It doesn't, but I don't think it should ever happen. There is no reason they can't say the team with the best record in the league gets to play the team in the playoffs with the worst record. It would be a relatively minor change that doesn't impact a lot IMO.
I hear you but it's not like the league forced the two teams in the same division to have the best records in the league. I'm sure MLB wouldn't have wanted anything more than to see that kind of matchup in the ALCS/NLCS or WS. But, again, these things happen but not often enough where things should change. It's not like the NBA where you have 2/3's of the league making the playoffs.
You can get away with a 16 team playoff when you only play 60 games. Baseball is a streaky enough sport that you need a full regular season to determine who's any good.
I favor relegation system to force teams from tanking.... Keep the playoffs the same... but bottom 6 teams can't make the playoffs the next year and are relegated to AAA.
I don't know about relegating to AAA, but having a system where the bottom 6 teams can't qualify for the Wild Card the following year could be interesting.
Your story checks out, welcome to the bbs. Your ideas about the postseason are complete ****ing bullsh!t.
My idea: play 120 games, then drop the bottom 7 from each league. The top 8 then have a round robin (42 more games for each team). Top 4 from each league make the playoffs. Bad teams won't tank to avoid missing out on revenue. Essentially all round robin games are between good teams.
Coming out of the mouth of a teenaged CF user, a 16 team playoff sounds awful. You're almost certain to have at least one losing team sneak in as an 8 seed. The scary thing, It might be inevitable as soon as next year with the new CBA. 16 teams really cheapens the regular season, which is already the weakest point of baseball. I'm not opposed to playoff expansion in general, but the number of teams needs to be expanded from 30 to 32 to allow for a 12 team playoff, exact format as the NFL. The NBA playoffs are a bloated mess of 8 and 7 seeds that stand no chance hanging around for four or five games. You can have a big NBA Playoff because the first two rounds are borderline formalities. Hell, I think the NBA could really improve by restricting the playoff a bit, nobody likes watching 40-50 win teams getting swept by the 60+ win teams. The very nature of individual impact in basketball and baseball means you need to keep the .500-ish mediocraties out of the postseason in the MLB. You have 162 games to show if you're any good. Sadly, the endless march of money will continue until every sport has 32-team playoffs with jerseys resembling NASCAR or F1 suits with all the advertising.
Baseball is too random and the season too long to water it down with teams that don’t need to be there. The setup they have now is fine.
Agree. The current setup is not that bad. With three divisions you need a wildcard. The divisions have uneven schedules so I don’t think you can just ignore them and there should be a penalty for not winning your division. The wild card game gives teams a stronger incentive to win the division. Sometimes things like a 106 win team playing a single elimination game will happen, but pre-wild card the 106 win team wouldn’t have even had that chance. I think you could have two potential improvements though. Make the wild card game a three game series and extend the division series to 7. Takes a little bit of the chance out of things and gives us more playoff baseball. It still a big advantage to win the division, get some rest and line up your starters like you want. Alternatively, move to 4 divisions and get rid of the wild card.
They'd have to either start the season earlier (still cold), or play less regular season games... or the post-season would end in mid November with extended series.
I think you should just "punish" the WC teams with the schedule. Instead of a 1-game knockout, make it a regular 3 game series. They can play Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday following the regular season. If they advance they could play Thursday or Friday or both, then they'll get a rest day. Oh well, win your division and you can avoid that. I think most players and fans would prefer it.
4 Divisions is always still an option. However, I don't see a major problem with starting a week earlier or ending a week later. The extended series are 4 extra games total if they all go full. I don't think the weather on March 24th is much different than April 1 overall.
Still won't fix a scenario that a 106 win team gets punished equally to a 90 win team, simply because they played in the tougher division. In the end, a 1 game winner take all scenario is major punishment. The better team will likely win a 3 game series (less often than a 5 or 7 game series, but more-so than a 1 game only scenario). Given the ratings windfall MLB saw for those wild card games, I don't think they're going away.
Minus the snow games in Chicago/Detroit. In general, I do think MLB can try and schedule those first weeks in warmer weather cities/domed stadiums vs. exposed elements that lead to early postponed games or double-headers. Or they can go back to 154.
I don't think you worry about the random 106 win team bc it might not be an issue again for another 20 years or longer. It's the first postseason matchup ever of teams with this many combined wins. It's unfortunate, but too bad so sad. If it was the Astros nobody else would GAF, so why should I care? In that scenario the Dodgers wouldn't have to face the prospect of winning 106 games and getting knocked out with 1 single bad performance after a 162 game season. At least they would get to play a normal-length series. If you lose 2/3, then that sucks, but that's baseball.
It snows on April 1 too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_April_Fool's_Day_blizzard Anyway, I think we both agree it would be solvable if they wanted to solve it. I think the current structure is generally OK. My biggest complaint would be the first few rounds allow for a little too much randomness.
