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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.

To use the AL last season as an example, the Astros with the best record would have received the bye. The Yankees, with the second-best record, would have had the choice to pick from among the Rays, Indians and Red Sox. Boston had the worst record of that group. Would the Yanks pick them or avoid the baggage of a series with their rival? It would create a ton of strategy and interest, and this is what MLB wants to sell. The Twins would then pick next as the other division winner, and then the A’s with the best wild-card record would play the team not chosen by the Yankees or Twins.

The plan is to have this all play out on a show on the Sunday night the regular season ends and have representatives picking teams on live TV — think the NCAA selection show, but just with the teams making the selections. The rights to that show is part of the enticement to potential TV partners.

Schad wrote:If we're going to go dumb, let's go all-out dumb:

- The regular season is reduced to 112 games, with each team playing a balanced schedule of 8 games against every other team in their league (no interleague games, 4 home and 4 away). At the end of that season, 28 of the 30 teams advance to the playoffs. The team in last in both the AL and NL is crowned The Absolute Worst. They will still have a role to play, however.

- The playoff teams are seeded 1 through 14 in the league, and play a seven-game series 1v14/2v13 etc (all series in the playoffs will be seven games). When the first team in each league exits the playoffs, they play a single game against The Absolute Worst from their league, who will be wearing uniforms patterned after a clown suit (they will continue to wear the clown uniform for as long they remain in the postseason). This portion becomes a single-knockout loser's bracket...the winning team from that game plays the next team knocked out, the winner from that game plays the next, until there is a single surviving team from the loser's bracket. That surviving team, now rechristened America's Sweetheart, reenters as the eighth remaining playoff team in their league.

- Rather than simply re-seeding teams, each team in the next two rounds get to pick their opponent, with the picks made in descending order based on regular season record. With a twist (there will, as it turns out, be a lot of twists): from this point forward, America's Sweetheart gets home field advantage. Also, they wear uniforms that look like shining full-plate armour for however long they remain in the playoffs.

- There is an alternative option, however. Rather than picking an opponent, a team can spin the Wheel of Chance. They can reject the first spin and spin again, but must keep the second team. If they keep the first team, they get to wear a uniform themed after an old-timey gambler for the remainder of the playoffs, and they will pick first in later rounds. Obviously, you can't spin the Wheel of Chance if you're the last team to pick, that would be silly. And we don't do silly, baseball is a serious sport with serious rules.

- When we're down the eight teams, the format remains the same, except the two leagues are folded into a single grouping. At this point, teams are also allowed Challenge Mode: they can begin a series with a 1-0 lead, but have to play every game on the road. Either the team picking or being picked can choose Challenge Mode, but the first option goes to the team who was picked. This format is repeated in the semi-finals.

- If America's Sweetheart wins the World Series, they automatically get the first seed in the next year's playoffs. If The Absolute Worst win the World Series, MLB is declared over indefinitely.