I was sitting around the ballpark last night as the Reds pulled out an awesome 3-2 victory in front of one of the livliest crowds I have seen since Griffey was chasing .600 and was thinking about the playoff situation. Why doesn't baseball adopt a 16 team playoff format like the NBA? I don't understand what it can hurt.. I know there are many baseball purist out there that don't agree with it, but in this day and age it could be nothing but positive for the game. I'll tell you what I propose and give you my reasoning why.
-Move one team from the National League, someone such as the Rockies or Nationals, that don't have much history with the National League to the American League. This makes it an even 15 teams in each League.
-Break the divisons down to 2 divisions in each League (East and West). This kind of simplifies things and makes division titles within themselves mean more to a Franchise because it is harder to win.
- Make it where the 4 top teams in Each Division face off on one side of a playoff brackett. This would make it to where teams would not have to fly to the West Coast or East Coast for 1st and 2nd round playoff games. Heres and example.
NL
===East 1
===== Winner
===East 4
===East 2 =====Winner
=====Winner
===East 3
======NL Champion
===West 1
=====Winner
===West 4
=====Winner
===West 2
=====Winner
===West 3
This in my opinion would help baseball with so many of its problems. Heres my list.
1. The obvious. It cuts down the number of meaningless August and September games and gives fans a reason of teams that normally wouldn't be into it to go to games. Local Market TV Ratings would go up.
2. For baseball purist it kind of ends up being the way of old. The best team from the East takes on the best team from the West to determine who goes to the World Series.
3. It would be great for local revenue as local markets and mlb.tv could be the exclusive home to first round games. Attendance would be high and it would give people a reason to subscribe to a mlb.tv package for playoff games.
4. Attendance, which would normally be down for a meaningless Reds vs Pirates game in September would increase and help create more revenue due to the two teams playing for the 4 seed in the east.
I think this would be so fun. Baseball needs to adopt something like this to help keep fans interest in the later part of the season. The one thing in baseball that can't be replaced is hope. If there is hope for a team, people will come to the ballpark and watch it on tv more. Alot of people will argue that it will hurt the dominant teams in the league. Well look at the NBA. The #1 seeded team has one the last three years. If you are good you are gonna advance in the playoffs. The game 7 that the underdog takes the top team to is what makes playoffs alot of fun.
What do you all think??