MLB Postseason: Why Less is More

Last night's thrilling finish to the Major League Baseball regular season is already being leveraged by some in the sports media to make the case for playoff expansion. And it's difficult to argue against the fact that the historic comebacks—or collapses, depending on your point of view—capped off last night were only possible because of the Wild Card, itself is a latter-day addition to baseball's playoff system.

But is expanding the playoffs really a good idea?

You could say yes, and point to the fact that all of the divisional races were pretty much sewn up a month ago, and the only drama to be had over the last several days were in the compelling—and almost identical—Wild Card races.

The flaw in this thinking, however, is the assumption that this drama grows exponentially with the number of playoff spots available. There is proof in all other major sports—both college and pro—that this just isn't the case.

So let's take a look at some of those sports, and prove once and for all that more is not always better.

NCAA Men's College Basketball

There's nothing quite like the NCAA Tournament. Thrilling to-the-wire action, a dozen games on all at once, and the (perhaps naively assumed) amateur atmosphere make the Big Dance truly unique. How many other sports can claim to have seven upsets on seven buzzer-beating shots in just one day?

But this excitement comes at a cost: The regular season doesn't matter. You know who's getting in, and unless you're like me and root for a small local college like Siena, even the conference tournaments are essentially meaningless.

As great as the NCAA Tournament is, it has reduced regular-season rivalries like Duke-North Carolina to parochial exhibitions. And its ever-growing size means there can be no last-day drama like we saw yesterday across Major League Baseball. 

NBA

I could go on for thousands and thousands of words about the NBA's playoff structure—for example, the way they artificially extend series by putting two and three days between the games—but since we're only talking about sheer bracket size, I'll instead focus on what that means to the league's stretch run.

Last season, the final playoff spots in both conferences were decided less than a week before the final day, leaving no drama to be had. But even if both had gone down to the wire, the stakes were low. Yes, playoff berths would be on the line, but given that the eighth seed has only ever made it out of the first round twice, the real prize would most likely be little more than pride. And a ticket out of the draft lottery.

Meanwhile, all the teams that matter—the Miami Heat, the Dallas Mavericks, the Boston Celtics—had long since locked up their playoff berths, and the jostling for position that outlets like ESPN tried to make a story of was largely superficial; neither top seed made the Finals, and the team with home-court advantage in the Finals lost the series.

So while the action is great, the larger playoff bracket diminishes the regular season considerably, and puts the focus in the final days on the teams at the bottom half of the playoff bracket rather than at the top, where it belongs.

NFL

The nation's most popular sport happens to have one of the worst playoff systems. A perfect example of this is last year's Wild Card playoff round, in which the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks hosted the 11-5 New Orleans Saints. Yes, hosted.

Down the stretch, the tightest divisional race was between two losing teams: the aforementioned Seahawks, and the St. Louis Rams for the NFC West crown. The Seahawks won with a 7-9 record.

And this is precisely where all the sports outside of MLB get it wrong: By nature, their season's final weeks focus on non-elite fighting for the final playoff berths. Instead of highlighting great teams, the bad teams play all the meaningful games in the last month of the season.

Of course, the NFL's structural problems go beyond merely putting the spotlight on bad football. Allowing the Seahawks to host a playoff game against a team with a better record means the NFL penalized the Saints for playing in a better division. That's something that should not, cannot, ever happen.  

Conclusion

While there won't always be thrilling comebacks or historic collapses in the last days of the season, Major League Baseball has, by far, the best playoff system in sports. If there are tight races, they are between elite teams full of elite players almost always playing great baseball.

The addition of even one more berth in each conference would go a long to ensure that the stretch-run baseball going forward would be of lower quality and less import. Had that extra slot existed this year, the race between the Braves and the Cardinals wouldn't have happened. Instead, the race would have been between the Cardinals and the lowly Dodgers, who were inexplicably next in the league standings.

And that's not anything any of us should ever want to see. Second-division teams belong in the role of spoiler, not September upstarts vying for a playoff berth they will almost certainly be swept out of.

The action we saw last night was evidence of the success of the current playoff system, and if there was ever a time for the old adage “If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” it's now.