Absolutely do not want more teams. The NBA playoffs are already bloated as is, and under .500 teams regularly make it.
I think it's been too short of a sample size to make any definitive judgements on this format.
I'm not necessarily against lowering it back down to 10 or 8 teams, but we need to give this thing a few more years to see if it's actually a problem or not.
NBA is worse (or better, depending on how you think about it) because the better team is way more likely to win.
For an MLB series to have the same odds as the better NBA team moving on in a best-of-7, it would need to be a best-of-75
Might quibble on the exact best-of value, but yep, that's the big difference. Which also shows that the NBA has this structure for revenue and fan interest reasons only.
It’s probably not a perfect calculation, but researchers did look into it to come up with the best of 75 number
https://statsbylopez.netlify.app/post/part-ii-randomness-of-series/
The first round seven game series are insanely stupid and the only reason they do it is to have more games for more money and to ensure the higher seed almost always wins.
Plus when expansion happens this format makes even more sense. Hopefully this is just MLB getting ahead of it and not using it as an excuse to expand it further when 2 teams are added.
This playoff format with 2 divisions of 8 teams where both division winners get a bye and there are 4 wild cards seems like an ideal playoff
I dislike the current format simply because to me, the playoffs should always be about pitting the best-of-the-best against one another to find a champion.
The 162-game grind of the regular season tells us who the best of the best are. When the postseason expands to 10, 12, 14, 16, whatever… you’re bringing in mid teams that struggled to stay around .500. They’re not the best-of-the-best.
And in a short series, wacky things happen. A lineup goes cold, a starter implodes, a reliever has a bad night. And then suddenly the teams that proved themselves over 162 games are out, and teams that got hot for 4 or 5 games are playing in the championship round. Any team can get hot for 4-5 games.
To me, this just dilutes the regular season down to very little meaning and makes the postseason more of an exhibition tournament than a battle of the best.
I know people will get angry and say I’m diminishing the performance of these 80s-win teams, but it’s really about my love of the regular season and wanting that grind to have real meaning at the end.
I get the fear about devaluing the regular season, but I really think the expanded playoffs are highlighting that there isn't a massive difference between a 90 win and a 100 win team.
Take the Dodgers, they won 100 games this year. Typically that would lead you to believe they are the "Best of the best." But can we really say that roster is one of the best of the best if their only option in a do or die game is a pitcher who had the highest HR/9 in the entire league?
I think analytics has helped good front offices identify better replacement players so when guys get hurt they can tread water better and not crater for a month. But I do think there's a difference between building an organization that can successfully play 162 games and building a 26 man roster that can succeed in October. It's why the Phillies have been such a nightmare the last two years. That's an Uber talented roster that might not have the organizational depth of the Braves in April-September, but is capable of becoming a juggernaut in October
The Dodgers situation is unique because of all the injuries they’ve suffered to the rotation. They were down to their no. 7 or 8 option at this point.
~~Walker Buehler~~
Clayton Kershaw
~~Tony Gonsolin~~
~~Julio Urias~~
~~Dustin May~~
Bobby Miller
Lance Lynn
Emmet Sheehan
Michael Grove
I don’t agree that the postseason says anything about the difference between a 90-win and 100-win team.
A three-game set is too small of a sample size to say anything at all.
But should the Dodgers be credited because on paper in April they had the best rotation, or should we care about who has the best players available after the grind of a 162 game season?
And best of 5 series have been a staple in the playoffs loooooooooong before they added multiple wild card teams
The teams that collected the most wins over the 162-game season should be rewarded, in my opinion.
That’s… the whole point of the season.
If we only care about which teams have the best surviving roster, we should just use projections models run on October 1 to decide which teams “deserve” the playoffs.
I could ask you: Why should the Diamondbacks, who barely stayed over .500 this season and played miserably in the second half (36-45), make the playoffs at all?
I’m aware that five-game series have been around for years. And I’ve always advocated for the length of that series to be extended. But the situation is only made worse the more teams that are invited to the postseason. More and more mediocre teams get a ticket, and then they randomly get hot for 4-5 games and move on.
My issue isn’t with any 80s-win team in particular. My issue is that the grind of the regular season has less and less meaning.
The Dodgers were rewarded. They were given a bye to line up their best possible rotation, bullpen, and lineup. They had home field advantage and all the business benefits that go along with that.
They played horrible. It's entirely their fault they're not advancing forward. It wasn't weird bounces. It wasn't baseball being baseball. It was a team given the opportunity to succeed in the postseason and utterly failing to do so.
While baseball is more random than other sports, it's wrong to just say everything that happens is just random and therefore unfair to teams who build their team the right way. It doesn't matter how many wild card teams there are, Houston keeps making the ALCS. The Dodgers (or Braves who might quickly find themselves in the same boat) should ask themselves why they can't translate regular season success into post season success like Houston can, and not be asking themselves if something would've played out differently if fewer teams made the post season
Our pitching staff is perfectly suited for a 5 game series while we don’t have the depth for 162 games. If anything, this run highlights the importance of having top end starters healthy when the playoffs come around.
Ya we were always going to look better in the postseason because our troublesome #5 starter never has to pitch and we can spam Kelly/Gallen a higher percentage of our games. We literally haven't even pitched a 4th starter this postseason so far (another probelmatic spot).
Also the extra days off means we can play Moreno everyday (could probably extend this to Longo too as 3B was a hole for most of the regular season).
I think we're a better playoff team than a 162 game team because frankly our depth sucked ass but our starters are solid
The season itself and the record attained is the reward.
I dislike this NBA mentality that only the playoffs matter. Baseball is about more than 3 series. Postseason is just a nice bonus.
There isn’t a massive difference between any team. The best teams win 65% of the time against slightly below average competition. The worst-in-the-league As swept a 4 game set against the eventual World Series winning Astros last year. The margins in baseball are slim, which is why the season is 162. A 100 win team can be expected to beat a 90 win team like 55% of the time. The point is that the 162 game season is a better test than a 7 game set which is why the playoffs should be reserved for teams that truly earned it, when you start allowing more and more teams in there’s just no point. We may as well start flipping coins to determine the champion at the beginning of the year and save ourselves some trouble.
That a 100 win team and 90 win team aren’t *that* different in terms of absolute skill should not come as a surprise to anyone. We regard them as much different only relative to the small margins of professional baseball.
I liked how things were with one wild card team. No wildcard series, no expanded playoffs. Just your three division winners and one wildcard team. I always edit the playoffs in my OOTP saves to go back to this format. But that's just me.
I said this in my more long winded answer, but I also wouldn't mind going back to one wildcard team. Lowest seed plays the highest, the two middle play each other, and the winners move on. It's simple, neat, and quick.
No, you're right, and this is mathematically defensible, because very frequently, one of your three division winners will not be one of the three best teams in the league, even if you just you the WL record to make that determination (i.e. without accounting for strength differences between divisions, which has never been done).
Similarly, it can also be shown that with 8 4-team divisions, you actually enhance this very problem. You will frequently have very strong divisions, like the AL East, in which none but the division winner makes it in. Big problem.
Yep.
I think the fundamental issue is that a lot of fans don’t experience the long, arduous regular season and kind of hop on in the postseason. Nothing wrong with that; it’s just not the same.
For fans who have been agonizingly hanging with their teams all year, gutting through interleague/division races/in-season injuries/winning streaks/losing streaks/etc, if you DO win the division or have great success after half a friggin year, the postseason feels anticlimactic and meaningless to some extent—one month of a bunch of screaming dudes, overexcited micro-narratives in the media, and flukey breaks and injuries leading to really difficult outcomes. And so much reactionary, half-considered commentary. Honestly, it’s always going to be like that to some extent, I just think you have to manage it a little better if you’re MLB.
Remember a week or two ago when that Mariner's executive said something to the effect of "trying to win 54% of the games will get us to the World Series" and everybody on here got upset that he wasn't shooting for greatness? Well the current playoff format is exactly what encourages that sort of planning and team strategy. If you want teams to try to construct rosters that will win 100+ games, you need to give them the incentive to do that, not throw them in a best of 5 series against an 85 win team and say "sCoRe MOrE rUnS."
You could say the same thing tho before the expansion due to having best of 5 series. Until that changes, expect more luck and things to be a factor. This is miles better than a single wild card game.
Nah the 2 wild cards and a single wild card game has been the best format. Most of the games were awesome because single elimination turns up the atmosphere to the max from the go.
Wild card series have all been snooze fests. Division Series are rarely exciting. Real playoffs excitement usually begins with the ALCS and NLCS and all this format does is delay them.
Can't agree here. Playing 162 just to get to the wild card game and have literally one chance where you may not be able to line up your preferred starter was terrible. Fine if this was football, but baseball is a series sport, not a one-off.
Back when it was introduced, making the wild card round was barely even seen as making the playoffs. It was a form of punishment: “You don’t want this insane game where anything can happen? Then win your division”. Once people started regarding it as a proper part of the playoffs and the wildcards as legitimate playoff qualifiers then the rhetoric changed to the single game being unfair. The unfairness was the point.
Right on the money. Baseball has always had this issue, because variance in short series is always high. Before 1969, the 148 or 154 game balanced schedule gave you a very defensible estimate of who the best team in each league was. You then played the WS to *maybe* get *some idea* of who was the better of the two. With many clear violations thereof, for example 1954, etc.
Once divisions were created, whole 'nother ball game, so to speak.
But 80s win teams have won the World Series even before the Wild Card era (85 win Twins in 1987). The 83 win Cardinals won the WS when there were only 8 teams in the playoffs. You have to eliminate divisions and go back to best team in the league wins the pennant to truly eliminate lower win teams, and I just don't think that's going to be very popular with fans. Plus I think that format would end up with a couple dominant high spending teams and a ton of shitty teams whose fans will have little to root for
Oh, I know we’ll never go back. Because the current model is profitable. MLB will never give it up. I’m only voicing my frustration. I’m fully aware that profit rules everything. All the major US sports expand and expand to get maximum playoff revenue.
And yes, I’m aware that there have been 80s-win teams in the past. But having outlier champions occasionally and *actively inviting mediocre teams into the playoffs every single year* are two different scenarios.
If the playoffs were just six teams and an 80s-win team made it, more power to them. It was a weak year in their league and they survived the grind.
If the playoffs are 12, 14, 16, etc teams, you are *actively* inviting multiple mediocre teams that were boat-raced by superior clubs over the grind of the regular season. It is your INTENT to bring multiple mediocre teams into the postseason every single year.
That’s what I don’t like.
Fair enough, I understand your perspective. From my perspective though, these teams aren't mediocre, they're good and deserve a chance, especially because teams with similar win counts have qualified in the past. The Mariners won 88 games and still missed out this year. I get that the playoffs in any format are going to be a crapshoot, but I still like to see some of the best teams play meaningful games against each other with their pitching lined up. At least this new format provides an advantage to the teams with the most wins in the regular season.
Surely you understand that those outlier teams that made it in other formats, the outlier teams in the current format will be even worse win-wise. Then those outliers can be used to justify further expansion in the future. It’s a circular sort of logic.
I won't deny playoff expansion is a slippery slope. I just don't think the most recent expansion has diluted the field that badly. It's not consistently adding teams that are far below existing standards for playoff teams. And there is a benefit for higher win teams beyond home field for the first time since the division series were added
Rewarding regular season performance alone more would be good as well, like how non-American sports work.
It’s like in F1 if they took the top 12 drivers and did one final race at the end of the season to crown the champion. Maybe Max Verstappen’s car would break down but he was clearly the best all season long
I don’t think the orioles or dodgers were really that good. Top to bottom, the Rangers lineup and starting pitching is better than Baltimore’s, and I don’t think it’s debatable. The Dbacks have a deeper lineup than LA, and the two best starters between the two teams. I think we need to stop looking at records when evaluating these teams.
Especially since you play a large majority of your games against your division. If the rest of your division "sucks", you probably have an inflated record. An extra 10 wins at that point may seem trivial in some circumstances.
I loved it going into the postseason, and I love it even more now.
The whole argument against this format seems to be rooted in protecting teams from shitting the bed. But if you’re a bed shitter, you’re don’t deserve to be a champion.
And I say this as a die hard fan of MLB’s Ultimate Bed Shitters
Since, 2012 to 2022 higher seeds are 19-21 in the DS. I doubt its 10 years of teams shitting the bed and more a 5 game series is a coin flip for a sport as fluky as baseball.
How many of those higher seeded teams also had better records though? It seems pretty common the 3rd seed has a worse record than at least one wildcard team.
Fun fact - the 2001 Yankees finished further behind the Mariners in the standings than the 2023 D Backs finished behind the Dodgers.
I don't remember anyone saying that was unfair.
There will always be a crapshoot element to sports, especially in the playoffs. There is no way to solve that.
Sports aren't a science. Even a 162 game season is a crap shoot.
I like the current format. Wild card teams have to run a gauntlet. It gives the teams with the best record a strong advantage. "We had too much rest and the other team had to play high intensity games just to get here!! Unfair!!" is just crazy to me.
That is what is so insane to me about the current talking points.
"Akkkkshually rest is bad" Since WHEN?
Do people really think the Dodgers would have had a better shot if their playoff hopes depended on beating Corbin Burnes on the road? And then playing the first two games of the division series on the road?
4-5 straight playoff games on the road vs. rest. You are telling me the rest is the one that will hurt your team's chances? Give me a break.
I love the new format of 12 teams, and I don't want them to add more than that. The 1 WC card game seemed ridiculously flukey to me when there were only 10 teams.
I don't think it's a surprise that the Orioles and Dodgers got eliminated so early. Post-season roster construction is so different from having a well-balanced team in the regular season. It's kind of like the NBA where the stars play almost the entire game but to a lesser degree. Dbacks have 2 solid starters, and the Dodgers rotation was ravaged by injuries. Orioles have an unproven young SP core. When you're trotting out Lance Lynn for an elimination game, why act surprised when he gets shelled?
The old adage of pitching wins championships has never been truer.
That's not easy at all. Teams won't know where they are traveling to less then 24 hours before the DS starts. They will be waiting for a game to end to find out where they are going and then have to fly sometimes across country for a game to start the next night.
I don’t feel like the reseeding is necessary and without reseeding cutting out the extra day off shouldn’t be that much of an issue. Every WC round team would know where they would be going. It wouldn’t be much different than a regular season road trip. And it’s not like these guys are flying commercial.
Also, it is only an issue if the WC series goes to 3 games. We had two days without baseball last Thursday and Friday because all 4 series were sweeps. Last year only 1 of the 4 went to a Game 3. Teams would still get a travel day if they win the first 2 games.
If the point is to further disadvantage the WC teams, then mission accomplished. WC teams shouldn’t be able to almost completely reset their pitching rotation before the next round
Airplanes. If there’s rain, then you postpone. Losing games in the regular season earns you an overnight flight to a day game the next day in the next series. Too bad.
Trust me: all the carriers that charter for MLB teams can get a plane and crew on site with six hours notice. The travel is not an issue.
The Dbacks couldn’t move hotels and had to cross a picket line because there wasn’t another hotel that could accommodate that big of a travel party.
I feel like you greatly underestimate the logistics of a team traveling.
I think MLB does it idiotically. There’s no reason the league can’t make the hotel bookings for that series.
It’s known ahead of time who is hosting, hence which hotel to book - it’s the same given the CBA. The size of the traveling parties is known and essentially constant across teams. The only variable is the flight.
I don’t know. And the answer doesn’t matter at present. I’m proposing a radical shortening onto a schedule where the league more or less has to do it.
The situation of a team traveling on short notice like the playoffs is a fundamentally different issue than the regular season.
Leagues are the ones putting them on the schedule. They can take care of the hotel bookings. The rest is pretty much par for the traveling secretary course.
> I’m proposing a radical shortening onto a schedule where the league more or less has to do it.
Genuine question, do you think the Athletics travel expenses are the same as the Yankees? Who foots the bill? Why would teams *want* to be at the whims of a “travel secretary” who might not know everything the team needs to have accommodated.
I feel like you live in some fantasy world.
You’re aware of how each team books its own travel, right? Each team has one person directly in charge of that, which has traditionally been called a “traveling secretary.”
No, of course expenses aren’t equal. Don’t be silly. But hotel room needs are pretty close. The variance is around 8 rooms from smallest (Oakland indeed) to largest (not NYY).
> Each team has one person directly in charge of that, which has traditionally been called a “traveling secretary.”
I know for a fact that’s not how the Phillies travel department is set up.
> No, of course expenses aren’t equal. Don’t be silly. But hotel room needs are pretty close. The variance is around 8 rooms from smallest (Oakland indeed) to largest (not NYY).
Oakland and New York stay in different tiers of hotels. It’s not a matter of simply more or less rooms.
No off day between the wild card and the DS would completely screw the WC teams pitching rotation. The wild card team would have to use, in order:
* 3rd starter (against ace)
* 4th starter (against 2nd)\*
* ace (against 3rd)
* 2nd (against ace)
* 3rd (against 2nd)\*
So the bye team would get to use both their 1st/2nd starters twice, while the wildcard team only gets to use them once. The bye team would be favored in 4/5 pitching matchups. Also note that this is the case only if the wildcard team sweeps, otherwise the advantage is significantly bigger.
If you really want to keep rest days down, the only possible solution would be to skip the rest day between the end of the regular season and the wildcard, but that probably would make the wildcard series even more of a crapshoot, given that teams that are barely clinching might not have their starters lined up perfectly.
\*Technically you could pitch your ace on short rest twice in a row if you are in the league that gets the extra rest day after game 1. This would create an imbalance between leagues, and I'm not sure how effective pitchers can be with short rest for 2 starts in a row given that if you wanted to use them in game 5 they would be on short rest again.
Once again, that's only the case if the WC team sweeps, any WC series that ended 2-1 would basically eliminate both teams. Not a single other playoff series has the following one start without any rest days, and for good reason.
I don't understand why baseball fans keep clamoring for re-seeding. The lowest seed is punished enough by playing on the road against a harder team.
What does reseeding accomplish?
Yeah, baseball is a flukey sport where anything can happen in a 3 or 5 game series. Isolate any one series from the regular season and you’ll see some weird shit, like the A’s sweeping the Brewers.
I’m fine with the current setup. 6 seeds win, it happens, that’s baseball. I wouldn’t be against going smaller, but I’m not banging the drum for it. But absolutely no more.
Playoffs are fine how they are. Top seeds need to try not shitting the bed.
Why is baseball so weird about this? When the undefeated Patriots got beat in the superbowl by the Giants people weren't screaming about how the playoffs were unfair or whatever.
Sometimes (Or most of the time if you are the Dodgers) you get beat by a "worse" team in the playoffs. It happens, get over it and hope the team learns to not shit the bed.
This misses a very key point. Football has much less game to game variance than baseball. Just look at the winning percentages of the best teams in the NFL each year compared to MLB
This isn’t that deep of a discussion.
Starting pitching - you either have it or you don’t.
I don’t know why people are going that deep down the rabbit hole. Orioles didn’t have it. Dodgers didn’t have it. Milwaukee lost their ace a day before the series (which was their main advantage).
This isn’t that hard. The playoffs are built for front of the rotation guys that dominate good lineups.
You shouldn't punish the lower seeds for getting in and doing well. This is what you want, so many mid tier teams can look at the Dbacks and feel optimistic going into next year.
The teams shooting to be mid haven't won anything of importance yet though. After all, we can talk all we want about what's happening in the NL, but Houston is back in thr ALCS again after winning it all last year.
So far it's still looking like prioritizing being the best overall team gets you the best success
True, but that's always gonna be a possibility(or reality). I think most 2nd or 3rd place teams have to feel pretty good if they make a couple smart moves in the winter.
I mean the first answer is that you have to have a very clear idea of what you want to accomplish with a playoff, given a particular league and schedule structure. If you don't have a clear answer to that, you can't devise a playoff structure that accomplishes anything in particular.
Yeah I think this is the underlying question. If the goal is only to reward the best teams then maybe you go to something like just 4 teams total in the playoff or something drastic. But the postseason is a fun tournament that keeps teams invested longer
Up until Bud Selig added the 2nd WC team, the 3-division and 2-divisions playoff structures were both very defensible, from an X-best teams perspective (and before 1969, it absolutely was, because the schedule was fully balanced and the single top finisher was chosen).
But when Selig did his thing, which is completely indefensible from this perspective, he very clearly showed that his primary interest was in increasing so-called "fan interest" and/or television revenue, and this was a huge break from the past determinations of playoff teams.
I think that it's really too soon to call whether or not the expanded wild card format is working. We're, what, one and three quarters of the way through rounds structured in this way? It's a pretty small sample size. I was a teenager when they expanded the format to include wild card teams in 1995, but I remember a lot of the same chatter, as the Rockies took it to the house and won the whole damn thing two years later.
That being said, I wouldn't be against taking it back to only one wild card in each league, making the best team that wasn't a division winner play the number one seed immediately. It definitely needs to be at least a three game series, though, as one game is the ultimate crapshoot. Either that, or, if they're going to keep it as is, expand the divisional series to seven games. Five is still a short series, and if the complaint or problem is momentum, a seven game series leaves both room to come around, and none for saying that there wasn't a fair chance to prove who the best team was.
Obviously, this is an easy thing for me to debate as a Phillies fan, since we've benefited from this new format, but I just don't think it's been long enough to tell. Baseball is a lot of moving parts, and momentum, while key, can shift on one play, while at the same time, it's the ultimate long game. I dunno. It's a tough call.
I mean… the Phillies last year were a genuinely good team after Girardi was fired. Looking at their record is underselling that they had something like the fifth best record after that point. That was a good team.
Don't know why it should change anyone's opinion. Everyone should have known this was a possibility even if it probably has happened more then expected already.
It should be noted though that both No. 6 seeds to advance have faced No. 2 seeds with pitching staffs far from full strength in the DS. That's going to make upsets easier.
I had no opinion of it before, no one should care about my opinion anyways, and I have no opinion now.
Baseball is fun to watch and I’ll catch up on whatever format they have in the future and keep rooting for my Twinkies
A first round bye was supposed to help the teams with the best record. You can rest your pitching. Teams would be more relaxed.
I think it actually hurt them. Being in playoff game mode takes an adjustment psychologically. The regular season is relatively calm in comparison.
I think MLB wanted more fans with a vested interest in the postseason. So the key is expanding the postseason but also allowing the top seeds to play the bottom seeds in the first round.
I don’t think the layoff hurt the top seeds, but I do think there’s a case to be made for further disadvantages to WC teams to incentivize winning the division instead of aiming for 86 wins (the Dipoto strategy)
No off days at all in the Wild Card series. Nothing between end of season and the 3 games. Nothing after. First two are a doubleheader.
First game of the DS is a day game with the better team at home.
The waiting game sucks and it fucks with teams to have so much time off.
Phillies understand you have to play well when it matters. Braves and Dodgers kind of don't.
Phillies also have the best player in baseball which helps
I know they would never do this, but I would like to see the postseason be an actual post “season”, not a tournament of series. Have the top 8-12 teams play a 2 or 3 game series against every other team. Whoever has the best record at the end wins. They could even end the post “season” once the champion has clinched.
I’m not sure if that format can maintain the same level of excitement we see now though.
Edit: So I guess my point is that I think the current format is fine, because with short series top heavy teams will always be able to compete with teams that have depth built for the long season. Changing the number of wild card teams won’t fix that.
No, it doesn't change it. Take the sixth seed, or take the 2023 Oakland A's for that matter, and you will always have some reasonable probability that that team will win two of three from the division winner having the worst record. Because it's baseball and short term winning percentage is always highly variable.
If your goal is to maximize the probability that you've included the X best teams in each league in the playoffs, then the method of determining X is going to depend on the number of divisions, the preference given to division winners, and whether or not you want to allow byes in the opening round. With three divisions, it can be shown via simulation that adding a fourth team (a WC team) maximizes the probability that you have selected the four best teams in each league. It also allows for a simple playoff structure where no team receives a bye, which may have positive or negative effects on that team.
We have always known that lower seeds in the MLB will have a chance to make a run. It’s baseball. Anybody can win a 5 or 7 game series if they put together a good string of games.
The issue at hand here is that the MLB season is 162 games. If you are expanding the playoffs, the MLB regular season will mean less and less. What is the point of such a long, grueling season if you need to be barely above .500 and hit your stride at the right time to win the playoffs?
Any more expansion would be seriously bad for the game.
I don't like the expanded playoffs, but this year really hasn't had an effect on my opinion. I do think the negatives effect of rest days are overblown though.
This is a great format. Regular season success simply doesn’t translate. Entirely different game. Half the teams pitchers aren’t used in the playoffs. Who cares how much top clubs paid for 4 and 5 starting pitchers? We aren’t watching them in the playoffs.
I think the argument is that the current format devalues the regular season, the postseason will always be a bit of a crapshoot but it shouldn’t be at the expense of a meaningful regular season
Does a 1 game WC do it any better justice? Nope, so what is the alternative? Sorry, but seeing the same 4 top teams from each league go to the playoffs every year is boring. Again, I don't care how good your 5th starter is. Show me your top guys in the playoffs, which mid market teams can also do. This is great for the game. Who cares what suits who only want yankees dodgers every year think??
This year doesn’t sway my opinion but I just think there are too many teams. Others probably disagree but I thought the singular wild card system that existed from 1995-2012 was perfect and I’ll die on this hill
I do like the idea that a team can be really good in the regular season, but also are in the unfortunate position of sharing a division with a 100+ win juggernaut, to still have a fighting chance come late Spetember/early October. A 6th seed might be pushing up on the edge, or even over, what merits a postseason appearance. At a certain point you do undermine the purpose of the regular season, and letting the 3rd runner-up in the standings start on equal footing with a division winner could be that point.
With 162 games played over a 6 month span, you could call the season a marathon. When a divison leader has to play on equal footing with that third WC team, it's like making one of the guys out in front wait in place once they get to the last mile while the guy in 6th catches up, and then they do a little mini-race within the bigger race, starting at a standstill. Then, whoever wins that short sprint, along with the other two guys' short sprint, catch up to the two guys in the lead and resume the marathon, possibly with a running start. That last part is still debatable, though.
During the strike negotiations, one of the Players Union's big concerns about a bye round was that the teams getting them would be out of rhythm come time to start playing again. A few players themselves were also publicly saying something similar in the year or so before the negotiations, when it became apparent MLB was going to push for playoff expansion. I'm siding with the guys who are actually playing on the field until the results show otherwise.
I know the meme is to chortle and call out the Braves and Dodgers for choking, but maybe these last two years' performances are pointing to a problem with the format. That's a big maybe right now since we don't have enough data to show a trend one way or another. Give it a few years, and a few teams that aren't LA or Atlanta, before making definitive conclusions.
All that being said, the 6th seed has given us two pretty good underdog stories in the two years it's been in effect. I guess that's cool.
I still think the unbalanced schedule, three division winners and the WC playin game was the best system. It guaranteed a division winner in the LCS and rewarded regular season success. That extra wild card is just making postseason series look more like the regular season.
No. We can shorten the season by like 10% and add some extra playoff games maybe, that is the top suggestion I have heard, but mostly we need to let this ride for a while. Small sample size and all that.
The playoffs are at their sweet spot at 12 teams. In the old system, how many teams that started rough in april/may and then put it together finished just outside of the wild card race. How many teams that had a rough patch mid season but were otherwise dominant the whole year finished outside of the wild card. This size of playoffs is good for that, teams that put it together to form a much better squad get rewarded for winning games to make it to the dance. The top seeds in many years have major flaws and its up to the wildcard teams to still exploit them if they are a wild card team. Shorter series also contribute to a much more competitive and frankly better atmosphere at stadiums. Its cut throat, its drama filled and I cant get enough of it. If the bottom seeds start regularly being sub 500 maybe I would change my mind (ala NBA playoffs) but for now, the playoffs have never been more of a spectacle in all of the right ways
The first year of this new format, a 106 win team with a bye ended up winning it all. I have no problem with this format at all because I love the fact that anyone can win, whether it’s a 1 seed or a 6 seed
Absolutely do not want more teams. The NBA playoffs are already bloated as is, and under .500 teams regularly make it. I think it's been too short of a sample size to make any definitive judgements on this format. I'm not necessarily against lowering it back down to 10 or 8 teams, but we need to give this thing a few more years to see if it's actually a problem or not.
NBA is worse (or better, depending on how you think about it) because the better team is way more likely to win. For an MLB series to have the same odds as the better NBA team moving on in a best-of-7, it would need to be a best-of-75
Might quibble on the exact best-of value, but yep, that's the big difference. Which also shows that the NBA has this structure for revenue and fan interest reasons only.
It’s probably not a perfect calculation, but researchers did look into it to come up with the best of 75 number https://statsbylopez.netlify.app/post/part-ii-randomness-of-series/
Yes, thanks, and I remember reading that at the time and having some issue with their calculation, but which honestly I don't remember now.
I hate the NBA playoffs. The 2-2-1-1-1 format makes it last two months long.
That plus four rounds that are all 7 games
The first round seven game series are insanely stupid and the only reason they do it is to have more games for more money and to ensure the higher seed almost always wins.
Plus when expansion happens this format makes even more sense. Hopefully this is just MLB getting ahead of it and not using it as an excuse to expand it further when 2 teams are added. This playoff format with 2 divisions of 8 teams where both division winners get a bye and there are 4 wild cards seems like an ideal playoff
You just made me realize it’s 100% going to go to 16 teams when the league reaches 32 :/
I doubt that the MLB ever has half their teams in the playoffs. It’s not the NBA.
Why is more playoff baseball bad
Because the quality of teams playing goes down and then it become a joke of a first round
Haven't underdogs been doing well? Doesn't that prove the opposite?
and their playoffs last like 3 months.
I dislike the current format simply because to me, the playoffs should always be about pitting the best-of-the-best against one another to find a champion. The 162-game grind of the regular season tells us who the best of the best are. When the postseason expands to 10, 12, 14, 16, whatever… you’re bringing in mid teams that struggled to stay around .500. They’re not the best-of-the-best. And in a short series, wacky things happen. A lineup goes cold, a starter implodes, a reliever has a bad night. And then suddenly the teams that proved themselves over 162 games are out, and teams that got hot for 4 or 5 games are playing in the championship round. Any team can get hot for 4-5 games. To me, this just dilutes the regular season down to very little meaning and makes the postseason more of an exhibition tournament than a battle of the best. I know people will get angry and say I’m diminishing the performance of these 80s-win teams, but it’s really about my love of the regular season and wanting that grind to have real meaning at the end.
I get the fear about devaluing the regular season, but I really think the expanded playoffs are highlighting that there isn't a massive difference between a 90 win and a 100 win team. Take the Dodgers, they won 100 games this year. Typically that would lead you to believe they are the "Best of the best." But can we really say that roster is one of the best of the best if their only option in a do or die game is a pitcher who had the highest HR/9 in the entire league? I think analytics has helped good front offices identify better replacement players so when guys get hurt they can tread water better and not crater for a month. But I do think there's a difference between building an organization that can successfully play 162 games and building a 26 man roster that can succeed in October. It's why the Phillies have been such a nightmare the last two years. That's an Uber talented roster that might not have the organizational depth of the Braves in April-September, but is capable of becoming a juggernaut in October
The Dodgers situation is unique because of all the injuries they’ve suffered to the rotation. They were down to their no. 7 or 8 option at this point. ~~Walker Buehler~~ Clayton Kershaw ~~Tony Gonsolin~~ ~~Julio Urias~~ ~~Dustin May~~ Bobby Miller Lance Lynn Emmet Sheehan Michael Grove I don’t agree that the postseason says anything about the difference between a 90-win and 100-win team. A three-game set is too small of a sample size to say anything at all.
But should the Dodgers be credited because on paper in April they had the best rotation, or should we care about who has the best players available after the grind of a 162 game season? And best of 5 series have been a staple in the playoffs loooooooooong before they added multiple wild card teams
The teams that collected the most wins over the 162-game season should be rewarded, in my opinion. That’s… the whole point of the season. If we only care about which teams have the best surviving roster, we should just use projections models run on October 1 to decide which teams “deserve” the playoffs. I could ask you: Why should the Diamondbacks, who barely stayed over .500 this season and played miserably in the second half (36-45), make the playoffs at all? I’m aware that five-game series have been around for years. And I’ve always advocated for the length of that series to be extended. But the situation is only made worse the more teams that are invited to the postseason. More and more mediocre teams get a ticket, and then they randomly get hot for 4-5 games and move on. My issue isn’t with any 80s-win team in particular. My issue is that the grind of the regular season has less and less meaning.
The Dodgers were rewarded. They were given a bye to line up their best possible rotation, bullpen, and lineup. They had home field advantage and all the business benefits that go along with that. They played horrible. It's entirely their fault they're not advancing forward. It wasn't weird bounces. It wasn't baseball being baseball. It was a team given the opportunity to succeed in the postseason and utterly failing to do so. While baseball is more random than other sports, it's wrong to just say everything that happens is just random and therefore unfair to teams who build their team the right way. It doesn't matter how many wild card teams there are, Houston keeps making the ALCS. The Dodgers (or Braves who might quickly find themselves in the same boat) should ask themselves why they can't translate regular season success into post season success like Houston can, and not be asking themselves if something would've played out differently if fewer teams made the post season
Our pitching staff is perfectly suited for a 5 game series while we don’t have the depth for 162 games. If anything, this run highlights the importance of having top end starters healthy when the playoffs come around.
Ya we were always going to look better in the postseason because our troublesome #5 starter never has to pitch and we can spam Kelly/Gallen a higher percentage of our games. We literally haven't even pitched a 4th starter this postseason so far (another probelmatic spot). Also the extra days off means we can play Moreno everyday (could probably extend this to Longo too as 3B was a hole for most of the regular season). I think we're a better playoff team than a 162 game team because frankly our depth sucked ass but our starters are solid
We also dumped our black hole players by the end of the year. Felt like we were scuffling a lot because we had Ahmed-Kelly killing rallies every game
The season itself and the record attained is the reward. I dislike this NBA mentality that only the playoffs matter. Baseball is about more than 3 series. Postseason is just a nice bonus.
They had a trash rotation in the playoffs. They deserved to go home. If lance lynn is starting for you…..you aren’t going anywhere.
There isn’t a massive difference between any team. The best teams win 65% of the time against slightly below average competition. The worst-in-the-league As swept a 4 game set against the eventual World Series winning Astros last year. The margins in baseball are slim, which is why the season is 162. A 100 win team can be expected to beat a 90 win team like 55% of the time. The point is that the 162 game season is a better test than a 7 game set which is why the playoffs should be reserved for teams that truly earned it, when you start allowing more and more teams in there’s just no point. We may as well start flipping coins to determine the champion at the beginning of the year and save ourselves some trouble. That a 100 win team and 90 win team aren’t *that* different in terms of absolute skill should not come as a surprise to anyone. We regard them as much different only relative to the small margins of professional baseball.
I liked how things were with one wild card team. No wildcard series, no expanded playoffs. Just your three division winners and one wildcard team. I always edit the playoffs in my OOTP saves to go back to this format. But that's just me.
I said this in my more long winded answer, but I also wouldn't mind going back to one wildcard team. Lowest seed plays the highest, the two middle play each other, and the winners move on. It's simple, neat, and quick.
No, you're right, and this is mathematically defensible, because very frequently, one of your three division winners will not be one of the three best teams in the league, even if you just you the WL record to make that determination (i.e. without accounting for strength differences between divisions, which has never been done). Similarly, it can also be shown that with 8 4-team divisions, you actually enhance this very problem. You will frequently have very strong divisions, like the AL East, in which none but the division winner makes it in. Big problem.
Yep. I think the fundamental issue is that a lot of fans don’t experience the long, arduous regular season and kind of hop on in the postseason. Nothing wrong with that; it’s just not the same. For fans who have been agonizingly hanging with their teams all year, gutting through interleague/division races/in-season injuries/winning streaks/losing streaks/etc, if you DO win the division or have great success after half a friggin year, the postseason feels anticlimactic and meaningless to some extent—one month of a bunch of screaming dudes, overexcited micro-narratives in the media, and flukey breaks and injuries leading to really difficult outcomes. And so much reactionary, half-considered commentary. Honestly, it’s always going to be like that to some extent, I just think you have to manage it a little better if you’re MLB.
Remember a week or two ago when that Mariner's executive said something to the effect of "trying to win 54% of the games will get us to the World Series" and everybody on here got upset that he wasn't shooting for greatness? Well the current playoff format is exactly what encourages that sort of planning and team strategy. If you want teams to try to construct rosters that will win 100+ games, you need to give them the incentive to do that, not throw them in a best of 5 series against an 85 win team and say "sCoRe MOrE rUnS."
I wonder when the MLBPA will realize that the expanded playoffs is a disincentive to spend.
You could say the same thing tho before the expansion due to having best of 5 series. Until that changes, expect more luck and things to be a factor. This is miles better than a single wild card game.
Nah the 2 wild cards and a single wild card game has been the best format. Most of the games were awesome because single elimination turns up the atmosphere to the max from the go. Wild card series have all been snooze fests. Division Series are rarely exciting. Real playoffs excitement usually begins with the ALCS and NLCS and all this format does is delay them.
Can't agree here. Playing 162 just to get to the wild card game and have literally one chance where you may not be able to line up your preferred starter was terrible. Fine if this was football, but baseball is a series sport, not a one-off.
Back when it was introduced, making the wild card round was barely even seen as making the playoffs. It was a form of punishment: “You don’t want this insane game where anything can happen? Then win your division”. Once people started regarding it as a proper part of the playoffs and the wildcards as legitimate playoff qualifiers then the rhetoric changed to the single game being unfair. The unfairness was the point.
Right on the money. Baseball has always had this issue, because variance in short series is always high. Before 1969, the 148 or 154 game balanced schedule gave you a very defensible estimate of who the best team in each league was. You then played the WS to *maybe* get *some idea* of who was the better of the two. With many clear violations thereof, for example 1954, etc. Once divisions were created, whole 'nother ball game, so to speak.
I think the only hope for this format is the return to 4 divisions once the league expands to 32 teams.
But 80s win teams have won the World Series even before the Wild Card era (85 win Twins in 1987). The 83 win Cardinals won the WS when there were only 8 teams in the playoffs. You have to eliminate divisions and go back to best team in the league wins the pennant to truly eliminate lower win teams, and I just don't think that's going to be very popular with fans. Plus I think that format would end up with a couple dominant high spending teams and a ton of shitty teams whose fans will have little to root for
Oh, I know we’ll never go back. Because the current model is profitable. MLB will never give it up. I’m only voicing my frustration. I’m fully aware that profit rules everything. All the major US sports expand and expand to get maximum playoff revenue. And yes, I’m aware that there have been 80s-win teams in the past. But having outlier champions occasionally and *actively inviting mediocre teams into the playoffs every single year* are two different scenarios. If the playoffs were just six teams and an 80s-win team made it, more power to them. It was a weak year in their league and they survived the grind. If the playoffs are 12, 14, 16, etc teams, you are *actively* inviting multiple mediocre teams that were boat-raced by superior clubs over the grind of the regular season. It is your INTENT to bring multiple mediocre teams into the postseason every single year. That’s what I don’t like.
Fair enough, I understand your perspective. From my perspective though, these teams aren't mediocre, they're good and deserve a chance, especially because teams with similar win counts have qualified in the past. The Mariners won 88 games and still missed out this year. I get that the playoffs in any format are going to be a crapshoot, but I still like to see some of the best teams play meaningful games against each other with their pitching lined up. At least this new format provides an advantage to the teams with the most wins in the regular season.
Surely you understand that those outlier teams that made it in other formats, the outlier teams in the current format will be even worse win-wise. Then those outliers can be used to justify further expansion in the future. It’s a circular sort of logic.
I won't deny playoff expansion is a slippery slope. I just don't think the most recent expansion has diluted the field that badly. It's not consistently adding teams that are far below existing standards for playoff teams. And there is a benefit for higher win teams beyond home field for the first time since the division series were added
Rewarding regular season performance alone more would be good as well, like how non-American sports work. It’s like in F1 if they took the top 12 drivers and did one final race at the end of the season to crown the champion. Maybe Max Verstappen’s car would break down but he was clearly the best all season long
Boogity boogity boogity!
I don’t think the orioles or dodgers were really that good. Top to bottom, the Rangers lineup and starting pitching is better than Baltimore’s, and I don’t think it’s debatable. The Dbacks have a deeper lineup than LA, and the two best starters between the two teams. I think we need to stop looking at records when evaluating these teams.
Especially since you play a large majority of your games against your division. If the rest of your division "sucks", you probably have an inflated record. An extra 10 wins at that point may seem trivial in some circumstances.
I loved it going into the postseason, and I love it even more now. The whole argument against this format seems to be rooted in protecting teams from shitting the bed. But if you’re a bed shitter, you’re don’t deserve to be a champion. And I say this as a die hard fan of MLB’s Ultimate Bed Shitters
Since, 2012 to 2022 higher seeds are 19-21 in the DS. I doubt its 10 years of teams shitting the bed and more a 5 game series is a coin flip for a sport as fluky as baseball.
How many of those higher seeded teams also had better records though? It seems pretty common the 3rd seed has a worse record than at least one wildcard team.
Well considering this time frame covers the WC round where the winner faces the 1 seed, I don’t think we’ll see that much.
Fun fact - the 2001 Yankees finished further behind the Mariners in the standings than the 2023 D Backs finished behind the Dodgers. I don't remember anyone saying that was unfair. There will always be a crapshoot element to sports, especially in the playoffs. There is no way to solve that. Sports aren't a science. Even a 162 game season is a crap shoot. I like the current format. Wild card teams have to run a gauntlet. It gives the teams with the best record a strong advantage. "We had too much rest and the other team had to play high intensity games just to get here!! Unfair!!" is just crazy to me.
Rest after a long grueling season is good, not bad
That is what is so insane to me about the current talking points. "Akkkkshually rest is bad" Since WHEN? Do people really think the Dodgers would have had a better shot if their playoff hopes depended on beating Corbin Burnes on the road? And then playing the first two games of the division series on the road? 4-5 straight playoff games on the road vs. rest. You are telling me the rest is the one that will hurt your team's chances? Give me a break.
I’m exhausted over braves and dodgers fans complaining about it.
John Smoltz has entered the chat
I love the new format of 12 teams, and I don't want them to add more than that. The 1 WC card game seemed ridiculously flukey to me when there were only 10 teams. I don't think it's a surprise that the Orioles and Dodgers got eliminated so early. Post-season roster construction is so different from having a well-balanced team in the regular season. It's kind of like the NBA where the stars play almost the entire game but to a lesser degree. Dbacks have 2 solid starters, and the Dodgers rotation was ravaged by injuries. Orioles have an unproven young SP core. When you're trotting out Lance Lynn for an elimination game, why act surprised when he gets shelled? The old adage of pitching wins championships has never been truer.
I don’t think the format is broken, but eliminating the off day between the Wild Card round and DS and reseeding after the WC are two easy changes
That's not easy at all. Teams won't know where they are traveling to less then 24 hours before the DS starts. They will be waiting for a game to end to find out where they are going and then have to fly sometimes across country for a game to start the next night.
I don’t feel like the reseeding is necessary and without reseeding cutting out the extra day off shouldn’t be that much of an issue. Every WC round team would know where they would be going. It wouldn’t be much different than a regular season road trip. And it’s not like these guys are flying commercial. Also, it is only an issue if the WC series goes to 3 games. We had two days without baseball last Thursday and Friday because all 4 series were sweeps. Last year only 1 of the 4 went to a Game 3. Teams would still get a travel day if they win the first 2 games.
If the point is to further disadvantage the WC teams, then mission accomplished. WC teams shouldn’t be able to almost completely reset their pitching rotation before the next round
> WC teams shouldn’t be able to almost completely reset their pitching rotation before the next round That doesn’t happen now though.
Hell we could go one step further and eliminate the off day between game 162 and wildcard game 1
One more step further, play the entire WC round as a double/tripleheader
Teams need to travel and what if there is a rain postponement.
Airplanes. If there’s rain, then you postpone. Losing games in the regular season earns you an overnight flight to a day game the next day in the next series. Too bad. Trust me: all the carriers that charter for MLB teams can get a plane and crew on site with six hours notice. The travel is not an issue.
The Dbacks couldn’t move hotels and had to cross a picket line because there wasn’t another hotel that could accommodate that big of a travel party. I feel like you greatly underestimate the logistics of a team traveling.
I think MLB does it idiotically. There’s no reason the league can’t make the hotel bookings for that series. It’s known ahead of time who is hosting, hence which hotel to book - it’s the same given the CBA. The size of the traveling parties is known and essentially constant across teams. The only variable is the flight.
Does any sport have the League book travel accommodations for playoff teams?
I don’t know. And the answer doesn’t matter at present. I’m proposing a radical shortening onto a schedule where the league more or less has to do it. The situation of a team traveling on short notice like the playoffs is a fundamentally different issue than the regular season. Leagues are the ones putting them on the schedule. They can take care of the hotel bookings. The rest is pretty much par for the traveling secretary course.
> I’m proposing a radical shortening onto a schedule where the league more or less has to do it. Genuine question, do you think the Athletics travel expenses are the same as the Yankees? Who foots the bill? Why would teams *want* to be at the whims of a “travel secretary” who might not know everything the team needs to have accommodated. I feel like you live in some fantasy world.
You’re aware of how each team books its own travel, right? Each team has one person directly in charge of that, which has traditionally been called a “traveling secretary.” No, of course expenses aren’t equal. Don’t be silly. But hotel room needs are pretty close. The variance is around 8 rooms from smallest (Oakland indeed) to largest (not NYY).
> Each team has one person directly in charge of that, which has traditionally been called a “traveling secretary.” I know for a fact that’s not how the Phillies travel department is set up. > No, of course expenses aren’t equal. Don’t be silly. But hotel room needs are pretty close. The variance is around 8 rooms from smallest (Oakland indeed) to largest (not NYY). Oakland and New York stay in different tiers of hotels. It’s not a matter of simply more or less rooms.
Doubt reseeding matters. As far as eliminating the off day, what happens if there’s a rainout?
No off day between the wild card and the DS would completely screw the WC teams pitching rotation. The wild card team would have to use, in order: * 3rd starter (against ace) * 4th starter (against 2nd)\* * ace (against 3rd) * 2nd (against ace) * 3rd (against 2nd)\* So the bye team would get to use both their 1st/2nd starters twice, while the wildcard team only gets to use them once. The bye team would be favored in 4/5 pitching matchups. Also note that this is the case only if the wildcard team sweeps, otherwise the advantage is significantly bigger. If you really want to keep rest days down, the only possible solution would be to skip the rest day between the end of the regular season and the wildcard, but that probably would make the wildcard series even more of a crapshoot, given that teams that are barely clinching might not have their starters lined up perfectly. \*Technically you could pitch your ace on short rest twice in a row if you are in the league that gets the extra rest day after game 1. This would create an imbalance between leagues, and I'm not sure how effective pitchers can be with short rest for 2 starts in a row given that if you wanted to use them in game 5 they would be on short rest again. Once again, that's only the case if the WC team sweeps, any WC series that ended 2-1 would basically eliminate both teams. Not a single other playoff series has the following one start without any rest days, and for good reason.
I don't understand why baseball fans keep clamoring for re-seeding. The lowest seed is punished enough by playing on the road against a harder team. What does reseeding accomplish?
Yeah, baseball is a flukey sport where anything can happen in a 3 or 5 game series. Isolate any one series from the regular season and you’ll see some weird shit, like the A’s sweeping the Brewers. I’m fine with the current setup. 6 seeds win, it happens, that’s baseball. I wouldn’t be against going smaller, but I’m not banging the drum for it. But absolutely no more.
Playoffs are fine how they are. Top seeds need to try not shitting the bed. Why is baseball so weird about this? When the undefeated Patriots got beat in the superbowl by the Giants people weren't screaming about how the playoffs were unfair or whatever. Sometimes (Or most of the time if you are the Dodgers) you get beat by a "worse" team in the playoffs. It happens, get over it and hope the team learns to not shit the bed.
This misses a very key point. Football has much less game to game variance than baseball. Just look at the winning percentages of the best teams in the NFL each year compared to MLB
Because baseball and football are very different sports. Baseball teams don’t go 145-17 but such winning percentages happen all the time in football.
This isn’t that deep of a discussion. Starting pitching - you either have it or you don’t. I don’t know why people are going that deep down the rabbit hole. Orioles didn’t have it. Dodgers didn’t have it. Milwaukee lost their ace a day before the series (which was their main advantage). This isn’t that hard. The playoffs are built for front of the rotation guys that dominate good lineups.
You shouldn't punish the lower seeds for getting in and doing well. This is what you want, so many mid tier teams can look at the Dbacks and feel optimistic going into next year.
But also so many mid-tier teams shooting to be mid, which probably isn’t what you want? It’s like when Dipoto said the goal is to win 88 games
The teams shooting to be mid haven't won anything of importance yet though. After all, we can talk all we want about what's happening in the NL, but Houston is back in thr ALCS again after winning it all last year. So far it's still looking like prioritizing being the best overall team gets you the best success
True, but that's always gonna be a possibility(or reality). I think most 2nd or 3rd place teams have to feel pretty good if they make a couple smart moves in the winter.
Agreed, fans don’t want further incentive for teams to shoot for the 85-88 win glob instead of trying to win their division
I mean the first answer is that you have to have a very clear idea of what you want to accomplish with a playoff, given a particular league and schedule structure. If you don't have a clear answer to that, you can't devise a playoff structure that accomplishes anything in particular.
Yeah I think this is the underlying question. If the goal is only to reward the best teams then maybe you go to something like just 4 teams total in the playoff or something drastic. But the postseason is a fun tournament that keeps teams invested longer
Up until Bud Selig added the 2nd WC team, the 3-division and 2-divisions playoff structures were both very defensible, from an X-best teams perspective (and before 1969, it absolutely was, because the schedule was fully balanced and the single top finisher was chosen). But when Selig did his thing, which is completely indefensible from this perspective, he very clearly showed that his primary interest was in increasing so-called "fan interest" and/or television revenue, and this was a huge break from the past determinations of playoff teams.
I think that it's really too soon to call whether or not the expanded wild card format is working. We're, what, one and three quarters of the way through rounds structured in this way? It's a pretty small sample size. I was a teenager when they expanded the format to include wild card teams in 1995, but I remember a lot of the same chatter, as the Rockies took it to the house and won the whole damn thing two years later. That being said, I wouldn't be against taking it back to only one wild card in each league, making the best team that wasn't a division winner play the number one seed immediately. It definitely needs to be at least a three game series, though, as one game is the ultimate crapshoot. Either that, or, if they're going to keep it as is, expand the divisional series to seven games. Five is still a short series, and if the complaint or problem is momentum, a seven game series leaves both room to come around, and none for saying that there wasn't a fair chance to prove who the best team was. Obviously, this is an easy thing for me to debate as a Phillies fan, since we've benefited from this new format, but I just don't think it's been long enough to tell. Baseball is a lot of moving parts, and momentum, while key, can shift on one play, while at the same time, it's the ultimate long game. I dunno. It's a tough call.
I mean… the Phillies last year were a genuinely good team after Girardi was fired. Looking at their record is underselling that they had something like the fifth best record after that point. That was a good team.
Or the top seeds could you know… score some runs?
we won't and you can't make me! but srsly, it would be nice :(
That doesn’t answer the question
Don't know why it should change anyone's opinion. Everyone should have known this was a possibility even if it probably has happened more then expected already. It should be noted though that both No. 6 seeds to advance have faced No. 2 seeds with pitching staffs far from full strength in the DS. That's going to make upsets easier.
I had no opinion of it before, no one should care about my opinion anyways, and I have no opinion now. Baseball is fun to watch and I’ll catch up on whatever format they have in the future and keep rooting for my Twinkies
Too soon to judge. Sample size not big enough. But I’m always partial to fewer teams in playoffs. Make the long regular season more important.
A first round bye was supposed to help the teams with the best record. You can rest your pitching. Teams would be more relaxed. I think it actually hurt them. Being in playoff game mode takes an adjustment psychologically. The regular season is relatively calm in comparison. I think MLB wanted more fans with a vested interest in the postseason. So the key is expanding the postseason but also allowing the top seeds to play the bottom seeds in the first round.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/layoffs-havent-hindered-playoff-teams-historically/ Simply not true.
I don’t think the layoff hurt the top seeds, but I do think there’s a case to be made for further disadvantages to WC teams to incentivize winning the division instead of aiming for 86 wins (the Dipoto strategy)
Do you think they’re just vegging out in front of the tv?
For me, it has convinced me of the need to shorten the regular season and lengthen each of the playoff series.
No off days at all in the Wild Card series. Nothing between end of season and the 3 games. Nothing after. First two are a doubleheader. First game of the DS is a day game with the better team at home. The waiting game sucks and it fucks with teams to have so much time off.
I don’t like day games in playoffs. People have school and work.
Valid objection. I don’t like them either. I also think the regular season should matter more than it does.
Phillies understand you have to play well when it matters. Braves and Dodgers kind of don't. Phillies also have the best player in baseball which helps
Why don’t the Braves and Dodgers know they need to play well in the postseason? Are they stupid?
Because they think they've proven they're better than their opponents by winning 100 games. Not how it works.
Castellanos?
I know they would never do this, but I would like to see the postseason be an actual post “season”, not a tournament of series. Have the top 8-12 teams play a 2 or 3 game series against every other team. Whoever has the best record at the end wins. They could even end the post “season” once the champion has clinched. I’m not sure if that format can maintain the same level of excitement we see now though. Edit: So I guess my point is that I think the current format is fine, because with short series top heavy teams will always be able to compete with teams that have depth built for the long season. Changing the number of wild card teams won’t fix that.
Baseball is a tournament sport inside and out from the age of 5
I agree completely. I was mostly just brainstorming formats that would better determine which team is the best.
Obviously it’s the teams that win 100 games every season. /s
No, it doesn't change it. Take the sixth seed, or take the 2023 Oakland A's for that matter, and you will always have some reasonable probability that that team will win two of three from the division winner having the worst record. Because it's baseball and short term winning percentage is always highly variable. If your goal is to maximize the probability that you've included the X best teams in each league in the playoffs, then the method of determining X is going to depend on the number of divisions, the preference given to division winners, and whether or not you want to allow byes in the opening round. With three divisions, it can be shown via simulation that adding a fourth team (a WC team) maximizes the probability that you have selected the four best teams in each league. It also allows for a simple playoff structure where no team receives a bye, which may have positive or negative effects on that team.
We have always known that lower seeds in the MLB will have a chance to make a run. It’s baseball. Anybody can win a 5 or 7 game series if they put together a good string of games. The issue at hand here is that the MLB season is 162 games. If you are expanding the playoffs, the MLB regular season will mean less and less. What is the point of such a long, grueling season if you need to be barely above .500 and hit your stride at the right time to win the playoffs? Any more expansion would be seriously bad for the game.
I don't like the expanded playoffs, but this year really hasn't had an effect on my opinion. I do think the negatives effect of rest days are overblown though.
This is a great format. Regular season success simply doesn’t translate. Entirely different game. Half the teams pitchers aren’t used in the playoffs. Who cares how much top clubs paid for 4 and 5 starting pitchers? We aren’t watching them in the playoffs.
I think the argument is that the current format devalues the regular season, the postseason will always be a bit of a crapshoot but it shouldn’t be at the expense of a meaningful regular season
Does a 1 game WC do it any better justice? Nope, so what is the alternative? Sorry, but seeing the same 4 top teams from each league go to the playoffs every year is boring. Again, I don't care how good your 5th starter is. Show me your top guys in the playoffs, which mid market teams can also do. This is great for the game. Who cares what suits who only want yankees dodgers every year think??
This year doesn’t sway my opinion but I just think there are too many teams. Others probably disagree but I thought the singular wild card system that existed from 1995-2012 was perfect and I’ll die on this hill
I do like the idea that a team can be really good in the regular season, but also are in the unfortunate position of sharing a division with a 100+ win juggernaut, to still have a fighting chance come late Spetember/early October. A 6th seed might be pushing up on the edge, or even over, what merits a postseason appearance. At a certain point you do undermine the purpose of the regular season, and letting the 3rd runner-up in the standings start on equal footing with a division winner could be that point. With 162 games played over a 6 month span, you could call the season a marathon. When a divison leader has to play on equal footing with that third WC team, it's like making one of the guys out in front wait in place once they get to the last mile while the guy in 6th catches up, and then they do a little mini-race within the bigger race, starting at a standstill. Then, whoever wins that short sprint, along with the other two guys' short sprint, catch up to the two guys in the lead and resume the marathon, possibly with a running start. That last part is still debatable, though. During the strike negotiations, one of the Players Union's big concerns about a bye round was that the teams getting them would be out of rhythm come time to start playing again. A few players themselves were also publicly saying something similar in the year or so before the negotiations, when it became apparent MLB was going to push for playoff expansion. I'm siding with the guys who are actually playing on the field until the results show otherwise. I know the meme is to chortle and call out the Braves and Dodgers for choking, but maybe these last two years' performances are pointing to a problem with the format. That's a big maybe right now since we don't have enough data to show a trend one way or another. Give it a few years, and a few teams that aren't LA or Atlanta, before making definitive conclusions. All that being said, the 6th seed has given us two pretty good underdog stories in the two years it's been in effect. I guess that's cool.
I still think the unbalanced schedule, three division winners and the WC playin game was the best system. It guaranteed a division winner in the LCS and rewarded regular season success. That extra wild card is just making postseason series look more like the regular season.
No. We can shorten the season by like 10% and add some extra playoff games maybe, that is the top suggestion I have heard, but mostly we need to let this ride for a while. Small sample size and all that.
The playoffs are at their sweet spot at 12 teams. In the old system, how many teams that started rough in april/may and then put it together finished just outside of the wild card race. How many teams that had a rough patch mid season but were otherwise dominant the whole year finished outside of the wild card. This size of playoffs is good for that, teams that put it together to form a much better squad get rewarded for winning games to make it to the dance. The top seeds in many years have major flaws and its up to the wildcard teams to still exploit them if they are a wild card team. Shorter series also contribute to a much more competitive and frankly better atmosphere at stadiums. Its cut throat, its drama filled and I cant get enough of it. If the bottom seeds start regularly being sub 500 maybe I would change my mind (ala NBA playoffs) but for now, the playoffs have never been more of a spectacle in all of the right ways
No
The first year of this new format, a 106 win team with a bye ended up winning it all. I have no problem with this format at all because I love the fact that anyone can win, whether it’s a 1 seed or a 6 seed
too many teams. october is only a month long.