Baseball's proposed post-season format makes zero sense

News flash—baseball is different than football.

That may not come as a shock to you, but apparently the Lords of the Realm (the major league baseball owners) are unclear on the concept.  They look at the success of the current NFL post-season process and they think it sounds like a good template for baseball.

The New York Post is reporting that baseball is considering expanding its playoff roster to 14 teams, up from the current 10.  This would qualify 46.7% (14 of 30) of the major league teams for the postseason (that’s nearly half for those of you who are numerically deficient).  The division winner with the best record would advance to the second round, while the other two division winners and four wild card teams would play in a best-of-three series.  The division winner with the second-best record could select their opponent from the four wild card teams, and then the third division winner would choose who they faced among the remaining three wild card teams.  The two unselected wild card teams would face each other, with the winner facing the division winner with the best record in the second round.

This is nuts.

The reason why it makes sense to have so many wild card teams in the playoffs for football is that football is a much more chaotic, random sport than baseball.  In football the teams play only 16 games per year (although the owners want more), which is a small sample size.  Additionally, games can turn on a random event, such as a bad ball bounce or a gust of wind nudging a field goal attempt.  The odds that a 10-6 team really is better than a 9-7 teams is probably, maybe 30-40%.  Typically, a single win or loss is all that separates a division winner from a team staying home.

Teams play teams in their division twice and opponents from a designated division once, meaning that teams face a different quality of opponent.  In 2015, the Carolina Panthers faced one of the easiest schedules of all time, facing only one team with a winning record during the regular season, and finished 15-1.  Maybe if they had faced the teams from a better division, they wouldn’t have finished with quite so good a record.

Injuries can influence a team’s record as well.  If a key player goes down with an injury just when the team is playing an easy opponent, the impact may be irrelevant; but if injury strikes a key player when a team faces a strong opponent, a team might lose a game they might otherwise have won.

Baseball is different.  Baseball teams play 162 games, which is quite a large sample size.  In 2019 the number four wild card under this proposal would have been the 84-78 Boston Red Sox, who finished 12 games behind the wild card Tampa Bay Rays, who finished 96-66.  After a 162-game season we can definitively say that the Rays deserved to be in the post-season and the Red Sox did not.

Let’s talk about how much time this new format would take up.  The World Series already extends into November (well, October 30 last year).  But now there will be a three-game series before the divisional series, pushing the post-season back even further.  Another difference between baseball and football is that in football, the championship game is on a neutral field in a domed stadium or warm weather venue; they play the World Series where the teams are from.  What if Minnesota, which plays in an open-air stadium, were to host a World Series game in November (playoff games in October are nearly as problematic)?  Games called on account of blizzard are not only possible, but probable, and postponing the game for a day or two would not be an option; you’d have to wait for the spring thaw.

You could start the baseball season earlier, but that would pretty much mean starting in March.  In most of the country, inclement weather would be a factor and cause a lot of games to be rained out and made up later.

Plus, this three-game series would be almost random, as a three-game sample size is very small.  The number four wild card team could easily get lucky and knock out the second-best divisional winner.  Last year in the American League (assuming the #2 division winner picked the lowest seed possible) the 103-win Yankees would have played the 84-win Boston Red Sox.  Yes, the Yankees won 19 more games, but tell me the Bosox couldn’t possibly have won a best of three series against their most hatred rivals. 

Of course, the solution to the timing problem would be to shorten the regular season back to the old number, 154 games.  This would also address the problem of baseball playing far fewer double headers than before and forcing too many day-games-after-night games or having to play a day game on a “get away” day.  But the owners wouldn’t like losing the paying customers at 8 games, and the players wouldn’t like getting paid for 8 fewer games.  Also, even though 154 is the number of games they used to play, traditionalists would complain that after so many years of 162 games how would it affect record books.  In fewer games, could anyone challenge Roger Maris’ (non-steroid) record of 61 home runs in a season? 

Expanding the post-season in baseball is solving a problem that doesn’t exist by creating a host of other problems.  Major League Baseball shouldn’t reward teams just because they finish in the upper 50% of all the teams in the league.  This isn’t youth soccer, where every kid gets a participation trophy.   As for the argument that more teams will strive to make the playoffs if mediocre teams are allowed into the post-season, well, has anyone eve made an effort to get a participation trophy?