Re-envisioning MLB’s Postseason

by
October 26, 2015

Some teams have already benefited from the second wild card. (via Dirk Hansen)

Some teams have already benefited from the second wild card. (via Dirk Hansen)

I was in Las Vegas, a wide-eyed, innocent 26-year-old kid holding the betting odds sheet for the Bellagio Sportsbook, a bloody Mary in hand, sitting in a leather recliner at 8 a.m. in front of a city block of televisions. I didn’t play craps or slots or poker or really anything most casinos peddle. But I did love baseball, and I thought maybe I’d make a few bucks.

“Even the worst teams win 60 games,” said a stranger in gray fedora, suit jacket, and designer jeans.

“Huh?” I said, intelligently.

“Betting on baseball. That’s your angle. Even the worst teams, the worst of the worst — they still win 40 percent of the time.”

“Oh, good point. Thanks for the tip.” I said.

And he was off.

I lost about a thousand dollars that weekend. Still, that notion has stuck with me for a good many years, and it’s part of what makes baseball so interesting—that good teams lose to bad teams a lot. Over the course of the season, the cream rises to the proverbial top, but over one game, the winner might not be the best team.

…

In an agreement between with the Players Association in November of 2011, Major League Baseball added two teams to the playoffs, rather unfortunately dubbed the “second” Wild Card. This modification not only had the benefit of two more markets experiencing playoff baseball, but the secondary effect of keeping more teams in the playoff hunt longer—and thus, ostensibly added excitement about baseball in more markets through September. Meaningful baseball to more teams throughout a long 162-game season is hard to argue with.

As you likely know, this second Wild Card squad plays the other Wild Card team from its league in a one-game playoff. One and done. A “play-in” for those of you so inclined. So, in theory, you can have the second-best record in baseball and be sent home after one bad day at the office. Like Pittsburgh was this season.

Historically, the one game playoff has matched teams with fairly similar records, although 2012 saw an 88-win St. Louis Cardinals beat the 94-win Atlanta Braves. This month, the Nos. 2 and 3 ranked teams by way of winning percentage faced off in a one-game playoff that saw the 98-win Pittsburgh Pirates lose to the 97-win Chicago Cubs. Because of this, some debate about the one-game playoff ensued. In breaking down the arguments for the one-game playoff, I’m not so sure MLB can’t do better.

“A one-game playoff is dramatic.”

Ahem, playoff baseball is dramatic. If your fan base can’t get excited about Game One of a seven-game series, then you ought to be targeted for contraction. I don’t buy the argument that the added suspense of a one-game playoff trumps the opportunity to duel over a multiple game series, featuring the full repertoire of a team’s pitching staff, demonstrating all the strengths and weaknesses of the respective rosters. If you think a one-game playoff is dramatic, then you have to believe Game Seven would be downright sensational. Besides:

“Losing in a one-game playoff doesn’t diminish a great regular season.”

This is a fantastic argument levied by Cubs fans in 2015. Big hugs all around, you did swell. Here’s your participant ribbon.

I’m not a huge Pirates fan as much as I am a baseball fan. And what losing that one-game playoff did for me was remove one of the best, most dynamic and exciting teams from the postseason. If MLB wants excitement, a seven-game series between the Cubs and the Pirates exactly fits that bill. And I’m sorry, but you play a 162-game, 183-day, seven-month grind of a season. Getting booted after winning 98 games is just a wasted opportunity to see great baseball on a big stage. We should demand more championship baseball, not less.

“Major League Baseball isn’t concerned about what’s fair, it just wants to make money.”

This response is an actual one found on a major news outlet website. I’m not making the fairness argument at all, so let’s just set that aside. However, if you want to levy the argument that MLB began this additional Wild Card endeavor merely to make some additional dough, then it is entirely in its best interest to have a three-, five-, seven-game series. More games, more advertising revenue, more ticket sales, etc. Duh.

The next two wrap up together into a logistics issue:

“You don’t want to be playing baseball in November.”

“The season is too long already.”

I’m a proponent of the 162-game season. I don’t have a problem going back to 154, I just don’t care to see the long list of asterisks attributed to records and the incessant “projected” stats that would no doubt accompany a 154-game season. If you want to go to a 154-game season, well this problem pretty much solves itself, but assuming MLB is not willing to go there, then how do we solve the issues above while still providing at least a five-game setup for each playoff series?

There are three pretty obvious areas involving scheduling where I think we can find fairly easy efficiency: spring training, Opening Day, and the All-Star break.

The 2016 season is scheduled to start with a “to-be-announced” evening game on Sunday, April 3. Most teams will play the following Monday and four teams won’t play until Tuesday. After what typically seems like an eternity to get through the last week of spring training, trotting out split-squad nobodies with teams playing opponents with names like the “Knights,” “Grasshoppers” and “Hooks” at places called “Whataburger Field”—we’re scheduled to wait two or three days for the season to begin. Why?

Raise your hand if you think spring training isn’t long enough. Why don’t we just start April 1, not with some grandstanding single evening game. Let’s make it exciting for all markets. All teams start April 1. If you want to cut spring training short a day or two, fine. If you want to play up to March 31 to make the nice folks in Tempe, Kissemmee and Port St. Lucie happy, whatever. But the bell rings April 1. You just saved yourself three or four days.

The All-Star game has its merits—wait, no it doesn’t. And All-Star week takes a lifetime to get through. OK, MLB, have your “Mid-Summer Classic” and your Home Run Derby and we can all debate those who were snubbed. Whatever. As it stands, All Star week is the week of July 11, book-ended by regular games that actually matter on Sunday the 10th and Friday the 15th. That’s just a horrible gap of nothingness in between. Can we just handshake, hug, or high-five an agreement that games should start back up on Thursday? I recognize star pitchers may have thrown an inning or two on Tuesday and re-jiggering for the “second half” takes some finagling, but you can do this. We can do this. Let’s do this.

So you just saved yourself another day of baseball — and you also saved yourself from the jitters of no baseball in mid-July. We’re up to four or five days of savings.

This brings us to:

“Winning the division has to mean something.”

“You can’t make the other teams wait a week before they play.”

Ah, indeed. So here we make a significant tweak.

MLB, and apparently the majority of teams, do not support adding additional Wild Card teams. They’re quite proud of the exclusivity of the postseason ticket relative to other organized sports, where mediocre teams frequently get in. They also don’t support blowing up the divisions and having two big leagues, seeding them based on winning percentage, balanced schedule, etc. So, what can be done?

Expansion

I think the best idea is to expand to 32 teams — yes, expand into two new markets. Hardball Times contributor Chris Mitchell examined possible expansion cities in April (Part 1 and Part 2). Take your pick — San Jose, Austin, Las Vegas, Mexico City, Montreal — there are a lot of good options and thirsty fans. Then, create four, four-team divisions per league. You win the division, you go to the playoffs. Seed teams by winning percentage, and off you go. Mic drop.

Three-game Wild Card series

Expansion likely isn’t a realistic option in the short-term, and then you probably can’t answer the “teams waiting around” issue. With a little bit of savings to off days listed above, you could ostensibly push that one-game playoff to a three game series, guaranteeing each team at least one home game and not playing baseball into November. Re-seed teams based on winning percentage so we don’t wind up with the two of the best teams in baseball playing a shortened series right off the bat.

But honestly, is this whole other teams waiting thing really that bad?

If you look at the current schedule distribution, it’s entirely possible teams will have to wait a significant amount of time should they run the board in a seven-game series. Look back to 2012, and the Detroit Tigers wrapped up their series against the New York Yankees on Oct. 18. San Francisco and the Cardinals went a full seven, and the World Series didn’t start until Oct. 24. In 2007, the Colorado Rockies finished off the Arizona Diamondbacks on Oct. 15, and had to wait around to play the Boston Red Sox in the World Series until Oct. 24. The 1995 Atlanta Braves had to wait a week before they trounced the 100-win Cleveland Indians in the World Series. So what’s worse—having to wait around for great baseball or playing a virtual coin flip of a game because you don’t want grown men twiddling their thumbs. You just played 180-plus days of a regular season, you can probably use the rest.

A three-game series for the Wild Card teams means, at most, a five-day layoff for other teams. We will have to endure the “how they’ll respond to the time off” narrative, but that’s just poppycock. Take extra BP, spend some time in the sauna. Read a book.

Expand the playoffs

Alternatively, there could be playoff expansion, but then MLB would have to accept more of an NBA style club for the postseason. To eliminate the need for the one-game playoff, give divisional winners some kind of advantage, and forego two teams waiting around for the others to settle the fight, you’d need to go to eight teams making the playoffs per league. Six doesn’t really work because even if you seed one through six, you wind up with three teams standing there looking at each other. So yeah, that means the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Indians, San Francisco Giants, Washington Nationals, and, ahem, Arizona Diamondbacks make the playoffs in 2015.

Seed divisional winners one to three based on winning percentage and then the remaining three teams four to eight based on winning percentage. Divisional winners get home field advantage. Match-ups go one vs. eight, two vs. seven, etc. Playoffs start immediately for all teams starting with five-game series, creating an additional series tier but we should avoid the “playing in November” issue if we can knock off four or five days like we spelled out above. Could we wind up with a World Series champion with a regular season record below .500? Maybe, but it’s not terribly likely.

Although, even the worst teams in baseball win 40 percent of the time.


Michael was born in Massachusetts and grew up in the Seattle area but had nothing to do with the Heathcliff Slocumb trade although Boston fans are welcome to thank him. You can find him on twitter at @michaelcbarr.
61 Comments
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Johnny Walker
8 years ago

Keep the 1 game play in. Don’t like it? Should have won the division.

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Marc Schneider
8 years ago
Reply to  Johnny Walker

I hate that argument. What you are really saying is that the Pirates should have relocated to the East rather than being in the Midwest so they could be in the same division as the Mets rather than the Cardinals. You are punishing a team for being in a tougher division.

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Dave
8 years ago
Reply to  Marc Schneider

Well, being the Pirates had a losing record vs every other team in the NL Central they probably would welcome a move to the NLE.

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Simon
8 years ago

How about all 30 teams make the playoffs. Best record in each league gets a bye. Remaining 28 teams play a best 4-of-7, resulting in 14 winners. The two bye teams join the 14 winners for 16 teams in the second round. The 16 teams play off, resulting in 8 winners. The 8 winners play off, resulting in 4 winners. The 4 winners play off, resulting in 2 winners, and finally the 2 winners play off for the championship.

Also I would like to see:

18 games vs 4 divisional opponents = 72 games
6 games vs other 10 teams in same league = 60 games
2 games vs 15 teams in other league = 30 games

72 + 60 + 30 = 162-game schedule

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Marc Schneider
8 years ago
Reply to  Simon

Why bother having a regular season? Just have the playoffs.

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Simon
8 years ago
Reply to  Marc Schneider

Well, the regular season is a much better way of figuring out the ‘best team’. The playoffs are more like an entertaining tournament. The best team is much more likely to win a 162-game season than a 1, 3, 5 or 7-game series. So why not have a 162-game regular season to crown a “best team”, and then an epic 30-team playoff for entertainment value.

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bucdaddy
8 years ago
Reply to  Marc Schneider

I actually wish this would happen for the NBA and NHL, since their regular seasons are pretty much worthless anyway (except as cash generators). Bracket all the teams and play them off in rounds of seven games. Pay each player a base of, say, $100,00 and make the rest of their pay contingent on playoff performance, with incentives for beating opponents in four games, and for making the next round.

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Bigchief
8 years ago

I don’t understand why people hate this system so much. I prefer it to the 1 wild card team system where the wild card team had the same odds once the playoff started as a team that won their division. The old system, there was no real “punishment” for winning the wild card.

Neither the cubs, nor the pirates won their division, so they had to play a one-game wild card game. And in a sport that took 162 games to find out that the pirates were 1 game better than the cubs do you really think a 3 game wild card would make it that much more fair?

The worst possible suggestion is to expand the playoffs to fix this made up problem. If you don’t think it is fair that your team has to play a one game play-in to decide it’s fate, the worst thing you could do is to add 6 teams to the playoffs. This argument is so bizarre, if you want the best team to win, why on earth would the solution be to add more inferior teams?

Maybe the expansion is the best solution but it doesn’t solve the real problem that most people had with this years playoffs, that the 3 best teams were in the same division.

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Tim L
8 years ago
Reply to  Bigchief

“And in a sport that took 162 games to find out that the pirates were 1 game better than the cubs do you really think a 3 game wild card would make it that much more fair?”

I think it would help avoid a situation where a team has one shot to win, but has to face an otherwordly pitcher like Jake Arrieta. You make it best of three, and depth comes into play a least a little bit.

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Bigchief
8 years ago
Reply to  Tim L

Jake Arrieta FIP: 2.35
Garret Cole FIP: 2.66

Jake Arrieta this post season: 3.66 ERA

Not to say I completely disagree with you, depth is definitely more important in a 3 game series instead of a winner take all. I just don’t think moving it to a 3 game series would swing the needle all that much. The addition of two more games just wont change the likelihood of the better team winning all that much, the team that wins the 1st game will have a 75% chance of winning the series.

It is sad that the Pirates didn’t win that game, especially considering one of the hardest hit balls of the game resulted in a bases-loaded inning ending double play. But it would have been a shame to see the cubs lose as well. Both were very good baseball teams that were a lot of fun to watch. I’ll reiterate what I think is the real problem here, the three best teams were in the same division.

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Brian
8 years ago
Reply to  Bigchief

I agree. I think people overestimate the relative randomness of a 3-game vs. 1-game playoff.

Let’s say, for example, that the Pirates (having home-field advantage, a better team over 162 games, etc.) have a 53% chance of beating the Cubs in any one game. That’s reasonable, right? The odds, then, that they would win a best-of-3 series rises all the way to… 54.5%

(To be clear, the math here is purely illustrative. The Cubs – with Arrieta going, perhaps a better lineup, etc. – could be the team with the better chance of winning one game. And maybe it’s more than 53%. It doesn’t matter. It’s the chance of winning 1 game vs. 2 of 3 that matters here.)

I just can’t see the wisdom of adding two extra games, possibly extra travel, pushing back the division series by half a week, for a measly 1.5% increase in certainty that the ‘right’ team won (i.e., something that would make a difference once every 66 years).

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Doh
8 years ago
Reply to  Brian

I think this probably understates the “Arrietta effect” in that one-game playoff. More generally, assuming that a team’s odds of winning are the same in every game ignores the issue that some people have with the one-game series — that depth of starting pitching, which is very important in the regular season, is meaningless in the one-game playoff. To illustrate this with some numbers, let’s say that w Arrietta on the mound that night, the Cubs had a 60% chance of beating the Pirates. Let’s say further that in Games 2 and 3, with Lester (vs. Liriano) and then Hammels (vs. Burnett) on the mound, the Cubs had a 52% and 40% chance of winning, respectively. In a one-game series, the Cubs have a 60% of winning. In a three-game series, they have only a 51% chance of winning. This is quite a significant difference.

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Michael Barr
8 years ago
Reply to  Bigchief

Just to be clear, I’m not trying to make any kind of fairness arguments. I just find a one-game-and-out approach to be patently stupid after a seven month season. Again, more championship baseball, not less — if we can make room for a three game series between two very good teams without inconveniencing the regular season schedule, isn’t that preferable to one?

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Bigchief
8 years ago
Reply to  Michael Barr

I see that you focused on the ‘more championship baseball’ in your article, but you shouldn’t completely blame my reading comprehension skills (which in most cases would be a valid criticism) for bringing up counter points to the fairness of a 1 game wild card. This article starts with a story centered around the fact that even the worst team wins 60 games.

I do understand that you believe it’s ‘patently stupid’ because there is an opportunity to see one, possible two more games of good, exciting baseball? I completely understand that point of view, and I’m all for more baseball, but I sincerely doubt that is why this has spurred such a debate.

This is your the paragraph that I think really sums up the center of the debate:
“This month, the Nos. 2 and 3 ranked teams by way of winning percentage faced off in a one-game playoff that saw the 98-win Pittsburgh Pirates lose to the 97-win Chicago Cubs. Because of this, some debate about the one-game playoff ensued. In breaking down the arguments for the one-game playoff, I’m not so sure MLB can’t do better.”
At the end of the game, I’m sure most Pirates fans were not happy. The Pirates played 162 games, winning 98 of them, making the playoffs and then one day later, it is the offseason. But I bet the frustration stems more from winning 98 and being eliminated before making it to the NLDS rather than only being eliminated in 1 game. I’m sure if they were eliminated in 2 (or even 3), the same frustration would have been seen.

It is the reason this debate has centered around the Pirates, Cubs. The same format was used in the AL but you don’t hear nearly the same level of criticism from the Yankees fans(relative to Yankees fans in general). It would have been enjoyable to see a 3 game series between the Yankees and Astros, but not so much so that people were demanding changing the wild card to a 3 game series.

To me, the wild card game fixed the problems I had with the old system, while changing the old system as little as possible. I did not think that it was not fair that the wild card team had the same chance at winning the world series as the teams that won their division. This one game wild card allows for more excitement at the end of September, and a team is rewarded by winning there division by making the wild card teams have to play each other.

That being said, a 3 game series would not change the excitement at the end of September, nor would it impact the teams that won their division. But the single game has the smallest impact on the rest of the system.

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Ian R.
8 years ago

Personally, I’d just keep the current system (though I wouldn’t mind expanding the Wild Card game to a best-of-three) but re-seed based on record. The top three teams go straight to the Division Series, and the fourth and fifth play each other for that final spot. Yes, that means we would’ve seen two division winners playing each other in the NL this year, but frankly that’s as it should be. It’s stupid that the 90-win Mets and 92-win Dodgers got to go straight to the Division Series while the 97-win Cubs and 98-win Pirates did not. It’s not their fault that they happened to be in the same division as the Cardinals.

Such a setup would avoid any potentially ridiculous Wild Card matchups – imagine, for instance, what would’ve happened if we had the current system in place in, say, 2001. The A’s won over 100 games but didn’t win their division, thanks to the 116-win Mariners. Under the current rules, they would’ve faced 85-win Minnesota in a single elimination game. What?

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Tim L
8 years ago

“They also don’t support blowing up the divisions and having two big leagues, seeding them based on winning percentage, balanced schedule, etc.”

Are we sure about this?

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6651634

“According to a highly ranked executive, one consideration that has been raised in ownership committee meetings is eliminating the divisions altogether, so that 15 AL and 15 NL teams would vie for five playoff spots within each league. ”

Why is this more crazy than adding teams to medium-sized markets and adding a fourth division?

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bucdaddy
8 years ago
Reply to  Tim L

Duh. Because you can’t sell tickets for a 15th-place team. You can’t even sell hope.

The divisions and the wild-cards and all that exist to provide consolation prizes to teams and fan bases, so they have SOME hope of winning SOMEthing. Going worst-to-first in your division can be and has been accomplished. YAY! You get this nice pennant to fly. But you have no chance of going from 15th to first in a year, and even 15th to fifth seems a stretch. How you gonna market that team?

If fans actually thought about how difficult it really is to win a World Series, and that’s all the winning there was, they’d spend their money somewhere else.

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Dave
8 years ago
Reply to  bucdaddy

Logically speaking, the winning percentage improvement to go 15th to 5th in the league is almost always going to the same or less as going from last to first in a division. How often does a division winner have worse than the 5th place record in a league?

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ray miller
8 years ago

This is a really good article about a really tricky situation. I personally prefer starting modestly: keep the same system, reseed according to W-L record, for all the reasons Ian R. (and several others) have given. But Michael’s points about tightening up the schedule makes a lot of sense, too: I think there are many ways to tweak the schedule to make it possible to add two more games to the first, “Wild Card” playoff round.

Here are some other random thoughts:
• You could probably start the season in late March if you cut some dead time out of spring training AND insisted that the first week of the season be played in warm-weather locales and/or domed stadiums. Some people (incl. the schedule makers) have said that that is “unfair” to fans in the NE quadrant, but what’s “fair” about getting the privilege of shivering under gray skies in 40-degree weather on Opening Day? Or suffering a rain-out (or snow-out) or two?
• Nothing broke my heart like seeing that great Pirates team get bounced so early (and I’m a Cubs fan). But, really, how often is it going to happen that one division has the three best teams by record in all of baseball? Change the post-season if you must, but let’s not blow the system up because of a scenario that is likely going to be relatively rare.
• I’m all for expansion in theory, but as I wrote in a comment to Chris Mitchell’s article in April, do cities like Austin, etc., really want a team? Everybody thought that Miami and Tampa/St. Pete were great expansion cities, and we know how that’s worked out, attendance-wise. The Twins, too, once took the temperature of Charlotte as a possible target for relocation, and found something less than indifference. Montreal, any large Mexican city, maybe a few other places, are very intriguing possibilities–but for relocating the Rays and maybe the A’s first, expansion second.
• By no means should the playoff field be expanded under the present conditions. The opening rounds of the NHL and NBA y’all-come tourneys are often the sports equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel: sub-.500 teams with no business having even a theoretical chance to win the championship vs. the strongest teams in the league. It does not make for great spectacle even in the cities that are affected; it becomes a week of forgettable games and waiting for the inevitable. I, for one, don’t want to watch a sub-.500 D-Backs team playing in October; it’s bad enough that that can theoretically happen anyway, when one division is particularly weak (e.g., the 1994 AL West; the one good thing about the strike–not having to watch a wretched Texas team in the post-season!)–let’s not make it even more possible.
• What do people think about having a three-game wild-card playoff with a scheduled double-header? I find that suggestion interesting, although there seems to be so support for it amongst the players.

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Marc Schneider
8 years ago
Reply to  ray miller

It’s true that this exact scenario won’t playoff very often, but having 90+ win teams have to play 80+ win teams in a one game playoff has happened and will likely happen pretty frequently. To be honest, I would rather see a team not make the playoffs by a game rather than see the one game play-in. At least in that situation, the team that doesn’t make has been eliminated over the course of 162 games. I don’t think I’m a “purist”-I have no problem with the concept of a wildcard-but it makes no sense to me to have a team finish ahead of another team over 162 games and then have to play that team again in a single game.

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Homer
8 years ago
Reply to  ray miller

I think this exact scenario (2 of the best records facing off in the wild card contest) could happen frequently. Look at the NL Central right now versus the rest of the National League. I understand strength ebbs and flows, players develop, players get injured, and so on… But the Pirates and Cubs are young teams with some significant upside remaining, even after 98- and 97-win seasons. Does anybody think the Cardinals will trend down in the near future? Hasn’t happened for over a decade. I think we are going to see a repeat of this exact situation fairly frequently over the next 5-7 years. The position of the teams may change, but the situation will not.

I think the current situation is fine. Remember we are deciding the “champion” of baseball with a tournament rather than a 162-game season to start with. The best team seldom wins the World Series anymore, just the team playing the best during the tournament.

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ben thompson
8 years ago

I’m in favor of the 3 game wild card series, but consolidating the leagues back into 1 division each (or possibly 2 divisions each w/ expansion).

As for finding extra days to play, both ASG & spring training ideas are good, but MLB needs to bring back the scheduled double-header. It wouldn’t have to be much, just require every team to schedule 1 or 2 home double-headers a season, again buying an extra day or 2 for the postseason.

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Michael Barr
8 years ago
Reply to  ben thompson

I excluded the double-headers simply because the players union has railed against it in the past. Players apparently really hate double-headers.

But I’d have absolutely no problem with one or two scheduled double-headers myself, it just seems it’s a non-starter as far as negotiations with the union are concerned.

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Well-Beered Englishman
8 years ago

What about just seeding based on record? Then you have the top three seeds from one division, true, but too bad for the other two.

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Talacker
8 years ago

Abolish the divisions. Best AL team plays best NL, best of 7. Call it, say, the World Series. Problem solved.

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Bob
8 years ago
Reply to  Talacker

Why stop there? Just get rid of the two leagues and put the best two teams in the series.

Heck, why even have a postseason at all? Just put everyone in one group and whoever has the best record gets a parade.

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Erik
8 years ago

When people talk about team record, no one talks about the unbalanced schedule and heavily weighted interleave “rivals.” Record is not always a fair way of judging teams, especially across divisions and even more so across leagues.

Sure the three best records in baseball were in the NL Central this year, but that does not make them the three best teams. As someone earlier brought up the potential unfairness of a repeat of the 2001 AL West under the current rules, was it a coincidence that the Mariners won 116 games and the A’s won 102 the same year?

This is not to take anything away from these teams, but simply to point out that team records are just a guide, and baseball is so random, with so many unfair aspects built right in, that we need to embrace the unknown, and not pretend that we know any better for sure.

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Erik
8 years ago

I would really like to see some shake up in the post season – consistently.

We treat the playoff format like it’s some permanent thing, with some perfect ideal solution, but it’s clearly not.

Why not build in some shake up every two or three years? Want to try a format requiring a radical realignment? Sure why not! It’s not permanent! Have a 30 team post season one year, a 4 team post season the next. It’s all for fun any way, and no system is perfect or completely fair so let’s play around with it.

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Bob
8 years ago

Any discussion of tweaking and improving the postseason begins and ends with significantly shortening the regular season.

Right now, once the season finally does end and the playoffs get into gear, many casual fans are so busy passionately following football that they barely notice (or care) if two out-of-market teams are playing the World Series. That is, at least among fans whose teams didn’t make the playoffs.

Look, owners like the 2nd Wild Card because it means there are more teams still “in it” later in the season. It basically extends their fan-bases attention span. But that’s just a band-aid over the real problem… and its a problem that isn’t going away as long as the World Series stretches all the way into November.

Cut three weeks off the regular season, make the wild card a five game series and call it a day.

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baseballfan123
8 years ago

You guys always have the best idea to fix the postseason, to fix the regular season, the draft, the international draft. The system is broken bla bla. While it is unfortunate the cubs and the pirates had to face off in a one elimination game, somebody already said it “if you don’t like it win your division”. I believe the current system works. Besides the chances of the top 3 team in the league being in the same division in a given year is very low. You writers keep proposing these ideas that look good on paper but did you know players actually look forward to the all-star break? It’s a long season, they can use the couple of days off. Next time write an article on how the rules of baseball are not fair and propose a change in that as well, as well as replay challenges, and MVP awards, etc.

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Marc Schneider
8 years ago
Reply to  baseballfan123

What “writers” are you talking about?

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Eric
8 years ago

Here is my solution to all of it:

1. Expand to 32 teams. (Yay! baseball back in Montreal)
2. Make it a 155 game season. Eh, 1 more game than 154 but less than 162, can have bit longer playoffs.
3. Add the DH to the NL. Please get rid of pitchers batting who hit, .121-.132 ave and OBP, their slugging is around .170, and OPS is about .300 to .330, with 13 to 1 K/BB ratio. Yuck and double Yuck. This would make pitching stats between leagues comparable.
4. Get rid of divisions. Absolutely useless to have divisions. No arguments about the Pirates getting screwed by having too many great teams in one division to wade through.
5. Have 16 teams in each league.
6. With a 155 game regular season schedule all seasons across all teams in the NL and AL have equal difficulty level, every team plays every other team 5 times apiece, and everyone can go to their home ball park to see all the other 31 teams play the team they root for in their own backyard. 31teams * 5games =155 game schedule. Theoretically, it would limit travel for teams, by playing 5 games at once and never play that given opposing team for the rest of the year, or you could split up the series, 3 games and 2 games.
7. The top 5 records in each league go to the playoffs, regardless, since no divisions anymore.
8. Every playoff set is 7 games, except for the wild card which is still one game. There is room for flexibility in the Wild Card series since 7 games have been lopped off the regular season schedule. So if you wanted to make the WC series up to 5 games to decide it, so be it. I like the one game ordeal, but I am agreeable to a 3 or 5 game series, maybe even 7.

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tz
8 years ago
Reply to  Eric

If you want to see every team play at your home park, you’d need to split into 3 game and 2 game series…

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Sinnycal
8 years ago

Axe the elimination bracket style playoff format and switch to a round robin. Each team plays 3 games against the other 4 postseason teams within the league, for 12 total games per team. That’s the same as a full 5 game divisional series and 7 game championship series. No wild card game saves those extra days for tiebreakers if necessary.

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tz
8 years ago
Reply to  Sinnycal

I’ve been chewing on how that might work for quite a while now. One nice thing is you don’t need extra games for tiebreakers – simply break ties based upon the regular-season record.

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EricO
8 years ago
Reply to  Sinnycal

Yes! Exactly my thought. This would be (theoretically) fairer, having each team play the same competition. I love the idea however I’m not sure it’s workable.

What if a team lost its first several games and was eliminated from winning? Or if 2 were eliminated? It would be kind of weird to have zombie teams playing meaningless playoff games (sounds like an oxymoron!) especially against each other. I suppose you could cancel those where both are already dead. But then teams whose season is over would sit for days.

There’s also a decent chance for ties. One game playoffs for these?

Anyone have practical solutions to these issues?

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tz
8 years ago
Reply to  EricO

For the “zombie team” risk, base each team’s post-season bonus pool share on the number of wins in the round-robin tourney. That should be a decent incentive, at least as a starting point.

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Erik
8 years ago
Reply to  Sinnycal

I love round robin, and I’d love to see one, but there is no way to completely avoid zombie teams in meaningful games at the end unless you make it really short and have divisions.

We could have 8 teams from the AL (same in the NL), in 2 divisions of 4 teams, each playing each other once. Eliminate the bottom team of each division based on record, with regular season the basis of any tie breakers.

Play 2 more games with the remaining 3 teams to eliminate another.

Rinse & repeat for a second round by combining the two remaining teams from the two divisions, then have the top 2 teams play in the LCS. This still opens up the possibility of zombie teams on the last day, especially if you use tie breakers instead of an extra head to head matchup.

An alternative to Round Robin, without zombie teams, could be a “division winners,” “wild cards,” & “losers” double elimination bracket system. You would take 2 division winners and 4 wild cards in each league.

2 division winners play a 7 game series.

Meanwhile, 4 wild cards play best of 3 series against each other. Losers move into the losers bracket.

Winner of the wild cards tournament (the team that won both 3 game series) plays the loser of the division winners 7 game series. Loser moves to losers bracket.

Winner of the losers bracket plays who ever won between the wild card champion and the division series loser.

The winner of that (3 game series) plays the winner of the 7 game divisional series in a best of 7, with the division winner starting the series up 1 game to 0.

It’s a pretty epic bracket, and every team is in it until they are not. Most teams get to play each other. Everyone is guaranteed at least 4 games. Big time reward for winning your division. Super short series mean the threat of defeat and elimination is constant, even more so than in the current system. A wildcard team winning the league will have won 4 best of 3 series and a best of 7 series.

The downside is that the bracket is a little convoluted for more casual fans and it is probable that some teams will face each other head to head twice..

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Jason S.
8 years ago

This reminds me of that recent article about blowing up the draft. Only the writers of these articles seem to care about the “problem” they write about. Nobody else thinks it’s a problem. For the record, I’m a Braves fan and I accepted their loss to the Cardinals (mentioned in the article) fine. What I had a big problem with was Joe Torre and Bob Watson defending the horrible infield fly call where the ump blew it and they both insisted that the call could not have been more right.

Tell you what. You show me an MLB willing to get the Division Series up to 7 games from 5 games and I’ll be willing to admit that such a league might be interested in your idea.

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iggy
8 years ago

Just reverse everything the last commissioner instituted. He didn’t know what the heck he was doing anyways.

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NastyNate82
8 years ago

Some good thoughts here and in the comments. However, the expansion section rides off the rails. Expanding by two teams makes everything ok, I guess; I’d love to see Montreal get another shot at a team or some new market like Austin, Mexico City, or Havana. But the problem is going to four divisions of four teams. No one who puts forth this eight division format seems to understand it takes what happened this year (the Cubs and and Pirates having great records, but reduced to the WC game because of their division) and make it MORE likely to happen. If you’re all about how important the regular season is, how do you rationalize if a Pirates or Cubs team like this year stays home and doesn’t make it at all? Congrats, you just rewarded more mediocre division winners by expanding to eight divisions.
Since the NFL is the only sport to sport this format (because they’re the only one with 32 teams, of course), I took a look at how often they had scenarios where a WC team with a superior record had to play away at a team who won fewer games, but lucked out by being in a subpar division. The NFL has had this format for 13 years, since 2002, so looking at those 26 conference playoffs, it has happened 14 times. So…more than half the time, a team with a superior record has to play at an inferior team’s venue because it had the misfortune to be in a tougher division. Now, of course, baseball and football are vastly different sports, but given the vast amount of games and the proposition that only the eight division winners make the playoffs make this scenario very likely to happen.
I’ve always maintained the following should happen. Split back into four divisions as before: NL East, NL West, AL East, AL West.
NL East: Mets, Nats, Phils, Marlins, Braves, Pirates, and Reds.
NL West: Dodgers, Giants, Rockies, Padres, Diamondbacks, Brewers, Cardinals, and Cubs
AL East: Yankees, Orioles, Rays, Jays, Red Sox, Indians, and Tigers.
AL West: A’s, Angels, Mariners, Rangers, Astros, White Sox, Twins, and Royals.

Playoffs would take each division winner, and the three teams with the next best record would be wild cards. Using this year as an example, the National League would have the Cards and Pirates as the division winners, the Cubs are the first wild card, and the Mets and Dodgers play a two of three series to face the #1 overall seed (Cards in this case). The AL would have the Royals and Jays as the division winners, the Rangers as the first wild card, and the Yankees and Astros playing two of three.

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FS
8 years ago
Reply to  NastyNate82

one NL division has 7 teams while other has 8. how do you divide schedule evenly?

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Nastynate82
8 years ago
Reply to  FS

Haven’t quite figured that out yet. But baseball operated for years with a six team NL Central and a four team AL West, so it’s not a deal breaker. The 15 team leagues necessitate interleague play.

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FS
8 years ago

Do away with divisions. Do away with inter-league play. Let AL keep DH and let NL have pitchers hit. If you like one or the other, you can keep enjoying it. Keep same number of teams. Have each team face other 14 teams from that league 11 times. That adds up to 154 games of regular season, 77 home games and 77 away games. Any team will face 7 teams for 6 home games and 5 away games. Against other 7 teams, they will have 5 home games and 6 away games. Start season from first April to 29th September, that is 182 days which is 26 weeks. It is easy to play 154 games during that period. You can even take a full week off for all star game and have elite talent available for the game. Add some kind of incentive for playing in that game. That leaves you with 175 days, meaning 21 rest days besides that week off for ASG. (or alternate is first Monday of April to last Wednesday of September. That gives us 17 rest days as 2015 season did. But has one week off for ASG.) End of regular season, take top six teams to playoffs. Top two teams rest as four others face each other in 3 games series, #3 against #6 and #4 against #5. Next stage is 5 games series, followed by league championship for 7 games. Finally the world series where starting venue is decided by best record. Playoffs consist of 22 games in total, which I think can be played in 30 days of Oct easily.

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Nastynate82
8 years ago
Reply to  FS

You can’t get rid of interleague play if you still have 15 teams per league, cause the odd number means a team is sitting. Getting rid of divisions means good luck selling tickets for a 15th place team. Divisions are a good thing for rivalries. The rush to make a schedule even-Steven loses sight of that.

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mike
8 years ago

There are too many teams in the playoffs! All the ridiculous wild card does is delude mediocre teams into thinking that they are championship caliber, which serves nothing except greed. Assuming ‘contraction’ is a non starter, add two more teams, the talent is so diluted anyway no one will notice, and go to four eight team leagues. Winners in the playoffs. Finished eighth? Incentive to improve! Get rid of the loathsome dh, either by grandfathering it out as was done with the spitball, or allowing 26 man rosters for a set period of years. Cease the efforts to replace umpires with machines. Schedule a doubleheader once in a while so the Series isn’t played in November. Shorten the breaks between innings, Disallow stepping out of the batter’s box after each pitch. Let’s get back to baseball, what do you think?

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GregF
8 years ago
Reply to  mike

Some interesting ideas here. Especially the one about the DH – having 26 man rosters in order to phase it out over several years.

This could serve two purposes. One of the issues the Players Association are concerned with are losing jobs and salaries. Phasing it over over time could solve this. Also, with expanded and specialized pitching staffs these days, one more roster spot could reduce the problem of too many pitchers, too small a number of bench players.

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Trace Juno
8 years ago

From the depths of my couch, a one-game playoff is a fun game to watch. Not quite, but a lot like a Game 5 or Game 7. Which is sorta like a one-game playoff. Which, uhm, what was the question…?

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Trace Juno
8 years ago
Reply to  Trace Juno

Oh, right, making the playoffs fair and fun for everybody without breaking with traditions too much. Yeah, ain’t gonna happen.
As always in baseball, it’s a lot of fun to discuss it though (why else would we be here?).

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Paul Thomas
8 years ago

Nope. You are wrong. I feel comfortable just coming out and saying that.

A one-game playoff forces the team in the playoff to immediately burn its ace starter, who then pitches only once instead of twice in the LDS. That is a big deal.

A three-game playoff allows the team to pitch its three top starters. There is presumably (at least) one travel day before the next series starts. The team’s ace pitches (at least) games 2 and 5 of the LDS. That is not a big deal.

That’s what people don’t seem to “get” about this current format. It actually weakens the Wild Card teams in the next round– not by a lot, mind you, but by a noticeable amount. A three-game series would have no such effect.

The baseball postseason is kind of a silly exercise to begin with– at the very least, the league championship pennant should be awarded cdto the team with the best regular season record, not the winner of the LCS– but the current format does a FAR better job of making the regular season meaningful than the last one did.

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bucdaddy
8 years ago
Reply to  Paul Thomas

“It actually weakens the Wild Card teams in the next round”

It’s supposed to, as an extra incentive to go all-out to win your division.

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Nate
8 years ago

The argument that the Pirates, a dynamic and exciting team is left out of the playoffs, is faulty because you can say the exact same thing about a one team wild card. The 97 win Cubs would have been left out. At least with this method they get one more shot. No matter how much you expand the playoffs, unless you just put everyone in, someone is always going to be left out and there will always be circumstances where a deserving team doesn’t get in. It’s the way it is. Stop trying to remake the wheel

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Philip
8 years ago
Reply to  Nate

@ Johnny Walker
“Keep the 1 game play in. Don’t like it? Should have won the division.”

Agreed. Even though my club was on the losing side of one-gamers in 1948 and 1978.

I do not like the wild card and would prefer the leagues go back to a two-division format.

But I do favor the addition of the second wild card for one reason: it makes winning the division a little more important again.

As for the Cardinals playing the Cubs this year, I wouldn’t have a problem with the seedings for the LDS being set after the wild card game and being ranked by winning percentage. In other words, don’t automatically seed the wild card game winner 4th. Seed them 3rd or 4th, depending on winning percentage; just don’t give them home field advantage.

@ Simon

“Also I would like to see:
18 games vs 4 divisional opponents = 72 games
6 games vs other 10 teams in same league = 60 games
2 games vs 15 teams in other league = 30 games
72 + 60 + 30 = 162-game schedule”

Agreed. Teams within a division should at least be playing the same number of games vs. the same opponents.

But even that skews the results since the potential wild card teams may have different schedules. Houston played the weak NL West this year while Minnesota, who finished 3 back of Houston, got stuck playing the tough NL Central (not to mention playing Kansas City 19 times while Houston played the Royals 6 times).

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Trace Juno
8 years ago
Reply to  Nate

My point exactly. You’re never gonna get a playoff format that nobody complains about, so just try to enjoy it for whatever it is. It’s still baseball.
Like I said, I do love this kind of discussion, and I do agree with most of what Paul Thomas says. I just don’t think anybody’s solution would make everyone happy.

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Trace Juno
8 years ago
Reply to  Trace Juno

I was agreeing with Nate’s comment (I thought mine would appear underneath his).

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Steven Scott
8 years ago

This entire discussion is only made possible by the fact the each league does not have the number of teams that are evenly divisible by four. Period. For a game that is so numerically driven, you would think the MLB would find this obvious.

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roadrider
8 years ago

The root of the problem is greed. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the pre-1994 two division per league setup with only division winners making the playoffs. Then the crass, stupid, greedy, corporate stooge, car salesman masquerading as the “Commissioner” (actually he was the designated hatchet man for the owners) came up with this ridiculous 3-division, wild -card setup which eliminated the drama of winner-take all regular season pennant races between superior teams (like the 1993 NL West, the 1978 AL East, etc.) and introduced vulgarities such as teams tanking games to get more favorable playoff match ups (Yankees 2010) or simply not caring (the Dodgers and Astros , separated by one game in the standings playing the last game of the season like a spring training game because, what difference did it make?). It was just a naked money grab and the MLBPA was just as happy to go along. And please don’t bother making stupid counter arguments like “how exciting some division series was”. You could get he same effect (and a real “wild card”) by taking teams at random and inserting them into the playoffs.

Expanding the playoffs is an incredibly stupid idea and so is the idea of 4-team divisions. As for the former, the post-season is already too f!#$king long! Some people, apparently you’re one of them, will never realize that often times less is more. And is anyone really pining for another week if Joe F^%$ Face, Tom VerDoucheBag and Harold Reynolds or more celebrity sightings in the stands? As for the latter, small divisions dramatically increase the probability of bad, undeserving teams making the post-season and winning the World Series because, as you said, even the bad teams win 40% of the time.

Baseball is not basketball or hockey and should not copy their playoff systems. In the NHL, for example, when they had only six teams four of them made the playoffs. That’s their history. It’s not baseball’s history. I don’t think expansion is the answer either although it will probably happen in order to save another useless novelty that has worn out its welcome (inter-league play). Assuming two new teams are added to balance the leagues then just go to two eight team divisions per league and only have the division winners make the playoffs. I really don’t want to hear the whining about “teams staying in the pennant race longer”. Most of them don’t deserve a shot at the post-season and should be rebuilding instead of making Quixotic trades and signings to chase an unlikely second wild card slot. Since that’s unlikely to happen (because money and TV – which are really the same thing) then just forget about the divisions and let the four top teams in each league in the playoffs. I can live with that.

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Marc Schneider
8 years ago

Regardless of the playoff format, baseball needs to do something to avoid having the World Series end in November. It’s ridiculous to be playing baseball in the middle of the football season and the beginning of basketball and hockey seasons. I think MLB needs to cut back to 154 games and, whatever the playoff format, get the World Series over by, say October 20 (I would prefer earlier), when it is still reasonable baseball weather. They got sort of lucky this year because the weather was, for the most part decent, but it’s nuts to be playing so late in the year. I had thought that one of the goals was to avoid having the World Series run into November, but obviously not. It is simply not baseball season any more. The NFL season is half over.

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Adam
8 years ago

How about this:

Wildcard round becomes a best-of-2 day night doubleheader, with the #1 wildcard up a game.

A way to get day games into postseason baseball, a way to get doubleheaders back into baseball, actually tires out the WC winner more (so the Division winners are happy), and so on.

It’d never happen because the MLBPA doesn’t like double headers, but it’d be cool and very much so play into the “hype” that the commish wants to generate.

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David
8 years ago

“roadrider” got the comment correct- it is all about greed, money power and control. I find it interesting that the Dodgers long time organist retired. The culture at the ballpark is a reflection of the culture in our nation. Hard work, perseverance and vision mean nothing now. It is all temporal, instant gratification and fake excitement and whipping fans into frenzy. The myth of exciting inter-league play, wild cards, loud annoying music and low information fans have destroyed the once great game of baseball. You want great baseball? Go back to two leagues and then the world series; with 154 games too, no DH and no inter-league play and the quiet hum of the stadium fans and organ music. Just watch games from the 1960s and even 1970s- you come to watch baseball not attend a carnival or concert.

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Courtney Gibson
7 years ago

Why make it a 16-team postseason play, just like the NBA.

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