Playoff Reformating?

[Sabermetrician]

Do you think there will ever be a time where the playoffs are switched to "Top 4 Get In" rather than "3 division winners, and a Wild Card?" I was just looking at the American League and there are 4 teams (aside from AL Central and East division leaders) that currently have a better record than AL West leading Oakland (NY, TOR, CHI, MIN).

 

Would baseball ever consider this or do the need "the excitement of division races" each year?

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Ask the Phillies, Mets and Marlins how they feel about the Padres making the playoffs last year.

[soccer10k]

It would be hard to differentiate between every team in the division being horrible and beating up on each other and every team being talented and beating up on each other. And as long as there is an unbalanced schedule you have to take the division winners. If they balanced the schedule out then it would be easier just to take the top 4 teams as every team would be playing on a level playing field.

[goonys evil twin]

 

Would baseball ever consider this or do the need "the excitement of division races" each year?

 

It's not so much the excitement of the division races as it's increasing the amount of teams whose fans are still interested late in the season. If you just took the 4 best records, you're probably going to lose out on a lot of tickets sales and ratings from teams that are out of that exclusive race. People might complain about the integrity of the playoffs, but baseball is still the most exclusive of the team sports as far as qualifying for the postseason.

[NCCubFan]

I don't see it happening. All sports give an automatic playoff spot to division champions. I don't think baseball will change. If they do, there would be no point in having divisions in the first place.

[A New Era]

I don't see it happening. All sports give an automatic playoff spot to division champions. I don't think baseball will change. If they do, there would be no point in having divisions in the first place.

 

Yes, you could just have: The AMERICAN league, and the NATIONAL league. And all of them would be listed in the same "division" and just the top 4 records each year would make it.

 

But it's not gonna happen though.

[UMFan83]

Every league (MLB, NBA, NFL) has made changes with the idea of keeping the division race intact and making sure that there is still a benefit to winning your division.

 

Plus, I know its far fetched, but what if there is a league where there are 4 very very good teams that pretty much beat up on each other all year and finish with 85-87 wins. Because the scheduling is unbalanced in favor of divisional matchups, this would make it really unfair for say a team that plays in a really crappy division and racks up 105 wins.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

 

Would baseball ever consider this or do the need "the excitement of division races" each year?

 

It's not so much the excitement of the division races as it's increasing the amount of teams whose fans are still interested late in the season. If you just took the 4 best records, you're probably going to lose out on a lot of tickets sales and ratings from teams that are out of that exclusive race. People might complain about the integrity of the playoffs, but baseball is still the most exclusive of the team sports as far as qualifying for the postseason.

 

I don't understand how choosing the 4 teams with divisions keeps more teams in the race than 4 teams with the best records.

[bhogg]

contraction and play off format from pre 1994 would be a-okay with me :)

[BigSlick]

contraction and play off format from pre 1994 would be a-okay with me :)

 

Not archaic enough. Lets go back to where there were no "Championship Series'" at all, and just have the pennant winners duke it out in a 9 game World Series.

[Derwood]

People have said this about the NBA, but it always balances itself out over time. A few years ago you could have had 12 teams from the West and 4 from the East in the NBA playoffs, but then just this year, only one West team (Utah) would have gotten in over an East team.