Major League Baseball has had discussions about what could be drastic changes to the system. Commissioner Rob Manfred appeared on WFAN New York with Craig Carton and Chris McMonigle and outlined two possibilities the league has discussed.
“We talked about the division of seasons. We talked about mid-season competitions,” said Manfred. “We understand that 162 (games) is a tall order. I think the difficulty of accomplishing those midseason milestones, you almost certainly start talking about a few regular season games. It’s a little weirder in our sport than in other sports. Because of all our records throughout the season, you’re playing with something that people pay a lot of attention to.”
To be clear, it doesn’t appear that either idea is being seriously considered right now. Manfred only addressed the topic when asked directly if the league would be interested in something modeled after the NBA Cup. He responded by pointing out the challenges of doing the same in baseball, as he admitted that they have given the idea a lot of thought in the division’s offices.
The NBA introduced that season’s competition during the 2023-24 campaign. It runs for about six weeks during the first half of the regular season. It involves all teams and starts with group play followed by elimination rounds. Most games count toward a team’s regular season record. Players receive a cash bonus for winning or participating in a tournament, and the winning team receives a trophy. The tournament has no effect on playoff seeding (except for games that count against regular season record).
MLB obviously won’t need to follow the NBA model to a tee, and it’s unlikely they will. The NBA playoffs, consisting of the final eight teams, are single-elimination games. That’s very different than the way the MLB series is approached in both the regular season and the playoffs. That makes it very challenging from a planning perspective.
Even playing a three-game series to determine most of the knockout stages would leave a very uneven schedule for the clubs that advance. Playing them as single-elimination tournaments can make the journey difficult. MLB could take a few weeks off to run the playoffs and decide that games don’t count against a team’s record, but that would leave non-promoting teams with fewer games on the schedule. That comes with its own issues from a revenue perspective.
The concept of a split season will be easy to implement. That’s used in the minors all the way up to Triple-A. It divides the season into two parts, each with its own winners. Those teams then play each other in the postseason, so that team can clinch a playoff spot in July. This keeps many fans hooked, as a team that plays badly in April and May will have a fresh start in the second half rather than digging an insurmountable hole.
However, this also suggests the possibility of a team finishing second in their division in both divisions and having the best overall record while still missing the play-offs (if the winner of each division did poorly in the other). That happened to the 1981 Reds in MLB. There was a split season that year due to the mid-season strike. Cincinnati was the best team in the National League but barely finished second in each division and was eliminated from the playoff field.
This seems to be more than a sideline for now. No harm in MLB kicking ideas in. Even if they wanted to follow them at some point, they would need the Players Association to come on board.
An important change made by the league is something to actively pursue is to increase. Manfred plans to retire three years from now and said he wants football to continue from 30 teams to 32 before he leaves. That could lead to a realignment of the divisions, possibly with regional conferences each having four divisions and four teams each — as happens in the NFL.
Manfred said his choice in this situation would be to keep the cities with two teams (New York, Los Angeles and Chicago) in separate leagues. That’s also a setting in the NFL. Manfred will no longer be commissioner once it begins — the expansion is a multi-year process that won’t begin before the CBA expires in December — but his comments provide a window into the league’s thinking right now.
