I don’t know about all of you, but I’ve never craved stories on which players have reported to spring training in the best shape of their lives more than I do right now. As the labor impasse stretches deep into its third month, with the start of the regular season now in jeopardy, we unfortunately have time to dig into one of the core issues at stake: expanded playoffs. The owners have proposed a 14-team postseason, while the players have countered with a 12-team setup, although undoubtedly will agree to 14 if the owners bend on the salary-specific disputes.
Baseball has always prided itself on the fact that it’s more difficult to make its postseason than the other major sports, with 10 playoff teams currently compared to 14 for the NFL and 16 for the NBA and NHL. It’s a big-event world these days, however, and the lure of TV lucre is too tempting to resist. Don’t act so surprised. More playoff games would bring in additional national TV revenue on top of the annual $1.76 billion that deals with Fox, ESPN and TBS will pay through 2028.
So expanded playoffs are inevitable, but what is the best format to crown a champion? The playoff-less — but exquisitely straightforward — system used in the Premier League in England (each team plays the other 19 teams at home and away) is a non-starter over here in the colonies, while the chaos of March Madness is probably too extreme for a tradition-bound sport like baseball.
I think four important factors should be considered here:
1) The integrity of the regular season. The beauty of baseball is a team proving itself over the grind of 162 games, so regular-season success should weigh heavily in any postseason format, whether in limiting the number of teams that make it or rewarding the best teams with higher seeds or byes.
2) How fair is the playoff format? Does it crown a true champion based on that regular-season success? Do you like random champions or a system where the best teams prevail more often? Everyone enjoys Cinderellas early on in the NCAA tournament, but you don’t want four No. 11 seeds in the Final Four. A format with too many one-game matchups or three-game series can create too many upsets.
3) The fun factor. On the other hand, elimination games are fun!
4) Drama. There should be a buildup of excitement from the regular season all the way through October.
OK, so let’s take a look and give a completely scientific and objective grade to past, present and potential future postseason formats …
Number of playoff teams: 2
Format: World Series
Previous incarnation: 1903-1968
Maximum games: 7 (there were a few best-of-9 World Series)
Best team wins: 59.8%
“The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” There was something uncomplicated and elegant to the two league champions winning a pennant and advancing directly to the World Series, with no kooky playoff games in the way. Teams earned their trip to the Fall Classic by beating their opponents over 154 or 162 games and the World Series was the biggest thing in sports.
While we remember Bobby Thomson’s home run or the classic pennant races like the 1964 National League or 1967 American League ones, the regular season could be a drag; there were many years when baseball fans were just waiting to see who would face the Yankees in the World Series. Indeed, the average margin between the first- and second-place teams in this era was 6.8 games. And if the World Series was a dud — 12 of the 65 World Series in this period were sweeps — then the entire postseason was a dud.
There’s something else to consider about this era as well. Should an entire baseball season come down to the ability of one pitcher to dominate one series? I see this both ways. When Sandy Koufax started three games and twice shut out the Twins in the 1965 World Series, he started 43% of the games and pitched 40% of the Dodgers’ innings, compared to 25% and 23% in the regular season. Just like you loved to see Michael Jordan taking that final shot, the biggest stars shouldered much of the workload in the season’s biggest games. On the other hand, if we’re trying to crown the best team, suddenly you’re playing a different game in October. I kind of like my postseason baseball to resemble my regular-season baseball. I can love Koufax’s heroics, but I also appreciated how the Braves put together a team effort this past October.
Regular-season integrity: 10
Postseason fairness: 6
Fun factor: 3
Drama: 5
Total points: 24
Number of playoff teams: 4
Format: LCS, World Series
Previous incarnation: 1969-1993 (excepting 1981)
Maximum playoff games: 21
Best team wins: 29.2%
With the addition of four expansion teams in 1969, MLB split its leagues into six-team divisions and created the league championship series. This created the exciting possibility of four division races and, more importantly, an extra round of playoff games to increase television revenue — although pennies compared to the money now at stake. Inexplicably, apparently not wanting to distract from the importance of the World Series, the LCS were merely best-of-five affairs until 1985. (Although this concern is generally overstated; a shorter series isn’t really any better or worse at determining the better team than a longer series — until you play a best-of-67, the number of games one study indicated where skill starts separates itself from luck.)
Some of baseball’s most memorable playoff races occurred under this format — the 1978 AL East tie between the Yankees and Red Sox or the epic 1993 NL West race between the Braves (104 wins) and Giants (103 wins). There was no backing into the postseason as a wild card; the Red Sox and Giants both went home. The average division margin was about the same as the pre-division era at 6.4 games, but since you had four divisions instead of two leagues, you had twice as many good playoff races.
I loved this format — although this could be a reflection of my own quest for nostalgia, since it’s the format I grew up with. The regular season could be tense and exciting and mattered because you had to win the division to make the playoffs. The postseason never dragged, since it lasted about three weeks. Every matchup felt important because you could follow everything and get caught up in the twists and turns of a series. The memorable 1986 postseason began on Oct. 7 and concluded with Game 7 of the World Series on Oct. 27.
Divisions, however, are an imperfect setup. For much of the late ’70s and into the ’80s, the AL East was much stronger than the AL West. The Angels won the AL West in 1979 even though four AL East teams won more games. Five East teams won more games than the Royals in 1984. In 1987, the Tigers won 98 games, the Blue Jays 96, the Brewers 91 and the Yankees 89, while the Twins won the West with just 85 wins — and then went on to win the World Series. Their playoff rotation: Frank Viola, Bert Blyleven … and Les Straker.
OK, so the Twins won with a two-man rotation. In general, however, it became harder for one pitcher to dominate the postseason – although Orel Hershiser’s legendary run in 1988 for the Dodgers (1.05 ERA over 42⅔ innings) certainly surpassed anything Koufax or Gibson ever did in a single postseason.
One of the goofy aspects to this era was home-field advantage wasn’t based on regular-season record, but instead alternated between divisions and then leagues in the World Series. The Twins had a unique home-field advantage with the old Metrodome, with its noise, roof, bouncy turf and perhaps a timely blast or two of air conditioning. Those 1987 Twins went 56-25 at home and 29-52 on the road, but were fortunate to have home-field advantage in both the ALCS and World Series and went 6-0 at home, including 4-0 in the World Series. In 1991, they once again went 4-0 at home in the World Series. Long live the Homer Hanky.
Regular-season integrity: 8
Postseason fairness: 8
Fun factor: 6
Drama: 7
Total points: 29
Number of playoff teams: 8
Format: LDS, LCS, World Series
Previous incarnation: 1995-2011
Maximum playoff games: 41
Best team wins: 17.6%
After the leagues were split into three divisions, the wild-card era began with an instant classic in 1995 when the Mariners beat the Yankees in the division series, perhaps still the greatest best-of-five series ever played (the 1980 NLCS between the Phillies and Astros raises its hand).
The new format met with immediate detractors — for the love of Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel, a second-place team could win the World Series! — and, sure enough, it took only until 1997 before the wild-card Florida Marlins did win. This created a fair amount of consternation at the time and then felt even more dubious when the Marlins immediately broke up the team. The Marlins won another World Series as a wild card in 2003, so the franchise has two World Series titles despite never finishing in first place.
For the most part, however, we’ve gotten past that ignominy. Nobody except Yankees fans seemed to care that the 2004 Red Sox team that ended the curse actually had finished in second place. We’ve now had seven wild-card winners, including the 2002 Angels, 2011 Cardinals, 2014 Giants and 2019 Nationals.
A few problems with this new format:
1) The great pennant (or division) race ceased to exist. Sure, you could have a close division race, but you no longer had one between two great teams with everything on the line since the second-place team was guaranteed a postseason spot anyway. Those 2004 Red Sox won 98 games, three games behind the Yankees, but easily punched their ticket to the postseason.
2) Indeed, teams didn’t even necessarily go all-out to win the division. The only penalty for not finishing first was losing home-field advantage, but that’s generally a minor thing in baseball. It proved more important to make sure your pitching staff was rested and lined up for the playoffs rather than pushing hard to finish first place.
3) There was a rule that you couldn’t play a team from your own division in the division series, which could mean the No. 1 seed, instead of playing the weakest playoff team, instead had to play a tougher opponent. This rule no longer exists, which is how in 2021 we ended up with the Giants playing the Dodgers in the NLDS.
4) Weather. An additional round meant playoff games were pushed even deeper into October, when cold weather could turn the summer game frigid. There’s nothing like a World Series game in Cleveland when your second baseman has to wear hand warmers and a down jacket while trying to chase down a pop fly.
Regular-season integrity: 5
Postseason fairness: 8
Fun factor: 6
Drama: 4
Total points: 23
Number of playoff teams: 10
Format: Wild card, LDS, LCS, World Series
Previous incarnation: 2012-2021 (excepting 2020)
Maximum playoff games: 43
Best team wins: 22.2%
It’s now been 10 years — nine seasons — of the wild-card game and I still go back and forth on it. MLB and TV officials like it because it brings in a little extra money and because elimination games draw higher ratings (the Red Sox-Yankees wild-card game this past October was the highest-rated MLB game on ESPN since 1998). The thing is, most of the wild-card games haven’t felt like a big game, unless of course you have a rooting interest in one of the participants. If one of the goals was to replicate the single-game magnitude of an NFL playoff game, that hasn’t happened. There are still so many more playoff games to come that it’s just not a big deal.
There have been some exceptions. Certainly, that Red Sox-Yankees game felt big because it’s Red Sox-Yankees. The Dodgers’ game versus the Cardinals also felt ridiculously tense, because a 106-win team faced the possibility of going one-and-done in the playoffs. There have also been a few classic games, especially the 2014 AL wild-card game between the A’s and Royals when the Royals scored three in the eighth and one in the ninth to tie it and then two in the bottom of the 12th to win it. For the most part though, the wild-card has always felt a little gimmicky; we’ve been conditioned that you win a playoff series, not a playoff game.
How good has the typical World Series champion been during the wild-card era? As you can see, the more teams you add to the playoffs, the less likely the best team wins; that’s the nature of baseball. The average World Series champion in the wild-card era has ranked as the 4.44th-best team in the majors, with the best regular-season team winning seven times. Here’s how that compares to the other leagues since 1995, using win-loss record for MLB and NBA, points for NHL, and Football-Reference’s simple rating system score for NFL:
MLB: 4.44 (seven No. 1 champs)
NFL: 4.11 (10 No. 1 champs)
NBA: 2.70 (10 No. 1 champs)
NHL: 4.81 (five No. 1 champs)
If you like the best teams to win it all, the NBA is your sport. The other three are pretty similar — sometimes the best team wins, most times it doesn’t. Once you’ve expanded to 10 teams, however, I’m not sure it’s a big deal to expand to 14 (other than allowing even lesser teams into the postseason). Even with the eight- or 10-team format, we’ve seen the 83-win Cardinals win it all in 2006; we had the all-wild card World Series in 2014 with the Giants and Royals; the 2021 Braves had the 12th-best record in the majors.
This is also a good time to address a popular narrative I’ve been hearing and reading a lot about lately, used to criticize modern-day playoff baseball. Let’s call it the “This guy is no Bob Gibson” narrative. First off, I hate to break it to those aching for the good old days, but 1968 is closer to the dead ball era than it is to 2022. I do understand the sentiment of wanting the starting pitcher to factor more into the game, especially after the past two postseasons with the controversial removals of Blake Snell and Ian Anderson and the constant churn of relievers. Yes, the last complete game in the postseason came in 2017, from Justin Verlander in the ALCS, but this narrative ignores: A) 2017 wasn’t that long ago; B) Stephen Strasburg’s performance in 2019 when he went 5-0 with a 1.98 ERA over 36⅓ innings, was a historic postseason and just happened two years ago; C) Madison Bumgarner’s performance in 2014, which (no offense to Gibson or Koufax) was the most impressive postseason pitching in history and isn’t exactly ancient history; D) There were many World Series before and after Bob Gibson when nobody threw a complete game.
Even the greats sometimes failed. A tiring Gibson allowed four runs in the late innings to lose Game 7 of the 1968 World Series. “Gibson stayed in, of course,” Roger Angell wrote, “It was inconceivable that [Cardinals manager Red] Schoendienst would take him out. He batted for himself in the eighth and fanned, and gave up another run in the ninth, on three singles. His stillness, his concentration, his burning will kept him out there, where he belonged.”
Yes, that star-driven drama is fundamental to appreciating a sport. But we’ve had plenty of it in recent years, if we just allow ourselves to enjoy it.
Regular-season integrity: 7
Postseason fairness: 6
Fun factor: 6
Drama: 6
Total points: 25
Number of playoff teams: 12 or 14
Format: Best-of-3 first round with byes, LDS, LCS, World Series
Previous incarnation: N/A
Maximum games: 53 (12 teams) or 59 (14 teams)
Best team wins: N/A
Let’s group these together, since they’re similar. The NFL used a 12-team playoff format for many years until moving to 14 in 2020, giving first-round byes to the top two teams in each conference. It’s a little bit of an awkward fit in MLB since you would be rewarding only two of the three division winners with a bye. On the other hand, it would push teams throughout the season to finish with one of those top two records. Mediocre teams that win a weak division, such as the 2021 Braves taking the NL East with just 88 wins, would face a tougher path through the postseason than they currently do under the 10-team format.
This is the 14-team format MLB has proposed, and it’s a big change from anything we’ve seen:
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The best record in each league gets a bye into the best-of-five division series while the other six teams play best-of-three wild-card series.
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The two other division winners and the best wild-card team not only get to pick their opponent but would host all three games over three consecutive days.
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The three winners move on and the playoffs proceed as they stand now: best-of-five division series, LCS, World Series.
I like the 14-team playoff format a lot better, mostly because of how it rewards the team with the best overall record in each league. I like eliminating the wild-card game with a best-of-three series. The negative: You could be adding sub-.500 teams to the postseason. Yuck.
So how good (or bad) would these additional playoff teams be? The average wins going back to 2011 (excepting 2020) for the sixth- and seventh-place teams in each league:
AL6: 88.3
AL7: 85.8
NL6: 85.6
NL7: 82.3
Under the 12-team format, there would have been one under-.500 team (80-82) and an additional three (80 wins, two with 79) under the 14-team format. So history suggests in a 14-team format we might see a losing team in the playoffs every two to three years. When we do go to 14 teams, what remains to be seen is if it will push teams to compete harder (spending more to get into the playoffs or get the top seed) or not compete as hard (it will be easier to get in).
Regular-season integrity: 5
Postseason fairness: 6
Fun factor: 7
Drama: 7
Total points: 25
Number of playoff teams: 16
Format: 16-team bracket
Previous incarnation: 2020
Maximum games: 65
Best team wins: 100%
If there’s one thing the NCAA tournament has taught us, it’s that we love our brackets. So it’s no surprise that this one-off from the COVID-shortened 2020 MLB season … worked? Sort of, kind of? OK, maybe you hated it. Too many teams; I get that. And I think one reason it worked is because we ended up with the Rays and the Dodgers, the two best teams, in the World Series. It wouldn’t have looked so fun if the 29-31 Astros had played the 29-31 Brewers in the World Series.
There were other reasons this was entertaining. The rapid-fire nature of the best-of-three first round with baseball all day long — much of it played in warm, sunny early fall weather — perfect baseball weather. Much better than freezing October night games at Fenway Park. If only more postseason games were played during the day. Because of the short series, that first round did feel more exciting than the initial games of a division series. This format also worked because there were fewer off days than a normal postseason. I wish MLB would consider fewer off days as a permanent feature
Anyway, the drawback with the 16-team bracket is a big one: There is little to be gained from crushing the regular season, other than home-field advantage. Now think of the bigger ramifications. Since a good team can cruise into the playoffs, load management and resting your stars becomes an important strategy. We would see starting pitchers throwing even fewer innings — and nobody wants that. Things like division titles become irrelevant (in fact, similar to the NBA, it becomes more about the league standings than the division standings, so you had might as well eliminate divisions).
Regular-season integrity: 3
Postseason fairness: 4
Fun factor: 8
Drama: 5
Total points: 20
Number of playoff teams: 16
Format: College World Series style
Previous incarnation: N/A
Maximum games: 48
Best team wins: N/A
OK, let’s think outside the box and ramp up the fun factor. The College World Series is an eight-team double-elimination tournament, culminating in a best-of-three championship series. The maximum number of games is 17, so double that to 16 teams and you get a maximum of 34. But we’ll modify this just a bit. Instead of a best-of-three championship series, we’ll make it the traditional best-of-seven LCS. Then we add on the best-of-seven World Series, giving us a maximum of 48 games.
What we’re doing is eliminating the excessive number of first-round games and the often tedious onslaught of division series games. Now every game has the absolute intensity and energy of a knockout game, without the gimmick of the one-and-done contest. In this format, you can lose your first game and still win the whole thing. Yes, travel and logistics would have to be worked out (giving home-field advantage to the best records to give some semblance of importance to the regular season would also be a plus). It’s a more creative approach to playoff baseball than a bracket, without losing the tradition of the LCS and World Series, and would ramp up the big-game feel of that first week of playoff baseball.
Regular-season integrity: 3
Postseason fairness: 5
Fun factor: 10
Drama: 7
Total points: 25
Number of teams: 24
Format: Eight teams get byes in the first round
Previous incarnation: N/A
Maximum games: 73
Best team wins: N/A
Look, once you go to 14 playoff teams, you’re probably going to 16 sooner rather than later. And once you go to 16, you’ve already devalued the regular season to a significant degree. So that puts 24 teams in play at some point in the future. Hold on, don’t throw your phone down just yet. Here’s the format: The top four teams in each league get a first-round bye while the remaining 16 teams play a one-game loser-go-home contest to advance into the 16-team bracket (or College World Series format mentioned above), giving us an additional eight games to kick off the postseason.
Unlike a straight 16-team bracket, at least finishing in the top four gives you some sort of advantage. But how to make the regular season more important when 80% of the teams make the postseason? Here’s how we juice up this one: The six teams that don’t make the playoffs move to the bottom of the draft. If you can’t make a 24-team playoff, you should not be rewarded; you should be punished like Albert Pujols would a Brad Lidge slider. This adds a whole new level of … umm, let’s go with uniqueness — to the regular season, kind of like relegation in soccer. Suddenly, everyone will care who the 24th-best team in baseball is.
Especially when that team wins the World Series.
Regular-season integrity: 3
Postseason fairness: 4
Fun factor: 8
Drama: 9
Total points: 24
Number of teams: All of them!
Format: Umm, might need to expand to 32 teams
Previous incarnation: Those domestic cups are popular in soccer
Maximum games: My head hurts
Best team wins: Good luck!