Today is the 22nd day of October and the 25th day since the MLB regular season came to a close on September 27th. Yet despite the World Series finally getting underway tomorrow, neither one of its participants have played more than ten games during this three and a half week stretch. Yes, both the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays have sat idle for at least 60 percent of the days between the conclusion of the regular season and the start of the World Series. Does this bother anybody else?
Baseball is a sport designed to be played (almost) every day, and that’s just not happening far too often for teams who make deep runs in October. Somewhere along the journey of this ever expanding postseason format, we’ve turned the game into something far less than the best version of itself. A game where power dominates, a game where a parade of rested relievers overwhelm helpless hitters, and a game where we sit around and wait for a couple of guys to go deep instead of the outcome being determined on the margins. I’m sorry, but baseball is so, so much better than this.
Now to be clear, part of the reason the Rays and Brewers have played so few games this month is because we truly do have the two best teams in this iteration of the fall classic. They won their series quickly and decisively, and despite a noticeable lack of drama to this point in October, I’m still expecting a compelling World Series.
However, while we sit here with these teams playing no baseball again today, my mind is wandering through radically different scenarios about how MLB could do this better. Specifically, is a future of multiple best-of-seven series stacked on top of each other really what’s best for the sport? (Because you know the LDS is getting expanded sooner rather than later, which if anything, could mean even more off days.)
The postseason format is only in its current form because the owners keep adding more teams. First, just the World Series wasn’t enough. Then they wanted Wild Cards 30 years ago, and then decided they wanted more Wild Cards 15 years ago, and then they wanted more Wild Cards a decade after that. We get it, they want more money, but at some point you have to look up and realize this stacking of series has created a monster that’s taken away many of the best qualities the sport has to offer.
So what if we just did October complete different? What if instead of all these teams playing in separate series, we turned October into a mini pennant race?
Get down to the last eight teams (I have thoughts on the best ways to do that as well, but that’s not the point of today’s exercise), and then have everybody play each other in a round-robin: 21 games for everybody comprised of seven three-game series, home team is the higher seed somewhere between most and all of the games, and the two teams with the best records go to the World Series.
Extra incentive is automatically baked into every three game series because the first tiebreaker is head to head record over this stretch, and you get the added bonus of every fanbase suddenly caring about everybody else.
Whether we like it or not, baseball in 2026 is a sport where if your team is in it, it’s the absolute most important thing in the world, and if your team is not in it, it tends to turn into casual viewing until maybe the World Series itself. (This is not 100 percent true with all fans, but we can see the site traffic numbers here at SB Nation, and they fully reflect this reality.)
However, in a world where eight teams are in a mini pennant race coming down to the wire, eight fanbases suddenly care deeply for most of the month, and their passion for their team will then naturally cross pollinate into opinions about other clubs they never would have cared about because they’re far less likely to pay attention to what’s going on in an LCS after their team has been eliminated. This is how you use baseball being a regional powerhouse and transform it back into a national sport for a few weeks each fall. If multiple teams are within sniffing distance of a World Series ticket with a handful of games to go, you better believe all those fanbases are not only hanging on every pitch of their game, but also monitoring the action around the rest of the league. Every storyline suddenly impacts every team.
In addition to that, the brand of baseball would just be better for the average fan. Much better! Teams would actually have to use their entire rotation. Bullpens wouldn’t be as rested. Hitters would get enough of a sample size to settle in and show off their star power. And as all this unfolded, storylines would pour out of the proceedings like a raging waterfall on a daily basis.
Additionally, assuming you started this thing on a Friday and sprinkled in three off days once a week in their natural Monday and Thursday regular season spots, you could end this chase in freaking glorious fashion! Give everybody the Thursday before the last three game series off (for both make-up game purposes and to prepare for what’s next), and then end the race with single admission double headers on the Saturday. You don’t compete with the NFL on the last Sunday, you give a nod to baseball history, and create the possibly for so much chaos if the standings are remotely close, you instantly create one of if not the best day on the entire sports calendar. Can you imagine the utter insanity that would ensue over those six or seven hours most years? And it will be sitting there, virtually guaranteed and scheduled ahead of time every single year on a Saturday in October.
Four cities, eight games, two trips to the World Series on the line. Box office! Remember how nuts the final day of 2011 and 1967 were? That type of finish would be brought back into the game, and it would happen relatively often.
Baseball works best as a sport when teams play everyday, and are racing towards something together in pursuit of a prize. A drawn out seven game series is fine when you get down to the last two, and in some cases the last four teams, but we’ve gone far beyond that. The bloated bracket baseball’s brokered in recent years divides attention spans, drags out the proceedings, and forces the sport into worst three true outcome version of itself that can possibly exist. It’s brutal from an entertainment standpoint.
MLB can do better, and if we’re hellbent on letting so many teams have chance at a championship at the end of each regular season (and yes, the owners are), we might as well do it in the most baseball manner possible. Turn October into a pennant race!
