Is the Major League Baseball Playoff System Broken?

Before I begin, please forgive me; brevity has never been my strong suit...

Before we delve too deep, let’s get some background. In the NBA and the NHL, 16 of 30 teams make the playoffs every year (53.3%). In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams makes the playoffs (37.5%) and in Major League Baseball, only 8 teams every year get to go to the postseason, or just 26.7% of the teams in the league. For a very long time, only the best team from each league made it to the World Series and in 1908 when the Cubs last won a World Series, choosing one out of eight teams to represent each league didn’t seem too unreasonable. After all, they did play 155-158 games so theoretically the best team would have won the most games.

Over the next 60 years, only four teams were added but the playoff format remained the same with only two of twenty teams playing in the postseason in 1968. Four teams were added for the 1969 season (the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Pilots, Montreal Expos, and the San Diego Padres) and the number of playoff teams doubled with the addition of the League Championship Series.

Continued expansion and division realignment has led us to where we are today with three division champions and one wildcard team from each league. Does it really need to be changed?

All across sports, when it comes to tournaments or playoff systems, they are structured to give the best teams an advantage and to give them the best chance to win the tournament out of all the teams involved. In the case of the NFL, this means giving the top two teams from each conference a week off to rest up while the lower ranked teams duke it out in the first round. In the NBA this means giving the better team more home games since crowd noise in such a small space can cause confusion for the road team.

Is there really that much of a home field advantage in baseball? Well, yes and no. First of all, every baseball field is physically different. Some have acres of foul territory and some have very little; some have a flag pole in the field of play along with a little hill while others have a 37 foot tall fence. These little differences help the home team because their players are more adept at adjusting to those little quirks than the visiting players. However, the vast majority of communication in baseball is nonverbal. Quarterbacks call plays and then call out audibles before the snap and point guards call out plays as they come down the court. Catchers use certain numbers of fingers to indicate pitches. Base coaches use sometimes comical sequences of touching certain body parts or making certain gestures to tell the batter or baserunner to do something in particular. Therefore, crowd noise isn’t nearly as big a factor in baseball as it is in other sports.

For the sake of argument though, when it comes to playoff baseball, the teams that make it to the playoffs are solid teams that aren’t likely to be thrown off by a raucous stadium and this reduces the home field advantage even further.

THE NUMBERS

In the wildcard era, the team with the best overall record entering the playoffs has won the World Series just twice; the 1998 New York Yankees (114-48) and the 2009 New York Yankees (103-59). It should be noted that the 2007 Boston Red Sox are not listed because while they did tie with the Cleveland Indians for the league’s best record at 96-66, the Indians were given home field advantage in that series because due to tiebreakers, they were the top overall seed. Even if we were to expand the sample to the teams with one of the two best records in that particular year, that only adds three more teams (1995 Atlanta Braves, 2005 Chicago White Sox, and the 2007 Boston Red Sox). So in fifteen years, only one third of the championships have been won by a team that was in the top two in the league in wins.

Over the same time period, the top overall seed has won the Super Bowl just three times but when you include the top two, that number jumps to ten teams. Also, the NFL does a much better job of protecting its top seeds; of the thirty teams to play in the Super Bowl in the past fifteen years, 22 of them had a first round bye, meaning they would have to play at very most one road game to get to the Super Bowl.

The same trend can be found in the NBA where one of the top two seeds in each conference has made the finals 24 times in the past 15 years, including more than half (16 out of 30) of the number one seeds.

The dichotomy is obvious but the real question is; is it a problem?

I don’t necessarily think that it’s a problem; I just think that unlike some of the other professional sports, there is relatively little incentive to win your division once you have a playoff berth sewn up. A perfect example of this is how the Yankees stumbled down the stretch this year and appeared to put little stock in winning the AL East and sure enough, the Rays played slightly better at the end of the season and won the division. However, the method to the madness was revealed in a dominant first round sweep of the Twins by the Yankees. Manager Joe Girardi used September to line his team up for the playoffs and though it didn’t work this year, he took similar steps last year and helped bring home the 27th World Series title in Yankees history.

In a nutshell, what I want to see is the all-or-nothing approach that you see week in and week out in the NFL. For instance, in 2004, the Philadelphia Eagles finished the season 13-3 and were the NFC’s top seed in the playoffs. That year, Terrell Owens gave the team a dynamic threat at wide receiver that they had been missing but in the middle of the season he went down with a fractured leg. As it turned out, he didn’t play again until the Super Bowl but let’s play a little what if.

What if he had been injured in November instead of December? Potentially, the Eagles would not have gone 13-3 (maybe 11-5) and then they would have been on the cusp of playing in the wildcard round or getting a bye. There would be extra incentive for them to play hard and win their last game or two to secure that first round bye so when the playoffs do start for them, they are as close to full strength as possible.

Now, admittedly, injuries are a much bigger concern in football than in baseball but the same logic can apply. How much would the Texas Rangers have welcomed a first round bye so MVP candidate Josh Hamilton could rest his ailing ribs? As it turned out, in the first round they won despite his paltry contribution and when he started feeling better, he made the Yankees pitchers cry.

THE SOLUTION

I’m sure that all of you were wondering if I would actually get around to suggesting a different format than what we have currently. There already are reports that the players union is open to expansion of the playoffs but given Commissioner Selig’s pace of doing business if we are to see any expansion, it would most like be shifting the first round from five game series to seven game series. Personally, all I really think about that is that it seems to be a fairly transparent ploy for the owners to sell tickets for two additional playoff games every year.

My suggestion is far bolder.

While the NFL is not my favorite league (far from it given their inactivity on issues such as concussions) and football is not my favorite sport, their playoff format is by far my favorite so, if you’ll indulge me, I will show you what it would look like if baseball adopted the NFL’s playoff format.

Before I get too deep into it, this is what I would suggest. Two teams in each league get a bye in the first round. Teams three through six would play a three game series with the games scheduled for three consecutive days. For all that moaning I hear already, the average baseball season is played in roughly 185 days and they play 162 games; they play three straight days with a plane ride in the middle all the time.

The winners of those series would then enter the final eight teams and from there, it would be the same as what we have with a five game “second round”, a seven game LCS, and a seven game World Series.

Now how much would that actually change? It depends. Would it have altered the 1998 Yankees crash course with history after a 114 win regular season? Probably not. Would it have altered the 2001 Mariners crash course off a cliff after a 116 win regular season? Potentially.

What it would really do is make it hard for a wildcard team to win it all. For the record, a wildcard team has made it to the World Series 9 times and won it all 4 times. They are:

1997 Marlins (Won)
2000 Mets
2002 Giants
2002 Angels (Won)
2003 Marlins (Won)
2004 Red Sox (Won)
2005 Astros
2006 Tigers
2007 Rockies

Would these teams have made it to the World Series with an extra three games on the front end of their postseason schedule? Of those nine teams, only one failed to win 90 games (the 2005 Astros went 89-73) while two of them (2002 Angels with 99 and 2004 Red Sox with 98) nearly won 100 games. So we’re not talking about the weaklings that got into the playoffs by a technicality. For many of these teams, they caught lightning in a bottle and in all likelihood, three extra games wouldn’t have made a difference. The 2007 Rockies won an unbelievable 21 of 22 games to make the playoffs and get to the World Series before being swept by the Red Sox. Could that just as easily have been 24 of 25? Absolutely. More likely is that they get to the World Series while losing a game here or there but it’s far from impossible.

Now, the obvious question is this: why do we need to change the playoff format at all? Well, first answer me this; what do the following teams all have in common?

1997 New York Mets (88-74)
1997 Los Angeles Dodgers (88-74)
2000 Cleveland Indians (90-72)
2003 Seattle Mariners (93-69)
2005 Philadelphia Phillies (88-74)
2005 Florida Marlins (83-79)
2005 New York Mets (83-79)
2006 Philadelphia Phillies (85-77)
2007 San Diego Padres (89-74)
2007 New York Mets (88-74)
2008 New York Mets (89-73)
2008 Houston Astros (86-75)
2008 St. Louis Cardinals (86-76)
2009 Texas Rangers (87-75)

Well, those 14 teams all won between 83 and 93 games (averaging 87.4) but the kicker is that none of those teams made the playoffs. It’s not terrible unusual for a team whose win total is in the 80’s to miss the playoffs but this list is special. They all missed the playoffs while a team in their league made the playoffs with a worse record. Here is a list of the offending teams:

1997 Houston Astros (84-78)
2000 New York Yankees (87-74)
2003 Minnesota Twins (90-72)
2005 San Diego Padres (82-80)
2006 St. Louis Cardinals (83-78)
2007 Chicago Cubs (85-77)
2008 Los Angeles Dodgers (84-78)
2009 Minnesota Twins (87-76 due to the tiebreaker. Their regular season record was 86-76)

In other words, the 14 teams that I mentioned got the short end of the stick because they were in the wrong division. It should also be noted that two of the eight teams above that didn’t have one of the four best records in their league that year went on to win the World Series.

Yes, baseball’s postseason is exclusive and not everybody can come. I don’t, however, see the problem with letting a few more teams in that are deserving. It’s possible that some day a team that has a sub .500 record could get into the playoffs but that’s always a possibility. At the time of the strike in 1994, the Texas Rangers were leading the American League West with a record of 52-62 and would have had to play .604 baseball the rest of the season just to break even (and only two teams played that well during the season, the New York Yankees and the Montreal Expos). So even with the current format it’s always possible for a team to make the playoffs despite a sub-.500 record. In fact, under my system, only one team in the past 15 years (the 1997 Chicago White Sox) would have made it in with a record below .500 (80-81) and the additional teams had an average record of 87.5-74.5, hardly the dregs of the league. 11 of those teams even managed to win 90 games and still didn’t make the playoffs.

My argument is not based on bad teams get into the playoffs while good teams are left home. My argument is much more about protecting the top teams from the regular season. I also understand that there is a big difference between building a team to do well in a 162 game regular season and a team that is built to do well in 5 or 7 game series and while my format may be a little unfair to the latter, it would provide an advantage for the teams that actually played better in the regular season.

MONEY

After all, it really does all come down to this factor. The most potential playoff games under the current format is 41 (if every series were to go the distance although we all know how likely that is). This year so far there have been 29 games with 2-5 more games, depending on how much the Rangers feel like playing in the World Series. Under my format, 8-12 games would be added and only four days would need to be added to the schedule. Those aren’t regular season games either with their $4 nosebleed seats; those are playoff games where many people are so desperate to get their hands on playoff tickets that the cheap seats will sell for many times face value.

CONCLUSION

The only losers in my plan are the purists who don’t want to see playoff baseball to be diluted too much. While I understand their concern (I have long thought that the NBA lets far too many teams into the playoffs) I think the overall excitement outweighs the potential dilution. If my plan had been put into effect in 1995 instead of the current format, 23 different teams would have made the playoffs just through the expanded wildcard format and of the other 7 teams, 5 of them made the playoffs either as the first wildcard or as a division winner. In other words, 28 out of 30 teams would have made the playoffs in the past 14 years (I excluded 1995 due to its shortened nature).

Instead, the Toronto Blue Jays haven’t made the playoffs since 1993 (they would have qualified in 1998, 1999, and 2003 under my system). Instead of making the playoffs in both 1996 and 2002, the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals haven’t been to the postseason since 1981.

All you have to do to see the effect of a playoff run is look at the Montreal Expos. Many experts and former players say that they would have been the favorite to win the 1994 World Series and when the season ended, they had the best record (74-40, or 105-57 prorated to a full season). If they had won the World Series, they would have had the revenue to keep their young core of brilliant players together and could have had a shot at a dynasty. Instead, the team fell apart because they didn’t have the money to keep them all together. After 10 more years and a .458 winning percentage, fans lost enough interest that the team packed up and moved to Washington, D.C. How would things have been different if two of those seasons had been playoff years?

Unfortunately, we’ll never know. Having lived in Washington (state) through the 90’s, I know full well what the city, state, and region did starting in 1995. I challenge you to find a fan base that was more rabid than during the playoff run in 1995. I understand that it was aided by fair weather fans but just look at what had happened when a team with a losing history caught fire and went to the playoffs. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that the 1995 season saved baseball in Seattle.

What other franchises need saving?