Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has proposed a new playoff system. Apparently he feels the MLB playoffs need fixing. The newly proposed system goes like this:
- Best team in the division gets a buy
- The other 2 division winners get home field for all games in a best of 3. They also get to go to a choosing ceremony to pick their opponents.
- The best team that’s not a division winner will also get home field advantage for the best of 3.
- Playoffs are expanded to 7 teams, which double the current number of Wild Cards.
History
When I was a kid, there were 2 teams from each division that would face off for the right to be in the World Series. A lot of fans had nothing to cheer for by June, or even by May. Very few fans had anything left to cheer for by August, and even less by September. The move to 3 divisions with a Wild Card was an excellent one. In theory, the more teams that make the playoffs, the longer into the season you can cheer for your team, and therefore the season is more exciting for more people. This theory held true for this first playoff change-up.
The Current Status
Next, MLB moved to today’s format where there are 2 Wild Cards that face off against each other in a 1-game death match.
Before I saw the current system in action, I was skeptical. It seriously devalued the Wild Card winners, and at least one of them was usually a better team with a better record than at least one of the division winners. I still agree with that issue right now, but the fun of the playoff death match, and the added bonus of being able to cheer for teams longer into the season overshadowed any problems.
The Future
The theory of more teams making the playoffs mentioned above has a breaking point. Yes, you will always get to cheer for more teams deeper into the season with more teams making the playoffs, but that part about the season being more exciting can fall apart when teams with a sub-500 record make the playoffs.
In the past 5 years:
- A sub-500 team would’ve made the playoffs three times (the Rays and Angels in 2017, and the 2016 Marlins).
- Not a single year would feature all playoff teams with at least 85 wins.
With this new system, we would be in hockey territory. In the barroom debate of which is the better sport, I always bring up the fact that the hockey playoff system makes their regular season feel meaningless, and most of the time, even hockey fans agree.
The Fix
Call it anticlimactic, but the fix is not to fix it. The playoff system is not broken and is great the way it is. Manfred’s proposal is not a good one, and cheapens the playoffs, and cheapens the regular season.
Further Into The Future
Expansion is imminent. There are too many cities that could use a baseball team. Three of the top ten most populous cities in America are without MLB, and that’s not even considering Canada.
Side note: I also believe we should quickly get some of these “poor” small market teams out of their cities. This is the best way to make baseball more exciting as the Miami Marlins could go from a team with no money and being out of the playoffs before the season begins, to another team from a big city with big money to spend.
Expansion should mean two 4-division leagues, each division with 4 teams, 16 teams in each league. At this point, I would add a 6th team to the playoffs in each league. 6 out of 16 teams is 37.5% of the teams (compared to 46.7% of the teams under Manfred’s proposal, or 33.3% under the current system). The NFL has 37.5% making the playoffs and the NBA/NHL have over 50%. 12 after expansion would put MLB right in line with the NFL. How would this playoff system look?
The 2 best division winners get a bye in the first round. But here is where it gets weird. I like the best of 3 first round all home games for the better team idea. Season ends, one day off, 3 straight games, one day off, round 2 of the playoffs. This limits the bye team to 5 off days, which could be an issue. If it is, I’m not against the first round being a winner-takes-all situation like it is now.
Even crazier though, I like the choosing ceremony idea. I know, it sounds stupid, and the player’s union will never go for it. I thought it was crazy too, but then I really thought about it and kept thinking of reasons why I liked it. The only reason I could think of why not to like it is that it sounds dumb. I ended up with seven reasons why I like it:
- A choosing ceremony would be fun to watch, creating a television experience that didn’t exist before.
- It would create bad blood between the team with the 1st pick and who they choose, making that playoff series instantly more fun to watch.
- It has huge potential to create long-term rivalries between these teams as bad blood lingers. This is especially more true if the picked team upsets their higher seed.
- It separates the best division winners from the worst ones, as the two best teams get a bye in the first round.
- How often has the best team in the league played the 2nd best team in the 1st round because they were the Wild Card? That won’t happen with a bye and a choosing ceremony.
- It puts the best Wild Card teams on more equal footing as the worst division winners (and these Wild Card teams often had better seasons than the worst division winners).
- More rivalries draws more fans to the stadiums and ratings on TV. This drives up revenue, which drives up salaries (which is why the players should go for it). Imagine if the Braves chose the Brewers last year and the Brewers beat them. Braves/Brewers was not a natural rivalry that fans would tune in for during the regular season, but now they definitely will.
If you enjoyed this post, please check out my other “fixing baseball” posts:
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