MLB’s new playoff plan hits a foul ball

Maybe MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and his cronies must consume too much caffeine.

Unable to sleep, they sit around a conference table inside MLB headquarters on Park Avenue around 3 a.m. on a cold winter morning in New York City and come up with weird ideas. The latest plan is Manfred’s strangest yet. The commissioner wants to expand the playoffs from five teams in each league — three division winners and two wild-card teams — to three division winners and four wildcard teams in each league. That would mean nearly 47% of the teams in the majors would make the postseason.

It gets weirder.

• The team with the best record in each league would get a first-round bye. The division winner with the second-best record in each league would get to choose which of the bottom three wild-card teams it prefers playing in the wild-card round.

• The two division winners plus the wild-card winner with the best record among the four wild-card teams would host all three games in a best-of-three wild-card round. There would be no wild-card home games for the playoff team with the inferior record.

• Four teams in each league would remain when the wild-card round concludes — the team that had the bye plus the three survivors of the wild-card round. Then the teams would be seeded 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3 in two best-of-five division series format in each league as it is now.

“Rob Manfred, your proposal is absurd for too many reasons to type on twitter and proves you have absolutely no clue about baseball,” former Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer, now a pitcher for the Reds, tweeted Feb. 10. “You’re a joke.”

Baseball plans to make a big television production of teams picking their opponents for the wild-card round.

It would take place the Sunday night after the regular season concludes.

Last year, the Astros won the West with a record of 107-55, the Yankees the East at 103-59 and the Twins the Central at 101-61. The Rays and A’s were the 2019 wildcard teams. The Indians (93-69) and Red Sox (8478) would have made the playoffs under the new proposal.

The Astros would have had a bye in Manfred’s hare-brained scheme. The Yankees would choose which of three wild-card teams (it can’t be the wild-card team with the best record) they wanted to face. Next, the Twins would choose their opponent

among the remaining two wildcard teams — all on national television.

The idea is convoluted. It humiliates the teams the Yankees and Twins choose to play in the above example, all for one brief moment on television that fans aren’t going to watch anyway unless they have a horse in the race.

Adding two more playoff teams in each league would prolong interest for the fans of teams still in the race, but it would be manufactured interest. The Indians lost their last five games in 2019. By the end of September, it was time for their season to be over.

“Why are we changing this loveable sport so much?” tweeted Phillies shortstop Didi Gregorius.

A team doesn’t belong in the playoffs if it isn’t good enough to win half its games in the regular season. That is one of the many things wrong with the NBA. The Nets at 2428 and Magic at 23-31 would make the playoffs if the NBA postseason began today.

Manfred’s proposal would have allowed two 80-82 teams into the American League playoffs in 2017.

That year, the Indians, Astros, Red Sox, Yankees and Twins were the only teams in the A.L. with winning records.

The players union must approve the change to the playoffs. The only way that happens is if players get more money from the new plan.

This is a bad idea. Manfred should stick to bullying teams into forcing them to lose their identity, as he did when he convinced the Indians to get rid of Chief Wahoo.