The Pros and Cons of New MLB Playoff Format for Mariners

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While the Mookie Betts trade became official yesterday, the biggest news outside of those two markets came from Joel Sherman’s report that MLB is proposing a new playoff format. What could this mean for the Mariners?

The baseball world was rocked back on Monday when Joel Sherman reported that MLB is proposing a brand new playoff format beginning in 2022 that would, amongst other things, raise the number of playoff teams from 5 in each league, to 7. Naturally, Mariners’ nation had some opinions.

You can read everything that is known about the proposal here, but anytime MLB implements a rule change, no matter how small, people instantly make hard opinions. Now granted, changing a playoff format isn’t small, but it isn’t close to official, which is something we should keep in mind.

The long-form proposal calls for 3 division winners, as always, and 4 wild card teams. The team with the best record in each league would be awarded a “first round” bye. Now here comes the crazy part: the team with the best record in each round would get to pick their opponent, while the second-best record would to pick their opponent after that.

The one-game wild-card playoff game would be eliminated as a result and replaced with a 3 game series, with all 3 games being played at the higher seeds home ballpark.

So now that we know the basic outline of the proposal, I think we can instantly start to pick out some of the pros and cons of baseball’s new idea. But whether you think this is a good idea or not, we should acknowledge that both sides have potentially valid points in their favor.

So naturally, we will explore some of the positives of this idea, as well as the negatives. Hopefully, we can keep an open mind (which can be hard for a lot of baseball fans). But let’s think positive and start with a few of the positives.

Pros of expanding the playoffs

SEATTLE, WA – SEPTEMBER 29: Felix Hernandez #34 of the Seattle Mariners acknowledges fans from the dugout after a video was show feature the pitcher during the fourth inning of a game against the Oakland Athletics at T-Mobile Park on September 29, 2019 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images) /

Pro 1: More teams in the playoffs

Well, let’s start right where most of the Mariners fans want to start. Expanding the playoffs from 5 teams to 7 teams means it is easier for teams to make the playoffs. And for a fanbase who is staring its 19-year playoff drought right in the face, it is easy to get on board with this idea.

But really, the Mariners have been pretty bad over the first 18 years of the drought, so would it really make a difference? As it turns out, yes.

Under this new playoff format scooped by @Joelsherman1, the #Mariners would have made the postseason in 2002, 2003, 2007, 2009, 2014, 2016 and 2018, if I'm understanding it correctly.
— Larry Stone (@StoneLarry) February 10, 2020

If a major league playoff team made the playoffs 7 times in 18 years, you’d consider that a reasonable success. Interestingly enough, those 7 years are also the only winning team Seattle has had in this playoff drought.

But yeah, any way you want to slice it, more teams getting in the playoffs improves your chances of making it yourself. With 7 of the 15 teams in each league making the playoffs, you’d have 47% of each league making the playoffs.

The extra opportunities to make the playoffs could bring excitement to more markets as well, since more teams will be playing for playoff positions in August and September.

2. Fewer tank jobs… they hope

One of the issues baseball has been searching for solutions to solve is the new “tank” strategy where teams purposely put out a subpar product for 4-7 years in hopes of snagging the right combination of lucky draft picks and player development luck.

While tanking and rebuilding are often confusing, when more than half the teams in baseball are doing because they have no shot of cracking the top 5 in their league, it doesn’t make for the best product.

Increasing the odds of making the playoffs to nearly 50% every year could, in theory, make any rebuilding window shorter and keep the average fan more involved on the day by day happenings of their local team.

From a Mariners perspective, if the format had been put into place this year, 2021 would have become a realistic goal for the team and made a 2-year rebuild a reasonable goal for a fan base. The hope is that this would prevent teams from pulling what the Orioles and Tigers are currently doing and push rebuilding teams into an accelerated rebuild like Seattle is attempting.

3. More activity in the winter

There is an idea the more teams who consider themselves a playoff contenders for the following season, the more willing they’ll be to sign free agents in the winter and to hand over prospects for MLB to rebuilding teams. While we can’t say this will definitely happen, it should be pointed out that for a 3-year stretch, free agency was a bit of a joke.

This winter was different, with teams like the White Sox and Reds shelling out some cash for middle-class free agents. Sure, the Yankees still got Gerrit Cole, but none of the upper-class free agents had to wait long to find their next team.

It is possible that the free agent slog fixed itself, with teams who had embarked on long tank jobs finally hitting the point where they were ready to spend. Again, this is more of an estimate than a proven fact, but it does make sense on the surface.

Now that we have outlined a few of the positives, let’s dive into some of the negatives.

The Cons

CLEVELAND, OHIO – JULY 09: MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and All-Star game MVP Shane Bieber #57 of the Cleveland Indians during the 2019 MLB All-Star Game at Progressive Field on July 09, 2019 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Kirk Irwin/Getty Images). /

1. Cheapens the playoffs

One of the things baseball has always prided itself on is how hard it is to make the playoffs. It takes decades to change their playoff format and every time they expand the pool, it is instantly met with pushback. But every time they’ve done this, from splitting into 3 divisions and the invention of the wild card to the addition of the second wild card, it has been met with criticism, but has also been a success.

Under the current system, just 10 of the 30 teams make the playoffs each year, or 33% of the eligible pool. In the NBA, 16 of the 30 teams make the playoffs (53%). In the NFL its 12 of the 32(37.5%), and in the NHL 16 of 31 teams (52%) get into the playoffs. Of the 4 major sports, baseball has the highest threshold to be considered a playoff team.

Which brings us to our second con.

2. Makes regular season less meaningful

We hear it all the time. MLB prides itself on its long, grueling schedule. They love to call it a marathon. But you can’t afford to just toss games often because your odds of reaching the playoffs are so slim that often the margin of error ends up being just one or two games.

The regular season matters in baseball and football. In hockey and basketball, it is basically a multiple months warm-up for the end of season tournament. The value of the regular season is huge in baseball and anything that damages that can be seen as a negative.

3. The quirks need work

There are a few quirks in this proposal that leads to a lot of questions. First, does earning a “bye week” really help that much. Unlike in the NFL, taking a week off of baseball after the grind of the previous 6 months could be considered a bad thing. The NFL players need that mental and physical break, but in a sport so predicated on the repetition of their skill, not playing games for 3-5 days while everybody else is could be a disadvantage.

Second, and perhaps the biggest fuss being made in regards to the proposal, is the seeding of the new playoffs. The idea that the best team gets to pick their opponent is tough to wrap your head around as a fan.

Would it not be simpler to just seed the teams as normal, where the best team gets the one with the worst record and so on? Well, that isn’t really an option, thanks to the 7 team format and the elimination of the 1-game playoff. Since all series are now 3 game series, the only way to make it work is to give the first seed a bye and then let them pick their opponent.

The whole thing feels, for the lack of a better term, gimmicky. A lot of baseball fans hate gimmicks and will crow that they ruin the game. Whatever side of the ledger you fall on, there are obviously issues that need to be resolved before this process is put into place.

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Well, there you have it. Some of the bigger pros and cons of the new playoff format. We should applaud baseball for even considering changing their game, something that doesn’t come easy to the old men that run the game. But it is also fair to point out some of the glaring holes present in this proposal. What do you think? Would this reformat be good for baseball?

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