Vinnie Pasquantino Is Not a Fan of MLB Teams Choosing Their Playoff Opponents

Major League Baseball owners have floated a lot of ideas for reshaping the postseason, and one of them landed with a thud on The Rich Eisen Show. The concept: let teams choose who they play in the playoffs. Rich asked Vinnie Pasquantino whether he likes it.

"No," Pasquantino said.

He was careful to frame it fairly. "I'm all for any ideas, right? That's just not one that I personally would like, because it puts both teams in a weird spot," he said. He also made a point of adding that "any opinions I give are my own, not the union's."

Pasquantino's first objection was about accountability. Somebody has to actually make the pick, and he doubts it would be anyone on the field. "It's not going to be a player, it's not going to be the coaches," he said. "You're going to have a fall guy for that one, because if you end up losing to the team that you picked to play, it just makes everything weird."

His second objection is one any athlete would recognize. "It's easy bulletin board material," he said. "All the obvious things are very at play there. If you're the team, oh, you pick us? You want to play us?"

That doesn't mean he wants the format left alone. Pasquantino said he's in favor of reseeding, pointing to what happened this year and in the past, when teams with the three best records couldn't play each other in the LCS. He also floated another idea: winning the division could guarantee a playoff spot without necessarily guaranteeing home games. "I think anything's on the table," he said. "I'm just personally not for picking your opponent."

Rich went further. "I think I hated it, too, Vinnie," he said, before correcting himself. "I shouldn't say that cause you didn't use the word hate, I just did."

His problem is the math of the wild card round, where there are only four teams involved. If the three seed chooses somebody from the five or six spots, "that means team four gets the opponent chosen for them by another team."

Rich also thought about the locker room. Picture a team that just made a terrific run, totally in unison, heading into the playoffs as "one group, one unit, one mission," and then somebody else decides who it plays. "The whole idea is weird," he said.

Pasquantino summed it up in a way that should resonate with anyone who just wants October to make sense. "Just unnecessary drama that we don't need," he said. "Just seed it. If you want to reseed, fine. Let's just go ahead and make it cleaner than picking your opponents."