My Vision For MLB in 2030
Introduction
As a longtime baseball fan, I will always welcome ways to improve the game, improve the regular season, and expand the scope and outreach to find new fans and maybe even bring back former supporters who are no longer invested in the game. Tradition has been a blessing and a curse, as MLB is arguably the league that best connects with the past, but with that we also see problems in having a willingness to adapt to modern-day viewing and consumption habits. On the bright side, we’re getting closer and closer to expansion, which means the divisions and even the regular season layout has to change.
Everyone has been throwing their theories as to how the divisions should be aligned, but to me I think the focus should be more centered on how we can usher a brand-new generation of professional baseball now that the field is going to expand to 32 teams and the scheduling complications have finally been reduced (aka interleague scheduling with odd number of teams in each league). We have a chance to see other professional sporting leagues to see what makes them succeed and maintain their audience in these changing times. While most organizations on this side want to emulate the NFL, in my opinion we should look across the Atlantic to see our potentially awesome future.
Division realignment shouldn’t be the main focus, the regular season needs a little TLC, needs a little bit of fixing up so we can better appeal to the hardcore crowd, the invested crowd, the casuals, and yes, even the damn gambling audience. The regular season should feature many opportunities for celebration, even if the championship or even the World Series is out of reach. In a season with so many games, so many ups and downs, there should be more ways to celebrate a “successful” season, whether or not the championship ends up in your hometown. In my version of MLB in the year 2030, we’re looking at in-season tournaments with actual stakes, new accolades, and more postseason rewards for actually trying to win, and even some potential punishments on the off-chance that some of the teams stop caring and stop competing.
Welcome to my vision for MLB in the year 2030.
2030 Regular Season Divisions and Overall Format
Main In-Season Tournament: The Diamond Cup
(Runs from Mid-April until September’s Labor Day Weekend)
What if Major League Baseball decided to create a tournament similar to what we see in European soccer?
Can you imagine the possibilities, can you imagine how much fun it could be seeing these smaller teams having their shot at taking on the top-tier professionals even if it’s just for a couple games a year? Hear me out, because I think this setup could improve baseball, expand baseball, and even potentially punish those select franchises who constantly coast on the revenue sharing without trying to compete every season (looking at you Marlins).
Under the new Minor League Baseball setup, we now have a more fixed and organized number of teams operating across the United States in Canada. I’m not a fan of some of these changes and subtractions that have occurred in the last decade, but that conversation is for another day. But now, we have essentially almost all professional baseball leagues under the watchful eye of Major League Baseball and just about an even distribution of minor league teams under the umbrellas of the professional teams representing them.
But what if we had a scenario in which we get most of them to participate in a tournament that not only allows more areas of the country to experience MLB, but also with added longshot incentives that could see a small delegation/promotion threat to teams that are constantly tanking?
Here is my barebones proposal for the Diamond Cup hosted by MLB:
Numbers of Teams Participating: 176
Number of Divisions: 16, with 11 Teams in Each Division
Selection Process:
Randomized and Televised Lottery System with every group having two teams from the top five levels of professional baseball and one team from the independent baseball leagues (the last two champions from each independent league are the ones eligible to participate, if there’s a back-to-back champ then second team is determined by best overall record). Divisions are unveiled during World Series on previous year, and they cover two Diamond Cup tournaments before the next lottery.
NOTE: When MLB team is picked, all their affiliated minor league squads are instantly placed on other divisions to avoid opening round matchups between two teams under the same ownership.
Number of Games in the Opening Round: 10, Every team in the division will play each other once, with the home/road teams alternating in the second year.
When are Games Played:
Opening Round: from April through July every Wednesday/Thursday (Depending on Schedule/Weather)
Tournament: from August to Early September with games every Saturday/Sunday (Depending on Schedule/Weather)
Do the Games Count Towards MLB Regular Season?: Yes, as the regular season from now on will be ranked according to who wins the most games combined between the scheduled games and the two yearly in-season tournaments.
Diamond Cup Point System to Determine Best Teams:
1 Point: Loss in Extra Innings
3 Points: Regular Win
4 Points: Victory with Shutout and/or Mercy Rule Applied (Leading by 10+ Runs after 6 Innings)
7 Points: Perfect Game (No Opposing Player Gets on Base. Perfect game still applies even after 6 innings under Mercy Rule if its triggered)
How Many Teams Advance to the Tournament Bracket: 30 (16 Division Winners, 14 Wild Cards, 2 Best Teams get First Round Bye)
Tournament Setup: Winner-Take-All every round. Semifinals, Third-Place, and Championship Games happen on Labor Day Weekend.
Labor Day Championship Venue: Team with More Points in the Opening Round
—————————————————————
Here is the fun part, the incentives. There is a million-dollar prize for every player and coach on the winning team, with the runner-up team earning $250,000 and 3rd place team earning $75,000. Who is going to be mad at that? Especially the bench players or those still on rookie deals. Imagine trying to work your way through the minor league system but having this opportunity to make life-changing money.
Now, the additional prize will depend on who actually wins:
1) If a non-playoff bound Major League Baseball team wins the tourney, then they land a Wild Card spot, regardless of regular season record. So if the 58-74 Pittsburgh Pirates go on a torrid run and wins the Diamond Cup in September, then at the end of the season they get to earn a wild card berth despite having a below-500 record.
2) If the winner of the tourney happens to also win a division in the end, then they get to skip the Wild Card round guaranteed.
3) Let’s spice things up a bit. If any of the lower-tier teams ever wins the tournament, somehow surpassing the 32 professional MLB teams to become the last team standing, then they’ll get the wildest gift of all: an entire season being promoted to the Major Leagues while the MLB team with the worst record in the division the champion would otherwise be zoned into gets dropped to cover the missing slot.
As a reminder, this shouldn’t happen, so if the MLB players don’t take the tourney seriously, then they very well can see themselves playing AA baseball while they see the Arkansas Travelers from the Texas League take over their spot, and even accepting the revenue sharing portion that would have belonged to the pro team and the staff getting demoted. The last part will likely be the biggest sticking point among owners and players while organizing this setup, but the chances of such an occasion would be extremely, extremely rare.
You’d have to somehow take one of the 30 slots from a field of 176 and march through the tournament likely having to defeat MLB team after MLB team. David defeating a slew of Goliaths is a tall tall task, but even then, I don’t see certain owners wanting to even flirt with the risk. Just look at the FA Cup, where since 1973 there have been only 3 winners from a lower-tier division, with the latest occasion happening in 1980. At the end of the day this will be an extra set of games for the MLB teams to play each other for a second pathway towards the playoffs, but at least every professional squad in America (and Canada) will have their proper shot, and just the fear alone is enough to create some additional drama within Major League Baseball.
More importantly, this is a chance for professional baseball to be presented in far off regions all over the country, with say the New York Yankees being in same group as the Timber Rattlers, and traveling over to Appleton, Wisconsin to play a game. Even if it’s just one game, the hype that wound surround the relatively smaller towns upon learning that they will host an MLB team would be awesome.
In conclusion, this is my version of what an FA Cup-style baseball tournament would look like. It would take place in the middle of the baseball seasons of almost all these leagues in the middle of the week, once a week until early September. This is a great chance to spread the game, offer an additional path for an MLB team to make the postseason, and of course if we’re talking business offer a great chunk of baseball content for whichever channel or streaming service would want it. Imagine offering this entire tourney on YouTube or Netflix, maybe even on Twitch for the younger folks to watch and enjoy.
European soccer is such a massive, massive hit because they have all these in-season tourneys that combines multiple teams from multiple different leagues and different professional tiers. Not saying MLB can ever hit the heights of the FA Cup, but this Diamond Cup could be the beginning of something truly special to watch in the middle of summer for sports fans across the entire nation and beyond. On top of that, the promise of a guaranteed playoff spot would give even weaker teams (whether by injuries, bad luck and misfortune, etc.) their opportunity to snatch a final spot and be able to extend their season just a bit longer.
Second In-Season Tournament: The MLB All-Star Cup
(Runs from Early July until All-Star Week)
What’s better than one in-season tournament?
How about two of them?
This tourney however is significantly shorter than the Diamond Cup, and also a bit more ruthless; all it takes is a couple losses and you’re already out of the running. Picture this event as a wild sprint towards the All-Star Break with potential playoff implications for everyone involved.
The seeding is simple, as it goes by who has the most wins from top to bottom, and it involves only MLB teams, no other leagues or tiers. The MLB team with the most wins as we start July will take on the team with the fewest, and its organized from there (tied number of wins can be separated by number of Diamond Cup wins, then run differential). As a way to reward teams performing well in the first-half of the season, home field advantage is strictly done on a record basis, as in whoever has more wins can host the matchup, whether in the winners or losers’ bracket. For travel and logistic purposes, there’s no baseball in July until the tournament officially begins, and there’s no regular season games until after All-Star Week is over.
July 4th is a national holiday, and arguably its most patriotic in the U.S.A. So why not reward Americans with more than 30 baseball games in 48 hours to jump-start a nationwide tournament involving everyone? You can have baseball mayhem start from 10:00 A.M. matchups and run programming all the way past midnight when the west coast is in the latter half of their games.
What can make this event extra special is that we would use this tourney to reveal who the all-stars are going to be. Instead of knowing in advance who will be participating with the full list of vote-getters, we can keep most of the selected cast a secret and will only learn of their inclusion with their jerseys, as during the tournament will always be laced with gold. So, imagine the first night of the All-Star Cup, and your team is about to enter the field, and you start seeing a couple golden jerseys making their way to the field, revealing that the people wearing them have gotten their invitation to the midsummer classic.
Now, the main prize for winning it all? A playoff spot ticket, almost fully guaranteed. For those who argue that it may not be the best idea to already have a playoff team before reaching August, there will be a threshold they have to cross before being able to enjoy their prize. You cannot just win this and automatically become a playoff team; you need to cross 70 wins. Under my shorter regular season format, the main focus isn’t on winning percentage, it’s on actual wins as we have multiple tournaments that also feature games to play. With my regular season, there will be a range of 144-158 games to play, depending on how far you go in both tournaments.
Ultimately, having a fast-paced tournament to bookend the first half of the baseball season would be a great way to transition to All-Star Week, and would be a fun way for casual fans to become interested in the season by starting their viewership participation with a tournament that involves all the teams. For the casual and loosely-interested crowd, it’s a good way to catch up on the year and physically be able to see who have been the league’s best players.
Then, the hardcore baseball fans can see who is making the All-Star Game, while rooting for their team to battle within the brackets to try to inch much closer to the playoffs. On top of that, it’s an extra big game for the venue that is already holding the All-Star Game, it would be an excellent yearly start to the festivities by watching the last two teams standing battle during an afternoon and maybe even the evening, depending on how the first game goes.
The MLB Playoffs
(Runs throughout the month of October to potentially early November)
Rumor has it that once we get to the 32 teams, then MLB will want to expand the playoffs to 14, maybe even 16 teams similar to the NBA and NHL. However, in my personal opinion, those two leagues in particular have very bloated playoffs, and a baseball season that already features 100+ games would not benefit from a larger playoff system. We already have extended the season to a point which the World Series gets played in November sometimes.
This is why under my preferred format, we still have the 12 teams intact, but reduce the number of Wild Card slots to two on each league, as we’ll have four division winners on each side. The two slots per side plus the two in-season tournaments that each reward a guaranteed playoff spot will make the division AND the wild card races that much more intense. Even as a division leader, you still want to aim for the most wins because you still run the risk of ending up on the Wild Card round if another divisional winner may not end up with more wins but did win one of the tourneys. Its even worse for those not leading their division, because you only have two potential slots per league to grab to continue your season, and they can be filled up by other teams who survived the All-Star Cup or the Diamond Cup to the end.
Having the two tournaments increases the pressure, especially on September. No lead is actually safe, no playoff spot is actually secured until after the Diamond Cup is over and now you can see how many remaining playoff spots are available and who might have an instant bye. Keeping the same number of playoff teams while adding tournaments increases value to the regular season, increases value to many of the matchups you’ll see throughout the season. Those division games have heavier implications as you not only try to avoid the madness of the wild card race, but also avoid the relegation that looms if an AA or AAA team shockingly advances to the Diamond Cup’s knockout round and can make a run. Also, remember the winner of the summertime tournament also has to reach a certain number of wins, which makes them a target for all the non-division leaders.
For the Wild Card round, instead of a best-of-three, I think we should have stronger rewards for division winners/higher seeds by giving them stronger home field advantage, and lowering their requirements to advance to the next round. So on the Wild Cards, the lower seed has to sweep the three-game set, and the home team only needs to win once. This makes every Wild Card matchup similar to a Game 7, they all become must-wins, which would bring us a little closer to the manic best-of-one winner-take-all Wild Card Games we had for a decade. Winning the division should mean something, and formatting the Wild Card this way adds value to such an accomplishment.
I had mentioned earlier that similar to the MLS, there should be a separate award for the team that enjoyed the best regular season, regardless of what happens in the playoffs. I feel like with such a long year with so many games to win and lose, and then with the added tournaments, more accolades should be added to give fans more potential reasons to remain invested to the very end, even after clinching a postseason ticket. I think having the best regular season win total overall should warrant an extra reward while in the playoffs.
Under my MLB postseason format, the team with the best record should earn an extra home game in the divisional series AND the championship series. As much as I love baseball, the game is chaotic enough and the postseason has become such a crap shoot especially as more teams get invited. I think to provide stronger emphasis on the regular season, give the Platinum Home Base recipient up to two more home games in the playoffs as they try to make it to the World Series. Even winning the Diamond Cup will not save you from losing a home game if you end up in the championship series against the top win-getter.
As for the World Series, my only change is something I had written about before, it should take place mostly on weekends and even with afternoon matchups as a nice throwback to the past when championship games were played before the sun came down. Ratings be damned (because in 21st century media with the streaming services, they really don’t matter), I think if the World Series game is happening on the weekend it should be played earlier, not later. Even during the weekday, I think the games should start earlier, even though MLB has done a fine job in reducing the length of these matchups.
My Dream World Series Schedule:
Game 1: Saturday with a start time range of 12:00 – 15:00
Game 2: Sunday with a start time range of 12:00 – 15:00
Game 3: Tuesday with a start time range of 18:00 – 19:00
Game 4: Wednesday with a start time range of 18:00 – 19:00
Game 5: Thursday with a start time range of 18:00 – 19:00
Game 6: Saturday with a start time range of 12:00 – 15:00
Game 7: Sunday with a start time range of 12:00 – 15:00
The MLB Playoffs are magical and chaotic, but their start times have been a problem and they are running the risk of becoming too bloated as the rumors of expanded playoffs continue swirling as realignment and expansion is being discussed. 12 teams is more than enough, let’s not totally ruin what remains the best postseason in all north American professional sports.
So this is my vision for what I think is the best regular season and postseason combination for Major League Baseball once we make it to 32 teams. Even if its not as many games overall, there will be more value in said regular season games, and with the tournaments it guarantees that everyone will experience playoff-esque baseball with high-stakes matchups. I think copying the Euro Soccer mannerisms in terms of scheduling a year of sporting activity is the key to becoming a more successful, profitable, and quality league. 132 regular season games, 2 in-season tournaments, opportunities to clinch a playoff spot early in July will create more eventful and memorable baseball. It is feasible, and highly necessary to preserve the historic leagues while creating formats that can craft new wonderful memories for anyone that enjoys the game.