MLB Playoff Expansion

[3and2Fastball]

A 1 game winner take all made the games not like a real game. Where we had to face Scherzer, Strasburg, and Corbin all in one game. That's not really in the nature of how baseball works, even in the playoffs.

 

The Wild Card game is a Game 7. The team that invested in better pitching won. The Brewers go as cheap as they can get away with, every year, and lost. The Brewers have also never drafted & developed a pitcher like Strasburg.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

A 1 game winner take all made the games not like a real game. Where we had to face Scherzer, Strasburg, and Corbin all in one game. That's not really in the nature of how baseball works, even in the playoffs.

 

The Wild Card game is a Game 7. The team that invested in better pitching won. The Brewers go as cheap as they can get away with, every year, and lost. The Brewers have also never drafted & developed a pitcher like Strasburg.

 

Oh please. They needed a ball through the legs and the most dominate reliever in baseball to blow the game. This is so disingenuous. They were a coin flip away from being sent packing by the Brewers despite their "investment" in better pitching.

[brewerfan82]

Just for some reference, here are the teams the past 5 years that didn't make the playoffs but would have with 14 playoff teams:

 

2019 AL: Indians (93-69), Red Sox (84-78)

2019 NL: Mets (86-76), Diamondback (85-77)

 

2018 AL: Rays (90-72), Mariners (89-73)

2018 NL: Cardinals (88-74), Pirates (82-79)

 

2017 AL: Royals (80-82), Angels (80-82)

2017 NL: Brewers (86-76), Cardinals (83-79)

 

2016 AL: Tigers (86-75), Mariners (86-76)

2016 NL: Cardinals (86-76), Marlins (79-82)

 

2015 AL: Angels (85-77), Twins (83-79)

2015 NL: Giants (84-78), Nationals (83-79)

[RollieTime]

Dallas Braden

@DALLASBRADEN209 11m

Half the league in the postseason doesn’t generate more hope. That’s cute though. It DOES generate potential POSTSEASON revenue for teams that haven’t spent $ to be competitive. This is LOWERING THE BAR. Just a mechanism to allow the tanking to be veiled as being competitive.

 

I'm more or less in Dallas Braden's camp on the proposed expansion. The Brewers already feel like they can significantly cut payroll this year and still have an outside shot at the 2nd wild card. Imagine this offseason knowing we only had to win ~ 81 games to get into the postseason. Would we have needed to sign any free agents? Put the pressure on the owners to actually invest in a winning product if they want to get to the postseason and make that postseason $$$. Reward teams for actually putting together a team that can withstand the entirety of a 162 game season. If anything we should go back to just 4 playoff teams (yes I know this means the Brewers would not have made it last year).

 

This just made me think that this wouldn’t help with more teams spending to be competitive. It would cause teams that are in that 85 win area to not spend (only talking about certain owners) knowing that they will probably make the postseason as it is so why spend more? Save the money, get the postseason revenue, add to the bank.

[KeithStone53151]

A 1 game winner take all made the games not like a real game. Where we had to face Scherzer, Strasburg, and Corbin all in one game. That's not really in the nature of how baseball works, even in the playoffs.

 

The Wild Card game is a Game 7. The team that invested in better pitching won. The Brewers go as cheap as they can get away with, every year, and lost. The Brewers have also never drafted & developed a pitcher like Strasburg.

 

I don't think you're correctly dissecting my point here. I prefer playoffs operate in more of a series manner. I get the game 7 aspect, you look at how rosters are constructed and players are used...and it's just different in a 1 game wildcard. There's also that much more variance in a 1 game than a 3 game. You're more often going to have the truly better team come out of a 3 game series than a 1 game. Sure if you split the first 2, both teams are going to load up best on best for that last game as well as they can. Might be tough for them to use all 3 in a game 3 in this scenario. Bottom line, I view the 3 game series much more like real baseball than a 1 game series.

[KeithStone53151]

A 1 game winner take all made the games not like a real game. Where we had to face Scherzer, Strasburg, and Corbin all in one game. That's not really in the nature of how baseball works, even in the playoffs.

 

The Wild Card game is a Game 7. The team that invested in better pitching won. The Brewers go as cheap as they can get away with, every year, and lost. The Brewers have also never drafted & developed a pitcher like Strasburg.

 

Oh please. They needed a ball through the legs and the most dominate reliever in baseball to blow the game. This is so disingenuous. They were a coin flip away from being sent packing by the Brewers despite their "investment" in better pitching.

 

I'll also add, when was the last time the Brewers drafted first overall? We've never had a shot at a 1st overall selection wire to wire elite pitching talent like Strasburg. And in this case, Strasburg was no longer under the initial team control window anyway, he would have been a free agent years ago had the Nationals not paid him more or less market value.

[BuckyBrewer61]

Well yeah, but I was referring to the playoffs being a money-making gimmick. Nobody takes the first round of the NBA playoffs even remotely seriously. They could get rid of the first round tomorrow and nobody would care. There are no fans legitimately thinking their 38-42 team is "in the playoff hunt."

 

The entire existence of professional sports is a "money-making gimmick." You could say that about any form of entertainment, we are not solving world hunger here.

 

I’m saying that in MLB, more people would care about their 6 or 7-seed team because they actually have a shot, just like we all cared about our 5-seed last year even though they were the 10th best team in the playoffs.

 

In the NBA, even a 5-seed has no shot, much less the 8-seed, which is the main reason no one cares.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I think that people are way overstating the randomness of baseball. These 80-win teams are not going to be come 100-win quality teams with any regularity if they expand the playoffs. The WC teams have won the WS, but they are mostly pretty good. There are teams like the 83-win Cards, sure, but the .500 teams are still going to have Mt Everest before them trying to take out teams like the Dodgers, staffs like the Nationals. I really doubt it would make that much of a difference in the end.

[bill hAll Star]

I think that people are way overstating the randomness of baseball. These 80-win teams are not going to be come 100-win quality teams with any regularity if they expand the playoffs. The WC teams have won the WS, but they are mostly pretty good. There are teams like the 83-win Cards, sure, but the .500 teams are still going to have Mt Everest before them trying to take out teams like the Dodgers, staffs like the Nationals. I really doubt it would make that much of a difference in the end.

 

Then everyone wins. 9 years out of 10 the juggernauts will still win. But the 80-83 win teams get to play meaningful games in August and September.

 

Debatable but they may try to win instead of sell in July as well.

[owbc]

The 80-win teams would have won more than 80 games if they were trying to make the playoffs for the whole season.

[Eye Black]

I think that people are way overstating the randomness of baseball.

Actually, no. Here is a really good study done at Cornell about the randomness of the four major professional sports leagues (Overview Link and PDF Document Link).

 

MLB is subject to the most random outcomes of the major professional sports. Here is a blog that uses the above study results to sum up the randomness of the post-season as compared to the NBA, Rethinking our playoff philosophy (on the role of chance in the postseason)...

 

How long would postseason series need to be in NFL, MLB and NHL to match the NBA’s “better team advances” rate of 80%?

 

In the NFL, a “best-of-11” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate.

 

In the NHL, a “best-of-51” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate.

 

And in MLB, an astounding “best-of-75” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate.

 

That is, if we wanted postseason formats to be equivalent across leagues, we’d need the NHL and MLB to do complete, and obviously ludicrous, overhauls.

 

There is a lot more to dive into about the randomness of baseball outcomes, but that sort of captures the gist of how unique MLB variance actually is.

[brewcrewdue80]

So part of this is Anti-tanking, part of this is TV revenue, let's add one more revenue maker. Take the 8 teams that are wild-cards and have a NBA like lottery. Pick one of the 8 out of a hat. Pick the winner a Draft spot numbered 1-8. The winner gets to pick where that spot is. Bumping everybody down below it. Add to the drama. The team/s with the worst record in baseball that season do the draw from the hats. Meaning if they draw 1 on the 1-8 it's their fault they lost the #1 choice and if it's to a team in their division even worse! They could do this during the selection show for playoff matchups or just at a later time. Imagine if a Wild Card team went on to win the WS and got the #1 pick? Hey and for degenerate gamblers, they now have something else to bet on. 1-8 which team? 1-8 which draft selection?

 

Maybe baseball they could make a 500 or better rule on this Wildcard series. So Division rank 2 gets a bye also if Wild Card #4 doesn't have at least a .500 record. #3 Division if #3 wildcard doesn't have a 500 record. on and on. I expect 6 teams regularly to be 500 or better. that 7th team though is where 500 records may not be reached. So in essence you reward the #2 Division team with an *bye. And remove the #7 team from that playoff revenue or potential to host games if winning 2 on the road in to the Division series.

 

I'd add that in my idea above if the team didn't win 500 or more they wouldn't be qualified for that drawing on draft pick. This could make the final series during the regular season matter for such a team if they may fall to 80wins with a loss or 3. So rather than maybe rest a #1 or #2 starter being "in" the wildcard 6 or 7 spot, they aren't actually in until that 81st win.

[pacopete4]

MLB Attendance by Year:

2019 (68.5 million)

2018 (69.7)

2017 (72.7)

2016 (73.2)

2015 (73.7)

2014 (73.7)

2013 (74.0)

2012 (74.9)

2011 (73.4)

2010 (73.1)

2009 (73.4)

2008 (78.6)

2007 (79.5)

 

The average ticket price has risen from $22.77 (2007) to $32.99 (2019). It doesn't take a smart person to figure out the problem with MLB baseball. But yes, let's jack up the whole system to spark an interest.

[Ennder]

The problem with baseball is young people don't like it. The demographics for baseball for people under 40 are awful. The game isn't losing people who grew up with it and are in their 40's and 50's now. The attendance is completely tanking for people ages 18-35 and 10 years from now that is going to cause huge problems if they don't fix it. Drastic changes need to be made and soon. They have to push them through even if the stuffy old men (of which I am one of) don't want to see change. Because if they don't change they are going to have real problems.

[owbc]

The problem with baseball is young people don't like it. The demographics for baseball for people under 40 are awful. The game isn't losing people who grew up with it and are in their 40's and 50's now. The attendance is completely tanking for people ages 18-35 and 10 years from now that is going to cause huge problems if they don't fix it. Drastic changes need to be made and soon. They have to push them through even if the stuffy old men (of which I am one of) don't want to see change. Because if they don't change they are going to have real problems.

 

At the end of the day ownership only cares about maximizing profits and strictly adhering to the demand curve. The #1 thing that they could do to increase the number of people watching baseball is to make the product more widely available through TV and streaming services in the local market. The #1 thing that they could do to increase attendance is to lower ticket prices. Neither approach maximizes short-term profit. Both approaches significantly damage long-term profit and I strongly believe that there is nothing they can do from a game/rules perspective to reverse the current trends.

[walleye]

If baseball truly wanted a more competitive non tanking leauge a true hard cap on salary would help more then expanding the playoffs , yes I’m well aware that the players union is what holds up a true cap but for the good of baseball it needs to happen.

[homer]

MLB Attendance by Year:

2019 (68.5 million)

2018 (69.7)

2017 (72.7)

2016 (73.2)

2015 (73.7)

2014 (73.7)

2013 (74.0)

2012 (74.9)

2011 (73.4)

2010 (73.1)

2009 (73.4)

2008 (78.6)

2007 (79.5)

 

The average ticket price has risen from $22.77 (2007) to $32.99 (2019). It doesn't take a smart person to figure out the problem with MLB baseball. But yes, let's jack up the whole system to spark an interest.

 

Attendance for most major sports is dropping:

 

- From 2014 to ’18, attendance across the FBS (college fb) fell by 7.6%.

- Here’s how the NHL’s minus-1.32% decline from 2013-14 to 2018-19 compares to the other major sports leagues.

 

Major League Baseball (MLB): minus-5.88%

National Basketball Association (NBA): plus-2.59%

National Football League (NFL): minus-1.98%

Major League Soccer (MLS): plus-17.56%

Out of the five major sports leagues in the United States, three of the five, including the NHL, have posted declines in average attendance between 2013-14 to 2018-19. Two of the leagues posted growth, the NBA and MLS. If you’re wondering why the MLS percent change jumps off the charts it’s due to their success in expansion, Atlanta United has been able to consistently average 50,000 in attendance since its debut in 2017.

 

I think there are too many options to watch games at home.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

I have been thinking about this for a while, and I think I've landed on the idea that our whole, cultural sense of regular seasons and postseasons is off, and this is particularly true in baseball. Here is what I mean:

 

The Brewers won the NL pennant in 2018. They did. They lost a random, 7-game series to another good team, and I get it. Those are the rules, but it's so arbitrary that we celebrate small samples over large ones. This proposal just makes that worse.

 

Here is what I wish: I want the soccer model. I want mini-competitionss (FA Cups and Europa Leagues and c.) existing alongside regular seasons. That way, you get the consistency of long-haul competition and enough short-form stuff to capture the spirit of magical runs and to keep up interest.

 

We had a Leicester City moment in 2018, and that is why I will celebrate that season forever. The fact that it ended in a loss is random. More and more, I think playoffs are just a function of our need to provide both dire competition AND egalitarian opportunity.

[owbc]

I have been thinking about this for a while, and I think I've landed on the idea that our whole, cultural sense of regular seasons and postseasons is off, and this is particularly true in baseball. Here is what I mean:

 

The Brewers won the NL pennant in 2018. They did. They lost a random, 7-game series to another good team, and I get it. Those are the rules, but it's so arbitrary that we celebrate small samples over large ones. This proposal just makes that worse.

 

Here is what I wish: I want the soccer model. I want mini-competitionss (FA Cups and Europa Leagues and c.) existing alongside regular seasons. That way, you get the consistency of long-haul competition and enough short-form stuff to capture the spirit of magical runs and to keep up interest.

 

We had a Leicester City moment in 2018, and that is why I will celebrate that season forever. The fact that it ended in a loss is random. More and more, I think playoffs are just a function of our need to provide both dire competition AND egalitarian opportunity.

 

I don't get what you're saying...MLB's proposal would be the most favorable for the 1-seed in any sport.

 

I suspect the NBA will be the first one to reform their season/postseason format. Almost the entirety of MLB's proposal was poached from ideas that have been floated for the NBA.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I think that people are way overstating the randomness of baseball.

Actually, no. Here is a really good study done at Cornell about the randomness of the four major professional sports leagues (Overview Link and PDF Document Link).

 

MLB is subject to the most random outcomes of the major professional sports. Here is a blog that uses the above study results to sum up the randomness of the post-season as compared to the NBA, Rethinking our playoff philosophy (on the role of chance in the postseason)...

 

How long would postseason series need to be in NFL, MLB and NHL to match the NBA’s “better team advances” rate of 80%?

 

In the NFL, a “best-of-11” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate.

 

In the NHL, a “best-of-51” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate.

 

And in MLB, an astounding “best-of-75” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate.

 

That is, if we wanted postseason formats to be equivalent across leagues, we’d need the NHL and MLB to do complete, and obviously ludicrous, overhauls.

 

There is a lot more to dive into about the randomness of baseball outcomes, but that sort of captures the gist of how unique MLB variance actually is.

 

Great, let's just scrap the regular season altogether then. We can have these awesome random outcomes with last year's Orioles winning titles.

 

I don't understand why people want to make qualifying for the playoffs a complete non-achievement. Like it is in the NBA.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

MLB Attendance by Year:

2019 (68.5 million)

2018 (69.7)

2017 (72.7)

2016 (73.2)

2015 (73.7)

2014 (73.7)

2013 (74.0)

2012 (74.9)

2011 (73.4)

2010 (73.1)

2009 (73.4)

2008 (78.6)

2007 (79.5)

 

The average ticket price has risen from $22.77 (2007) to $32.99 (2019). It doesn't take a smart person to figure out the problem with MLB baseball. But yes, let's jack up the whole system to spark an interest.

 

Attendance for most major sports is dropping:

 

- From 2014 to ’18, attendance across the FBS (college fb) fell by 7.6%.

- Here’s how the NHL’s minus-1.32% decline from 2013-14 to 2018-19 compares to the other major sports leagues.

 

Major League Baseball (MLB): minus-5.88%

National Basketball Association (NBA): plus-2.59%

National Football League (NFL): minus-1.98%

Major League Soccer (MLS): plus-17.56%

Out of the five major sports leagues in the United States, three of the five, including the NHL, have posted declines in average attendance between 2013-14 to 2018-19. Two of the leagues posted growth, the NBA and MLS. If you’re wondering why the MLS percent change jumps off the charts it’s due to their success in expansion, Atlanta United has been able to consistently average 50,000 in attendance since its debut in 2017.

 

I think there are too many options to watch games at home.

 

Not only that but the at-home experience is WORLDS ahead of what it was even in the early 2000s. Go watch some highlights of games from that era if you don't think so. You used to flock to one guy's house because he had a "big screen TV" and I hardly know any homeowners whose main TV is less than 60 inches. The financial crunch is obviously a factor in the attendance too, but there are a bunch of factors working together. Thus you have "fan experience" as a requirement in all new stadiums. New restaurants, shopping, etc. "Districts" around the stadium. The game is not enough.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

The problem with baseball is young people don't like it. The demographics for baseball for people under 40 are awful. The game isn't losing people who grew up with it and are in their 40's and 50's now. The attendance is completely tanking for people ages 18-35 and 10 years from now that is going to cause huge problems if they don't fix it. Drastic changes need to be made and soon. They have to push them through even if the stuffy old men (of which I am one of) don't want to see change. Because if they don't change they are going to have real problems.

 

It's specifically not resonating well at all with youth minorities. I don't know specifically about hispanics but I know it is catastrophically failing with black youth leagues. Which is a problem for the sport because the county's demographics are going the other direction. The intensity of a lot of youth baseball comes with expenses and a lot of travel which is another problem. The sport in general needs to fix a problem at that level and it would help the MLB product. But the point about ticket prices and access to games is relevant too. I would guess that it can't be doing a whole lot better with Hispanics. It is hugely popular in Latin America obviously and like 1/3 of the MLB players are born there, but within the Hispanic population of the US I don't think it's quite as huge.

[Warning Track Power]

The problem with baseball is young people don't like it. The demographics for baseball for people under 40 are awful. The game isn't losing people who grew up with it and are in their 40's and 50's now. The attendance is completely tanking for people ages 18-35 and 10 years from now that is going to cause huge problems if they don't fix it. Drastic changes need to be made and soon. They have to push them through even if the stuffy old men (of which I am one of) don't want to see change. Because if they don't change they are going to have real problems.

I know others have brought this up but I truly believe this is due largely to the fact that the league is heavily tilted toward the large markets. In the NFL and NBA, you have Patrick Mahomes and Giannis who will likely spend their entire careers in Kansas City and Milwaukee. As opposed to MLB, where you have Indians fans who are preparing to lose Francisco Lindor or Brewers fans who already lost Prince Fielder and are already preparing (3 years in advance) of losing Christian Yelich.

 

Why invest your time, money and fandom in something so obviously gamed against you?

[OldSchoolSnapper]

The problem with baseball is young people don't like it. The demographics for baseball for people under 40 are awful. The game isn't losing people who grew up with it and are in their 40's and 50's now. The attendance is completely tanking for people ages 18-35 and 10 years from now that is going to cause huge problems if they don't fix it. Drastic changes need to be made and soon. They have to push them through even if the stuffy old men (of which I am one of) don't want to see change. Because if they don't change they are going to have real problems.

I know others have brought this up but I truly believe this is due largely to the fact that the league is heavily tilted toward the large markets. In the NFL and NBA, you have Patrick Mahomes and Giannis who will likely spend their entire careers in Kansas City and Milwaukee. As opposed to MLB, where you have Indians fans who are preparing to lose Francisco Lindor or Brewers fans who already lost Prince Fielder and are already preparing (3 years in advance) of losing Christian Yelich.

 

Why invest your time, money and fandom in something so obviously gamed against you?

 

I definitely think losing superstars is a big problem for MLB and competitive balance, but you can't say the NBA isn't large-market centric. The supermax is there, sure, but the players have a ton of power and bolt for large markets all the time. I think the difference is that there is a disproportionate number of basketball fans who are fans of players and not necessarily teams. Terrible NBA teams always use visiting stars in their marketing.

[Eye Black]

Great, let's just scrap the regular season altogether then. We can have these awesome random outcomes with last year's Orioles winning titles.

 

I don't understand why people want to make qualifying for the playoffs a complete non-achievement. Like it is in the NBA.

I am not sure if we are misunderstanding each other’s points, or actually on the same side here.

 

My point with that study link was not that we should scrap the regular season by any means, but actually the exact opposite. The length and results of the regular season are much more important to MLB than any other professional sport because it takes such an incredibly large sample size for results to actualize that match true talent levels.

 

If the goal is to figure out who the best team is at the end of the playoffs than the best way to do that would be to significantly limit the total number of teams that get into the playoffs.

 

If the goal aligns closer to entertainment value (and revenue for the teams), than I guess an argument can certainly be made for “the more the merrier” playoff approach. That isn’t the side I would choose, but I understand the argument.