revising the postseason/wilcard format

best records in each league:

2015: Cardinals vs Royals
2014: Nationals vs Angels
2013: Cardinals vs Red Sox
2012: Nationals vs Yankees
2011: Phillies vs Yankees
2010: Phillies vs Rays
2009: Dodgers vs Yankees
2008: Cubs vs Angels
2007: Diamondbacks vs Red Sox/Indians
2006: Mets vs Yankees
2005: Cardinals vs White Sox
2004: Cardinals vs Yankees
2003: Braves vs Yankees
2002: Braves vs Yankees
2001: Astros vs Yankees
2000: Giants vs White Sox
1999: Braves vs Yankees
1998: Braves vs Yankees
1997: Braves vs Orioles
1996: Braves vs Indians
1995: Braves vs Indians

would have been living hell for non-barves/yankees fans in 90s and early 2000s, but the better competitive balance in recent years makes it a little more palatable.

but yeah, it doesn't matter, they're never going back.

of course, if there had just been two 14 (or 15)-team races the schedules would've been different, but no matter.

Since TV wants that draw in eyes, I'd think realigning everything geographically basically combining the east, west, central into 3 divisions with DH as law of the land could be a way to go. I'd then use a prior year results to setup schedule for the remaining out of division games, that way in theory you should get more good teams vs. good teams.

it's unlikely that this year's scenario happens very often -- the majors' three best records being in one division -- but given that we're not going to have fewer teams in the playoffs, i'd suggest that the seeding within each league be based on record, not division titles

i.e. the dodgers and mets already benefited from playing their shitty division foes 18 times each; if their records are still worse than the wild cards then fuck 'em

(yeah i'm bitter, so what)

one thing that chafes about current seeding: Pirates will pick #29 even though they got a glorified tiebreaker (against a team they beat in the regular season) as their "playoffs"; Texas will pick somewhere around 22 but got a full series. equally chafes, ofc, that five years ago CHN would have picked #28 and gotten nothing at all. not clear to me why pick seeding isn't tied to playoff outcome.

(obvi picks in baseball draft are much less important in general, and draft picks are less distinguishable by the time you hit the mid 20s, but it's the principle of the thing)

lol

https://t.co/RDTj5m8cBd EXCLUSIVE: MLB is planning a radical change to their postseason perhaps by 2022, hoping to move from 5 to 7 teams in each league and -- get this -- have the teams with the best records pick their playoff opponents.

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) February 10, 2020

Baseball has too many games, they need to make the games they have mean something more. I would think some type of mid-season all or nothing single elimination 'cup' tournament would perhaps be more valuable than a further watered down playoffs. Have the Final four and championship in a weekend with the All Star game in the middle.

It would be in the middle of the summer when the other sports are not having anything big going on, don't know if the money and TV attention was there, I think it could work.

too bloody European

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 (@BauerOutage) February 11, 2020

too bloody European

it's pretty much the precise opposite of european

European style would see the wild card team advance to a separate qualification group where they'd play home and away round robin games to see who advances to play division winner #3, where the winner faces the loser of the bye team vs division winner #2, and then .....

I don't hate the new proposal -- the bye for the team with the best record is a nice incentive -- but nearly half of all MLB teams qualifying for the playoffs? No thanks.

there's no point to having a 162-game season then; maybe he's looking for 80

i do hate the new proposal, and like everything else manfred likes it won't matter, he'll just push it through and wait a couple years for everyone to get used to it.

Any proposal would have to be negotiated with the players' association. The current collective bargaining agreement runs through the 2021 season.

idk I think the biggest issue with the baseball playoffs is that the sport has so much variance built in making it common for the best teams with the most well known players to just scrub out in the first round because they hit .125 with RISP. so I like the idea of first round byes and expanding the first round to 7 games but expanding the # of teams is just a bad idea all around, you're just asking for a team like say the 85-win Diamondbacks to get hot for a few weeks and win it all

This is, by the way, where we'll get to eventually. If you were starting a baseball league today, you'd *never* play 162 games over 187 days starting 3/26 and overlapping with seven weeks of the NFL. MLB has enormous amounts of low-value inventory in March, April, and September.

— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) February 11, 2020

just experienced a huge influx of cash due to local TV deals, let's cut the regular season so that fox has a few more games that do worse ratings than the masked singer

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-new-playoff-format-would-disincentivize-competition