There’s been speculation that 2021 would be the last we ever see of the 10-team playoff format with the extra Wild Card.
Of course, we saw Major League Baseball expand the playoffs to 16 teams for the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. But prior to that, before baseball even shut down due to COVID, there was talk of a new playoff format being introduced as soon as 2022.
The new format in question was one that consisted of 14 teams, seven per league. If the postseason is indeed expanded next year, as part of the upcoming CBA, the playoffs would include the three division winners, and two more Wild Cards in addition to the two that the current format features.
Thus, a Wild Card round would come into play, as it did in 2020. With seven teams per league in the postseason, the top seed in each league would get a bye for the Wild Card round, making that best record all the more important. Then, the remaining division winners would pick their Wild Card opponents in a live broadcast, with the top Wild Card team receiving the team that went unpicked.
Once the playoff field is set, the Wild Card round would be a best-of-three series with the higher seed in each matchup hosting all three games. In the American League, the Blue Jays and the Mariners would have received the six and seven seeds had the expanded format been in play this year. In the National League, it would’ve been the Reds and the Phillies.
Personally, I was a fan of the expanded playoffs in 2020, and was actually kind of surprised to not see it return in 2021. I do think the 16-team format was only good for the 60-game season, as it would be too much for a full season to have more than half the league make it. I did think however, that they would explore the 14-team format again or potentially even go with a 12-team format. But if put into place, expanded playoffs would allow the league to get some extra revenue for more postseason games. It would also mean that we could see more underdog teams make improbable runs to a championship.
It would be nice to see more teams get in. It would make it easier to reach the playoffs for teams who haven’t been in the postseason in a while or perhaps just missed out by a game or two. It also makes things more interesting. If things got really crazy, we could see a six and a seven seed meet in the LCS, and that would be absolutely insane and super fun.
I do think it’s likely that we’ll see the postseason get expanded to 14 teams in 2022. During the negotiating process before the 2020 season, the players and owners were kicking around the idea of a 14-team postseason, before ultimately shifting gears and going the 16-team route. If they’ve been considering this for that long, then it’s very possible that it could be implemented next year. We’ll just have to see how CBA negotiations play out.
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