The MLB Is Considering A Radical Playoff Change With A Reality TV Twist

MLB Playoffs

NY Post

Imagine a team picking its playoff opponent. Think about Brian Cashman and the Yankees deciding whether to face the Red Sox or avoid them in the first round of the postseason. All on live TV.

Well, it is probably coming soon to the major leagues. MLB is seriously weighing a move from five to seven playoff teams in each league beginning in 2022, The Post has learned.

In this concept, the team with the best record in each league would receive a bye to avoid the wild-card round and go directly to the Division Series. The two other division winners and the wild card with the next best record would each host all three games in a best-of-three wild-card round. So the bottom three wild cards would have no first-round home games.

The division winner with the second-best record in a league would then get the first pick of its opponent from those lower three wild cards, then the other division winner would pick, leaving the last two wild cards to play each other.

The more and more I am trying to digest this news and idea the more I hate it. At first, I thought selfishly that this could help my Seattle Mariners finally earn a spot in the playoffs.. but then I thought about it more, this would essentially make the divisional races way less interesting and playoff berths way less valuable. I also don’t need to make baseball into reality TV. You know what baseball needs to do? Let them play, have fun, do bat flips and not be so stuck up. That will boost ratings and get kids to play. Let’s make baseball fun again. Plus, it’s not like local markets are not doing good, people love their baseball teams already. This is not needed by the MLB.

 

Written by @GeorgeONTap

The Co-Founder of the Sports ON Tap & Found every where @GeorgeoNTap. Sports, Travel, Experiences. All Things Sports.

+ Doing Seattle Sports for @SeattleONTap aka Sports ON Tap Seattle.