MLB Announces Playoff Change Hours Before 1st Pitch

Missing the playoffs this year just got a little more embarrassing. 

To quote George Costanza: "You want to get nuts? Let's get nuts!"

A baseball season unlike any we've ever seen before will come with a playoff system we've never seen before as well.

Expanded playoffs were one of the things the MLBPA and MLB were negotiating when they were trying to get back to the field. Reportedly, the owners wanted to expand the playoffs from 10 to 16 teams. When this was not part of the plan to return to baseball, most thought that would be the end of it.

Then reports started leaking out yesterday that they were revisiting the idea AND it sounded like it was likely going to happen if they could come to an agreement before the first pitch of the season opener tonight between the Nationals and the Yankees.

Sure enough, earlier this afternoon baseball announced that they would indeed be expanding the playoff to include 16 teams. That number is more than half of the 30 that comprise the league.

In short, this is how it'll work:

APNews -  In each league, the division winners will be seeded 1-3, the second-place teams 4-6 and the teams with the next two-best records 7-8, which means up to four teams in one division could be in the postseason. The first round pairings will be 1 vs. 8, 2-7, 3-6 and 4-5.

 

The higher seed in the first round would host all games. The sides agreed to decide tiebreaker rules later.

Of course, all this assumes that the season will go off without a major coronavirus related hitch, which at this point is a pretty big assumption.

Purists will be mad that this waters down the playoffs, but at this point, it really doesn't matter in my eyes. This is just another weird wrinkle in what will be an undoubtedly weird baseball season.

One last-minute deal that hasn't (as of 5:17 PM on 7/23/20) been made yet is a Marquee Network deal with Comcast. The Cubs' new flagship station still isn't available to the majority of Cub fans. Fortunately, for you Cub fans in the Rockford area, you can listen to every single Cub game right here on 1440 WROK.