October is Losing Its Edge: Stop Diluting the Playoff Field

I've spent my life around this game, and if there is one thing that makes baseball the greatest sport on earth, it is the grind. It is a marathon designed to weed out the pretenders and crown a true champion over a massive sample size. But lately, it feels like we're trading that prestige for a spectacle that doesn't actually mean anything.

Let's be clear: this is my opinion, but the numbers back up the frustration. According to CBS Sports, Major League Baseball currently has the most exclusive playoff field among the four major North American professional sports. MLB lets in 12 of 30 teams, which is 40%. For comparison, CBS Sports notes that the NFL lets in 43.75%, the NHL lets in 50%, and the NBA lets in 53.3%.

On paper, MLB looks like the toughest league to crack. In reality, it's already too easy. When did we decide that the top 40% of a league represents the 'cream of the crop'? In any other professional setting, being in the 38th percentile doesn't earn you an award; it earns you a performance review. Yet, in baseball, we're seeing mediocrity rewarded with October baseball.

Look at the recent history reported by CBS Sports. Last season, the Cincinnati Reds made the playoffs with just 83 wins. In 2024, we saw two teams earn postseason berths with only 86 wins. Even more egregious, in 2023, two teams with 84 wins made the cut, and one of them actually reached the World Series.

Now, there are people clamoring for even more expansion. The argument is usually that the first-round bye is detrimental to the best teams. This is nonsense. CBS Sports points out that the 2023 Atlanta Braves, who won 104 games, were bounced in their first series. People blamed the bye, but they conveniently forgot the Braves were swept by the Miami Marlins in mid-September and lost a series to a 71-win St. Louis Cardinals squad earlier that month. The bye didn't kill the Braves; the baseball did.

If we expand to eight teams per league to eliminate the bye, we are inviting a disaster. Baseball is a game of variance where a bad team can take a short series over a great team. We risk a scenario where a team with a losing record knocks out a 100-win juggernaut in the first round. That might be fun for a college basketball tournament, but it's a travesty for a professional league trying to determine the best team in the world.

Why is this happening? Follow the money. As CBS Sports reports, both owners and players have an incentive to expand the field. Owners want the late-season attendance surges and the postseason gate revenue. Players want the chance to play in October and the playoff shares that come with it.

I'm not suggesting we go back to the days when only the team with the best record won the pennant—the theater of the playoffs is too good to give up. But we have to stop the bleeding. A World Series featuring two 100-win titans is infinitely more valuable to the sport than a series between two mediocre teams. We don't need more playoff teams; we need to make the ones we have actually earn their way there.