By Jordan Long
Major League Baseball is officially back. Last night 2 games were played. With that, MLB has announced expanded playoffs for this season. Instead of 3 division winners and 2 Wild Cards or a total of 10 teams, there are now going to be 16 teams entering the playoffs.
The last time MLB lengthened the postseason was in 2012. They added a second Wild Card team. This was a 1 game playoff between the two Wild Card teams to determine who would play the best team in both leagues for the Division Series. Now with the 16 teams, it will be the 3 division winners, 3 second place teams in the divisions, and the remaining top 2 records.
The playoff matchups for this would be 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6, and 4 vs 5. The first round will be a best of 3 series at the higher seeds’ home ballpark. After that it is the same as the past, the Division Series is best of 5, while the League Championship Series is best of 7 and the same with the World Series. They would travel back and forth between ballparks like they normally do.
Increasing the playoffs is not the worst idea. The MLB season this year is 60 games which is 102 games less than what it normally is. The regular season in normal years means more. With the new playoff system, a terrible start won’t mean a team is out of it. They still have a chance to make a run to the playoffs.
This increase in postseason teams may only be for this year. It would be difficult next season to play all 162 games and then have 16 teams in the playoffs. They would be playing baseball far into November which would be tricky for winter cities like Chicago and Denver. The weather could be too cold or unplayable with snow. If they wanted to add more teams to the postseason in 2021, the year would need to start earlier. For this shortened season though it makes sense.
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