Why MLB’s playoff format could be nearing its end
We may not realize it now, but these are the good old days for Major League Baseball’s pennant drive and forthcoming playoffs.
It’s not easy to develop an equitable playoff format that checks a wide array of boxes:
Properly rewarding dominant teams and upholding the integrity of a 162-game season.
Providing access to the postseason for wild-card clubs so that fewer fans – and franchises – check out too soon.
And, lest we forget, making a ton of money for owners and players alike.
Baseball got it just about right in adding a second wild card berth in 2012 – and one-game elimination showdowns in each league. It jolted an otherwise staid format, producing the most indelible playoff moments over the past decade. While the other three playoff rounds – Division Series, League Championship and World Series – can sizzle or stagnate from year to year, the wild card game has almost unanimously delivered.
It is a counterintuitive but effective prelude – providing the biggest thrills at the outset of the playoffs, instead of the conclusion.
If there’s one thing baseball lacks, it’s an appropriate sugar high. Too often, Next Big Things are prematurely anointed, or a good two months of play can spark false and unsustainable hope for a team or player.
But the wild-card game allows fans both avid and casual to fly in the face of baseball convention and assign an abundance of import to just one game. It feels both healthy and appropriate.
Unfortunately, this year’s installments (Oct. 5 for the American League, Oct. 6 for the National) may be the last. The current format, admitting five teams per league into the postseason, is under fire from both the pro-expansion playoff crowd and also a contingent that, inspired by an anomalous two-team sprint in the NL West, feels one game is an insufficient safety net for a second-place team.
It’s baseball, and it’s a year in which the current collective bargaining agreement expires, and so money will talk, even more than usual. In the nearly two years since commissioner Rob Manfred’s desire for an expanded playoff field became public, nothing has arisen to suggest the league’s stance on more playoffs has changed.
While a contingent of players – and other stakeholders concerned with the game beyond how many lucrative TV windows it can provide – remain concerned the integrity of the regular season may be compromised, it’s hard to imagine staving off an expanded playoff, likely of 14 teams, under current bargaining conditions.
In these negotiations, conceding expanded playoffs could be a win-win for the union – creating the perception they’re “giving” something to the league, while also getting a share of that expanded postseason pie.
And that’s a bummer – because the current format, from this view, looks just about perfect.
Oh, you think a one-game knockout is unfair? If you’re this year’s Dodgers or Giants, you have a point. The California rivals are staging the finest NL West race since 1993, when the Atlanta Braves dealt for Fred McGriff, went on an absurd 51-18 run and got a huge final-day boost from Mike Piazza, who slammed a pair of Game 162 homers as the Dodgers knocked out the Giants.
The Braves won 104 games and the division. The Giants won 103 games and went home. Two years later, the wildcard format debuted and in 2012, a second wild card was added, allowing for plenty of soft landings for multiple division runners-up.