I recently saw a video discussing the idea of Major League Baseball using a split-season schedule. The general idea is that the baseball season is really long. Like, really long. Teams have good and bad months, and sometimes a team is on fire in August and September and clearly deserves to go to the postseason, but a bad May or June prevents them from making the cut. A split-season format would give them a second chance.
How It Works
Division Champs
The good news, or bad news depending on how much you like baseball, is the arduous 162-game regular season won’t be shortened. The season is simply split at the 81-game mark for all teams by the All-Star break. The current division leaders are deemed the “first half winners”. The W-L records are reset to 0-0, and the remaining 81 games are played to determine the “second half winners”.
If a team happens to win both halves, they are automatically deemed their divisions champion and given a first-round bye into the postseason. If the halves are won by different teams, they face off to determine the division champ.
Wild-Cards
In that video, Bob Nightengale did not discuss how Wild-Card teams would be determined. A fourth team would still need to be selected to create a full bracket. I would suggest choosing the two next best teams by overall win percentage from all 162 regular season games.
Round Structure
With potentially six teams competing for division titles and two wild-card teams vying for October baseball, there would be a maximum of eight teams per league contending for a pennant. Under the current playoff format, a wild-card team needs to win eight games to reach the World Series: the wild-card game, 3 of 5 in the division series, and 4 of 7 in the league championship series. This would need to change to accomodate a series to potentially decide division champs.
The first round would see all teams playing a best-of-three series. Division half winners would play each other for the division title, while the two wild-card teams would play each other.
After the first round, the four teams in each league would be seeded in standard 1-4, 2-3 pairs according to their overall 162-game regular season records. They would then play a best-of-five series for the divisional, round.
The league championship round would remain the same, a best-of-seven series. This means every team (excluding teams who won both season halves and got a bye) would need to win nine games to reach the World Series. Only one more game for a wild-card team compared to the current format. Seems pretty reasonable.
The World Series would remain a best-of-seven series between each league’s champion.
Home-Field Advantage
For every round of the playoffs, the team with the better 162-game regular season record would have home-field advantage.
What It Would’ve Looked Like
Here are the teams that would’ve made the postseason last year if this format was used. A spreadsheet showing the 81-game splits can be seen here.
- West:
- 1st-Half Winner: Houston
- 2nd-Half Winner: Oakland
- Central:
- 1st-Half Winner: Cleveland
- 2nd-Half Winner: Cleveland
- East:
- 1st-Half Winner: Boston
- 2nd-Half Winner: Boston
- Wild Card 1: New York Yankees
- Wild Card 2: Tampa Bay
- West:
- 1st-Half Winner: Arizona
- 2nd-Half Winner: Colorado
- Central:
- 1st-Half Winner: Milwaukee
- 2nd-Half Winner: Chicago
- East:
- 1st-Half Winner: Atlanta
- 2nd-Half Winner: New York Mets
- Wild Card 1: Los Angeles Dodgers
- Wild Card 2: St. Louis
In the American League, all the real-life division champs still made the postseason, as did both of the real-life wild-card teams. Only Tampa Bay was added to the picture. After going 50-31 in the second half, I think the Rays deserved a shot last October.
In the National League, all the real-life division champs still made the postseason, as did both of the real-life wild-card teams. However, three other teams were given second chances to compete for the pennant. While the Dodgers had the best overall record in the West, they didn’t win either half of the season. And while the Mets finished fourth overall in the East, they led the division in the second half, with one more win than the division champ Braves. St. Louis also earned a wild-card spot.
All said and done, the split-season format would have given four more teams the privilege of fall baseball last year.
Should MLB Make The Switch?
According to Nightengale, MLB executives have considered a split-season format. I think a split-season format is unnecessarily complicated. A postseason-caliber team plays at that level all year long. An arbitrary cutoff at the 81-game mark shouldn’t determine who gets in. I think this format is too untraditional and doesn’t properly reward high-performing teams.
While I’m not a fan of the play-in wild-card game under the current format, the split-season format has its flaws. The Dodgers would be reduced from a division champ to a wild-card, despite winning that title from a game 163 against Colorado and sporting the second-highest win percentage in the National League. It would also bring in the .475 Mets. While the NL East was pretty bad in the second half, a sub .500 team shouldn’t be in the playoffs. Giving the Rays a chance to compete would be nice, but the real-life AL wild-card Athletics and Yankees had much better records, so there were teams that deserved it more.
As always, a huge thank you to Sports-Reference.com for all of the free data their sites provide. If you enjoyed this piece please share it and follow me on Twitter @AdamNelson22_ to never miss a new article!
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