Originally Posted on the Previous Iteration of Baseball.FYI by Daniel R. Epstein, @depstein1983
The 2020 version of MLB ranges from tolerable to endearing like a quirky, off-script TV episode. It’s a drama that becomes a musical for just one show or a comedy that moonlights as a mockumentary. It’s The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular. All the crazy changes to the familiar format are charming and memorable in a don’t-ever-do-that-again kind of way.
Naturally, Commissioner Rob Manfred sees it differently.
Plainly stated, permanent 16-team playoffs would be terrible for every MLB stakeholder except the owners. It’s Manfred giving a middle finger to the fans and players as he desperately attempts to auction off what remains of MLB’s soul to the highest bidder. MLB’s regular season is more cherished and robust than that of any other major sport, but drastically expanded playoffs would devolve it into NCAA basketball, where there’s hardly any reason to pay attention to the best teams before March Madness.
Manfred is no fool, though. When he speaks, there are almost always multiple meanings behind his words. He wouldn’t drop a bombshell like this recklessly— this is a carefully wrought message with different meanings on each level.
Surface Level
The most direct interpretation of his words is that more playoff games means more money. Three months ago— before baseball was even back on the field— MLB and Tuner Sports signed a new seven-year, $3.2 billion deal for broadcast rights to one division series, one championship series, and one game of the week during the regular season. The big-ticket items are the two playoff series, meaning the network will pay $470 million per year from 2022-2028 mostly for 7-12 games every October. For context, Mike Trout signed a 12-year, $430 million extension last year. On an annual basis, a small handful of games in the playoffs are worth roughly double the value of the greatest player of our time.
Expanding the playoffs means a lot more games to sell. MLB last expanded the postseason by adding the second Wild Card team in 2012. From then through 2019, there was a guaranteed minimum of 26 playoff games per year— usually a lot more because most series aren’t sweeps. With an expanded playoff field in 2020, there will be a minimum of 40 games, which is a 54% increase.
Taken at face value, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. (Nothing bad ever happens with free-market capitalism!) MLB is free to sell their product for as much as the market bears, and they’re increasing supply to keep up with high demand. Besides, there’s more baseball! More than that, it’s going to be important baseball! You’re a baseball fan, aren’t you? Shouldn’t that make you happy? Pay no attention to anything behind that curtain!
Subsurface Level
Take this from a logical perspective. If 16 of 30 teams reach the playoffs— including all the good and half-decent ones as well as a few which are mediocre— and all playoff teams have to play a coin flip, three-game series in the first round, what happens to the regular season?
If we had this format last year, the eighth seeds would have been the 78-84 Texas Rangers and 84-78 Chicago Cubs. The Rangers would have faced off against the 107-55 Houston Astros in the first round, against whom they finished 6-13 in the regular season. But! They won two of the first three games in their season series! Had that transpired in the playoffs, the best regular-season team in baseball would have been bounced by an unequivocally bad opponent.
As for the Cubs, they had a 76.7 percent chance of reaching the playoffs exactly one year ago today according to FanGraphs. They proceeded to lose their next nine games and ten of their final dozen to finish the year. With a 16-team playoff field, it would have made little difference. They would have faced the 106-56 Los Angeles Dodgers in the Wild Card Series. They finished 3-4 against L.A. in the regular season. But! They won their first two head-to-head battles! That would have been enough to advance to the NLDS.
Maybe that’s all well and good if you happen to be a Cubs or Rangers fan, but what message does this send to the Dodgers and Astros? (Set aside all the Astros scandals, just for a moment, and pretend they’re a normal 107-55 team.) Why should any franchise spend their money to build a 100+ win roster when 85ish is just as sufficient? The odds of advancing past the first round in the postseason are virtually the same whether you’re the 78-win Rangers or the 107-win Astros.
The economic impact on the game wouldn’t just be ripples; it would be tidal waves. Since MLB and the MLB Players Association last signed their Basic Agreement in 2016, the average player salary has stagnated. However, that average doesn’t impact all calibers of players the same way. The top end of the market— Manny Machado, Gerrit Cole, et al.— still see increasingly larger paydays with every free agent class. Therefore the mid and lower-tier players are actually decreasing in yearly salary on the whole— even though MLB has thrived financially.
Now let’s take the incentive to win ball games out of the equation. Would the Yankees still sign Cole for nine years, $324 million? Would the Dodgers pay Mookie Betts $392 million to stick around for 13 years? Both of those teams were clearly above the 85-win threshold without those two superstars. The expanded playoff field kills the market for high-end talent, just as it already withered for everyone below them.
Maybe you don’t care about that. Maybe you think they make too much money already. But the question isn’t, “Does Gerrit Cole deserve $36 million per year?” It’s, “Where does that money go if the Yankees don’t give it to Cole?” It won’t go to other players and definitely won’t go back to the fans or taxpayers. It just further engorges the robust Steinbrenner family investment portfolio, and your baseball experience is worse off because of it.
Fracking Level
What’s below the subsurface? Let’s rip apart the Earth and suck out its juices to discover! Just like fracking gives us nonrenewable resources to burn for energy at the expense of a dying planet, there’s very slight near-term good news along with devastating medium-term bad news.
Rob Manfred and the owners (which sounds like the absolute worst British Invasion band) can’t do any of this unilaterally. In order to expand the playoffs, the Players Association needs to agree to do so. Hopefully, their leadership is wise enough to realize this would be disastrous for their members and doesn’t sign off (see above section). Expanded playoffs averted = good news!
Manfred is well aware of this, of course, so why announce the 16-team field might be here to stay when he doesn’t have that authority?
The Basic Agreement expires after the 2021 season, at which point the owners and players will need to negotiate a new deal. For myriad reasons, there is already humongous acrimony between the two sides, and we could be headed for a work stoppage. Be that as it may, Manfred is laying the groundwork for his opening negotiation proposal, which will surely include a 16-team playoff field. That’s probably a nonstarter for the union— it damn well better be!— but by asking for something big and stupid in the first round, Manfred moves the point of compromise further to his side of the table.
You don’t want extra playoff baseball with more fun games in October and more revenue coming in (…that we don’t intend to share, hehe…)? Well, that will severely hurt our business interests! Instead, you must agree to the rest of our evil plan or no deal. With expanded playoffs off the table, we need a permanent five-round MLB draft as well as an international draft, minuscule increases to the minimum player salary, a lower luxury tax limit or possibly even a hard salary cap, and all players have to get a DraftKings tattoo. Don’t like it? Go ahead and strike! We’ve already made you the bad guys in the press.
Let’s zoom back out for a moment. All year long, MLB has cried and moaned about all the money they’re losing. Two days ago, Wall Street villain Steve Cohen just agreed to buy the Mets for $2.42 billion— the most lucrative franchise sale in baseball history. Taken as fact, these two statements should be incongruous. No one would spend so much money on a losing proposition. Billionaires will lie with their words but tell the truth with their wallets. Cohen is plainly able to see how MLB owners have positioned themselves with ploys like the expanded playoffs (he also has access to MLB’s accurate financial details, which the players and the public do not). The fact that he’s buying in at such an astronomical price at this particular point in time speaks volumes.
If Manfred gets his expanded playoffs from the players, he wins. If he doesn’t, he’s still in a better position to win in the next round of bargaining. Any way you slice it, he’s once again imperiling the future and well-being of the game we love to further enrich 30 billionaire ownership groups.