A Big
Baseball Article:
Reimagining MLB’s
Regular Season and Post-Season
Mark
Bausch
Editor
St. Louis Sports Online
September
30, 2024
Summary: With
a hat-tip to the NBA’s Play-in Tournament, it is proposed that MLB
conducts its own Play-in Tournaments (one each in the American and
National Leagues). Each league’s Play-in Tournament commences at the
conclusion of the 162 game Regular Season. The top two Qualifiers (1
and 2 in each league, based on Regular Season play) advance to each
league’s Division Series as Seeds 1 and 2, while Qualifiers 3-5 advance
to each league’s Wild Card Series as Seeds 3-5. Each league’s Play-in
Tournament (comprised of single elimination Play-in Semi-Final and
Final games) features Qualifiers 6-9 competing to earn #6 Seeds. The #6
Seeds advance to their respective league’s Wild Card Series, where
MLB’s post-season continues as currently constructed: per league, two
(best-of-three) Wild Card Series, two (best-of-five) Division Series,
and one (best-of-seven) League Championship Series. Winners of each
league’s LCS qualify for the World Series. Qualifiers 1-9 (in each
league) are determined, in part, via earning ‘Post-Season Tickets’.
Post-Season Tickets are earned by winners of each division at the
conclusion of three 54 game ‘seasons’: Games 1-54, 55-108, and 109-162.
Teams earning three ‘Post-Season Tickets’ qualify at positions higher
than those earning two (followed by one). Each league’s complement of
nine Qualifiers is completed by consideration of the remaining teams’
162 game won-loss records.
A Big Baseball Article: Reimagining MLB’s Regular Season and
Post-Season
I. The
NBA and Its Play-in Tournament
II.
Some NBA Play-in
Details
III.
Meaningful (and
Meaningless) September Baseball?
IV.
A Three-Part Regular
Season? The MLB T-Mobile Play-in Series?!
V.
Applying
the T-Mobile Play-in Series and Split-Season Plans to 2024 American
League Results
VI.
Applying the T-Mobile Play-in
Series and Split-Season Plans to
2024 National League Results
VII.
A Bracket, a Summary, a Caveat and a
Look Back at 2023
I. The NBA and Its Play-in Tournament
Many
(but not all) casual NBA fans know that ‘The
Association’ recently instituted an annual play-in tournament.
The
SoFi Play-In Tournament! Here’s how it works.
Currently,
thirty NBA teams are divided into two fifteen
team conferences (Eastern and Western); each conference is further
divided into
three five team divisions.
At
the conclusion of the regular season, the top ten
teams (in each conference) are ranked 1-10, with division champions and
best
overall won-loss records at or near the top of both lists.
In
each conference, teams ranked 1-6 automatically
qualify for the first round of the NBA Playoffs and are assigned
Seeds 1-6,
respectively.
A
play-in tournament involving teams ranked 7-10 (in both
Eastern and Western conferences) is utilized to complete each
conference’s complement
of first round playoff qualifiers.
In
other words, the ‘winners’ of the SoFi Play-in
Tournament earn Seeds 7 and 8 in each conference, therefore filling out
each
conference’s eight team playoff bracket.
II. Some NBA Play-in Details
The
SoFi Play-in Tournament consists of a total of four
play-in games (two in each conference) and two No. 8 seed game.
In
each conference, one Play-in Game matches teams seeded 7
and 8 while another Play-in game matches teams seeded 9 and 10. The
winner of
the 7-8 game qualifies for the NBA Playoffs as Seed 7; the loser of
the
9-10 game is eliminated from further play.
In
each conference, the No. 8 seed game matches the winner
of the 9-10 game with the loser of the 7-8 game. The winner
of this
game qualifies for the NBA Playoffs as Seed 8.
All
of this means that, each season, when SoFi Play-in
Tournament games are defined as post-season games, a total of twenty
(out of
thirty) NBA teams qualify for post-season play. After the Play-in
Tournament,
sixteen NBA teams participate in the First Round of the NBA Playoffs
(the
Conference Semi-Finals).
Every
spring, the NBA’s television partners are delighted to
televise a total of six additional post-season games. Of course, the
NBA and
its players are also delighted with the additional revenues that the
television
partners supply (in the form of rights fees) in exchange for the right
to
televise said games. Everybody wins!
The graphic that
follows shows the results of the 2024 NBA
Play-in Tournament where the 76ers and Heat (7th and 8th
seeds in the Eastern Conference) and Pelicans and Lakers (7th and 8th
seeds in the Western Conference) advanced to their respective
Conference
Semi-Finals.
III. Meaningful (and Meaningless) September Baseball?
There
is nothing quite like the atmosphere in and around a
big league baseball stadium, in September, when the home team is
contending for
a spot in MLB’s post-season playoffs.
Baseball’s
oldest of old-timers talk about ‘pennant fever’.
On
game day at the ballpark, everybody from ushers inside to
the traffic cops outside seem to know why they are there—there’s a
pennant race
in the air.
Former
Cardinals manager Tony La Russa refers to those
September games as ‘meaningful’.
To
this observer, it seemed that, as manager, La Russa’s
primary spring training goal each year was for his team to be fortunate
enough
to play ‘meaningful games’ in the September that followed.
How
did La Russa make his way to St. Louis as the Cards’
manager?
The
1995 Cardinals season was dreadful in several ways;
baseball’s labor problems delayed the start of the regular season
(after cancelling
the 1994 post season), the team’s owners (the Anheuser-Busch
corporation) were
in the process of selling the team, the team traded perhaps its best
player
(Todd Zeile), fired manager Joe Torre (basically doing the well-liked
Torre a
favor), and replaced Torre with long-time organizational man Mike
Jorgensen.
All
on the way to a 62-81 won-loss record, and September
1995 Cardinals’ games were barely ‘meaningful’.
And
the atmosphere around a ballpark before, during and
after meaningless September games is the opposite of that
described
above for meaningful September games; at times it seems likely that
out-of-contention teams would be unable to fill their stadia even
if they
gave away September tickets for free.
Alas,
in St. Louis, Tony La Russa was hired prior to the
start of the 1996 season, and in large part was charged with bringing
meaningful September baseball back to Busch Stadium.
As
the first draft of this article is written (September 21,
2024), the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates are in fourth and
fifth place
in the NL Central division, 13 and 16.5 games behind the first-place
Milwaukee
Brewers. With about one week left in the 2024 regular season, both
teams have
been eliminated from Wild Card contention.
Cincinnati
played host to Pittsburgh earlier today. The
announced paid attendance (25,574) at The Great American Ballpark
dwarfed the
actual crowd; TV shots suggested the actual number of fans in
attendance was
about half the announced attendance. Or less.
The
game featured two high-profile rookie starting pitchers
as well as real-life budding position player superstars on both
rosters. While
the weather was typical for late-summer Cincinnati
(hot-and-humid)…well, typical
Ohio River-area September weather alone doesn’t normally prevent some
of the
midwest’s best baseball fans from showing up at the downtown Cincinnati
riverfront
ballpark.
But
in terms of post-season possibilities…the late-September
game was meaningless for both teams. Ergo, a paltry number of fans
gathered in
a stadium devoid of atmosphere.
Even
with MLB’s expanded wild card format, there are dozens
of meaningless MLB games each September.
With
its still-recent rule changes (including instituting a
pitch clock and larger bases, placing limitations on defensive shirts
and
restrictions on baserunners breaking up double plays), MLB’s
decision-makers
have shown that they are willing to think outside of the box as far as
making
improvements to what used to be referred to as The National Pastime.
Let’s
put MLB’s open-mindedness to the test!
Is
there a way to reduce the number of meaningless September
MLB games? In essence, is there a way to ‘energize’ MLB’s
annual
six-month long regular season?
IV.
A Three-Part Regular Season? The MLB T-Mobile Play-in
Series?!
Baseball’s
regular season more-or-less runs from April
through September, with 162 games spread over six months—April &
May (Spring),
June & July (Summer) and August & September (Fall). [For the
purpose of
this article, the small number of March regular season games are
included with
April’s totals.]
Baseball’s
162 game regular season divides nicely into
thirds...
Suppose
baseball’s single 162 game regular season was split
into three equal 54 game seasons: Spring (basically, April
& May); Summer
(June & July); and Fall (August & September)…with each
individual ’season’ ending with a declared champion.
Baseball’s
current thirty team, two league/three division
set-up (a total of six divisions) therefore would result in, for
each division
in each league, the crowning of ‘champions’ after the games played
at the
end of the 54-game Spring Season (Opening Day through the end of May),
‘champions’
crowned after the 54-game Summer Season (early June through the end of
July),
and ‘champions’ crowned after the
54-game Fall Season (early August through the end of the regular
season).
For
each season, then, a total of eighteen ‘champions’ (nine
per league) would result:
*American
League: Spring, Summer and Fall champions (in AL
East, Central & West divisions)
*National
League:
Spring, Summer and Fall champions (in NL East, Central &
West
divisions)
Each
season will have eighteen pennant races.
It
is proposed here that each ‘champion’ earns one
‘Post-Season Ticket’ per championship; and that a team earning (at
least) one
‘Post-Season Ticket’ automatically qualifies for post-season play.
Therefore,
six teams (three in each league) qualify for post-season
play at the end of May, at the end of July, and at the end of September
(season’s end).
At
season’s end, the qualifiers are ‘ranked’ according to
their 162 game won-loss record, best (Qualifier #1) to worst (Qualifier
#9).
Restating:
each MLB regular season results in nine (9)
post-season Qualifiers, per league.
Of
course, in each season it is likely that, instead of nine
different teams (per league) earning exactly one Post-Season Ticket, at
least
one team will earn two, or even three ‘Post-Season Tickets’.
A
team (or teams) that earns three Post-Season Tickets is placed
at the top of their league’s ranking list (and teams that earn two
Tickets are
placed behind those earning three but ahead of those earning one
Ticket).
In
the event that more than one team earns three Tickets (or,
more than one team earns two Tickets), their qualifying order will be
according
to each team’s 162 game won-loss record.
It
follows that, in each league, any season with at least
one team earning at least two Post-Season Tickets requires that fewer
than nine
teams qualify for that league’s post-season play via earning a
Post-Season
Ticket.
For
example, if one National League team earns three
Post-Season Tickets while another earns two…this scenario
demands that four
other NL teams earn exactly one Post-Season Ticket—for a total of six
NL teams that
qualify for the post-season via Post-Season Tickets.
But
as described, nine qualifying teams, per league, are
required to initiate post-season play.
In
the above scenario, the three remaining qualifying
positions will be filled by teams (not earning Post-Season Tickets)
with the
best full-season 162 game W-L record.
For
ranking purposes, won-loss records for qualifying teams that
did not earn a Post-Season Ticket are compared with won-loss records
for qualifying
teams that earned (exactly) one Post-Season ticket.
In
other words, a bit of re-ordering often occurs with these
two groups of qualifiers (those earning exactly one Post-Season Ticket
and
those filling out each league’s list of qualifiers to nine).
Restating
(and fleshing out) the Proposal:
Each
League has nine qualifiers; the Qualifiers are ranked
1-9.
It
is proposed that Qualifiers 1 & 2 automatically advance
to each league’s Division Series as Seeds 1 & 2, and that
Qualifiers 3-5
automatically advance to the Wild Card Series of playoffs as Seeds 3-5.
What
follows is best understood as a straightforward mechanism
that reduces the four remaining Qualifiers (6, 7, 8 and 9 in each
League) to the
one remaining place in each league’s Wild Card Series (the #6 Seed in
each
League). [Currently, Seeds 3-6 qualify for the Wild Card Series in each
League.]
A
name for the ‘tournament’ that yields a #6 Seed in each
League? The T-Mobile Play-in Series (!).
Simply
put, in each league, the T-Mobile Play-in Series
opens with a pair of single elimination games, where Qualifier 6 plays
Qualifier
9, while Qualifier 7 plays Qualifier 8.
These
two games comprise the Play-in Semi-Finals.
Per
league, the winners of each Play-in Semi-Final game
then advance to the Play-in Finals, a single game in which the winner
earns the
#6 seed for what is currently referred to as the Wild Card Series.
At
this point, the MLB post-season would continue as
currently constructed where, in each league, teams seeded 1 & 2
receive byes,
while (in each league) in a pair of three-game series (currently known
as the
Wild Card Series), Seed 3 plays Seed 6 (the winner of the Play-in
Series),
while Seed 4 plays Seed 5.
Again,
in each league, the winners of these two three-game
series (the Wild Card Series) are matched with Seeds 1 and 2, in what
are now
referred to as Division Series. As it is now, these are five game
series.
Finally,
in each league, the winners of each five game
series (the Division Series) advance to their respective American and
National League
seven game League Championship Series.
And
the winner of each league’s Championship Series advances
to the seven game World Series.
For the
American League’s just-completed 2024 regular season, the necessary
parameters for the T-Mobile Play-in and Wild Card Series set up as
follows
[Spring, Summer and Fall ‘Champions’ W/L records in RED):
Qualifiers 1-3 [Teams
with 2 Post-Season Tickets; 1-3
ranking based on
2024 season W/L record]:
#1 NY Yankees (94-68); Seed 1
#2 Cleveland (92-79); Seed 2
#3 Houston (88-73); Seed 3
Qualifiers 4-9 [Teams
with 1 or 0 Post-Season Tickets; 4-9
ranking
based on 2024 season W/L record]:
#4 Baltimore (91-71); Seed 4
#5 Kansas City (86-76**); Seed 5
#6 Detroit (86-76**);
Play-in
#7 Seattle (85-77); Play-in
#8 Minnesota (82-80); Play-in
#9 Boston (81-81); Play-in
Note that the list
of Actual 2024 Seeds (#1 NY Yankees; #2 Cleveland; #3 Houston; #4
Baltimore; #5
Kansas City; #6 Detroit) is identical to the list of the top six
proposed Qualifiers.
VI. Applying the
T-Mobile Play-in Series and Split-Season Plans to 2024 National League
Results
For the National
League’s just-completed 2024 regular season, the necessary parameters
for the
T-Mobile Play-in and Wild Card Series set up as follows [Spring, Summer
and
Fall ‘Champions’ W/L records in RED):
*Summer W/L records for Milwaukee and Pittsburgh: 30-24. Milwaukee and Pittsburgh evenly split their ten Spring & Summer games (5-5). Milwaukee outscored Pittsburgh 44-39 in those ten games. Milwaukee wins tie-breaker.
**Fall W/L records for Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee: 32-22. Milwaukee won eight of thirteen Regular Season games with the Cubs; Milwaukee wins tie-breaker.
***2024 Season W/L
records for Chicago Cubs and St. Louis: 83-79. St.
Louis won seven of thirteen 2024 Regular Season games with the Cubs;
St. Louis wins tie-breaker.
****2024 Season W/L records for Atlanta, NY Mets and Arizona: 89-73.
--Atlanta won seven of thirteen 2024 Regular Season games with the Mets; Atlanta wins tie-breaker.
--Atlanta won five of seven 2024 Regular Season games with Arizona. Atlanta wins tie-breaker.
--NY Mets won four of seven 2024 Regular Season games with Arizona. NY Mets win tie-breaker.
Details
and Explanations
Qualifier
1 [Team with 3 Post-Season
Tickets]:
#1 Milwaukee (93-69); Seed 1
Qualifiers
2-9 [Teams with 1 or 0 Post-Season
Tickets, 2-9 ranking based on 2024 season W/L record]:
#2 LA Dodgers (98-64); Seed 2
#3 Philadelphia (95-67); Seed 3
#4 San Diego (93-69); Seed 4
#5 Atlanta (89-73****);
Seed 5
#6 NY Mets (89-73****);
Play-in
#7 Arizona (89-73****);
Play-in
#8 St. Louis (83-79***);
Play-in
#9 Chicago (83-79***);
Play-in
Note
that Actual 2024 Seeds 1-6 are the same teams as the
top six proposed Qualifiers (different order).
VII.
A Bracket, a Summary, a Caveat and a Look Back at
2023
A
Bracket is worth a thousand words.
A
Summary: There are two primary new ideas within A
Big Baseball Article: Reimagining MLB’s Regular Season and Post-Season.
First,
the 162 game Regular Season and the Wild Card,
Division, League Championship and World Series remain in place, but for
Post-Season play qualification, the Regular Season is split into three,
equal
54 game ‘seasons’: Spring, Summer and Fall. Baseball’s current
two-league three-division
structure is utilized, and teams with the best record, within each
division,
for each 54 game season, qualify for post-season play.
Second,
within each League, Qualifiers 1-5 (as
described in the article) automatically advance to Wild Card Series
play as
Seeds 1-5, but Qualifiers 6-9 compete in a two-day Play-in Series to
determine
Seed #6. Seed 6 advances to the Wild Card Series.
Ramifications
of Reimagining MLB’s Regular Season and
Post-Season:
*Pennant
races result, in all six divisions, in late-May,
late-July and late-September. Each team has three opportunities to earn
a
Post-Season Ticket via, in essence, a single two month stretch of games
*For
the purposes of seeding and tie-breakers, 162 game
records matter, and every run scored matters
*The
six single-elimination Play-in Games, because they are
single-elimination games, will generate interest all their own. In
essence,
they are their own stand-alone Game Sevens!
*The
Play-in Series adds length to each year’s playoffs—pitchers
for Seeds 1-5 get additional time to rest
*Including
the Play-in Series, while eighteen of thirty MLB
teams qualify for some form of post-season play, only twelve (as it is
now)
participate in the Wild Card Series and Division Series rounds
*In
virtually every conceivable scenario, the nine
Post-season Qualifiers in each League will be teams with the nine best
W/L
records in their respective leagues. In essence, the regular
season
serves as the laboratory where post-season seedings are earned
*The
men and women who construct the MLB regular season
schedule will have extra work on their hands as they attempt to
‘balance’ the
Spring, Summer and Fall seasons as far as fairness is concerned
A
Caveat: Any comparison of the ‘results’ of Reimagining
MLB’s Regular Season and Post-Season with the current 2024 regular
and
playoff protocols is somewhat limited in utility because the
protocol
proposed here was not in use. As contending teams approach regular
season
games 54, 108 and 162, it is likely that managers would optimize their
lineups
and starting rotations as the conclusions of the Spring (Game 54),
Summer (Game
108) and Fall (Game 162) seasons approach—in efforts to collect
Post-Season
Tickets.
A
look back at the 2023 MLB regular and post-season
playoffs reveals that every team that qualified for the 2023
post-season would
have also qualified when applying the 2023 Regular Season results to Reimagining
MLB’s Regular Season and Post-Season.
Qualifiers
1-5 (American League: Baltimore, Texas, Minnesota,
Houston and Tampa Bay; National League: Atlanta, LA Dodgers, Milwaukee,
Philadelphia
and Arizona) would have been awarded the corresponding seeds in each
league’s
Wild Card Series.
Qualifiers
6-9 (American League: Blue Jays, Mariners,
Yankees and Guardians; National League: Marlins, Cubs, Reds and Giants)
would have
competed in the Play-in Series to determine each league’s #6 seed, and
move on
to the Wild Card Series.
Actual
2023 MLB Post-Season Play included the following
twelve teams (seeds):
AL:
Baltimore (1); Houston (2); Minnesota (3); Tampa Bay
(4); Texas (5); Toronto (6)
NL:
Atlanta (1); LA Dodgers (2); Milwaukee (3); Philadelphia
(4); Miami (5); Arizona (6)