Major League Baseball floated a trial balloon a week ago, only to see the vast majority of media, fans and players take aim at it in order to (figuratively) shoot it down.
The proposal: expanding the number of playoff teams from the current five teams to seven in each league; awarding a first-round bye to the division champion with the best record; staging a three-game wild card round (rather than the current one-and-done format) with all three games hosted by the team with the superior record; and perhaps most radically, allowing the two highest-seeded teams to choose their first-round opponent.
Let's put aside, for the time being, the fact that a lot will have to happen to get this plan enacted. The Players Association must approve any changes to the postseason format and it's highly unlikely anything will change before 2022, with the current CBA set to expire after the 2021 season.
Almost immediately, the reaction was intensely negative. Some didn't like the notion of the expanded playoff field, charging that baseball would be more closely resembling the NBA and NHL playoffs. Both the NBA (30 teams) and NHL (31 teams) have 16 postseason participants while the NFL allows 12 of its 32 teams to qualify.
Others argued that choosing opponents -- which would be done on the final night of the regular season as part of a TV selection show -- is too hokey and reeked of the artificial drama associated with reality shows.
Players raged. Columnists fumed. Mostly, people asked some variation of this question: Why does Rob Manfred hate baseball so much?
Whether that part is facetious or not, understand that Manfred doesn't hate baseball at all. But he has every right to hate the direction in which the sport is heading and this proposal aims to reverse that.
Naturally, much of this is designed with TV in mind. Although MLB's deal with FOX (involving a Game of the Week telecast, the All-Star Game, two of the four Division Series, one League Championship Series and the World Series) is in place through 2028, the rest of the sport's broadcast inventory (wild card round, Division Series and one LCS) will up for bidding soon, with the current contract with ESPN and Turner up after 2021.
Networks love drama, and they especially love the possibility that one team's season could end without a win. Fans love the urgency of such games, too, which is why the one-and-done wild-card games sometimes attract bigger numbers than the Division Series which follow.
Under this proposal, networks could get a minimum of four elimination games (Game 2 of each of the wild card rounds) and potentially, four double-elimination games (Game 3). Meanwhile, the Sunday night "Choose your opponent,'' show could potentially have the appeal of the NCAA Tournament Selection Show and instigate a week's worth of trash talking.
The drama inherent in the Selection Show and the wild-card rounds would presumably help build interest in subsequent rounds, culminating in the World Series.
Along the way, baseball has ceded October to football. Playoff games -- including LCS showdowns to determine which teams are going to the Series -- routinely get clobbered by run-of-the-mill NFL matchups on Sunday and Monday nights.
The new format could attract more casual fans, curious to see if the Yankees pick the Red Sox....or someone else in the first round. Think of the trash-talking that would ensue, especially if a team picks its own opponent, only to then lose to them and see its season ended prematurely.
Meanwhile, the networks would have staggered start times -- as many as six games could be played on the same day -- across multiple network platforms, once again drawing comparisons to the NCAA college basketball tournament.
Naturally, MLB could see its TV rights fees skyrocket, making owners happy. And ultimately, Manford is in his job to do exactly that.
But there would presumably be benefits for the fans. An expanded playoff field would encourage more owners to spend freely with an eye toward a postseason berth. And that, in turn, should appeal to the MLB Players Association, which believes, not without reason, that there are currently too many incentives to tank.
The bigger playoff field could also re-make the trade deadline, with again, the potential for more teams to improve rather than sell-off. And the availability of two more wild card spots plus the race for a first-round bye or home-field advantage for an entire playoff round will help maintain interest deep into September when fans of .500 teams might otherwise be tempted to re-direct their rooting interest to college or pro football.
Are there potential negatives? Surely, starting with the obvious notion that by enlarging the playoff field from 33 percent of the teams to 47 percent, MLB will water down the significance of qualifying for the postseason. In the span of roughly 10 years, baseball will have nearly doubled the number of teams in each league to get to the playoffs, going from four clubs (as recently as 2011) to the proposed seven.
It's a competitive landscape and the pitfalls are many. But baseball has been losing ground for too long to simply try more of the same. As it is, football sucks up all the oxygen in the sports world -- from the regular season to the playoffs, and soon after, with the start of free agency and the draft -- and the likelihood that the NFL will add a 17th regular-season game and play the Super Bowl later in February will further crowd baseball out of a month that it's already struggling to dominate as spring training gets underway.
Some change and innovation are necessary for baseball to thrive. The status quo, as we've seen, is a losing proposition.
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