The MLB playoffs are a postseason tournament where the best teams in baseball compete to be World Series champions. The current MLB playoff format is too short and doesn’t give the best teams the best chance to win; the MLB needs to update it.
The format has changed 18 times since the league’s creation in 1903, but currently the format is 12 teams, with six from each league: three division winners and three wild card teams. The top two division winners with the best record in each league get a bye to the second round. The other four teams in each league play a best of three wild card series to advance. The four remaining teams from each league play a best of five series in the second round to advance. Both the semi-final round and the World Series are determined by a best of seven series.
Teams play 162 games in the regular season, so that the best teams have a big enough sample to separate themselves from the rest of the league. Once the playoffs start, the talent gap quickly shrinks, as in a three-game series, a couple of bad games or even one play can eliminate the best teams early. Baseball’s randomness, especially in smaller sample sizes, leads to more upsets in the playoffs. A wild card team that is on a hot streak going into the playoffs could knock off a division winner, which isn’t a real measure of team strength. An easy fix to this playoff format could be increasing the number of games in the playoff series to at least a best of seven games in the first two rounds.
Others might argue that the upsets and uncertainty in the playoffs are what make it exciting. For example, March Madness is one of the most popular playoff formats because of the upsets and the surprising runs. Another argument could be made that the shorter playoff gives smaller payroll teams a chance. The MLB is the last remaining American sports league without a salary cap, meaning teams can spend as much money as they want. This leads to the rich big market teams like the Dodgers and Mets to outspend the smaller teams. This year, the Dodgers’ payroll of $350 million was more than five times the payroll of the White Sox. These short playoffs could be an effective method for giving these smaller teams a chance of competing with the richer teams in the playoffs.
These are both valid arguments, but the reason March Madness has so many upsets is because of the number of rounds in the tournament. College basketball has 352 teams, so a larger tournament is needed. This wouldn’t work in baseball because there are only 30 teams, so if the playoffs were extended, the regular season would lose its value. The argument about payroll is also valid, but payroll is not a direct indicator of success. In the last five years, the team with the highest payroll has finished with the best record only once in 2020, and teams like the Guardians and Brewers show year after year that you can compete with smaller payrolls.
The solution to this problem is clear: the MLB should make the early playoff rounds have more games to give the better teams a better chance of winning.
