Glaser: MLB’s Playoff Proposal Won’t Fix Its Problems

Image credit: Nationals GM Mike Rizzo (Photo by Rob Tringali/Getty Images)

The New York Post reported Monday that Major League Baseball is considering an expanded postseason where 14 of the league’s 30 teams would make the playoffs and the top teams would get to pick their opponents.

Regardless of whether the best postseason format is the past or present one, it certainly is not this future one.

MLB should be working hard to be less like the NHL and NBA when it comes to the postseason, not more. Those are the leagues that feature roughly half of all teams making the playoffs, and we know what happens.

Teams with losing records get in. No one remembers what happens in the first round. The regular season is irrelevant. Making the playoffs becomes a meaningless accomplishment.

One of baseball’s most valuable assets is its playoff teams have proved undeniably worthy. After 162 games, the teams who make it have earned it.

Adopt this proposal and MLB throws that all away. Devalue the 162-game regular season to the point that even teams who barely finish above .500—as the seventh-best teams in each league, the Red Sox (84-78) and D-backs (85-77) did last year—can call themselves playoff teams, and making the playoffs becomes little more than a participation trophy. In 2017, there would have been a three-way tie for the sixth-best record in the American League—all three teams (the Angels, Royals and Rays) finished at 80-82.

All that in the name of satisfying broadcast partners, who, by the way, are already paying MLB more than a combined $1 billion per year and are zero threat to suddenly just stop carrying MLB games. MLB doesn’t need radical changes to survive in the modern media landscape.

Baseball is already dealing with a number of long-term problems, from the increasing length of game times to declining attendance to a sign-stealing scandal that has created a crisis in credibility.

Embracing mediocrity to generate superficial excitement is not a fix to MLB’s problems. It would just create new ones.

How They Would Have Finished
MLB’s reported playoff proposal would expand the playoffs to seven teams in each league. Here is how many wins the seventh place team finished with in each of the past 19 seasons.
Year	AL	Wins	NL	Wins
2019	Boston	84	Arizona	85
2018	Seattle	89	Three-way tie	82
2017	Three-way tie	80	St. Louis	83
2016	Two-way tie	86	Miami	79
2015	Minnesota	83	Washington	83
2014	Cleveland	85	Two-way tie	79
2013	Two-way tie	85	Arizona	81
2012	Los Angeles	89	Milwaukee	83
2011	Toronto	81	Los Angeles	82
2010	Toronto	85	Colorado	83
2009	Tampa Bay	84	Atlanta	86
2008	Toronto	86	Two-way tie	86
2007	Toronto	83	Atlanta	84
2006	Toronto	87	Cincinnati	80
2005	Minnesota	83	Two-way tie	83
2004	Chicago	83	San Diego	87
2003	Two-way tie	86	Two-way tie	85
2002	Chicago	81	Montreal	83
2001	Boston	82	Two-way tie	86