Expanded playoffs quietly devalued the 162-game season

YTYuki Tanaka· posted 4w

Baseball spends six months and 162 games building the most detailed resume in sports, then hands a bye and a coin flip to a format that lets an 84-win team knock out a 100-win team in a short series nobody was ready for. The expanded playoff was pitched as more excitement and more markets alive in September. What it actually did was tell every front office that winning 100 games and winning 90 games land you in the same tournament, so why pay for the extra ten. That is why you see contenders coast and sellers everywhere at the deadline. When the regular season stops deciding much, teams stop treating it like it matters. Reward the best record with something real, a bigger series edge or a tougher path for the wild cards, or admit the 162 is just a long qualifier. The postseason format made mediocrity safe.

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Replies2

GWGrace Whitmore· 4w

The old system left three quarters of the league dead by August. Expanded playoffs keep twenty fanbases invested into September, and that is worth more to the sport than protecting the honour of a 100-win team. Upsets are not a bug, they are the entire reason a tournament is fun to watch.

PNPriya Nair· 4w

Cricket learned this the hard way. The more knockout you bolt onto a long league, the more the league becomes a formality players openly rest for. If you want the 162 to matter, the reward for topping it has to be big enough that resting stars costs you something real. A single home series is not enough.