Imagine a team picking its playoff opponent. Think about Brian Cashman and the Yankees deciding whether to face the Red Sox or avoid them in the first round of the postseason. All on live TV.
Well, it is probably coming soon to the major leagues.
MLB is seriously weighing a move from five to seven playoff teams in each league beginning in 2022, The Post has learned.
In this concept, the team with the best record in each league would receive a bye to avoid the wild-card round and go directly to the Division Series. The two other division winners and the wild card with the next best record would each host all three games in a best-of-three wild-card round. So the bottom three wild cards would have no first-round home games.
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Maybe make the Wild card a best of 3 series and the rest best of 7, but going crazy rarely works well.
Sports should take a cautionary look at what has happened with NASCAR
Why play almost every day for six months if you’re just gonna scrap it all and have a big tournament at the end?
Tim Britton
@TimBritton
Under this system, the 2014 Mets would have been a playoff team -- with a 79-83 record. Last year's Mets, of course, also would have made it.
* A batter with 2 strikes can tell the home plate umpire that he wants his at-bat to go to 4 strikes, but if that batter ends up retired, it counts as 2 outs.
* With 2 outs in an inning, a defense can turn a double play, if the opportunity is available. If they successfully turn it, the second out would carry over to the next inning.
DO IT, MLB!!!
After all, they've gotten all the money out of fans that they can for that game so why mess up the tv schedule and pay to keep the stadium lights on any longer than they have to?
In other words, MLB wants to have a Sunday show where, for example, the Yanks would get to pick their opponent.
Stupid.
Maybe make the Wild card a best of 3 series and the rest best of 7, but going crazy rarely works well.
Sports should take a cautionary look at what has happened with NASCAR
Not following your analogy to NASCAR. NASCAR’s downward spiral started before they started the “chase”, now the playoffs. The “chase” was an attempt to stop the bleeding when the bubble burst in the early 2000s. NASCAR’s problems occurred because of too much growth, too fast. The proliferation of 1.5 mile tracks and the Great Recession. MLB adding playoff teams has no comparison to NASCAR’s rise and demise. That said I’ll be there with 100,000 fans on Sunday at Daytona.
2) The team with most wins in each league gets first-round bye.
3) First round is a single three-game series played in one city. Win the series and advance. If you've got the better record, you're home. Worse record, gotta win a series on the road.
4) Team with second-most wins picks their first-round opponent. (I assume the team with the third-most wins also picks their opponent from the remaining 3.)
So you'd have three 3-game series in the first round in each league. That's the "Wild Card" round.
The idea of choosing your opponent and having a 3-game series in a single city are a big shift away from everything we're used to in sports playoffs. I have to admit that I don't hate it as much as I hate the DH or having wild cards with an unbalanced schedule.
MLB has long since traded away the joys of a pennant race for having a lot of teams in the playoffs. This would be jarring but we'd get used to it pretty fast. And baseball is smart to at least be thinking outside the box, instead of always leaning into "tradition."
Agree 100% with this. I've never understood how Basketball and Hockey can have 7 game series in the first round and they play half the amount of regular season games MLB does. Division series needs to be 7 games. I think I would also be in favor of the 3 game wild card round with the team with the better record getting all 3 home games. Definitely don't want more playoff teams, 5 from both league is enough.
* A batter with 2 strikes can tell the home plate umpire that he wants his at-bat to go to 4 strikes, but if that batter ends up retired, it counts as 2 outs.
* With 2 outs in an inning, a defense can turn a double play, if the opportunity is available. If they successfully turn it, the second out would carry over to the next inning.
DO IT, MLB!!!
Maybe base runners should wear clown suits.
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Trevor never leaves doubt about his view on things. I'm in Bauer's corner this time.
Change the dumb one and done wild card game to a 3 game series.
Give the 2 teams in each league a first-round bye and make each series post WC best of 7.
Shorten the regular season by 10-15 games and start the playoffs in mid-September.
More teams invited to the dance and less chance of tanking...
Change is needed.
However, this might also be a sounding board for MLB. Throw some shit out there and see what responses they get.
But they would need to shorten the regular season. This crap of playing baseball in football weather is awful. Baseball is a warm weather game. Season needs to run from April to mid-September and playoffs over before Halloween.
Also, the way this plays out leads to needing a balanced schedule. Just go back to one standings in each league, no divisions. Top team with the bye, next six then seeded two through seven and paired 2/7, 3/6. 4/5. Reseed rest of the way to LCS.
You don't need more wild card teams in a sport like baseball, hey Manfred, this is not the NFL!
nypost.com/2020/02/10/mlb-plotting-playoff-expansion-with-reality-tv-twist/
While the core of the fan base is older it's not generating the revenue that a younger audience would and that's what Manfred and the owners care about. If the game was growing with the current demographics they would not be trying all these silly changes. But MLB wants a younger market to merchandise to and sell their product on more digital platforms and they think these gimmicks will do that. Yes traditional fans will be pissed off initially, but they are willing to bet that we are not so angry that we will stop watching all together. They have us.
MLB is getting marginalized by football. As was recently said on ESPN's PTI, in this country the NFL is #1, College football #2 and then there is a wide gap to everyone else. Manfred is swinging for the fences now instead waiting to trying and fix a worsening product when the corpse is getting cold.
Exactly. The current format makes winning the division important, keeping the 162 important.
Doesn't more teams actually give you more incentive to watch, as your team can actually make the playoffs- even if it's not having a high degree of success? That you would otherwise discard realizing the playoffs are a long shot.
I think NBA and MLB ratings are down due to the nature of the sports. The NBA to me seems to be all three pointers and dunks, while MLB is painfully slow and long.
Until of course you reach the actual playoffs.
Fix the issues at the root of the problem.
These other ideas are just lipstick - and I would think causes less interest in the regular season since lots of teams previously in pennant chases would now easily be in the postseason under new rules.
And watching a 3.5 hour game on a Tuesday night and getting home at 11:30 to go to work then next day ? No thanks.
Teams should be playing a maximum of 5 games a week. Two games Monday-Thursday and 3 games over weekend