Have The Expanded Playoffs Hurt Baseball?

I'm turning into an old man

Have The Expanded Playoffs Hurt Baseball?

I like October baseball. But there’s way too much of it.

I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I got out of the habit of watching postseason games a few years ago. As much fun as the expanded playoffs are, it tends to consist of mediocre teams in a desperate attempt to move on to the next round. The games feel tedious (though the pitch clock and other rules have helped speed things up), they are played way too late at night, and there are simply too many games to be interesting.

But what I really am curious about is the sort of pennant races we’re missing.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to replay seasons from 1969 and on with balanced schedules and with no divisions. What would the pennant races look like? Would certain teams simply dominate, or would we see something more interesting than the postseason series we got in real life?

This alternate 2024 American League pennant race might be interesting:

It’s hard to say for sure, of course, since schedules these days are anything but balanced. But I could see a division free 2024 American League replay ending up with a 3 team race for first.

And the National League might give us 4 good teams:

For some reason, I’ve always wanted to give this a try with 1991. Perhaps the Pirates would have been good enough to go to the World Series in that case:

The Twins would likely have made it work in the American League:

Now, this isn’t a really practical idea. It likely would never work in real life. After all, fans aren’t thrilled with going to see a 12th place team that is 30 games out of first place.

But we can do whatever we want in the simulation world, can’t we?