MLB considering adding ‘selection show’ twist to 16-team 2020 playoffs

The MLB is still not putting the “selection show” idea to bed.

The MLB season is scheduled to get started later tonight, and the league still hasn’t finalized their postseason plans for this truncated morsel of a season in 2020. That’s probably for the best, however, as that means there is still time to convince Rob Manfred that the latest playoff proposal is nonsensical.

Per Buster Olney, the top three seeds in an expanded 16-team playoff would be the three winners of each division. Because the MLB is committed to shooting themselves in the foot, the three teams who win the division would then be able to select who they play in the first round of the playoffs.

The MLB’s plan to let division winners pick opponents makes no sense.

It’s painfully obvious what the MLB is trying to do here. The league is realizing that it does not do a good job of marketing players or feeding into narratives created over the course of a season like the NFL and NBA, so they’re essentially asking the players to force those narratives upon us by picking opponents.

Baseball fans already have issues with the fact that the playoffs in a shortened season will be expanded. Rather than bastardizing the game even more than they already have, the best course of action for the MLB is to play the season out like normal and try to set up a traditional eight-team bracket in each league.

Often times, the reason that unique formats like this don’t exist on a larger scale is due to the simple fact that these formats don’t work. While Manfred and the higher-ups think that this format will add all sorts of drama and new narratives to the postseason, teams picking their opponents seems more like a sideshow act from a lower-tier minor league than the playoff structure of the best baseball league in the world.