MLB plotting playoff expansion — with reality TV twist

It's not meant for people who post about baseball on Internet forums though. It's meant to attract interest from people who aren't currently watching the MLB playoffs. It's not going to fix all their issues, but the MLB needs to market their game better, and this is an easy and free way to attract some attention. If it's not your cup of tea don't watch, the selection results will be posted to Twitter instantly. I'd gladly trade the Red Sox Truck Day parade float for this.

Baseball will take that trade of more casual fans/more revenue/more entertaining product on the field come playoff time. Getting more casual fans to watch it is exactly what brings in more revenue. The diehards will always be there, despite them not agreeing with the way they think baseball should be played.

I welcome any revenue making ideas Mafred has, even the crappy ones because that's what's going to ensure that baseball doesn't become a regional or dying sport in my lifetime and that's the only thing that's important in my eyes. I'll never stop watching the greatest game on earth, baseball.

LOVE the idea of the best team picking their opponent.

Loathe the idea of expanding the playoff teams.

The NBA regular season is a complete joke, do you really want that?

I get that. They're exact opposites. I just meant that everyone makes it in. I guess it's fine if you offset it with more teams.

Reading the new idea and some of the responses reminds me of how some hate change. I look at this as does it attempt to solve some issues in baseball at this time? Or does it create new issues?

It seems it attempts to solve tanking by better teams at end of season and gives incentive for teams to WIN period. How’s that a bad thing?? It also creates a new revenue stream. ( don’t think for a second that playoff TV contracts won’t go up). Also not a bad thing.

Someone brought up balanced schedules which is something that will need to be addressed. But otherwise adding 2 teams to playoffs draws more fans to the game, gives more variability to whom mighty win, creates more incentive to actually win, and will add money to the game. Give me a downside other than it’s been done this way for so long I don’t like this garbage?? Winning your division is still important because you get home field advantage in playoffs and can pick who you play. So help me understand why it’s garbage or a bad idea? Just a huge baseball fans input and it’s interesting to see what players union says

Kind of a contradictory sentence there...

If the Sox aren't in it, I barely watch. Usually a few partial WS games. My local team (DC Area) were in this year and I fell asleep to 3 games probably.

"Rob, one of the league's richest teams just salary dumped the best player they developed in 40 years, fans are furious, how can we fix this?"
"I dunno, maybe we could find a way for them to make the playoffs when they go 82-80!"

It won't ever be like that, because the sports are fundamentally different. You know who's overwhelmingly likely to be in the NBA championship before they play the first regular season game. People weren't giving the Nats a real shot at the World Series even after they won NLDS! The NBA regular season doesn't matter that much because the seeding doesn't matter that much and most of the teams don't have a chance anyway. In baseball, seeding potentially can be a big deal, and if it is, that creates more meaningful races and games during the regular season.

The bottom line is that baseball has never had to compete harder for the attention of its fans, and fans pay attention when there's something to play for. Expanded playoffs gives more teams more things to play for.

So did the 1987 Twins, and that pre-dated the wild card.

The balance between the playoffs being fun and not making the regular season feel like a waste of time is important. Mediocre teams sneaking in and peaking at the right time every so often is cool, especially when you have fun stuff like Albert Pujols hitting a baseball so hard you can see Brad Lidge's soul depart his body in real time. Every team who is above .500 making the playoffs pretty much every year? Cockamamie seeding schemes? Eh.

The issue here is that it's fixing something that isn't one of the problems. This doesn't help Mookie Betts stay on the Red Sox. This doesn't help playoff games take less than four hours. This certainly doesn't help the insane anti-streaming policies, which locks out the way most people in 2020 would choose to watch baseball. They're not trying to fix problems, they're just trying to appeal to The Kids by Being Zany. This is Poochie.

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On a slightly related note, as a basketball fan I'd like to draw a distinction. The reason more teams making the playoffs in basketball works is because usually the best team wins a basketball game, so the playoff structure rewards excellence in a way that baseball can't. The Orioles would beat the Dodgers at least 25% of the time, which means they'd win a seven-game series like 12% of the time. That makes individual upsets in basketball exciting in a way that they really can't be in baseball. You can have a 42-40 team make the playoffs because they're probably not going to beat a great team. And if they do, it's probably really, really, really wild in a way that baseball just isn't from game to game.


EDIT: My timing was a little off, in that the Pujols-Lidge soultheft was in the 2005 playoffs, when the Cardinals failed to win in the end. My point stands.

Help, police, I'd like to report a murder.

I didn't really come back to MLB until I quit the NHL. I can and will find something else to do with my time and money when I can't handle it anymore.