Here’s a novel idea about expanding the post season from the bottom. Hold a tournament among the bottom eight teams, with the winner getting the first pick in the draft:
From there, the two subsequent ‘one game showdowns’ will establish the exact order. If you like shortcuts, here’s the “won-loss” pattern that will determine each pick:
W-W-W = 1st overall pick
W-W-L = 2nd overall pick
W-L-W = 3rd overall pick
W-L-L = 4th overall pick
L-W-W = 5th overall pick
L-W-L = 6th overall pick
L-L-W = 7th overall pick
L-L-L = 8th overall pickThat’s 12 one-game showdowns with quite a bit at stake in each game (especially the first round, but arguably throughout), with each team guaranteed to play 3 games.
AthleticsNation.com
All the game will be played at the stadium of the team with the best winning percentage, so that gate encourages bad teams to finish as high as possible. In this scenario, MLB would go back to a single wild card. It’s an idea worth considering.
Really interesting idea, but I wonder if the combination of making getting a ‘real’ wild card less likely and the increase in value to finishing 8th worst means more teams would have a mid season incentive to be sellers at the trade deadline, thus actually exacerbating the ‘no one wants to win’ problem. It seems to me that eliminating the draft and allotting bonus pools (since MLB has already placed constraints on amateur spending) would both significantly reduce the incentive to finish last while still providing some advantage to the worst team in terms of talent acquisition. Which, of course, is the international system that no one is happy about.
So, if you’re the marginal veteran player who makes a big play to win your team the top pick, and then that draft pick takes your job a year at two later . . . .
There would need to be some incentive for the players to play hard. For MLB players, young talent is fundamentally a threat to your career, which is why I suspect the union has been willing to shaft them in past agreements.
You’re correct. The point is to get the management of the team not to tank. So the marginal veteran may already be out of a job.