Last month, amid the frustration of an underwhelming postseason, I proposed MLB radically rethink its playoff format. Specifically, I want them to turn October into a mini pennant race once we get down to the final eight teams. Everybody plays everybody in a three game series creating a 21-game mad dash to the fall classic. The top two records advance, the first tiebreaker is the head to head since everybody played everybody, and all this replaces the LDS and LCS rounds (which is about to take three weeks
to complete anyway once they expand the LDS to a best-of-seven).
At first, I just liked the idea, but this is one of those things where the more I return to it and run scenarios in my head, the more the more compelling it becomes. Fair warning: I’ve become obsessed with it, and as we venture into an abyss of an offseason, I will be fleshing out all the ways it beats the broken bracket format, because I’m at the point where I’m confident this thing would elevate the entire sport on a national level.
But while the benefits of baseball doing its postseason this way are numerous and enormous, I’m actually not going to dive too deep into them in this particular post because A) it’s going to require several posts to do it justice, and B) I wanted to run through and lay out a mock schedule to better understand any and all obstacles.
So I went ahead a created one using the 2026 postseason teams with one exception: I shoehorned the Red Sox in there because A) this is a Red Sox blog, and B) since I’m already living in my own world, I wanted to apply the other big idea I have for the MLB postseason to the front of this schedule (not a must here, but hey, “when in Rome”).
So here’s how I got the eight teams (you can skip this paragraph is you just want to see the schedule): The top four seeds are the top two teams in each league (Brewers, Dodgers, Rays and Guardians). The 5 and 6 seeds then earn their spots in the mini pennant chase from a one game playoff between the 3 and 4 seeds (so Yankees over Astros and Braves over Padres based purely on record). The bottom two Wild Card teams in each league then play each other (Red Sox vs. White Sox and Cubs vs. Phillies), and the winners of that go on to face the losers of the other matchup (Astros and Padres). From that group, I mocked the Padres and Red Sox emerging and made San Diego the 7 seed and Boston the 8 based on each of their records.
So with that, here’s what I created (the 21-game mini pennant race starts on Friday, October 2nd here with the previous three days being the paragraph above in table form):
Two things stuck out to me while making this, one of them good, one of them bad.
The good? With everybody playing each other in a three game series, you get a calendar that looks remarkably similar the regular season. In other words, it looks like pure baseball with teams playing (almost) every day and not resting arms for half the month. This means depth in your rotation actually matters, starters will be forced to pitch deeper into outings, offenses won’t spend the majority of October getting blown away by forgettable middle relievers, and the ball will absolutely be going in play more often in the most critical games and moments.
The bad? The travel is the trickiest aspect to this whole thing. I’m sure somebody who is an expert in this field could make a better schedule than the one I just made (go for it in the comments if you’re feeling ambitious), but somebody is pretty much guaranteed to be unhappy about the number of miles they’re slated to log.
However, like pretty much everything else in this world, this predicament is workable, and could actually be used to our advantage. This is specifically true when thinking about my other reservation to this format: I want the regular season to matter as much as possible, and on the surface allowing all of the top eight teams in the sport into the same ecosystem works against that.
But when you combine these two worries, and all of a sudden you have something beautiful. What if the harsh travel is the penalty for the lower seeds and the imbalance of home games is the advantage of the top seeds?
Initially, I ran the schedule above with smite in my heart, thinking it would be fine if the higher seed is just always the home team. But even as somebody who wants to properly penalize the lower seeds, that felt a little too extreme with the No. 1 seed having 21 home games and zero road games and the No. 8 seed being on the road for a month.
So I went back to work and flipped the home field in four of the matchups (1 vs. 8, 1 vs. 7, 2 vs. 7 and 3 vs. 6) to get the following breakdown as follows for the 21 games:
No. 1 seed: 15 home games, 6 road games
No. 2 seed: 15 home games, 6 road games
No. 3 seed: 12 home games, 9 road games
No. 4 seed: 12 home games, 9 road games
No. 5 seed: 9 home games, 12 road games
No. 6 seed: 9 home games, 12 road games
No. 7 seed: 6 home games, 15 road games
No. 8 seed: 6 home games, 15 road games
That’s the breakdown you see in the schedule above, but as with everything else here, it’s flexible, and open to suggestion.
From there we have a few other things that are a must, but are largely benefits:
1) The 7 seed has to play the 8 seed right out of the gate in my format because I want everything else to get underway on Friday (October 2nd) instead of having that as an off day like MLB foolishly has now. So here, the Red Sox visit the Padres to kick off their postseason. Tough draw immediately going to the west coast, but you know what? It instantly makes the regular season matter. With more wins in April through September, they wouldn’t have to do this.
2) Everybody must have the Thursday near the end of the chase (in this case October 22nd) off for two reasons. One, there needs to be a potential make up day for any postponements baked in. And two, as discussed when originally devising this format, the whole thing is going to end with a double header on the Saturday. This maximizes the chaos potential in the final 36 hours, gives a nod to old school baseball, avoids the NFL on that final Sunday, and forces to teams to get creative with their pitching staffs as they try to get across the finish line and punch their ticket to the World Series.
3) There needs to be get away days at the end of these series (so Sundays and Wednesdays / Thursdays). However, this once again creates opportunities. Some nights (say Tuesdays), all the games will be on top of each other (scoreboard watching galore), but other times, it would be easier for the owners to sell a stand alone game to a national network.
For instance, you could sell that Yankees at Brewers game on October 7th as a stand alone prime cut matchup. Everybody else plays earlier for a get away day, and they play in prime time by themselves because they both have Thursday the 8th off. That’s just one example, but I have a feeling that the owners and the networks could make a killing here because not only are national baseball ratings incredibly matchup dependent (and now networks would get to pick), but now all the other six teams battling for the World Series spots instantly become more engaged because the result of that game has implications for their team.
I could go on here, and we will in future installments, but that’s a solid enough look at how the logistics would work here off the bat. Feel free to offer your own observations and critiques in the comments.
