Thursday, January 21, 2010

Dominican Winter League Playoffs

The Dominican Baseball Guy has not posted much in the last month because I have returned to the States and am not following the league as closely. But I am following the Dominican Winter League still, and they are currently playing the playoffs.

The league has a very interesting playoff system. The six teams in the league play a 50 game regular season. After this, the top 4 teams go on to a round robin playoff. The round robin is 18 games, so each team plays the other three teams 6 times. This year the Gigantes del Cibao, Licey and Escogido in Santo Domingo, and the Toros from La Romana made the round robin.

The top two teams from this round robin playoff then go on to play a 9 game final series. The Gigantes and Escogido are the two teams that made it through the round robin and are now playing in the finals. The Dominican Baseball Guy was following the Gigantes this season, so it is pretty cool that they are doing well. I have talked to some friends in San Francisco de Macoris and the city is abuzz over the Gigantes. It is a small city, so everyone is talking about the Gigantes. This would also be their first league championship.

The winner of this final, then goes on to play in the Carribean Series against the winners of the Mexican, Venezuelan, and Puerto Rican leagues.

The Dominican Baseball Guy would love to see the MLB adopt a system similar to this. It seems to make a lot more sense then playing 162 regular season games, then 7 game playoff series. But we all know the MLB would never change the system that drastically, and a 16 game round robin playoff is not as TV friendly as the 7 game series are.

The Gigantes have a stacked lineup and are leading the final series 2 games to 1. Go Gigantes!

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