Sherman: MLB to change playoff format

UNCBlue012

UNCBlue012

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EXCLUSIVE: MLB is planning a radical change to their postseason perhaps by 2022, hoping to move from 5 to 7 teams in each league and -- get this -- have the teams with the best records pick their playoff opponents.

Wow - thoughts?
 
Why are we playing 162 games again?

Cut the season by 25% and start the playoffs in September (World Series in October) and I could get on board.

But I am also wondering if baseball is again wasting time trying to cater to type of person that will never be interested in baseball, while ignoring what makes the current fan interest in baseball.
 
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7 is an extremely weird number. 6 feels like the sweet spot. With the two best teams getting first round BYE instead of picking their opponent and the first round being bumped to 3 games instead of the 1 game wildcard. So a 3-5-7-7 format.

Keeps the regular season important, only extends the possible amount of games by 2, rewards the two best teams, and keeps the hopes of marginal teams alive longer thus increasing fan interest and revenue. The only potential downside is that perhaps it may give the two best teams too much of an advantage, but I think this could be mitigated by increasing the time between the first two rounds by a few days, giving pitchers time to rest. This may necessitate decreasing the regular season schedule by a few games, but that's not really a big deal in my eyes.
 
chop2chip said:
Why are we playing 162 games again?

Cut the season by 25% and start the playoffs in September (World Series in October) and I could get on board.

But I am also wondering if baseball is again wasting time trying to cater to type of person that will never be interested in baseball, while ignoring what makes the current fan interest in baseball.
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25% would be a MASSIVE cut. That is too extreme for me, but cutting it down to ~150 games or so would be fine with me. There are some complications given that baseball is such a stat-heavy sport and the record books would be sketchy, but I don't think that's an insurmountable obstacle. But going down to 120 games or something would be insane.
 
chop2chip said:
Why are we playing 162 games again?

Cut the season by 25% and start the playoffs in September (World Series in October) and I could get on board.

But I am also wondering if baseball is again wasting time trying to cater to type of person that will never be interested in baseball, while ignoring what makes the current fan interest in baseball.
Click to expand...

Awful. 162 games and basically HALF the teams make the playoffs? Awful.

Agreed. You'd have to cut regular season games, but MLB would never do that.
 
They won’t actually do this - they are just floating this out there to see what the fan response will be - and it isn’t pretty.
This is will go away like New Coke.
 
Except, of course, “new coke” was a brilliant marketing strategy to bury Pepsi in the cola wars, but I digress...
 
What the hell is the format for 7 teams per league? Two play-in games followed by a third play-in game to narrow 4 wild cards down to 1, then placing it in the NLDS with the 3 division winners as now? That's all I can think of, that the wild cards would need to start the postseason 2-0 to get to the NLDS.
 
As far as that pick your opponent foolishness, that will definitely go nowhere, but this is just the perfect time for it. Astros, BoSox, Yankees cheating? Let's create new avenues to take advantage of!
 
Snowman said:
What the hell is the format for 7 teams per league? Two play-in games followed by a third play-in game to narrow 4 wild cards down to 1, then placing it in the NLDS with the 3 division winners as now? That's all I can think of, that the wild cards would need to start the postseason 2-0 to get to the NLDS.
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Round Robin with the top two teams playing in the NLCS? That sounds like a really, really stupid idea at first, but the more I think about it the more I think it would actually be kinda fun lol
 
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