Playoff creep has made the regular season almost irrelevant in the NHL and the NBA, and Major League Baseball has been struggling with how to avoid a similar fate ever since it stopped automatically sending the two teams with the best records in the American League and the National League directly to the World Series. That last happened in 1968 when there were just ten teams in each league: now there are 15, with six divisions. The champs of each get into post-season play-offs, with three Wild Card teams, mandatory because otherwise random luck can have a mediocre and inferior team making the play-offs by winning a weak division while teams with a better records are left at home watching the games on TV, just because they happened to be competing with stronger teams in their division.
Fairness and perception are the issues at hand, as well as maintaining the quality of the World Series. Last year’s edition, with the L.A. Dodgers squeaking out an extra-inning, deciding game victory over an evenly matched Toronto team, gave the sport a boost that carried into this season. Pairing the Dodger with a mediocre team is a recipe for embarrassment on baseball’s biggest stage. No team with a losing record has ever represented its league, but this season that situation could indeed occur. That highlights a flaw in the system. Now what?
In “How to keep losing teams out of MLB playoffs,” ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle does an excellent job explaining the problem and analyzing potential fixes. Right now, there are just five teams (out of 15) in the American League with winning records: the leaders in the three divisions, and two more teams (including the Red Sox) in the Eastern Division. Those two teams, Boston and the Yankees, seem to have wrapped up the first two Wild Card slots, but six teams, all with losing records, are in contention for the third Wild Card, and a single losing streak by the leaders in the Central and Western divisions could give those losing champions as well. If the American League playoffs started today, the top three records in the league would all reside on one half of the bracket, with the Tampa Bay Rays awaiting the winner of a wild-card series between the Yankees and Red Sox. On the other side of the bracket, the leaders in the Central Division, the Chicago White Sox ,would receive a bye to face the winner between the Astros (72-69), winners in the West, and the Cleveland Guardians (70-70), the third Wild Card.
FanGraphs projects Chicago to win the Central with 84 wins, with Cleveland taking final wild card with 82 wins and Houston winning the West with only 82 wins. Those would be three of the six worst records to ever qualify for the postseason in a full season, yet one of those teams would be guaranteed to play for the AL Championship in the ALCS.
Here are Doolittle’s candidates for remedies going forward. This season, of course, all baseball fans can do is cross their fingers. Doolittle’s commentary will be in quotes:
An excellent piece! Baseball’s playoff system has been somewhat disagreeable to me ever since expansion in the 90s. And it’s only gotten worse. The revenue generation of the playoffs is so tempting that the push to widen participation is hard to curb. Look at college football’s bowl system over the last 30 years or so…college basketball…it’s everywhere.
Speaking only of baseball, I think the playoffs should be for the very best teams. That means the division winners and one (1, uno, 2-1) wildcard team – the team with the best record that didn’t win a division – to have four teams on each side.
And yes, I am a huge fan of eliminating interleague play. I have never liked it (just like I’ve never like the DH, but different topic). One of the things I loved about baseball before interleague games was the speculation of how certain teams would fare facing each other in the World Series and, to a lesser extent, the All-Star game.
But far more important, if it’s the division standings and records that determine eligibility for the playoffs, then interleague games have no business in the sport (excepting the ASG and the Series), unless it be to water down win-loss records and thereby require bigger playoff brackets to resolve things.
So #7 for me as well.
I’m kind of scattered again this morning, but it’s a Friday before a holiday weekend, so…
The problem is money, as you identified.
The one solution I really don’t like (though I am not sure I understand #3) is #4. Make it harder for bad teams to win in the playoffs. That is unfair by definition. No home playoff games? Ghost wins? Hogwash! (Not my preferred curse for this idea.) Why not make all the players on the bad team bat and throw with their weak hand? Or play barefoot? Or without gloves?
If you have a system where bad teams make the playoffs, tough. What’s that Hyman?
“This is the business we’ve chosen!”
The solution is for good teams to beat bad teams. That is the whole concept of the playoffs. If good teams can’t beat bad teams, shame on them.
-Jut
remove Inter League games. Raise Intra division games. Before the cross league games I can’t remember any sub .500 division winners.
MLB
Expand to 40 teams and remove interleague play. 20 teams per league. 20 league scrum, no divisions. Top 4 from each league make the post-season. The Bottom 2 from each league are swapped to the other league starting next season to keep it spicy.
NFL
The NFL’s problem is even worse. It’s possible you have an entire division go 3-14 and one team will make the post-season based on a tie-breaker. Should they sweep the post-season, they would be a 7-14 Super Bowl champ. Absolutely bonkers. I’ve always liked the idea of a dynamic post-season format. Guarantee post-season to NFL teams who attain 12 wins. It’s unlikely, but that might mean 9 teams from a conference qualify…so the #1 seed no longer gets a bye and has to play the wild card weekend. What do we do with #9? Ship them to the other conference to play that conference’s #1 seed. Does this sow chaos? Yes. Is chaos bad? No. Embrace chaos! It makes things interesting! Also, NFL should have a 6.5 or 7.5 win threshold to qualify for playoffs.
NCAA Football
Until NIL is fixed, post-/bowl-season means nothing. I have actually devised a year-long, single elimination in-season tournament that involves all FCS/FBS teams….but the economics of it are not in line with the contractual realities of school conferences and associations. The money behind who-plays-who and who has a television contract and rights, etc etc is too complex and there’s no over-arching authority keeping the integrity of this system. All school-programs need to be nationalized under NCAA because this is a scenario where too much chaos among the sheer number of school programs (240+!) is unworkable.
NHL
Go back to the conference playoffs rather than the divisional playoff format.
NBA
Whatever. Nothing matters because the Referees keep making the playoffs every year.
MLB. Relegate the two worst teams to AAA!
I agree. Interleague play is a disaster. Get rid of it entirely.
A few thoughts on the subject. I have been thinking for the past month or two that it was likely that some team would go on a tear and lock down either the wild card slot or the Western Division. So far this hasn’t really happened, although it still could. Perhaps the closest has been a surge by the Kansas City Royals, although they had such a dreadful start that they are still a dozen games under .500. I was thinking of a surge like the Red Sox did, which seems to have cooled just a bit lately.
I would probably be in the #1 camp, leaving things as they are. I looked at the records for the wild card teams since 2022, when MLB added the third wild card team. The #3 AL wild card has had 86, 89, 86, and 87 wins. Not great, but not horrible either. The NL #3 was from 83 to 89.
One thing I might argue is that the 3rd wild card actually results in fewer truly horrible teams. Yes, there will be 100 loss teams, but the third wild card means that fewer teams will be doing fire sales at the trade deadline. This year I think there were only two or three AL teams that were big sellers, with so many still in theoretical contention for a playoff spot. If that is true, it’s a good thing for the sport. No fan base likes to watch their team lose 110 games and it’s important for teams to have robust attendance and local interest.
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All that said, my Rangers are one of the contenders for the 3rd wild card, but I have serious doubts they’ll make it. Even if they do, I don’t expect them to go far — nor, I think, do many fans of teams in their situation.
Of the various options above, I would have the least problems with going back to the heavy division focus from #7. I was never one of those who didn’t like that format, and I think it makes sense to play your division rivals a whole lot. That said, I think MLB is in love with interleague play.
I like #2 or #3. Break 500, or don’t even have a chance for the World Series. The risk though is that the AL East consistently blow up the regular seasons. The upside is that teams might change strategy to compete against everyone, just just targeted mediocrity against their division rivals.
Manfred proposed #6 a number of years ago, and it made me nauseous that he even proposed it. The National League is a runner of the oldest sports organization in the world. Soon after Manfred proposal, my family visited Cooperstown, and I got goosebumps in front of the standings board before even entering the museum (let alone the hall itself).
Number 6 destroys baseball. I’d much prefer two 15 teams scrums, since post season play is inevitable. “Advancing” the top for though risks exposing how silly the endeavor is. When the regular season winner of each league is clearly obvious, having it compete with the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th team to actually win the pennant looks as absurd as it is. The ‘divisions’ are nothing but mathematical hand waving.