Since 2012, MLB has had a 10-team playoff bracket format – 5 teams from each league consisting of 3 division winners and 2 Wild Card teams. Well, except for the 2020 season, when Rob Manfred said, “well, we’ll only be playing 60 games, why not turn it into a science experiment” and put 16 teams in the playoffs, among several other controversial rules.
Even before Manfred decided to put below-.500 teams in the playoffs, the number of playoff teams has always been a hot topic, whether the argument was for more teams, a different Wild Card format, what have you. The actual implementation just amplified the discussion.
With the return to playoff bracket normalcy confirmed prior to the 2021 season, I was looking forward to a breath of fresh air, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. First off, before the postseason even started, the race for the AL Wild Card spots were so tight that MLB had to tweet this:
When I first saw that, I read half of the first slide and gave up trying to understand it.
As I’m sure you know, the AL Wild Card game ended up being Yankees at Red Sox, resulting in devastating finishes for both the Mariners (disappointed but not surprised) and Blue Jays (which ensured that the World Series would take place in just one country). But no game between Yankees and Red Sox is devoid of chaos, let alone a one-game playoff.
Anyway, on to the actual title of the article. The historic chase for the National League West between the Giants and Dodgers raised even more controversy over the current playoff format’s seeding, because even though it had been clear for quite some time that the Giants and Dodgers would both carry the top 2 records this season, whichever team finished 2nd in the division would need to play in the Wild Card Game instead of being the 2-seed in the National League bracket, which is just objectively unfair.
On top of that, since the Braves won their division and the Dodgers didn’t, the Braves got home field advantage in the NLCS, even though the Dodgers won nineteen more games than the Braves. We all saw how that series was. Home-field advantage could’ve been the deciding factor for the Dodgers.
What it boils down to is that MLB is putting a lot of emphasis on division wins, which doesn’t make sense to me — why should the Braves be rewarded for being located farther away from the Giants than the Dodgers? As a Giants fan, I’m glad things worked out the way they did, but as a baseball fan, I’d be pissed if the same thing happened to the Giants.
This reminds me of a small tidbit from the science experiment that was the 2020 MLB season. All baseball fans remember Rob Drake’s beyond-awful umpiring in the Giants’ final game of 2020, a game they needed to win to get into those expanded playoffs. What a lot of people don’t know is that in 2020, if ties were determined by run differential instead of record against divisional opponents, the Giants would’ve played the Dodgers in the Wild Card Round instead of the Brewers. Would the Giants have won? Far from guaranteed. Does that even matter? Not really. It’s just an example of MLB unnecessarily prioritizing divisions over how good a team actually is. That has to change.
That’s not to say I want to drastically change the seeding or division format of MLB. I’m the type of person who simply doesn’t like change, and am not necessarily privy to having more teams in the playoffs. I do think that the seeding is flawed, however, and should be addressed sooner rather than later.
I’d like to end this article by shouting out this tweet that reminded me that I even wanted to write about this and also brought some perspective I hadn’t thought of. If you’re following me on Twitter but not Danny, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Actually, if you’re reading this, you’re legally obligated to follow him. So do it. Now.
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