MLB has lost me. For the first time in my life, Spring Training is here, my team doesn’t stink, and I’m completely disinterested in and downright disgusted with baseball. And now an MLB Playoff proposal has division winners picking their preferred postseason opponent.
The Houston Astros cheated and won a World Series. The Boston Red Sox cheated and won a World Series. Yet no cheaters have been or will be punished, and no World Series titles have been or will be vacated. I don’t suspect the cheating to continue, despite rumors of eight-or-so teams utilizing similar strategies to Houston and Boston. But for what is anyone playing if the trophy and rings aren’t taken away from cheaters?
Now commissioner Rob Manfred has announced an MLB Playoff proposal to expand the postseason to include seven teams from each league, with the leagues’ top seeds getting byes and the second-seeds get first pick of their Wild Card opponent. The idea has not been received well, especially by Trevor Bauer.
No idea who made this new playoff format proposal, but Rob is responsible for releasing it, so I’ll direct this to you, Rob Manfred. Your proposal is absurd for too many reasons to type on twitter and proves you have absolutely no clue about baseball. You’re a joke.
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) February 11, 2020
I proposed what I thought to be the perfect MLB playoff proposal over a year ago. It shortened the regular season to 154 games, ignored divisions when considering postseason seeding, and extended the Wild Card Game to a race to two wins. Manfred’s MLB Playoff proposal does make the Wild Card Game a race to two wins, but I also think the divisional round should be a race to four wins instead of three.
The league’s best playoff team should play the league’s worst playoff team in the divisional round, and that’s not the case as the MLB postseason currently stands. It still wouldn’t necessarily be the case under Manfred’s MLB playoff proposal. Manfred’s proposal gives one more chance to two more Wild Card teams in each league to upset the random apple cart in October, giving mid- and small-market teams a better chance. But it also expands the windows for large-market teams to contend for a longer period of time.
An MLB Playoff Proposal that Solves Baseball’s Problem
What Major League Baseball really needs is a good reason for people to watch regular season games. I happen to have an idea that would give regular season games between league contenders a bit more intrigue, whether played in April or September. Give home field advantage in the playoffs to the team who won the season series over their playoff opponent, not the team with the better overall record. So the six fantastic games the Yankees and Twins played in the 2019 regular season would have higher stakes, making the Yankees’ 14-12 extra-innings, comeback win on July 23 that much more important to their season and their fans.
Imagine that during a 154-game season, every team in every league played each other seven times with the winner securing home field advantage in a potential playoff series. How much more interesting would regular season games between the Nationals and Brewers been last season? The Tampa Bay Rays would have actually hosted Houston in the divisional round of the 2019 MLB Playoffs because they won the regular season series 4-3. That potentially changes the entire outcome of the postseason. More importantly, rewarding teams for winning head-to-head matchups against potential postseason opponents solves baseball’s problem of so few of its 162 regular season games having enough intrigue to draw and sustain an audience.
