Expanding playoffs could energize MLB
ESPN dropped news this week of reported changes to the MLB postseason that the league was considering.
The proposal would see an expansion to the number playoff teams, with seven qualifying from the AL and NL respectively, for a total of 14 teams. From there, the higher seeds would actually pick their opponents in the postseason.
The picking of these opponents, according to the report, would happen on live television the final Sunday night of the MLB season.
There are currently five teams from each league which qualify for the postseason, with two teams playing a onegame Wild Card playoff to advance to the divisional series.
MLB is considering a move in which each league would have three division winners and four wild-card teams making the postseason starting in 2022, sources said. The best team in the league would receive a bye into the division series. The two remaining division winners and the wild-card team with the best record of the four would each host all games of a best-of-three series in the opening round.
On top of that, there are the wrinkles which would allow teams to pick their opponent, a playground-rules style upgrade to the game that would certainly give the team picked first a ton of bulletin board material, at the very least.
MLB fans lost their minds at the suggestion. Like, all of them did. Even younger, progressive minded baseball fans lost it.
I’m here to suggest: Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad?
First off, I think this is a ploy by MLB to implement incremental change. Leak a wild, over-the-top plan, then when they scale it back (no pick-your-opponent nonsense) it seems more reasonable and people can get behind it.
Still, I know fans will hate this. And I get it: Baseball is inherently conservative. History is important. Playoffs should be special.
But I dunno, I like MLB playoffs, and I think more of them would be good. Maybe that makes me an idiot, a true baseball simpleton. Which, sure. Maybe that’s true. But to me, the idiot man, the stakes feel more real in the postseason. For a sport whose season is interminable, playoffs bring everything into sharp focus.
And part of the beauty of baseball is that, once a team gets into the playoffs, it actually has a shot to advance to a World Series and win the thing. A couple starting pitchers get going, a bullpen comes alive, a few hitters come up clutch, and a team can make a run.
That’s exciting! That’s fantastic! More teams equals more chances for a magic run to happen. This would actually give MLB an advantage over a league like the NBA, which has 16 playoff teams and it’s mostly meaningless because you know two of like four possible teams will make the finals.
I know smart writers have argued this would reward mediocrity. I don’t know I think it would reward “actually giving a hoot and going for it.”
The biggest argument in favor of playoff expansion is trying to even the scales between “teams actually trying to win a lot of baseball games” and “teams folding it up and trading away assets for a rebuild.” Right now, you know about a third of the way through the season who’s actually trying to win a World Series, and quite often, more teams than not aren’t a part of that list.
That sucks. It’s disheartening for fans, and the Moneyball cosplay of “ooh what assets can we get in return for our star shortstop” is not as fun as some pundits want to believe it is.
In a perfect world, teams would operate in good faith and actually try to, you know, win. But that’s not happening, so MLB needs to take measures to make this whole thing more exciting for more fanbases.