A wild idea to fix the postseason: Get rid of divisions

It’s been a strong year in the National League Central. So much so that the best three records in the National League could come out of one division. The Cardinals, Pirates and Cubs are all having great seasons and on most days this year would be first place teams in any other National League division.

That sounds like a bragging point for the NL Central, but it is also problematic in 2015 baseball. It hardly seems fair that either the second- or third-best team in the National League won’t make it past the win-or-go-home Wild Card game. Once the NLDS starts, one the league’s best teams will be watching from home.

In 2012, the first year of the second wild card, the Detroit Tigers locked in their postseason spot by taking the American League Central with 88 wins. They had the seventh-best record in the AL that year. Both the Tampa Bay Rays and Los Angeles Angels had more wins than the Tigers but neither made the postseason. The Tigers advanced to the World Series that year, but were swept by the San Francisco Giants.

It hardly seems right that a team with a worse record than two other teams in the same league participated in the postseason while those two better teams did not. What the postseason is supposed to be is the league’s best teams battling for a championship.

We very well may be headed for something similar in the 2015 postseason.  The Cubs and Pirates just might finish with better records than both the NL East and NL West division winners. But only one team from the Cubs-Pirates Wild Card game will actually make it to a full postseason series.

Baseball’s future fix to this is relatively simple: get rid of divisional play. Winning a division, beating out four other teams to capture an East, West or Central crown in either league doesn’t hold the same weight as being one of the five best teams in the league.

The other angle is that baseball needs its best teams and players in the postseason on the national stage. The Cubs are lovable losers. They last won the World Series in 1908. They are a young team led by Joe Maddon, a new-age manager. They could be one and done this year. The Pirates, who currently have the second-best record in the NL and one the game’s best players in Andrew McCutchen, could also face the same fate.

Below is a look at the playoff picture as of Sept. 9 this year if the top five teams went to the postseason. The outlook is much different than what would actually happen if the season ended the same day under the current system.

Postseason picture as of September 9

*current division leader

A couple of things jump out. First, three division winners that are currently guaranteed a spot in the division series are now wild card teams.

In the American League, the Astros and Rangers would be the fourth and fiftth seeds and play the Wild Card game for that final spot in the ALDS.  The Astros would be chasing the Yankees for the guaranteed spot in the division series.

In the National League it would be two current division leaders, the Dodgers and Mets, who would be playing the Wild Card game with the Dodgers actually chasing the Cubs for the final guaranteed spot in the NLDS. As it stands now, the Cubs are cruising to that second wild card spot as they lead the Giants by 9 games. In this scenario, they are up just a half-game over the Dodgers for a spot in the NLDS.

If the standings finished where they are right now in my plan then we’d get a game where Clayton Kershaw or Zack Greinke would go up against Matt Harvey or Jacob deGrom in a win-or-go-home scenario. I’d take that.

The biggest upside is that the top three teams in each league are in a division series. After a 162-game grind, that should always be the case.

This type of change would necessitate a schedule alteration. Currently teams play the other four teams in their division 19 times per year. That is just too many. I remember those days. That’s 76 games, nearly half of the entire schedule, against just four teams in the league. What’s the point? That is not really a true test of who is the best in each league.

An even schedule would make everything, well…even. Here’s one scenario that could work:

10 games versus every team in your respective league – 140
3 interleague games versus 6 teams in the other league – 18
2 game home and home series vs. your interleague rival – 4

That totals 162 games. League competition is spread out evenly and fairly, 86% of the schedule is against your entire league, as opposed to 47% against just four teams.

Currently each major league team plays 20 interleague games. This scenario actually increases that by two games. If that’s too many for you, I would not be opposed to 11 games within your league in a series of 4-4-3 for 154 games and eight interleague games, two against your rival and two random three-game series. Less interleague play will only add more intrigue to the World Series and reignite the fire in the National League vs. American League debate.

This idea will be met with much resistance because traditionalists just don’t like change. But baseball needs to guarantee that teams with the best records start the postseason in a series and not a crapshoot Wild Card game. That’s a battle the fourth- and fifth-best teams in each league should have to engage in.