RealGM

This is going to be a long elaborate post and not presented as elegantly as I'd like (alcohol related) but for baseball fans not pointless I hope?

I've been a proponent for a long time of shortening the regular season (154 games, maybe even a little shorter) and changing the playoff format. I know baseball short shortsightedly sees fewer home dates as bad thing but I think they are not seeing the big picture with an expanded playoff.

For starters start the season a week earlier (with shorter spring training) and have everyone play in a dome or a warm weather climate for the first week of the season. Nobody cares about always starting on the road, they'll still love home openers. I've looked at the amount of warm weather cities and domes, this can be done with proper scheduling.

Everything I say is about reducing a couple weeks going up against the NFL which baseball just can't win. The sooner the season is done and the fewer important games they have during the football season the better it is for baseball.

154 game schedule with every team having two home and road double headers placed on sundays before a monday day off. Baseball had doubleheaders forever, as long as they are before a day off I can't see why they don't schedule them again as a further means to get the world series done by mid October. November baseball just isn't right.

The top 2 division winners get byes. Tiebreakers are determined between head to head wins and run differential not an additional game.

We add an extra wild card team for 6 playoff teams a league like the NFL. The first round of the playoffs is a 3 game series that starts the day after the regular season ends (no playoff tiebreaker game, same tiebreaker system with the worst division winner obviously always getting home field) with the team with the better record or the tiebreaker hosting all three games to eliminate travel over 3 day.

From there we go to a 5 game NLCS ALCS and a 7 game LCS like we have now.

People will argue that teams wouldn't want 4-5 less home dates but my counterargument would be that now fans in 5-6 more cities per year would have reasons to keep attending games in chances their team may get the extra playoff spot down the stretch leading to higher attendance overall because a lot more games will no longer be meaningless. I'll take an extra 20-25% attendance in September every couple years over empty stadiums when my team has no chance.

It also makes the wildcard round much more meaningful from a fan and network prospective as an extra 2 games are possible for ratings and a long baseball season hasn't come down to one game.

The one game playoff in baseball just makes no sense when compared to the length of the season. Fans will be more amped upped about a 3 game series even if all games are on the road.

The visiting wild card team gets all the revenue from game 2 to offset what they may have lost during the regular season.

I know as a fan I'd be a lot more interested in a 3 game road series than the possibility my teams season is over in one game. I may be wrong in that opinion?

With the season starting earlier, a couple double headers and a shorter season overall I think it's realistic to have the baseball season done by just after mid October which I think would be a huge win for baseball.

I would love to hear why my idea is stupid or why the system as is is better?

I say just keep the 162 games and cut back on spring training to add in the extra playoff games.

3 home games all for the same team would never, and should never, happen. Having a division winner be mixed in with the 3 wild card teams in an extra elimination round also would probably not happen.

I like the shorter season though, and scheduled double headers isn't a bad idea, as well as reducing spring training. But in return I'd like to see extended playoffs. Go to 4 divisions, and have 4 wild cards. Each division winner gets HFA against a wild card team. WC and LDS rounds are 5 game series, LCS and WS are 7 game series. Maybe that doesn't finish the season any sooner, but honestly I couldn't care less about competing with football, and so far, the MLB hasn't cared enough to avoid it either.

Skin Blues wrote:3 home games all for the same team would never, and should never, happen. Having a division winner be mixed in with the 3 wild card teams in an extra elimination round also would probably not happen.

I like the shorter season though, and scheduled double headers isn't a bad idea, as well as reducing spring training. But in return I'd like to see extended playoffs. Go to 4 divisions, and have 4 wild cards. Each division winner gets HFA against a wild card team. WC and LDS rounds are 5 game series, LCS and WS are 7 game series. Maybe that doesn't finish the season any sooner, but honestly I couldn't care less about competing with football, and so far, the MLB hasn't cared enough to avoid it either.

The NFL has division winners play wildcard teams in the first round and it isn't a problem but I do get your point with the importance of winning your division in baseball.

Baseball needs to expand its playoffs to generate more interest in more markets but also reward the division winners with the best record because the playoffs are so much of a crap shoot. If they went to a basketball or hockey style playoff winning the division then loses its importance. An NFL style playoff bracket and seeding isn't perfect but it's better than what they have now or a 16 team playoff.

What I could reasonably foresee is them going to the old playoff format of the NBA and extend it to four rounds with the first one being a short one. Make the wild card series either a 3-gamer or a 5-gamer, then make the LDS, LCS and WS 7-gamers. This would add extra playoff games. Division winners all get a first round bye for bypassing the wild card, the MLB can market it as "Wild Card Weekend" like the NFL does with their first round of the playoffs, make it Friday-Sunday and do 3 games, then start the LDS on a Monday night. It'd look like this:

Wednesday: Season ends
Thursday: Day off
Friday-Sunday: Wild Card Series
Monday: Start ALDS

Then proceed with whatever playoff schedule from there.

RalphWiggum wrote:

Skin Blues wrote:3 home games all for the same team would never, and should never, happen. Having a division winner be mixed in with the 3 wild card teams in an extra elimination round also would probably not happen.

I like the shorter season though, and scheduled double headers isn't a bad idea, as well as reducing spring training. But in return I'd like to see extended playoffs. Go to 4 divisions, and have 4 wild cards. Each division winner gets HFA against a wild card team. WC and LDS rounds are 5 game series, LCS and WS are 7 game series. Maybe that doesn't finish the season any sooner, but honestly I couldn't care less about competing with football, and so far, the MLB hasn't cared enough to avoid it either.

The NFL has division winners play wildcard teams in the first round and it isn't a problem but I do get your point with the importance of winning your division in baseball.

Baseball needs to expand its playoffs to generate more interest in more markets but also reward the division winners with the best record because the playoffs are so much of a crap shoot. If they went to a basketball or hockey style playoff winning the division then loses its importance. An NFL style playoff bracket and seeding isn't perfect but it's better than what they have now or a 16 team playoff.

Yeah thinking about it more, having the worst division winner mixed in with the 3 WC teams might work. Just ahve them play the worst WC team and get HF advantage. I like that it keeps it to 6 teams rather than 8.

One thing that I would like to see is that the MLB get rid of September call-ups.

why go through over 80% of the season with a 25 man roster,, just to give teams a month to tryout their prospects at the major league level, against teams that are still in the playoff hunt.


In my opinion, if you want to have a month for call-ups, it should be April. It's early on in the season and managers have more time to decide who they want to keep.