“Stupid Idea!” - Rich Wants No Part of MLB’s Proposed ‘Chose Your Playoffs Opponent’ Proposal

Major League Baseball wants higher seeds to pick their playoff opponents. Rich's ruling came quickly: "Dumb. Stupid idea already. I reject it."

The setup started with money. The show had just watched a team with the 28th highest payroll in baseball knock out the team with the third highest, and the remaining field kept making the point. The Dodgers carry the second highest payroll, behind the Mets, which earned a jab at the resident Mets fan about the best team money can buy. The Brewers, at 19th out of 30, have the next highest payroll left. The White Sox are 24th, the Rays are 28th and the Guardians are dead last. A Guardians run could produce a World Series of the 30th payroll against the second.

Rich figured the players association would be rooting hardest for the Brewers and Guardians. A 19 versus 30 World Series would let them ask the owners where all the teams that supposedly need a salary cap are. With a winter of labor talks coming, Rich said any proposal baseball makes "has got to be seen through the prism" of the coming collective bargaining fight, one that hopefully ends with games being played next year.

Then the proposal popped up on screen. MLB posted that it wants to return to a 154-game regular season and a best-of-seven division series starting in 2029, creating a weekly standard off day for player health and adding up to eight more postseason games. Beginning in 2027, higher-seeded clubs in the wild card and division series would select their opponents. In the wild card round, for example, the three seed would choose between the five and the six.

Not everyone in the room hated it. One voice called it fun. Another said it "just spices it up." The crew pointed out that teams always get asked who they would rather play, and never answer. Now organizations would be forced to, and the team that gets picked could put "the disrespect mantra in full display." Oh, you want us? You got us.

Rich's problem was what it does to everyone else. He walked through this year's American League. The Astros, who barely made the playoffs, won their division and were seeded above the Yankees. Under this system they would choose their wild card opponent, and the Yankees would simply get whoever was left. "It would be up to the Astros who barely made the playoffs to decide who the Yankees play," he said.

Someone suggested Rich only hated it because it did not benefit the Yankees. "No, because it wouldn't benefit any team," he said. "Just fill in the blank." This year, the second best team in the American League would be left to the worst team that made the playoffs to decide its opponent. Rich explained he uses the Yankees as the example for two reasons: it is the schedule he knows best, and "it's the team that everybody cares about the most." That drew an immediate "Dallas" and "the varsity" from across the room.

When the crew asked if he wanted to get rid of divisions entirely, Rich had a cleaner fix. "The better proposal is you stack the teams based on record." It is a balanced schedule pretty much anyway, he said, noting the Yankees did not play the Red Sox appreciably more than they played the Rockies. Told he was using this one season as his example, Rich did not budge. "All it's going to take is one for me to tell you it stinks."

He is not against change. He likes the idea that nothing is sacred, crediting Roger Goodell for bringing that mindset to the NFL, with the draft as a perfect example. And he agreed that fewer regular season games and more playoff games is better for baseball. He also compared opponent selection to the era when the All-Star Game decided home field advantage. "How great was that?" The answer: "Dumb and stupid."

It is all years away and will have to be collectively bargained. But Rich closed where he started. Nobody wants to answer who they would rather face, even though the preference exists. Letting a team that barely got in, "with an awful schedule," choose before the second best team in the league makes no sense. "It's just absurd," he said. "How about you just rank them? That's it."