MLB To Expand Playoff System And Create Two 15-Team Leagues

13 Comments + Add Comment

• Chuck September 24, 2011 at 10:08 am

  I love the extra wild card in each bracket but a ONE game playoff after playing 162 games is silly. It should be at least 3.
  • 86mets September 24, 2011 at 11:00 am

    I agree, it should be best of 3, then best of 5, then the LCS best of 7. What they should consider doing, but won’t b/c the owners will lose money, is cut the regular season back to 154. The extra 8 off days would benefit most pitching staffs as well as players who suffer from the common “day to day” injuries. Plus, it would make adding an additional 3 game playoff series easier to accomodate. It will not happaen, as I say, because the owners won’t want to lose the revenue from those 8 games.
    • XtreemIcon September 24, 2011 at 11:30 am

      Or, they can add more double headers. Same number of games, so the owners get their money, but an earlier end to the season so the World Series doesn’t end around Thanksgiving.
      • Denver Mets Fan September 24, 2011 at 3:08 pm

        Go back to Sunday double headers
  • t agee September 24, 2011 at 12:51 pm

    This still renders the regular season meaningless. Now 33% of teams in each league make it. Why 33%? You play 162 games to eliminate just 10 of the 15 teams. That’s absurd.

    Go back to the 2 division format. Two winners, that’s it. Whoever wins that series advances to the World Series. That’s how you get the best and most deserving teams into the World Series. Not gimmicks, snow jobs, scams, BS, 1 game playoffs or any other nonsense.

    If your that adament about adding 2nd and 3rd place teams into the playoffs at least do it honestly. Have a separate playoff that all four 2nd place teams (and any 3rd place, 4th place ect teams that you want)

    You can have the real championship and then you can have a quasi, 2nd 3rd place playoff tournament and include every team for all I give a ****.

    Just make the regular season king. The gatekeeper. Make the four division winners the only four teams to have a chance to go to the Series. After all they beat everyone else out over a 162 game season. Now they have to go beat them out again in a best of 3, 5, or 7. and if they lose that’s it? They don’t get a second chance like the 2nd place and now 3rd place teams do? What kind of BS is that? Win your division fair and square and then you have to win it again in the playoffs against a team you’ve already beaten out. Why are they even there? Put ‘em in a 2nd place tournament. They don’t belong in the same playoff as the teams that won their division because they finished 2nd. Second place! they should be eliminated on that basis alone. Disqualified. Put ‘em in a separate tournament, they just don’t belong.

    That’s the way you get the best teams in the World Series, by eliminating all but the four Division winners. Anything else is just a bull sh*t scam job swallowed by gullible and naive fans and espoused by Selig and his minions to keep the illusion of a World Series possibility alive until mid September for all but one team in every league.

    But they won’t stop there. Oh no. They won’t be happy until every team has at least some sort of tie breaker type playoff scenario going into the last weekend of the season. Every team. Then they’ll start talking about “fairness” Sure 10 teams is fair but wouldn’t 12 teams really be more fair than 10?

    The celebration of mediocrity will just continue. All teams over .500 should be included. We can call it the Bud Championship Series (BCS for short)

    When you talk about fairness what could be more fair than letting everyone in the playoffs? Eliminate the entire regular season. Start the season with a World Cup style draw.

    Selig and the owners forget why people like baseball. They like it because it’s HARD to make the playoffs. It’s an achievement, not an entitlement. You have to earn it. Grind it out, day in and day out. 162 games over a 182 day period. Keep devaluing that achievement over a 162 game period with gimmicks and con jobs and people will stop paying attention. They’ll just wait around until the BCS starts when they find out who their going to play in the first round.

    Baseball continues to try to emulate the NHL or the NBA when they should be trying to set themselves apart from those sports. Football’s a little different in that you simply can’t play enough regular season games to truly eliminate the unworthy. A certain portion of the less than best have to be eliminated in the playoffs. Baseball has none of those concerns. With a 162 game season it’s plain and obvious for all to see who’s worthy and who’s not.
  • METS62FAN September 25, 2011 at 11:14 am

    i agree 2 out of 3 is essential especially should the necessity for a tie breaker be encountered to determine the final W/C spot. Then what? a coin flip? lol
• JoeD 1966 September 24, 2011 at 11:51 am

  I would like to see them do away with 3 divisions in each league and go with just the 2 leagues like pre 1969 and have the top 5 teams in each league make the playoff with the 4th and 5th teams play a best of 3 and the winner of that sreies gets to play the 1 seed.This way you’re gauranteed to have the best records make the playoffs and will avoid teams like the 2006 Cardinals make the playoffs with 83 wins because of a weak division and a team with more wins ends up going home because of being in a tougher division.Thiis will never happen because it makes too much sense and thats not Bud Selig’s way to make sense.The other option is going back to just 2 divisions in each league and at least get rid of the 3rd division.It’s only happened once and no one remembers it because of the strike in 1994 but the Rangers were leading the AL West with a record 10 games under 500.Luckily he strike ended any chance of having a team under 500 make the playoffs.Even once would’ve been too many.
  • t agee September 24, 2011 at 1:10 pm

    I remember that. That would have been a big embarrasment to baseball. Know how they dodged that one? They brought in the unbalanced schedule. Got a division that’s weak from top to bottom? Take away two series every year against Boston, NYY, and all the other top teams in the league and replace them with inter division games. Someone has to win between the Rangers and Angels right? Seattle and Oakland right?

    By doing that your ensuring that the six games over the weekend result in a .500 record where as before, like in 1994 all 4 teams in the AL West could have been swept because they were all bad at the same time. It’s funny. By tilting the schedule in 1995 the AL West had 3 teams OVER .500 and Oakland 10 games under. Far cry from when 10 games under .500 was the BEST record. Creative accounting at it’s finest, all to preserve the integrity of the game no doubt.

    Creative accounting instead of a credible and meaningful regular season and now the embracement and celebration of mediocrity just continues.
  • Derek C. September 24, 2011 at 8:36 pm

    I have to agree with you Joe. Last year I would have thought of the Idea of 2 leagues with no divisions was ludicrous. The Mets could have won 95 games this year and still might have not made the post season because they are in one of the strongest divisions in baseball. Get a more semi balanced schedule. Keep interleague play to a minimum and have an additional rivalry series to close out the season. Rivalries like the Mets/Phillies, Yankees/Red Sox, Cubs/Cardinals, Giants/Dodgers, etc..Otherwise balance out the scheduling to where each team plays each other at least 6 times a season, but no more than 12 in their league. Only 3 times in the other league except for the inter city rivalries. Teams like the Rangers and Tigers won’t have it too easy for playing weaker teams in their division more than the other teams outside their division.
    • JoeD 1966 September 25, 2011 at 2:16 pm

      2008 we won more games than the Dodgers but we went home.There’s no way in hell a team that has more wins should go home.We also wouldn’t be talking about 2 straight choke jobs.
      • Derek C. September 29, 2011 at 10:00 pm

        In 1973 how many teams went home that had won more than 82 games? Fair is fair and I agree that the 2 leagues should go without divisions to see who is the best.
• Metsie September 24, 2011 at 1:27 pm

  Good going there HoJo on pointing out the team being idle if they do what they propose…
  I’m sure they know this and will use it (once it is implemented) to create two more franchises they can get franchise fees for and line their pockets even further than expanding the Playoffs already will!

  It’s rediculous to allow even more bad teams into the playoffs than get in now!
  Especially when making the playoffs is used to jusdge the merits of things like Moneyball!
• jerseymet September 24, 2011 at 3:29 pm

  All solutions seem to create new problems. The lords of baseball have given us something new.

  Would the odd number of teams allow for a bye weekend?