Crazy, stupid, genius? A radical change to the MLB postseason could help...the Seattle Mariners?
The Major League Baseball postseason has gone from the winners of the American and National League meeting in the World Series to a wild card game to determine the wild card winner.
If you think that’s strange, in 2022 we may have another twist to the MLB postseason. According to the New York Post, we may see playoff expansion with a twist on the horizon.
Under this new format, we would see the following…
AL and NL playoffs expand to seven teams in each league
The teams with the best record in each league would skip onto the divisional series
The two other division winners and the wild card with the next best record would each host all three games in a best-of-three wild-card round.
The division winner with the second-best record in a league would then get the first pick of its opponent from those lower three wild cards. The other division winner would pick, leaving the last two wild cards to play each other.
To add in potential drama, the selections would be made on the Sunday night in what traditionally is the final day of the MLB regular season. Team representatives would be on the special making their selections.
So think of this, the NCAA’s Selection Sunday decided to go into business with ABC’s “The Bachelor” and helped create a very strange wrinkle to the MLB postseason.
This made me wonder, what would a certain team *cough* Seattle Mariners *cough* that may or may not have a looming two-decade-long playoff drought look like had this playoff format been around since their last playoff run in 2001.
2001: No. 1 Seed (Bye)
2002: No. 5 Seed (Wild card)
2003: No. 5 Seed (Wild card)
2007: No. 5 Seed (Wild card)
2009: No. 7 Seed (Wild Card)
2014: No. 6 Seed (Wild Card)
2016: No. 7 Seed (Wild Card)
2018: No. 6 Seed (Wild Card)
Ok, so yeah...The Seattle Mariners should ABSOLUTELY embrace this potential format change. End that playoff drought by any means necessary!
We are just a few seasons away from going full BASEketball when it comes to playoff formats.
This story was originally published February 10, 2020 at 3:31 PM.
