Baseball is stuck.
The players and owners keep throwing proposals and counter-proposals at each other, inching so gradually towards the other’s position that the owners have described the current state of things as “deadlocked.”
Hey, wait a minute, if they keep inching towards each other, that’s not a deadlock at all! That’s just really slow movement! Anyone describing the current labor situation as deadlocked should be dragged behind galloping horses, which I like to call “standing still.”
Anyway, one of the current ways the players could break the not-deadlock is if they offer a large concession to get a large concession back. That large concession could take the form of…shout it out if you read the title of today’s newsletter and therefore know where I’m going with this…a 14-team playoff field.
Here’s the thing: that’s bad.
People who like the idea of a 14-team playoff will generally give you one of the following arguments:
Playoff baseball is great, so more playoff baseball is great!
Having more tense, meaningful baseball games is great!
So many playoff teams will encourage front offices to improve their teams to get in
Everyone loves the NFL playoffs, and now MLB is getting closer to that format
They have to do something different because (demographics of Major League Baseball)
And to all of that I say, nah.
Oh sure, I can give reasons, but isn’t it nice to just be able to say nah to things? Try it. Out loud, right now. Naaaaaaaaah.
Pretty fun, right?
Okay, logical arguments. Let’s do it.
The thing that makes playoff baseball great is that it is a series between two teams that are significantly above average Major League Baseball teams. They don’t all have to be the 107 win Giants facing the 106 win Dodgers, but two division winners facing each other means something. Even a division winner facing a team that won a play-in game just to be there means something. And that something is, very specifically, that this is a good team that accomplished something and you should respect them. If you get rid of that, allowing at least one third place finisher in each league —third! — then it means nothing. I don’t want to watch 83-win teams in the playoffs, and yes, 2006 Cardinals, I definitely include you in that. I don’t want to watch teams that are there by default, and it seems like that’s all you’ll get in a 14-team field.
What if I told you that, instead of making more games matter, expanded playoffs would actually mean fewer games matter? Pretty wild, huh? Did I just blow your mind? No? For multiple reasons? All right, well, I can’t say that’s not disappointing, but I respect your decision.
The reason that less games would matter is that with just under half the league making the playoffs, regular season games wouldn’t matter. As long as you half-ass some mediocre 84-78 season, you’ll get in. So those late September games where you come into the week at 82-74, needing to win to lock down your shot at October? Those are gone. Meaningless. Just another week of the season, just like that week in May when your team went 2-4. Dust off your uni, you’ll get ‘em next time.
That’s not what September should be. September should be AH FUCK WE CAN’T LOSE A GAME BECAUSE WE KNOW THEY’RE NOT GONNA LOSE A GAME. That’s what makes the race fun down the stretch. Taking that all away…what’s the point of the regular season at all? Isn’t all of it just prelude to the Important Part? And what’s the point of baseball? Why are we doing any of this? Why-SNAP OUT OF IT, BRUZZONE. YOU HAVE WORK TO DO.
In a similar vein, if every over-.500 team makes the playoffs, and it will at least be extremely close to every one of them, then why would a front office mortgage its funeral to get marginally better? Why would an ownership group take on salary to move from a 7th seed to a 6th seed? There’s no reason. It doesn’t make business sense. So now, not only have we ruined September, but we’ve also ruined the trade deadline. Cool. Good work, everyone.Yes, people do love the NFL playoffs. But you know what’s exciting about them? It’s not the format. It’s the fact that here in America, people really fucking love football. That’s it. It’s easy. And then you add to that the drama of a one-and-done game, and what you have is a recipe for popularity.
Baseball, meanwhile, has long, multi-game playoff series, like the NBA. Now, I don’t want to make it seem like there aren’t great moments or iconic moments in the NBA playoffs, but the first fourteen months of every NBA playoff season are famously a slog. The first rounds take forever, and fans check out and say they’ll be back later, when the teams are playing for something. This is the fate MLB wants for itself. This is not the fate I want for them.Baseball is dying, the argument goes. Only more playoff games can fix it, the implied solution goes.
But can they? I mean, really. Can they?
Kids nowadays have the TikToks and Nintendo Gamecubes and whatnot that can entertain them for hours on end. If they are not already baseball fans, why would they choose to watch the 96-66 Cardinals take on the 83-79 Brewers? Yes, baseball has a growth problem, but if you’re going to fix it, you do that by creating opportunities for kids to play baseball and go to baseball games and love baseball, not by slapping a few extra games up on TV and saying, “Yeah, this’ll do it.”
In other words, this solution doesn’t solve the problem. If you want kids playing the game, pay to remove their barriers to entry. Set up MLB-sponsored travel teams where parents don’t have to pay a dime, and set up cheat batting cages for the public, and do anything to fix your long-term problem instead of putting a Band-Aid on your short-term one.
Of course, the secret here that I don’t want to ponder too hard is that all of this applies to a 12-team playoff field too, if somewhat less. The playoffs will still be diluted. The season will still be marginalized. No long-term problem of kids not caring about baseball will be solved.
It’s not hard to find an example of an undeserving team that would have been a Playoff Team under either of these formats. For example, back in 2017 there were exactly 5 American League teams over .500. A team with a losing record does not belong in the postseason, and yet, there would have been two of them. That doesn’t sit right with me. You earn the playoffs by winning. That’s what makes them the playoffs. Without that, why bother?
This is how other sports operate. NHL and NBA playoffs routinely feature teams that lost more games than they won. But baseball doesn’t have to do this. The thing that baseball fans like about it is that it is its own sport with its own values, traditions, and meanings. Getting rid of those, making the sport more like its competitors, misses the point. Baseball is fun because it’s baseball. The people who like it like that about it specifically. You can try to alienate those people pandering to the masses, but will it work?
Naaaaaaaaaaaah.