Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club
The Brewers wrapped up the strangest season in MLB history with a surprise ending, but what they do next could reshape the future of the sport.
This week they’ll be one of 16 teams participating in the wildest week of postseason baseball we’ve ever seen. Starting on Tuesday there could be as many as 24 playoff games in four days, potentially including up to 16 where at least one team’s season is at stake. On Wednesday all eight series will be in action at the same time, twice as many contests as have ever been played on one day previously.
This postseason format was presented as temporary when it was announced on Opening Day but, like the other items on the array of new rules the league has tried this year, it’s being considered for permanent installation. Commissioner Rob Manfred has publicly stated that he’d like to see this system become the new normal.
The reasons for trying to make this work, both in 2020 and beyond, are clear: The league and its owners stand to make a lot of money by playing additional postseason baseball. Earlier this year MLB signed a new postseason rights deal with Turner Sports believed to be worth in excess of $1 billion. Postseason television rights are one of the sport’s most valuable assets, and creating more than a dozen new games to sell will lead to a significant windfall.
Big Stakes
Those games are even more valuable, meanwhile, when every single contest has a lot at stake. It’s a lesson to be learned from MLB’s last postseason expansion, the 2012 addition of a second Wild Card team in each league and a one-game playoff to determine which team advances to the Division Series round. At the time the move was roundly criticized. It was gimmicky and unfair to expect two teams to reduce the outcome of a 162-game regular season to what amounted to a single coin flip. The single game was also must-see television, however, and MLB is very good at turning TV ratings into money.
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This week they’ll turn that single game concept into a wild week. They’ll play as many as two dozen high stakes games in a very short span of time, turning what used to be two must-see games into a week-long event. ESPN has already announced plans for special Statcast-centric broadcasts and “whiparounds,” where they’ll attempt to help fans stay abreast of the chaos. If it goes well this could be baseball’s version of the first weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament, a fast-paced viewing environment where upset bids come one after another and every contest is win-or-go-home.
The problem with the Wild Card Games, however, was that the criticisms about their fairness were accurate. Having two teams play a one-game postseason series diminished the value of their performance during the regular season and created a strong possibility that the better team would not win. It was one thing for MLB to subject the fourth and fifth best teams in each league to that, but it’s entirely another to do it to the sport’s juggernauts.
That’s where the Brewers come in. They’ll be enormous underdogs this week as they take on one of the best regular season teams in the history of the sport, the Dodgers. Their 43-17 record was the equivalent of 116 wins in a 162-game season. They have several of the game’s most recognizable stars and they’re the favorite team of one of America’s largest TV markets. They’re exactly the kind of team MLB could build its postseason marketing around. It’s also not unthinkable that they could be eliminated as soon as Thursday.
The results of this postseason could play a huge role in determining how this format is seen going forward. If we see a week of wild action, exciting finishes and high ratings, then there’s a strong possibility that this playoff structure becomes permanent. If teams like the Brewers and Marlins unseat the Dodgers and Cubs, however, then it may shift the perspective in another direction and cause MLB to reconsider their plans going forward.
In a way, the Brewers have nothing to lose this week. A 29-31 team, they’re certainly playing with house money as the National League’s last qualifier and a team that needed help to back into the postseason on the season’s final day. Seen from another perspective, however, the Brewers are one of a handful of teams with an opportunity to shape the future of postseason baseball.
To read more Brewers On Deck Circle columns by Kyle Lobner, click here.
