The long-rumored proposal from Major League Baseball to reduce the season and alter the playoffs has finally come.
Major League Baseball announced several proposed scheduling changes for the 2029 season in conjunction with a proposed salary cap and salary floor system.
The proposal to reduce the schedule is, by and large, not a big deal. Will it make some records harder to break? Sure, in the same way it made it easier for some records to fall when the schedule went from 154 games to 162 in 1961. But all in all, there is nothing harmful about an eight-game schedule reduction that returns baseball to the way it was from 1920-1962.1 Especially if there is, as MLB suggests, a standard off day every week.2 This will help with player conditioning, standardize how off-days are handled, and should make it easier on pitchers.3
The other changes aren’t nearly as interesting.
I don’t think the MLB needs more playoff games. The playoffs have already gotten too cumbersome and too long as it is. Making the Division Series a seven-game affair in the same way the LCS and the World Series are is just a cash grab, even if the stated reason is to “reduce weekday daytime Postseason games” and “give pitchers extra rest.”
When Bob Gibson won three games in the 1968 World Series, he pitched three complete games on three days' rest each. I don’t think Bob Gibson needed extra rest between games.4
Expanding the Division Series to seven games gives mediocre teams an extra chance to steal a game or two. But does anybody really think the Yankees would have beaten Tampa Bay in the Division Series this year if the series had been seven games?
I have mixed feelings about the third proposal.
Opponent selection is a very unique quirk that no other sport does. It has been bandied about from time to time as a way to equalize the playing field and give the Division Winner stuck in the Division Series at least some level of perk, and it gives extra incentives for the Top 2 Division Winners to keep playing for those top seeds.
But I also think that reseeding the teams after the Wild Card series would achieve a similar purpose.
All in all, this is a unique idea and not the worst idea that MLB has ever had.5
The brightest side to all of this is the fact that it shows that MLB’s owners are willing to compromise with the players. The MLB Players Union has steadfastly held out for a salary floor, and now the Owners are agreeing to give them one in exchange for a salary cap. The onus will be on the players to decide if they are willing to compromise for the good of the game or whether or not we’re going to be stuck with a long lockout this winter.
Either way, Major League Baseball’s scheduling proposals for 2029 aren’t entirely bad. But some are better than others, and I would think long and hard before expanding the playoffs again.
Hard to believe, but there have been more MLB seasons with 162 games than with 154. You can look it up.
It’s unclear, so far, if this means “The Orioles have every Monday off” or “The Orioles will have either Monday or Thursday off”. I’d have to think it’s the latter.
Particularly Japanese pitchers who come to the US, as Japan has a standard off-day but a six-man rotation.
I’ll at least allow that there were only seven postseason games in all of 1968, the last year before divisions. But Bob Gibson threw 304 innings in 1968, so does it really matter?
Universal DH. Banning the shift. Three-batter minimum. Choose your own here.