The decision to expand the playoff field felt like every other change to the basic structure of baseball in this odd, pandemic-constricted season, where we would accept just about anything short of changing the number of outs in an inning as long as it meant we got actual baseball. Universal DH? Sure, I wanted that anyway! Runner on second base to start extra innings? Fine, it’s the price of baseball this year. Replacing select umpires with circus clowns to see if anyone notices? Now you’re wondering if I made that last part up!
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The news on Wednesday that an expanded playoff format could continue into 2021 and beyond is decidedly unwelcome. The expanded playoffs were a solution to a specific problem: a truncated regular season deprived owners of a significant amount of broadcast revenue. A bigger field and more games add revenue for the postseason, which is shared across all teams and pays out at a higher rate per game because the telecasts are usually national. Even if we all wish to indulge in the fantasy that the 2021 season will return us to the halcyon days of (checks notes) 2019, with 162 games and fans in the seats, MLB will still see lower-than-usual revenues next year and that probably won’t bounce all the way back until 2022. Grabbing some extra cash now is probably just good business, and fans get a little bit more baseball in a year when they were getting less than half of a regular season.
Going forward, however, expanded playoffs would be primarily a money grab, and they risk diluting the regular season as a unique product while simultaneously reducing the value of individual games as broadcast properties in the playoffs. It also prioritizes short-term gain over the long-term financial health of the sport. Given that teams are shedding scouts — the lifeblood of the sport and the very folks asked to find future talent at deeply discounted prices — I suppose we could at least award MLB points for internal consistency.
Major League Baseball’s biggest differentiator from other major men’s North American sports leagues has long been its regular season, which takes up more of the calendar and stands alone on the stage for most of the summer. It also carries more weight than other leagues’ seasons because MLB has long allowed the lowest percentage of its teams into the postseason. The NHL has long gone the other direction: in 1980-81, the league had 21 teams, and 16 made the playoffs. Three of the clubs that missed the playoffs eventually relocated, including the original Colorado Rockies, who moved to New Jersey after just one more year in Denver.
The NHL and NBA both let just over half their teams into the playoffs; the NFL lets in 14 of 32, or 44 percent; in 2019, MLB let in one-third, and that format includes two teams that would exit the playoffs after a one-game wild card. The NHL and NBA use their regular seasons as an extended exercise in determining seeding – and that’s fine, neither better nor worse than the MLB format, just different. With the move to let in 16 of 30 teams, the same ratio as the NBA allows, or even 14 teams (with two division winners getting a bye in the first round) out of 30, MLB loses a prime differentiator between itself and its major competitors on the men’s sports landscape.
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It also feels like a possible shadow move to discourage the best teams from spending at or above the luxury-tax threshold, because the reward for being the best team in the regular season is so much less than it was previously. Winning 100-plus games in the regular season meant a guaranteed playoff berth when those were somewhat scarce — no team has won 100 games and missed the playoffs in the wild-card era — but with 16 of 30 teams making the playoffs, 90 wins would almost certainly guarantee you a ticket into the postseason.
If 100 wins doesn’t do much for you but improve your seeding, what is the financial incentive to spend more to get to 100 when we know that the results of playoff series aren’t that far from 50/50, and making your team that much better on paper barely increases your odds of advancing? The answer is probably “very little,” and that would impact the free-agent market at all levels — even at the very top, as teams that typically run huge payrolls would no longer see the return on a $30 million investment in one player as they did under a system where fewer teams made the playoffs, and you could easily win 95 games and go home on Oct. 1.
MLB also had the advantage of a very compact postseason format that typically saw the entire slate played within one month (and often within the calendar month of October). That could change under a new format, with an extra round-plus of games, or MLB could stick to the format they’re using this year, which compresses the whole tournament by removing off days — a schedule that works against pitcher health and effectiveness and is something players typically oppose. The more we ask guys to pitch on short rest, the more they tend to get hurt. These innings are already high-leverage; asking premier relievers to throw more such innings on little to no rest seems like a recipe to blow guys out.
The potential plan isn’t all bad, and I don’t just mean that it will increase profits for billionaires. It disincentivizes tanking, because the bar to reach the playoffs is probably no longer even a .500 record. The model that multiple teams have used in the last decade — tearing down the entire roster, losing 100+ games for multiple seasons, restocking the system with high draft picks and the products of trades — hasn’t worked as well recently. Fans have generally accepted it, and even cheered teams doing it, because it did result in the Astros and the Cubs winning World Series titles, and watching a bad team in the majors with a burgeoning farm system and call-ups of exciting rookies was better than watching a team hovering in the 75- to 80-win range with neither hope of the playoffs nor the potential to land the next Casey Mize or MacKenzie Gore in the draft. Now, that team that’s projected to win 75 to 80 games is on the edge of playoff contention, and they’d have a much harder time selling their fans (or players, for that matter) on tanking. These teams probably won’t be in the market for the elite free agents, but they’re less likely to sell off talent, and that could in turn prop up salaries for some lower tiers of free agents because buyers would have fewer options available in trades.
Less tanking would mean more fans engaged with their favorite teams deeper into the season, although it might be somewhat offset by declining interest from fans of teams who coast through the last month or two because their playoff spots are secure. It also puts worse teams in the playoffs, a time when you expect to see the best of the best on the field, and increases the risk that we’ll see more blowouts against depleted or just inferior pitching staffs.
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Baseball does need to expand its audience, and that will entail changes to the game on the field and to its structure off of it. I’m sure we’ll eventually see expansion, which brings a large one-time windfall to baseball owners, and which might help reflect demographic shifts, as the 30 MLB franchises we have now aren’t located in a way that maximizes the sport’s reach to the U.S. and Canadian populations. The universal DH is almost certainly here to stay, which absolutely will help the sport, removing the worst hitters in baseball from National League lineups. The automated strike zone is probably coming soon; I think the idea of eschewing available technology in favor of noticeable errors is confusing to anyone who didn’t grow up a fan of the sport (and to many of us who did).
Expanding the playoffs isn’t one of those easy wins. It will further line the coffers of MLB owners, though. Maybe they’ll use the extra cash to rehire all the scouts and coaches they’ve let go this year. (Narrator: They won’t.)
(Photo of Victor Robles: Will Newton / Getty Images)
