Major League Baseball publicly revealed a massive proposal to the MLB Players Association this week, throwing a curveball at how we might see the regular season and postseason play out. This isn’t just talk, folks, it includes a plan to chop the regular season from 162 games down to 154.
The 154-Game Regular Season: A Blast from the Past?
Look, part of me, the part that loves history and those classic benchmarks, balks at messing with 162 games. It feels like going backward, right? But if you dig into the archives, you know the American League ran on a 154-game schedule from 1920 to 1961, and the National League did the same from 1920 to 1962. We’ve adjusted our numbers before, and we can do it again. Frankly, 162 games is *more* than enough baseball. We can drop the “more than.” Don’t get it twisted, I’d throw a fit if they talked about cutting it to 80 or 100 games, because baseball needs those big sample sizes. But 154? Yeah, that’s plenty. Plus, it could keep more teams in the hunt deeper into the calendar, and who doesn’t love that kind of drama?
Longer Divisional Series: More Baseball, More Justice?
Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint, and we all know how fluky small samples can be. Remember those one-game Wild Cards? You could always say, “win your division if you don’t like it.” But now with three wild-card teams per league, things can get wild in those short three-game Wild Card Series. Even seven games is a small sample to definitively crown the better team. Still, moving the Divisional Series from a best-of-five to a best-of-seven is absolutely a good move. The longer the series goes, the better the chance the truly better team comes out on top. We don’t want the winner to be *obvious*, but we want the competition to truly play out.
This proposal is a serious play by the league ahead of the current collective bargaining agreement expiring this coming offseason. It’s a peek behind the curtain at what ownership is thinking, and it’s got us all thinking about what future MLB might look like. There’s a lot on the table, and how this all shakes out will absolutely shape the game for years to come.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by CBS Sports.
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