I spend what is probably an unhealthy amount of time thinking about baseball. Usually I am thinking about ways to make the game more fun and interesting for fans. Looking forward to the upcoming (hopefully), COVID-19-shortened, 60-game season I thought to myself, “what if the regular season were two of these?” And fully down the rabbit hole I went.
The Format
·
The regular season would be divided into two
halves with the All-Star Game between, and each half would be 60 games (or 70
or 80 but the number of games is not important to this discussion).
·
Teams would qualify for the postseason based on
the standings after each half.
o
3 division winners and 1 wild card team in each
League
Scenarios
·
If 1 team wins its division in both halves, they
advance to the Division Series.
·
If 1 team wins the wild card in both halves, they
advance to the Division Series.
·
If 2 different teams win the same division, they
play each other in a best-of-three to decide who advances.
o All three games will be in the same city in three consecutive days.
o
Home field advantage in these three games would
be determined by head-to-head record for both halves of the season and then by
record within the division if a second tiebreaker is needed.
·
If 2 different teams win a wild card in the 2
halves, they would play a single game to determine who moves on.
o
Home field advantage in this game is determined
by which team has a better record for both halves of the season combined.
·
If a team wins its division in one half of the
season and the wild card in the other half, that team keeps their half-season
division title and the wild card spot goes to the team in second place in the
wild card standings.
·
In the event of a tie for any of the 8 possible
playoff spots, a single-game tiebreaker would be played only if it determines which
of the two tied teams is in the playoffs or out of the playoffs. All ties are broken to determine division
winners first. A tiebreaker game counts
as a regular-season game.
o
If two teams tie for a division in one half of
the season but both would qualify for the wild card then there would be no
tiebreaker game but instead the tiebreakers discussed earlier for home field
advantage would be used.
·
The 4 teams that advance (either by winning
their division in both half seasons or by the wild card round) would be seeded
1-4 based on combined record (the winner of the Wild Card Game would always be
seeded 4th). The playoffs
would then resume the format that we are accustomed to with a 5-game Division
Series round, a 7-game League Championship Series round, and a 7-game World
Series.
Application
I
wanted to take a look at how this situation would work if it were applied to
actual standings from the past. I
decided to use the end-of-season records from 2014 and 2019 to represent each
half of a hypothetical season. 2014
because the Orioles were really good that year and 2019 because it was last
year. Obviously, these standings reflect
whole seasons, not half seasons, and are only used as data in this hypothetical
scenario.
First, I looked at the American League and turns out it was no fun. The four playoff teams from each hypothetical half season are all different (I did not think this would happen when I chose these two seasons). Orioles @ Yankees, Tigers @ Twins, and Angels @ Astros would be our best-of-three matchups; and the Athletics would host the Royals in the Wild Card Game. The American League playoff bracket is shown below.
The National League, however, was completely different and it fully illustrates this proposed format. The Dodgers and the Cardinals won their division in each half season so they advance to the Division Series. The Nationals and the Braves both won their division in a half of the season and they will play each other in a best-of-three in order to go to the Division Series. The Giants and the Pirates tied for the wild card in the first half so they would play a single game tiebreaker to determine which team goes to the playoffs. This game would take place immediately after the conclusion of the first half and before the All-Star Game. Even though the Nationals won the wild card in the second half, that spot in the playoffs goes to the Brewers because the Nationals had already earned a playoff berth by winning their division in the first half. The National League playoff bracket is shown below.
If
Major League Baseball adopted this format for the regular season and the
playoffs, the sport would be even more exciting to follow. Every game is that much more important with
fewer games to determine who qualifies for the playoffs. There would be more teams in the mix to make
the postseason with more ways to get in, while also maintaining (and even
increasing) the importance of the regular season. Really good teams that win their division in
both halves of the season aren’t subjected to the possibility of being bounced
from the playoffs early because of the randomness of a short series or single
game. Conversely, teams that barely
squeak into the playoffs can be eliminated in a single game, and teams that are
unable to maintain their division dominance throughout the whole season would
make it harder for themselves later on.
It is important that Major League Baseball continue to engage with and make the game exciting for its fans. They shouldn’t take for granted that baseball is “The Great American Pastime” and that the fans will always be there to support them. That relationship, like any other relationship, must be constantly maintained and evolved or it could fade away. An updated season format is just one of many ways that the sport could be improved.
Major League Baseball: you can thank me later.
-Evan Ash