way baseball works. There was a statistical analysis done a few years back, and baseball and hockey were shown to be the two most "random" playoff sports BY FAR ("random" based on the odds of the better regular season team winning in a 5 or 7 game playoff series). The number of games needed for a playoff series to reliably determine the truly better team turned out to be something like 50 games for baseball.

Now that baseball has gone to 3 rounds, there is just a lot more randomness in who ultimately hoists the trophy. Since the change to a 3 round playoff format in 1995 (24 World Series since then), there has only been ONE repeat champion (the yankees three-peated in '98-'00 so 2 of the 24 WS were won by a repeat team). From '69 to '93 when there was a two round playoff format (26 World Series), 5 of the 26 World Series were won by a repeat team (A's, Reds, Yankees, Bluejays). Prior to 1969 when the format was JUST the World Series (65 World Series) you had 14 repeat champions (obviously including several multi-year runs by the Yankees).

Years.........Rounds.......% Repeats
'95 -'19..........3..................8%
'69-'93...........2.................19%
'03-'69...........1..................22%

Some of the difference in repeats is due to revenue sharing, free agency, etc, but having 3 rounds of playoffs in a sport with as much randomness as baseball leads to far more randomness in the results. I'm not even saying this is a "bad" thing, but it is what it is. I agree that it makes playoff baseball exciting.