it became the sudden new thing everyone was using.

The strange thing is, given my tendency to live some distance from my employer (even more so in my UCSD days than in my Davis days), there were many times over the years when I mused about how nice it would be to stay home, with a view of the fruit orchard, and lecture from afar. But now that I have to do it, I… kind of… don’t much like it. I mean, it has gone better than I expected, after one week, but that is a low bar. I miss the in-person engagement. The technology, while quite amazing, still has its limitations.

The current crisis has taken away my two most important forms of social interaction–synagogue and teaching classes. May those be the worst things it ever takes from me, or from any of us.

Australian fires

I have a lot of readers and regular commenters in Australia. I actually don’t know where most of them live. I just wanted to take a moment to say that I hope you are all safe. Being a Californian, I know that, even if you do not live in direct harm’s way, the smoke and the accompanying weather can make life difficult during these emergencies. Be safe, and be well.

Last day, 2019

Funny how baseball works out sometimes. The two wild cards format was supposed to make the final days of the regular season more exciting. But this year it did not quite work out that way.

In the NL, the Cards and Brewers had something on the line right until today, given that one would be Central winner while the other would get sent to the one-game playoff as the second Wild Card. (Today they could have tied for a one-game tiebreaker to determine which was which.) However, if there had been only one Wild Card, it would have been an actual do-or-die to close out the 162-game schedule, as both teams would have been out of the running for the single Wild Card.

In the AL, the A’s and Rays also would have had a nice all-or-nothing for a single Wild Card, but not much was at stake with both of them qualifying. On the positive side, the Indians kept it interesting till the past week. (Sympathies to any Indians fans reading; the team led the Wild Card race much of the year and for a while looked likely to surpass the Twins for the AL Central.)

I’ve said before that this current format is not a good one. (Click the link for “playoffs and world series” for past discussions.) There is no perfect system, of course. And the current format did give us one of the greatest games played in recent decades. Maybe we will have something special in the game on Tuesday or Wednesday.

And it is also the last day of 5779. May we have a good and fruitful 5780!

Tu Bi-Shvat 5779

Tu Bi-Shvat is here! It is the “new year for trees” in Judaism, which here at Fruits and Votes we take as a pretty special occasion. The full moon of the month of Shvat marks one of those seasonal turning points–winter is coming to end (for those of us in northern-hemisphere Mediterranean climates, at least), and the fruit trees will be blooming before long. Traditionally, this observance is said to mark the time when the almond trees begin to bloom in the Land of Israel. Here, where our climate is broadly similar, it is coming a bit too early this year. It makes me think we just might need a second month of Adar, following the first month of Adar that will start with the next new moon in about two weeks. In fact, by the lunisolar calendar used in Judaism, we will indeed have two Adars this year, as otherwise we would be putting ourselves on a path to celebrating Pesach (Passover) too early. It needs to be at the full moon of the first lunar month after the vernal equinox. With the winter solstice only about four weeks behind us, it is indeed a bit early in solar-season terms for the almond trees to be blooming. Here is mine now, for instance.

The buds have been swelling for a while, but it’s not ready to bloom just yet. By comparison, last year buds began swelling around the 9th of January, but the first blooms did not open till the 30th–conveniently, the eve of Tu Bishvat, so right on time! In 2017 it also began its bloom on the eve of Tu Bishvat, even though that happened to be the 10th of February! The range of late January/early February is about right for first almond blooms, and is also generally when Tu Bishvat, but as I elaborate a bit below, the Jewish calendar by no means guarantees that Tu Bishvat will line up with any specific point in the season, but it will always be one of the first two full moons following the winter solstice.

Notwithstanding the date on the Jewish calendar, then, it seems the almond will be a little early, relative to Gregorian calendar dates of past years. And that may be a harbinger of early blooms on many of our fruit trees, something I have expected ever since the surprising bout of chill very early in the season, occasioned in part by the heavy smoke. At least the varieties that are relatively low chill should have had their requirement met by now; given that January has been quite warm, the higher-chill fruits may still be waiting around longer for further chill (which we may not get; outlook is for unseasonably warm weather, which alas, is becoming the new normal).

While the almond may not be blooming for Tu Bishvat this year, just now it is about peak season for some flowering/fruiting trees:

This is an ume apricot in the UC Davis campus, obviously already in full bloom, as of late last week. The ume is traditionally associated with new year in Japan, which on the Chinese version of the lunisolar calendar will be at the next new moon (the one that on the Jewish calendar will be I Adar this year). Chinese years start on the first or second new moon after the winter solstice; the next new moon will be the second.

So we have one “new year” (the Jewish one for trees) that is coming a little too “early” (in solar-season terms), and another one that is coming too late (although I’ll grant that in Japan, two weeks from now might be about “right” for the first ume blooms*). Such are the challenges of lunisolar calendars. On the one hand, the months are true months–i.e., they are set by moon cycles (the root of the word “month” is moon, but Gregorian calendar months have nothing to do the moon). On the other hand, the calendar must be adjusted ever few years by the insertion of additional month to avoid slipping too far out of synch with the solar cycles, if the culture in question (Jewish or East Asian) has annual observances that must keep to the proper season. (The Islamic calendar, for example, is strictly lunar, so there are no such adjustments and thus Ramadan and other observances can occur at any time throughout the solar year.)

While this year’s New Year for Trees may be a bit early, the timing is nonetheless fortuitous in another sense. It coincides with a lunar eclipse. In fact, with a “super blood wolf moon.” The Tu Bi-Shvat seder includes three different kinds of fruits, where the categories are: (1) inedible exterior, edible interior; (2) edible exterior, inedible interior; (3) entirely edible. To mark the occasion of the “blood” moon, our fruit for the first category will be blood oranges, which happen to be in season now.

Let’s all enjoy some good fruit and fruit-tree blooms as spring approaches!

____
* Various ume festivals start in early February and run until some time in March.

Smoke and chill

We have been dealing with heavy smoke from the Camp Fire in Butte County, which is a couple hours’ drive north of us. The weather conditions have been such that the smoke has settled and some days it has been like a fog that starts out moderately thick and never totally clears.

What I did not expect was that it would be so cold during this smoky phase. The fire began on 8 November, and the winds that initially made the fire so devastating died down late in the day on the 11th. Since then, we have had six straight mornings with low temperatures at 36F or lower, including three at 32 and two more at 33. This is substantially colder than the norm for this time of year. Usually–at least in the years I have been at this location–we do not get a morning below 32 until some time in December.

The NWS forecast discussion last night mentioned, “The smoke is keeping temperatures below normal blocking heating from the sun during the day and allowing heat to escape at night, unlike cloud cover.”

It is obvious that smoke cover would keep daytime highs down. In fact, we have not had a high temperature higher than 66 for the past six days, and some days have been only 62 or 63. That is near or a little below the norm for mid-November. (Normal low and high temperatures for the month of November around here would be more like 41 and 66.)

I would not have expected smoke to help keep it so cool overnight. Perhaps naively, I would have expected it to act more like cloud cover. Evidently, however, the fire has had the effect of getting our winter-chilling off to an early start. The deciduous trees are presumably dormant enough by now to “receive” chill, so this early cold snap is a good start.

The fire has been one of the worst disasters in the state in some time, and the air quality has resulted in UC Davis being shut down since 12 November and through the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Through all the awfulness, these cold mornings have been welcome.

Playoff-qualification formats, 2018 complaint

I’ve had some version of this complaint since at least 2005 (click the category links at the bottom to see past posts). Even though the playoff format has changed in a big way in the interim, I still don’t like it, and 2018 American League again shows why.

First, however, the National League of 2018 shows some clear advantages of the current format. The Cubs and Brewers have a weekend showdown (albeit not playing each other) over which one will win the Central. Whichever one does will also have the league’s best record. The other will be the first wild card. The stakes are high! The Dodgers and Rockies also have a showdown (again, not playing each other directly) over which one will win the West. The loser of that contest might be the second wild card, but the Cardinals are still alive, and so the loser of the West race could get left out entirely while the Cards get the (second wild) card. And to add spice to it, the Cards and Cubs (long time rivals!) play each other over the final weekend with both teams having playoff berths (or at least seeding) on the line.

Meanwhile, in the American League, we see the fundamental problem with the current format on full display. The Indians clinched their division a full week ago. At the time, their record was 86-68. The Tampa Bay Rays had the exact same record on that date, yet were on the brink of elimination. The Seattle Mariners were, on the same date, 85-69. Three teams within a game of one another in the standings. Yet one of them got a week to get rested and set up its rotation, while the other two will sit out the postseason.

The AL situation this season reminds us of the arbitrariness of the divisional alignments. While they are geographically accurate (unlike the NL before 1998), they can reward a mediocre “division winner” while shutting out teams with approximately identical records who just happen to be in tougher divisions. A related effect is that the AL Wild Card one-game playoff is going to pit the third and fourth (possibly second and fourth) best teams in the league (by W-L) against each other, while the fifth (or possibly sixth) best team gets to go straight to a Division Series as the League’s No. 3 seed.

While I was praising the NL situation earlier, I would be remiss if I did not note that, despite the good races to the finish in that league, there actually will be a similar unfairness in the outcome. The NL West winner is likely to finish with a worse record than the first wild card, and possibly in a tie with the second wild card. It just won’t be as stark a difference as the one in the AL.

Could this be remedied with better institutional design? Of course! I still prefer my Two Divisions, Two Wild Cards idea, first proposed in 2010, years before the current format (which is three divisors and two wild cards) was adopted. Of course, it is very unlikely that MLB will reduce the postseason back to four teams from the current five. As much as I do not like the one-game postseason “series” of the current wild card playoff, I could live with it–in modified form.

How about Two Divisions, Three Wild Cards? Bear with me a moment. I want a system that maximizes the chances that the best teams face off in the LCS and one of the very best makes it to the World Series. I don’t want to spot a mediocre team a top playoff seed just because it happened to win a weak division (i.e., this year’s Indians, but also several recent division winners). And I don’t want a first wild card that is well ahead of the second to have just one chance to get beat by an inferior opponent. The basic problem is small divisions magnify the odds that a weak team gets a division title. So two divisions are better than three!

It is not ideal to have divisions of different size in a league. With 15 teams per league, this proposal would require it (unless some more cross-league shifts were made, making the leagues different sizes instead of the divisions within each league).

With three wild cards, the first of them could get an automatic advance to the Division Series, while the second and third play a one-game playoff. (I’d prefer a best-of-3, but there really is no time for that.)

If this were in place now (and we’ll assume the records would be the same as they actually are), the AL teams would be: Red Sox (AL East, as actually), Houston (AL West, as actually), Yankees and A’s (first two Wild Cards, as actually), and a still live race between the Indians and Rays and, more marginally, the Mariners for the third Wild Card.

The proposal would work better still if the Division Series themselves were asymmetric, an idea I included in my earlier Two Divisions, Two Wild Cards proposal. I quote myself (because I can):

One could still introduce a first-round playoff structure that rewards division winners over wild card winners, if one wanted to do so. For instance, the first round could be a best of seven with the division winner having the first three games at home, instead of only the first two–while still having the last two if it went that far. Or under a best of five, one could similarly ensure the division winner four home games if the series went the distance. Another thought is an asymmetric series: the division winner advances after winning two games, but the wild card has to win three. I will not consider any of these integral to 2D2W [or the new proposal]; they are additional considerations.

Every institutional structure one can devise has problems as well as advantages. That is true of baseball championships as much as of electoral systems. And it is certainly true of this one. But I believe it would be an improvement on the current format.

In any case, enjoy the last weekend of the regular season, and the playoffs that follow!

5779 is upon us!

Last Thursday when I looked straight up as I ascended the gravelly knoll for shacharit it really hit me. That little bit of moon meant Rosh Hashanah must be really upon us. The yellow leaves on the fig tree offer further hints that we are well into the season of turning.

This year’s “first fruits” for Rosh HaShannah. Muscat of Alexandria and Zinfandel? (could be Syrah) grapes, Arkansas Black and Hudson’s Golden Gem apples, Warren pear, and the season’s icon, our first pomegranate (I used to think it was Desertnyi variety, but now I am thinking maybe Parfianka).

It was a fruitful end to 5778. Maybe 5779 be sweet and bountiful! See you on the other side.