Welcome to State of the Union, a weekly column covering the commissioner's office, the players' union and all the forces shaping the future of our national pastime.
The calendar has turned to September. There's a slight chill in the air. Division titles and Wild Card spots are hanging in the balance. Just weeks remain until we arrive at postseason baseball ... and everyone once again starts complaining about why MLB's playoff format is unfair to their specific team.
At this point, it's become a time-honored tradition, especially since Rob Manfred overhauled the league's postseason setup for the 2022 season — adding a third Wild Card team in each league and making each Wild Card round a best-of-three series instead of one do-or-die game. And rest assured, when the first upset unfolds in October, the cries will start up all over again.
We're not here to go to bat for teams who were unable to get the job done when the lights were brightest. It's a simple tradeoff, one that every fan is on board with: To get the drama of the playoffs, you need to invite a little chaos. If you want to simply reward the regular season, get rid of October entirely. If you want to create instantly iconic moments, well, suck it up and go win.
Still, while a bit of randomness will always exist in any playoff format, we can't help but feel like MLB's version could still use a bit of tweaking. So here are four changes we'd suggest Manfred and Co. institute to strike the perfect balance between madness and meritocracy.
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Bring back Game 163
I'll admit, this one isn't based on anything more than personal preference. Is it "fairer" to decide who claims a division title or a Wild Card spot based on head-to-head record over the course of the regular season? Of course it is. But it's also much, much more boring.
For years, MLB resolved any ties in the standings with one more game, right after the conclusion of the regular season, with the winner going on to October and the loser potentially going home. Game 163s produced several unforgettable moments over the years, from Bucky Dent's homer at Fenway Park in 1978 to Matt Holliday maybe (or maybe not) clipping home plate with the winning run in 2007 to the Twins and Tigers battling for the AL Central title at the Metrodome in 2009. But when the league expanded the postseason from 10 teams to 12 in 2022, they decided to get rid of the tiebreaker game in order to make room for the best-of-three Wild Card round.
It's time to bring it back. Sure, it would create some cramped scheduling, like we saw when the Mets and Braves had to play Games 161 and 162 on the Monday after the season ended due to postponements. But you know an easy way to avoid that problem? Win. And besides: Now that there are three Wild Card spots, a team that loses out on the division in a Game 163 would still have a chance to bounce back. One-game series are some of the sport's best drama, and while they don't belong in the postseason proper, they're better than deciding a tie on paper.
Make the lower Wild Card seeds win an extra game
Every year, we see at least one upset in a best-of-three Wild Card series, and every year, the losing team's fan base cries foul about how unfair it is to get sent packing early after being the superior team over the course of six months. While I only have so much sympathy for that line of argument — unless you want to go full Premier League and abandon the postseason entirely, this will never be a true meritocracy — I do think it's fair to do a little bit more to reward higher seeds for their work during the regular season.
So let's steal an idea from the KBO. In Korea, the two Wild Card teams in each league play a best-of-three series; but unlike in MLB, the higher-seeded team only needs to win once, while the lower-seeded team has to win twice. Why not apply this to our own Wild Card round? You're still giving lower seeds more than a puncher's chance; all they have to do is win two games in a row. But you also give the higher seed a definitive advantage that goes beyond simply playing at home (an advantage that sure doesn't seem to mean all that much any more). The Wild Card series are our single biggest source of chaos, and our biggest source of belly-aching; this keeps the potential for chaos while tilting things in a way that doesn't make those preceding 162 games feel quite so meaningless.
Reseed after each round
As things stand, the NFL is the only one of the big four men's professional sports leagues to reseed after each round of the playoffs, ensuring that the No. 1 seed plays the weakest remaining seed and so on down the line. The NBA and NHL are also holdouts here, but I've yet to hear a solid argument against reseeding the bracket.
To be clear, I'm not sure how much of a difference this would actually make. Let's look at last year as an example: The Phillies technically caught a break when the No. 6-seeded Mets upset the Brewers in the Wild Card round; in the NFL, they would've been sent to L.A. for an NLDS matchup with the Dodgers, while the No. 4-seeded Padres would've faced Philly. Los Angeles likely wasn't thrilled at having to survive a five-game war against a hated division rival, but the Phillies wound up losing to New York anyway.
Still, in the interest of fairness, why not ensure that the higher seed comes with what is on paper at least the easiest possible matchup in each round?
Make the Division Series a best-of-seven — with a potential twist
I know, I know, we're already bumping up against how long the postseason can possibly last while we barrel into the first week of November. But we should probably shorten the regular season back to at least 154 anyway, and this would be a way to fill in that extra time. Because really, it's sort of incredible that a quarterfinal playoff series is a best-of-five in the year of our lord 2025 — neither the NBA nor NHL are structured similarly.
If you're lucky enough to be one of the top two seeds in your league over the course of the regular season, you deserve a little more leeway in your first playoff matchup. And if we don't want to go to a full seven games, we could apply the Wild Card tweak here: The higher seed only needs to win three games to advance, while the lower seed needs to win four.