Before we begin, two things:
- You clicked on this article expecting it to come from a salty Braves or Dodgers fan, but it’s actually written by a Phillies fan. Whoever thinks that…
- The current playoff format places more emphasis on the regular season than any postseason setup since 1993, the year I was born.
With six teams in each league making the playoffs, truly elite teams are rewarded with a bye, which in itself makes them twice as likely to win the World Series compared to merely good teams that have to contend during the Wild Card Round. . Compare the win totals of the eight bye-winners from the two seasons we had with this format to the win totals of the 16 teams that were punished by having to play an extra series:
| Playoff Team Type | Average regular season record | Fair World Series odds, ignoring team quality |
|---|---|---|
| Goodbye-win | 102-60 | 12.5% (+700) |
| Third best division winner or Wild Card | 90-72 | 6.25% (+1500) |
The fact that being a team that wins over 100 games now brings a tangible reward compared to a team that wins around 90 games benefits the players, and it also benefits the people who love truth and justice. Players should be happy about this because it incentivizes teams to chase not just 90 wins, but 102. Fairness fans should be happy because it’s nice to see that success over 162 games means something once baseball suddenly comes down to a five-game stretch.
But there’s a catch: Doesn’t it have to come down to a five-game stretch in the first place?
Perhaps you’ve seen the math that shows that for an MLB team to win a series as often as favored NBA teams win their first round games, they would have to play a best of 75. As much as I would love to simulate a league with this setup in Out of the Park Baseball, that’s not what we’re talking about here. Why not instead take inspiration from…
- the ALCS
- the NLCS
- the world series
- each round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs
- in each round except the play-ins of the NBA Playoffs
and simply play a best of seven in the Division Series.
It’s a small adjustment, but it gives a notable advantage to teams that can claim to be significantly better than their opponents heading into the series. That’s what we’re looking for, right? Something that rewards teams that are actually good, compared to what Braves and Dodgers fans think of the Phillies and Diamondbacks. Not only is this fair, but it incentivizes owners to spend more to reach the league’s inner circle, which benefits the players.
As for the owners, they also make money. Playoff games generate significant revenue and attention, far exceeding the attention paid to regular season competitions. More playoff games mean more money generated through multiple channels, including television contracts, gate receipts, concessions and additional value to be negotiated in many sponsorship deals.
While the extra money for homeowners is a good thing, you may doubt whether the move from best-of-five to best-of-seven matters in terms of the all-powerful argument of fairness and justice. Luckily, I invented something called Mathematics to help us.
If the two teams are truly tied — or if they are perhaps forced to decide each game via coin toss instead of baseball, for whatever reason — the length of the series wouldn’t matter. The odds for each game, and therefore the series, would be 50/50, and players would want +100 for each team.
However, if a team is favored by any amount, the amount by which they are favored increases in proportion to the length of a given series. The relationship between a team’s chances of winning a given game and its chances of winning a series of a given length is shown in the table below:
|
Chances of the favorite in a match |
Odds of the favorite in the best of three |
Odds of the favorite in the best of five |
Odds of the favorite in the best of seven |
Odds of the favorite in the best of nine |
Odds of the favorite in the best of 11 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
50% |
50% |
50% |
50% |
50% |
50% |
|
52% |
53% |
54% |
54% |
55% |
55% |
|
54% |
56% |
57% |
59% |
60% |
61% |
|
56% |
59% |
61% |
63% |
64% |
66% |
|
58% |
62% |
65% |
67% |
69% |
71% |
|
60% |
65% |
68% |
71% |
73% |
75% |
|
65% |
72% |
76% |
80% |
83% |
85% |
|
70% |
78% |
84% |
87% |
90% |
92% |
|
75% |
84% |
90% |
93% |
95% |
97% |
|
80% |
90% |
94% |
97% |
98% |
99% |
If you prefer to think in terms of odds, try this table instead:
|
Chances of the favorite in a match |
Odds of the favorite in the best of three |
Odds of the favorite in the best of five |
Odds of the favorite in the best of seven |
Odds of the favorite in the best of nine |
Odds of the favorite in the best of 11 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
-100 |
-100 |
-100 |
-100 |
-100 |
-100 |
|
-108 |
-113 |
-116 |
-119 |
-122 |
-124 |
|
-117 |
-127 |
-135 |
-142 |
-149 |
-155 |
|
-127 |
-144 |
-157 |
-170 |
-182 |
-193 |
|
-138 |
-162 |
-184 |
-204 |
-223 |
-242 |
|
-150 |
-184 |
-215 |
-245 |
-275 |
-306 |
|
-186 |
-255 |
-325 |
-400 |
-482 |
-573 |
|
-233 |
-363 |
-513 |
-693 |
-912 |
-1,178 |
|
-300 |
-540 |
-866 |
-1,317 |
-1,944 |
-2,813 |
|
-400 |
-862 |
-1,627 |
-2,899 |
-5,007 |
-8,481 |
As you can see, moving to best-of-seven doesn’t change the odds by more than a few percentage points, but we really shouldn’t be looking for anything drastic here. We already have a pretty good system, but we’re just trying to be a little fairer to the best teams in the league.
Based on the actual odds from DraftKings Sportsbook before the start of the Division Series, we can estimate what the odds would have been for the four favorites if they had been able to demonstrate their supposed superiority over seven games:
| Favored team | Real Best of Five Odds | Estimated best-of-seven odds |
|---|---|---|
| Orioles | -115 | -118 |
| Astros | -160 | -174 |
| Brave | -170 | -186 |
| Dodgers | -205 | -230 |
Expanding the Division Series from best-of-five to best-of-seven is the cleanest way to improve the MLB playoffs without spoiling the good parts of the current system. A good playoff format must balance three things:
- Preserving the importance of the regular season
- Offer the possibility of upheaval
- Don’t be too long
Achieving goal #1 is actually quite simple, if that’s your only goal: simply abandon the playoffs altogether, as is the case in most European soccer leagues. The best team in the regular season always wins the league, because the regular season is all there is. But of course, that completely eliminates goal #2 and is not something MLB would seriously consider, nor something fans would want.
We could go the other way and achieve goal #1 by extending each series to a ridiculous number like 23 games, because the math clearly shows that the better team’s advantage gets stronger as a series goes on longer. This helps the best teams in the league while leaving goal #2 still theoretically possible. But soon enough, we wouldn’t be able to achieve goal #3.
If change is to come, then let it be one that goes a step further by reinforcing the importance of building a dominant team over the course of 162 games. Keep the 12-team system we have now, which encourages teams to pursue excellence and the first-round bye that comes with it, but give the league’s best teams two extra games to break out of a temporary funk and demonstrate their quality. This is a small but significant change that benefits everyone.
Whether this year’s Dodgers or Braves would have actually managed to come out of a 3-0 or 3-1 deficit is of course another question entirely, but worst-case scenario, who would have minded seeing these two exciting games of the NLDS for one. or two other games?
Not the players, who want owners to invest in truly top teams rather than settle for 84-win mediocrity.
Not the owners, who would never say no to extra TV money for the playoffs.
And certainly not the fans, who would get to see more playoff baseball games while enjoying the added sense of fairness that a seven-game series would give us.
