Expanded Playoffs Are (Probably) Coming
After a week of waffling that would make Belgium jealous, Rob Manfred threw a curveball yesterday:
Manfred statement… pic.twitter.com/Z2NgD95F9T
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) June 17, 2020
Of course, it couldn’t be that easy, and I don’t just mean avoiding mixed metaphors. The MLBPA agreed that new substantive discussions had occurred, but disagreed that an agreement was in place or that a final deal was imminent. We’ll have to wait for another offer from the players, and likely a final counter from the owners, though the fact that their latest proposal includes full prorated salaries — and please, let’s never use the phrase “full prorated” again, like ever — suggests that the two sides will reach a deal.
Lost in the tick-tock of the negotiation and Manfred’s wild swings towards dealmaking and obstructionism, however, baseball is changing shape. When (and if) the game returns this year, it will look different than it ever has before. I don’t mean the season length, though that will certainly be novel. There are two major changes to the game in the owners’ most recent proposal: a universal DH, which Jay Jaffe will cover in greater detail tomorrow, and an expanded 16-game playoff field in 2020 and 2021.
The length of the season, while not yet final, looks likely to fall between 60 and 70 games. There’s not much difference between those in terms of how “real” the season will feel — it’s going to feel short, and that’s fine. Nothing in 2020 has felt normal so far, and baseball is merely following the trend.
That’s not to say there’s no difference between 60 and 70 games. Each additional game nets players roughly $25 million in extra salary, which explains their steadfast desire for more baseball. Owners may or may not also profit from extra games, but do make the majority of their profit from the playoffs. To them, extra games are simply a lever to pull in negotiations with the players. For our viewing purposes, however, it will feel short and random. Dan Szymborski is sitting in the ZiPS situation room as we speak, projections at the ready, to fire off win total predictions and playoff odds as soon as the exact season structure is announced, but suffice it to say that 60 and 70 game seasons don’t produce significantly different outlooks.
If the short season will feel a little weird, the expanded playoffs will feel outright jarring. The Mets, Diamondbacks, and Cubs would have made the NL playoff field in 2019. The Indians, Red Sox, and Rangers (!!) would have qualified on the AL. That’s in a full season — worse teams will very likely make this year’s playoffs. There is, as of yet, no concrete information on the prospective playoff structure, but the Rangers won 29 fewer games than the Astros last year. One way or another, they would likely meet in the playoffs with an eight-team field.
An expanded playoff field will likely be a short-term ratings and cash bonanza for the league. It’s less clear whether it makes sense in the long run for the health of baseball. Team incentives would suffer greatly unless top seeds receive some serious first-round advantages, on the order of a one-win advantage in a best-of-three series. Think of it this way: total major league payrolls last year amounted to $4.08 billion, which means that one win above replacement, averaged across all players rather than merely free agents, cost teams roughly $4 million. If the Astros paid the market rate, those 29 extra wins would run them $116 million. That’s a lot of extra spending to play a three- or five-game series that could end your season, the same situation your opponent faces, before even getting to the “regular” playoff crapshoot that already exists.
This argument isn’t airtight — the Astros couldn’t relinquish 10 wins and pocket $40 million very easily, because baseball assets aren’t perfectly fungible. Even if the Astros became less interested in winning, teams in the Rangers’ rough tier might pick up some of the slack by attempting to jump from, say, 75 wins to 80.
But at the moment, there’s a real incentive to build a team that projects to win nearly 100 games; even if your club disappoints, you’re still likely to make the current playoff structure. The same can’t be said of a team with a 92-win projection before the season; should that team come up on the short side of variance, they’ll likely be watching the playoffs from the comfort of their own homes.
Removing incentives to build great teams hardly seems like a good way to make baseball more interesting. There’s a balance to be struck — one playoff team per league wouldn’t be a great system either — but in a sport where variance plays such a key role in short series, expanding the playoff field creates a pull toward the middle. Teams are rational actors. If the incentives for creating a fully operational Death Star are low, why build one?
There’s a central issue at play here: to make the most possible new revenue from the expanded playoff field, the league would prefer the series to be competitive. Spot the higher seed too much of an advantage via the structure of the playoffs, and there’s less drama, less appointment television.
Imagine an extreme: the lowest seed in the playoffs must play their first series with only eight players on the field. That would provide a huge incentive to win the top overall seed in the league — a virtual first-round bye. But who would buy the rights to a series that was destined to be uncompetitive? Sure, audiences might tune in for a year: novel concepts can be fun! But if the top seed’s victory is all but assured, what’s the point of watching? And if the top seed has to play two short series, just the same as the fourth seed, what’s the point of aiming to be the top seed?
In all likelihood, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Try to imagine the league using a 16-team playoff field for two years and then returning to eight. It would never happen. The players know that owners want an expanded playoff field — they’ve repeatedly used it as a bargaining chip to ask for greater compensation. Why would they sacrifice compensation to ask for a smaller playoff field? Similarly, the owners have no incentive to pitch the players on a smaller playoff field in exchange for lower salaries — the players wouldn’t listen, and the owners don’t even want to make that tradeoff.
This same logic is true, roughly, for a universal DH. Players generally want the DH in the NL; it would create extra jobs, or so the thinking goes. The owners likely don’t care; profit is profit, whether Madison Bumgarner bats for himself or not. But despite the historical significance of removing pitcher batting from the NL, I believe the expanded playoff field is far more meaningful.
Teams will adapt to the new playoff structure. The Cardinals, to name one example, have proven adept at aiming for an upper-80s win total year after year, a skill that will be more valuable in the new expanded-playoff world. Star starting pitchers will be a must; there’s no better bang for your WAR buck in a short series. But mostly, I think the new playoff field will be a bad thing for generating or sustaining fan interest in baseball. The more teams that aim for the middle, the less fun it is to watch.
There’s an argument to be made that the expanded playoff field would prevent tanking. I think that’s a terrible argument. Teams don’t tank just to try to later build a 100-win team. They tank to save money. Teams that cut salary don’t add it back on average. As long as owners are profit motivated, accumulating underpriced assets at the cost of being bad and inexpensive today will be a viable strategy. Why would we expect teams who are already at best middlingly interested in making the playoffs to suddenly develop newfound zeal when an extra round appears when they still face juggernauts like the Dodgers and Yankees?
In the end, I’ll simply be glad that baseball is back. When my options are a bizarre form of the game or nothing, give me the bizarre form every day. Maybe I’m wrong about the long-term effects of an expanded playoff field. Maybe the structure of the playoffs will still bestow enough of an advantage on the top seeds that they’ll be worth fighting for. But when you’re jumping for joy that baseball’s back, spare a thought for how you’ll feel about the 78-win Rangers and their future equivalents. Playoff baseball is always weird — and it’s about to get weirder.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Expanded playoffs and DH are the two worst parts of all of this. I’d rather no season this year to prevent that for next year. Effecting the long term negatively for the benefit of a short term season is not a positive.
I agree that expanded playoffs are bad – a universal DH, however, was inevitable anyway. Besides, pitchers are only getting worse at hitting, and even the “good” ones have batting lines that wouldn’t fly as even defense-first shortstops. I think a DH is a net positive – better quality of play overall, no fluky heartbreaking injuries to pitchers while they’re pretending to be hitters, and if anything if gives players more major league jobs to compete for.
I enjoy small ball, bunting, moving the runner over. The cat and mouse game of pinch hitters in late innings. Without the DH, the bench guys during the game are much less important. DH was added for offense, there is more than enough offense now, don’t need it.
I understand that point, but I think the need for strategy it creates is often overstated. Even in the AL, pitchers are kept on ever-shortening leashes, to the point that I think most pinch hitter decisions are done almost by rote. Unless he’s an ace it’s starter approximately twice through the order, then a series of 1- or maybe, if the pitcher’s spot doesn’t come up, 2-inning relief stints. Managers inclined to play small ball (though there are fewer and fewer of these) will do it anyway, just using their worst hitters to bunt instead of their pitchers. I do wish there was room for more variation in strategies among teams, but there increasingly seems to be a “right” way to make decisions at every point in a game, and I just don’t think forcing pitchers to hit adds much meaningful decision-making to the game anymore. Though, again, reasonable minds can differ and I do understand where those opposed to a DH are coming from.
The mentality of pulling pitchers so early in the game is another one that we need to see the pendulum swing back the other way. In time that can happen with the right people. Less than 6 innings is a pathetic start. 7 should be minimum for a top notch pitcher.
I would love to have seen the ‘66 series where the Orioles went the entire series with only making a single call to the bullpen. But, watching a trio of fireball relievers slam the door in three straight innings is also not without its appeal.
Fuck that–Jim McCormick once averaged 539+ IP over a six year stretch. Beat that, you pansies!
Grover Cleveland Alexander pitched ten straight complete games on two non-consecutive occasions!
Underrated comment, haha
The pitcher batting doesn’t add a great deal of strategy, and it’s uninteresting to watch them flail at the plate. But it’s preferable to the designated hitter, and allowing someone who doesn’t play the field to get a full slate of at-bats. I liked the short-lived idea of allowing the designated hitter to remain in the game for as long as the starting pitcher remains in the game. After the starter is gone, teams would have to go to the bench to pinch-hit for their relievers. It would encourage managers to let their starters try to go through a lineup a third time, and discourage the opener and bullpen games.
This is absolutely the DH model I support. It keeps some strategy in the game, makes pinch hitters useful again, and incentivizes keeping the starter in a little more. Seems like a no-brainer.
That’s an interesting idea… would you allow, as the rules do now, for the DH player to be moved into the flied in order to keep him in the game? But the DH position is now lost?
I am staunchly anti-DH, but I could get behind this as a compromise.
This I like and I’m a big fan of the DH. It’s like the strategy added with pitchers batting, but I don’t like to see terrible hitters forced to hit too much.
Why do you want to discourage openers and bullpen games?
Because they suck.
Great, nuanced response. Care to elaborate?
I hadn’t heard of that model and you know what? I think I like it, too.
Double switches really get you going, huh? Love watching those old guy managers walk up to the umpire and point at a bunch of guys to move around?
Don’t really care about double switches.
The DH isn’t another ML job – he just replaces one of the pitchers on the roster…
I’ll agree that the universal DH was inevitable. The per-instance, nearly impossible, but eventually all-but guaranteed ultra-fluky, career-ending and possibly-lethal injury to a pitcher while batting would do it. And if it were bad enough (say the kind of player and injury of Kirby Puckett), I could see enough push to even happen mid-season. There are, of course, other freak injuries pitchers are subject to, but those are currently harder to prevent.
If that must happen now in lieu of causing that kind of almost-impossible-but-fully-preventable, horrible situation 1, 5, or 100 years in the future, then I’m happy with it.
I already have a hard time accepting a wild card team as “world champion,” so it’ll be jarring to have 79-83 teams yelling “we’re no. 1!” But I’m old enough to know the playoffs are about money rather than determining the best team, and which players are “clutch” and “want it more.” The 162-game season, if we ever get that again, is the true test. Everything that comes after it, whether it’s an 8-team, 10-team, or 16-team tournament, cheapens it. Luckily, the rotisserie league season remains pure, and that’s where the bulk of my baseball interest lies.
I would be interested in seeing the odds of an under .500, 8-seed type of team winning the World Series. It’s tricky because while that type of team has a decent chance to upset the #1 seed, they then have to win three more series in order to take home the title. You can win one series off of a fluke, but can you win four in a row?
It would probably be comparable to a low-scoring sport like the NHL rather than the NBA. It seems fairly common for lower seeds to upend the regular season juggernauts in the NHL. But it’s probably rare for them to carry it through four in a row. I think the L.A. Kings won the Stanley Cup within the past decade as an 8th seed.
I agree the NBA is a bad comparison. There are only 5 guys on the floor at any time and they are the same 5 each night. A single superstar is vitally important and two are even better. In baseball you have a different pitcher every game and that guy is half the defense at least, and then you have 9 guys hitting in a specific order. You don’t get to run a play that sends Mike Trout to the plate if you are down two with two on and two out in the ninth. The “better team” wins a much higher percentage of games in the NBA than in MLB.
“There are only 5 guys on the floor at any time and they are the same 5 each night. ”
This sentence doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t watch hockey, but low seed upsets is one of the positives from their playoffs over the nba.
As someone legally obliged to watch hockey (Canadian) the NHL playoffs are one of the things I really dislike about the sport. They would be just as exciting if you didnt let sub .500 teams in every year.
There is more parity in the NHL and MLB than in the NBA. In the playoffs, home teams win 65% in the NBA, 55% In the NHL and 55% in MLB.
“But can you win 4 in a row?” is the wrong question, I think. The correct question is, “do you want to find out how it feels when a #8 seed wins the World Series?” because that will happen if this dumb cash grab playoff system occurs long-term. And let’s be clear, as the OP said: This is about making piles of $$, it does absolutely ZERO to improve baseball.
I’m okay with the cash grab this year. Even in the instance that we don’t believe the owners crying poor, they are not making the same amount of money they normally would.
Well… how did the most recent champions, the 7-seed Nationals win it when they were a 93-win team on the road against the NL’s 1-seed, and 3-seed teams and then against the AL’s 1-seed?
Major upsets do happen. They are extremely rare, of course, but they do happen and even in formats that require extra effort for it (such as the bye systems in MLB, the NFL, etc.
you realize a wildcard team could win more games then a divisional winner right?
I’m still rather pessimistic we’ll even see a season. The owners pretty blatantly tried to leak that a deal was done to put more pressure on the players to accept, but adding like, 8 games to the “fallback plan” does not seem like nearly enough incentive for the MLBPA to waive the ability to file a grievance, which it seems pretty clear they have a solid case for doing, let alone agree to the other concessions the owners are still asking for, such as expanded playoffs.
I’ve been pretty pessimistic about a season, but I disagree with you on the games not being worth the grievance. Eight games is about $200 million in total player salaries. Let’s say they get another 6 added on in the back-and-forth from here, and we settle on a 66-game season. That’s $350 million in extra money from the fallback 52-game season. Let’s further assume that the money isn’t linked to the playoffs actually happening this year (that appears to be the case in this proposal).
I’d take a guaranteed $350 million over the right to file a grievance, I think. Even if the prospective victory would be worth a billion dollars, after you add in legal fees and the chance that they lose the grievance, your EV is almost certainly lower than $350 million. Whether this is worth conceding the bargaining chip of expanded playoffs is a different question entirely, and I’m not sure it is. But if the players don’t care about the expanded playoffs or were planning on sacrificing that anyway, getting to a 65-ish game season seems to me like a clear win for them relative to playing 50 and hoping to win a case.
That’s a good point, I guess I wasn’t fully considering the financial implications on all sides. I do think there might be some “soft factors” that come from potentially winning a grievance that could help change things in the players favor down the line for the next CBA and beyond, but I really have no idea how to quantify or value something that abstract (if it even exists). And yeah, the perceived negative value of expanded playoffs is a huge wild card – it feels like it could range anywhere from the players really not caring to being something approaching a deal breaker.
I’m not really sure what is gonna happen. I think the main thing this saga has taught me is that I’m too confident in moving around my odds of a season happening. I’ve moved from like 35 to 65 to 15 to 50 in two weeks. Maybe I should just have wayyyyy wider uncertainty bands. That’s a good point about setting a tone, though; maybe that gives the grievance path a little more juice.
65 games over 50 games + potential grievance also has a benefit to players that like playing baseball.
I can’t stand the MLBPA, but the Owners have made them look good these last 2 months….
I’m pessimistic we see a season because I think covid blows the whole thing to pieces in like late October.
I don’t think it takes so long, unless some states pull their heads out of the sand. Just to pick one, AZ is currently running a R of about 1.2, which means doubling every three weeks unless they change course, and that’s on identified cases, and their test positivity rate is approaching 20%…
I posted this in another comment section, but beginning in 2022, instead of adding more teams, couldn’t they just bump the four Division Series up to best-of-seven?
That’s potentially eight more Postseason games without adding any more teams. It preserves the integrity of the regular season while simultaneously giving the owners additional (highly profitable) Postseason games.
It’s a win-win… win.
It’s seemed odd to me that the DS hasn’t switched to Bo7 already, especially given the mega-randomness of the one game wild card round – it’s a nice way to further incentivize going for the division and reward the teams that do win the division a bit. Obviously even 7 games isn’t enough to determine the truly “better” team, but it’s a fairly significant increase over 5 games, and yeah, for that and all the reasons you list, it does seem like kind of a no-brainer.
“Teams don’t tank just to try to later build a 100-win team. They tank to save money. Teams that cut salary don’t add it back on average. ”
I don’t have a BP subscription so can’t read the article Ben is linking to, but this statement is empirically false or maybe Ben’s definition of “tank” is different. The Cubs tanked their payroll from $136M in 2011 to $86M in 2012 and down to $60M in 2014 before rebounding to $115M in 2015 and to $176M in 2016. The Astros went from $106M in 2009 to $15M (!!) in 2013 and then rebounded to $93M in 2016 and then to $172M in 2018.
Teams tank according to their competitive cycles. When they’re down, they trade off veterans for prospects and attempt to draft high to rebuild their farm system. When the prospects emerge in the majors, the team starts trading for veterans and adding free agents. Sometimes these cycles are long because teams like the Royals held on to Moustakas, Hosmer, Cain, and Merrifield too long and will now have low payrolls for a while since they’re building their farm systems from scratch.
A lot of fans hate this cyclical nature so maybe the expanded playoffs will appeal to these fans since teams will have incentive to shoot for 78 wins which may be enough to get them in and not tank to load up on prospects. I doubt it though, the tanking works better than holding on your decent veterans (and adding a couple more) for one more low-probability shot.
I’m not gonna steal Rob’s thunder, but basically the article doesn’t ask whether the payrolls *ever* go back up, but whether, say, a team that goes from a $160 million payroll to a $130 million payroll in one year will spend enough, in future years, to offset that year-one savings. The answer is no — teams, on average, rebound to about their prior salary level (actually ever so slightly lower) five years after a salary cut. The interim years are all lower than baseline as well.
In other words, the idea that teams save money now to redeploy that money later isn’t borne out by data. They might get back to their prior spending levels — indeed, teams in Houston and Chicago spending competitive amounts seems pretty reasonable — but the money not spent in the interim is mostly just pure savings for the team. You can quibble with various definitions, but I think it’s an excellent point. “Financial flexibility” or “we’ll have more to spend later” just means “we’ll spend up to our means later,” not “we’re saving this money for a future big splash.”
If they are saving money while getting better draft picks, is that a bad thing? Or just a sound strategy for winning long term?
Well yeah, that’s my point! Expanding the playoffs isn’t going to suddenly stop teams from saving money while getting better draft picks. That’s something they’ll always want to do. I think you framed it perfectly. Saving money? Good. Better draft picks? Good. The chance to be an eight seed is unlikely to overwhelm those two factors.
So long term, they would be better served not having that large of a playoff pool. They want more more more for added money, but a better product is also a means for gaining more viewing eyes and thus more money.
Yes! Good point.
Ok, but so what? The Astros’ cycle took 9 years to go from $109M to $172M. So sure Rob’s sample shows that they didn’t get back in 5 years. They could have probably gotten back to a 75-win team and stayed there rather than winning 107, 103, 101, 84, 86 the last 5 years. That’s the point of tanking: to build a great team.
Obviously, if one-third of the league is using this strategy, the benefit may be arbitraged away, but the White Sox and Padres are emerging out of this same strategy. In a few years, the Tigers, Marlins, Royals, Mariners and others will emerge. Not sure what would have been the point of these teams adding Keuchel’s and Moustakas’s along the way, It would have made Rob’s data look better, but again, so what?
Oh I’m totally with you: tanking works! It’ll still work! It builds a good team while saving owners money, because even if you end up fielding a big payroll at the end, you’ve saved in the interim. There’s a reason why teams like doing it: it has the big payoff at the end in banners, and then the owners save $50 million a year or whatever in the interim. I think we’re saying the same thing, mostly, here. I just don’t see how a few extra playoff teams are going to suddenly turn teams away from tanking.
What if redeploying within 5 years isn’t necessary.
Expanding the playoffs that dramatically also probably makes the trade deadline very dull. Fewer teams will be out of the race and willing to sell, those teams that are out of it will be the absolute worst of the league that year and presumably have fewer players that teams would want to buy, and unless there is a big incentive to getting a higher seed, teams near the middle of the playoff field will have very little incentive to buy unless that one, true, missing championship piece is somehow available from the smaller field of available players.
NBA – 16
NHL – 16
NFL – 14
MLS – 14
I say bring it on.
Not a good argument. Especially when most people think the 16 in nba are way too many. NFL has been at 12 for a long time, haven’t seen the 14 yet. And nobody cares about soccer.
The NFL only plays 16 games too. So, we have less assurance that the best teams have the best record. It makes sense for them to have more.
Yep. The first round (and often, much of the second round) of the NBA playoffs are a complete joke.
The NHL playoffs are hellishly long and make the regular season seem frankly irrelevant, if you can even remember the regular season when the playoffs end. I don’t want that for MLB. I also don’t want half the league in the playoffs. What is the point of that, other than a cash grab (and secondarily, rewarding mediocrity implicitly)? Noting that other professional leagues have already diluted their product to grab fistfuls of playoffs TV cash is not an argument for anything.
Might the effect of diminishing the impulse to build a juggernaut be more parity and more competitive division races? I feel that a lot of the arguments that expanding the playoffs will devalue the regular season ignore that the main factor governing the watchability of 162 games is whether or not your team is in a pennant race. If there is less incentive to build a super team, might that make for tighter division races in the dog days of the season? I mean, for every good player that the Dodgers pass on because the advantage of winning 100 games instead 90 games shrinks, another less juggernaut-y team gets to sign that player. Setting aside that this effect may have a depressing effect on player salaries, it seems there would be a correlation between elite teams feeling less need to be elite, and middling teams feeling MORE of a need to be a bit better. That actually sounds like a good thing to me.
Like all pro sports leagues, MLB already has the (slight) risk in any given year that a deliberately-underfunded team will surprisingly win 80-90 games. That’s chance, folks! Why would MLB want to further incentivize that behavior (owners spending as little as possible and fielding the lowest-quality teams, generally), by making it *easier* for those sub-mediocre teams to make the playoffs, thereby rewarding them with even more cash that owners won’t spend on fielding better teams? If Miami makes the playoffs, they will not sign better players, they will pocket the cash. Watch it happen.
This is a stupid plan that is only about money for owners. It adds no actual benefit for fans of baseball.
I really, really hate the idea of expanded playoffs. It somehow manages to cheapen the playoffs and the regular season, and I hate it.
BUT: If you’re going to do it–I think you have to make it quite a bit different than what we’ve seen before. Like, having a mini-tournament with some extremely favorable home field advantage for teams that won their divisions–doing round-robin best of 5 series–before the more traditional championship series, or something like that, rather than just adding more best of 5 or best of 7 series. I don’t think I can take yet another round of best of 5 or best of 7 series.
I think the easiest way is to let in 12 teams. Take a day or two off after game 162. Top four get a bye, bottom eight play a two game series in two days to advance. One in each home park. Tiebreaker is total runs over the two games. Then no off days before the second round. That way the division winner is almost guaranteed to be starting their best pitchers against the wild card team’s 3 and 4, and the lower seeded teams may have had a pretty rough travel schedule. Maybe the Yankees are hosting the Red Sox on Sunday to start the second round, and the Red Sox played Friday in Boston and Saturday in Oakland. A three game first round series means the wild card team can use their best starter in game 2 of round 2 on 3 days rest, so that’s another option. But make them travel and don’t give them off days. Off days level the field and make depth of pitching less important.
The TV networks would probably object and we’ve learned in the last few weeks that Major League Baseball is now largely a Playoff TV Delivery Device, so it won’t happen.
If MLB expands the playoffs to 16 teams, they could group the teams into a ‘first division’ comprised of the three division (West/Central/East) winners plus the top wild card team, and a ‘second division’ for teams #5-8 by winning percentage. Teams would play out the first 2 rounds within their grouping (so first round matchups would be 1 v 4, 2 v 3, 5 v 8, 6 v 7). The 3rd playoff round would be a face-off between the winners of the first and second division. In this way, MLB could maintain the integrity of the best facing the best within the ‘first division’.
The problem (and of course there are always problems) is that the #5 team would have a greater chance of making the world series than the #4 team since #5 has weaker competition. So maybe instead put #5 in first division and reward the top wild card team with top seed in the second division.
#1 Division Winner, automatically in best-of-seven Division Series
#2 Division Winner, automatically in best-of-seven Division Series
#3 Division Winner, automatically in best-of-seven Division Series
#4 Wild Card
#5 Wild Card
#6 Wild Card
#7 Wild Card
#8 Wild Card
G1: #8 at #7
G2: G1 winner at #6
G3: G2 winner at #5
G4: G3 winner at #4
Four consecutive days of mayhem for the Wild Card! Eight winner-take-all games in four days! Integrity of the regular season still intact! The #7 or #8 seed potentially playing in four cities in four days!
I didn’t see this when I posted my idea below. I don’t know about the logistical part of either of our proposals, but I think the spirit of having a Baseballpalooza is something to be seriously considered.
At this point, I think we could cancel the regular season and just hold playoffs from March through October. You could combine every playoff format into one: Round-robin tournaments within divisions, double/triple/quadruple elimination, etc. You just keep on giving teams assigned to the “losers” bracket chances to get back into the winners bracket for what was the regular season.
I am sure the owners would love that. Playoff shares are now the only thing they have to pay, and they get the nice big playoff revenue to boot!
Totally. Just get rid of the regular season altogether. Manfred and his overlords continue to get rid of the things that make baseball unique and great.
If we’re going to have to have 16 teams in the postseason (too many imo), I would set up the first day of the playoffs as a massive play-in for the 2nd through 5th wild-card teams. Set up a Tuesday tripleheader beginning at 11am at the home sites of the top WC team from each league. WC2 plays WC5 in the first game, WC3 plays WC4 in the second game, then the winners play each other in the evening. The winner of the Tuesday action then plays the WC1 team on Wednesday for a spot in the Division Series.
October Madness. If we’re going to take this big step, let’s stop the world for one day in the fall and make it watch wall-to-wall baseball. It worked for college basketball; it can work for MLB.
JMO, but most baseball fans I know appreciate the tradition and continuity of the game. I think your idea could work for casual baseball fans, but it’s way too much of a departure from the game as we know it to plod through a 162 game marathon, only to unleash an all out frenzy at the end.
Another issue with expanding playoffs will be divisional alignments. Since the majority of playoff spots will be going to non-division winners, it’s pretty unfair and makes little sense to have such agressive division weighted schedules.
16 teams in the playoffs is so incredibly stupid and shortsighted. There’s a reason nobody (including the players) gives a shit about the NBA regular season and this will have the same effect. From all baseball fans everywhere: FUCK YOU ROB MANFRED !
I wouldn’t mind a 12 team playoff bracket similar to the NFL and a DH would help improve the chances for a two way player, while also stopping some pitcher injuries.
Here is a simple way to expand the playoffs and still give an advantage to top seeds: in each round of the playoffs (except maybe the World Series final), play all games at the better team’s ballpark. Based on generic home field advantage (home teams win 54% of the time), the odds of the better seeded team advancing increases by 11.6% (5 game series) or 14.4% (7 game series). That is before taking into account that the high seeded team may have more talent. In fact, a best of 5 all-home series is better for the higher seed than a 7 game series with only 4 home dates .
There are other advantages. There would be no need for days off for travel which makes scheduling easier and means a series can be completed within a week. Having no off days also helps teams that have more depth. Teams make more money with more home games so there if financial incentive to be the highest seed possible .
Clearly, the expanded playoffs will weaken the correlation between regular season success and playoff success. And maybe that will create frustration that leads to less fan interest. (On the other hand, see the NHL.) But I don’t see why parity during the regular season would be less, rather than more, interesting. The AL was filled with Death Stars in 2019 and was less interesting than the NL. Sure, the AL playoffs featured juggernaut matchups that we likely wouldn’t see Under expanded playoffs. But I don’t see why juggernaut matchups are significantly more interesting than even matchups of excellent teams that are not juggernauts.
Re: tanking. Surely, expanded playoffs will reduce the number of tanking teams, even though it can’t eliminate them. And that would be good. See, again, the AL in 2019.
We at this site tend to be fans of baseball at a national level, which is why the article and comments are largely against a larger playoffs, but I think a local fan’s perspective (the vast majority of baseball fans) is missing here. Small market teams are less likely to tear down, and could be in the playoff hunt year after year, which would drive local interest in the regular season. More teams in the playoffs means more fan-bases watching playoff baseball who otherwise wouldn’t (or maybe just tune into the WS). And those are the fan-bases MLB most needs to engage. The Yankees and the like will be fine in terms of attendance/fan interest during the regular season whether they have a playoff spot locked up (8-team playoffs) or need to fight to get in (5-team playoffs). But if the Brewers or Indians don’t need to tear down after these recent runs of success are over, that’s good for the sport.
I’m not opposed to expanded playoffs in principle. But the regular season should matter and mediocrity shouldn’t be rewarded. And I’m saying this as a Mariners fan.
I’d prefer a playoff format that looks like this (per league):
-2 top division winners get a bye
-Remaining division winner and 3 next best teams play a best of 3 wild card round.
-Division series is expanded to 7.
-LCS and WS are the same
This would give GMs the incentive to build powerhouse teams and compete late into the regular season for a bye. Also the teams that get past the wild card will have their pitching used up moreso than the 1 game series. I’d imagine the 7 game series tilts the odds more toward the teams with a bye than a 5 game series, but am not too sure.
Hopefully the expanded playoffs are killed in the next CBA, but I’m pessimistic. The regular season will become a joke like the NBA and NHL and will incentivize front offices to build above average teams rather than juggernauts.
I particularly hate that they’re going to put advertisements on uniforms. MLB uniforms are typically aesthetically pleasing and that will go out the door with a big stupid Chevy logo on a 100 year old franchise’s uniform.
I’ll take (small) uniform advertisements any day before fundamental changes to the way the game is played, like starting extra innings with a runner on second base or universal DH.
The ownership is somehow both alienating so-called “baseball purist” types and also failing to engage younger generations. The huge contraction of minor league teams is not helping their cause either.
The point about star starting pitchers being more valuable is interesting
and something I have been thinking about for a while.
A back-of-the-napkin calculation tells us that
a 10 WAR position player (e.g. Trout) provides ~0.44 WAR(10/160*7) in a 7 game series
a 7 WAR starting pitcher (e.g. Scherzer) provides ~0.44 WAR(7/32*2) in a 7 game series.
Of course, there is obviously value in the three extra wins in the regular season,
but that value is decreased in the extended playoffs scenario as you mentioned.
If MLB teams are rational, the $/WAR value should relatively decrease for hitters and increase for front end starters.
4 WAR SP might be more valuable than 5 WAR hitter for a lot of teams now.
Ben, I will now, for the full pro-rated future, use the phrase full pro-rated in every comment on each and every one of your articles.
It won’t happen, but I wish they would call the 2020 postseason finale something different than the World Series. Because there is no World Series this year, under this schedule. I’d rather it be called something different for one year than be a WS with an asterisk.
Honestly, I’m more concerned that they’re meeting in Phoenix. Maricopa County has to be one of the unsafest places to be wrt COVID right now (which, hey, have they figured that out yet?). I want baseball too, I swear, I’m just not convinced these two could lead a boulder downhill
Seems weird to suggest that more playoff spots isnt healthy, when the other 3 major north american sports leagues are having better growth and all have more playoff spots. I strongly disagree that more playoff spots means less great teams, this just isnt a thing in thing in any other sport.
I also believe tanking oncreased with the introduction pf the one game playoff, that just wasnt worth spendong or trading a lot of prospects.
This is the best opening line I’ve read in a while.
Cubs may have a chance for once
So more than 50% of the league makes the playoffs? Teams with sub-.500 records will be in the playoffs?
I will be rooting for a losing team, hopefully a really bad team, to win the World’s Series and be crowned as the best team in baseball.
In fact, I hope we see a Series between two sub-.500 teams… How about the 2020 Series with the Padres vs. the Blue Jays – assuming nothing teams sneak into the playoffs with well-below-.500 records.
Just to highlight the absurdity.
Right, in the nba playoffs i basically just root for the lower seeded teams to win. Rarely happens anymore, but I’d rather see that.
8 seed plays 7 seed in winner take all game
Winner of 7-8 plays 4 seed in winner take all, while 5 plays 6 in winner take all game
Winner of 7-8 / 4 plays winner of 5-6 in winner take all game
You are now left with 4 teams in the league to play normal playoff series format for chance to go to WS
The winner take all games make for compelling TV while providing tremendous incentive to finish top 3 regular season, similar to current incentive to win division and avoid WC game. Also creates great interest in the regular season for seeding purposes
I’m not so much concerned about the expanded playoffs (which will probably become inevitable come the 2 new expansion teams).
I’m no longer bothered by the exact number of regular games.
But we do seem to have lost sight of how “balanced” that schedule would be. (Or maybe teams just play the games from Julyteenth on as per the original schedule?)
Surely Interleague is out this year. But surely we need two series, one home and one away, against divisional opponents?
That’s 24 games per team right there. Or 32.
60, 65, or 70 — is there a sane proposal to distribute the rest?
“But mostly, I think the new playoff field will be a bad thing for generating or sustaining fan interest in baseball. The more teams that aim for the middle, the less fun it is to watch.”
I highly disagree with the second sentence here personally. I think that an even field creates more chaos, more teams all around the same projected standings that will be fighting tooth and nail for that extra win. Personally I prefer a whole league of teams who are around each others’ skill levels, each team having a few stars and having the small things throughout a season be the difference maker, rather than me having 5 all-stars and you having 1 be the difference.
Three teams in one division finishing around 85 wins is fun, not the dodgers and astros running away with their divisions in mid-July.