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New York. Max Scherzer is in favor of a radical makeover of the playoffs, in which the highest seed in the first round of a 14-team postseason starts a best-of-five series with a 1-0 lead.
Major League Baseball and the players, who resume talks Sunday, would both expand the current 10-team postseason — that’s been the number since 2012, apart from the 16 teams in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
The union prefers 12 and the sides appear to be heading towards that number, but Scherzer said players would consider 14 if clubs accept the ‘ghost win’ format.
Under MLB’s 14-team plan, the division winner with the best regular-season record in each league would get a bye and advance directly to the Division Series. The other two division winners would pick their opponents and play at home for the entire best-of-three round.
The division winner with the second-best record would choose their opponent from the three lowest-ranked wild card teams.
The division winner with the third-best record would get to choose from the remaining two wild cards. The top wild card would face the remaining team after the division winners make their picks and also play all games at home.
The announcement of the selections would be made in a televised program.
“We felt like the competition could erode in that scenario, and we had specific examples from different players who spoke out that specifically highlighted that,” Scherzer said after Tuesday’s breakdown in labor talks.
“Continuing those division winners down, we didn’t see the right incentive for those other two division winners,” the New York Mets pitcher added. “We didn’t understand why they didn’t want to accept us in a more competitive format.”
The stoppage came on Saturday at day 94, four days after commissioner Rob Manfred canceled the first two series of the regular season, which was scheduled to start on March 31. Players were working on their response to MLB’s latest offer.
Before talks broke off, the players said they could agree to a 12-team postseason subject to an overall deal. The possibility remains that the 14-team idea could return to discussions, depending on trade-offs in the final stages of negotiations.
Under the postseason plan that the union has discussed but not decided to propose, the top seed would be home for all games and would need two wins to advance, while the visiting team would need to win three times.
A team with a first-round bye would be out at least five days, potentially complicating plans for starting pitchers, and fans of the lowest-seeded team in the opening round would not get any home games. Also, MLB doesn’t like that the ‘ghost game’ doesn’t make broadcast rights money.
“The 14-team format that MLB originally proposed offers significant advantages to division winners and provides incentives to win at all levels of the group,” MLB spokesman Glen Caplin said Saturday. “In an effort to reach agreement, MLB agreed to a 12-team format after discussion of formats that included a ‘ghost game.’ MLB made it clear that the ‘ghost game’ poses serious problems and is not a viable way forward.”
The ‘ghost win’ has been used in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) since 2015, when its playoffs expanded from four teams to five in the 10-club league. The new best-of-three wild card round has ended in one game in five of seven seasons, with the underseeded team forcing another game in 2016 and last year, then losing the final both times.
“Working with the union’s economists, we felt we had come up with a format that would incentivize competition throughout the season, especially for division winners,” Scherzer said. “We didn’t see that just that home court advantage was going to be the piece to try to go out and win your division.”
Without the ‘ghost win’ format, Scherzer said “a 12-team format made more sense to us.”
Pitcher Andrew Miller, like Scherzer, a member of the union’s eight-man executive committee, said Scherzer’s thoughts on the postseason carry weight within the union.
“A central goal of this negotiation is to increase competition, and there is no way we are going to walk away from the table without something being done about that,” Miller said. “We’ve spent a lot of time debating the merits of various playoff formats and there’s probably no one better at the table to ask than Max. But we are not going to do anything to sacrifice the competition of the season. Anything that points to mediocrity, that’s the antithesis of our game and who we are as players.”
