Reseeding the Playoffs

Down the stretch and during the first two days of the MLB Postseason, one topic has been discussed quite frequently.  How the AL East has really been screwed by the current playoff system.  For the second year in a row, the AL East put three teams in the playoffs.  For the second straight year, they were the 1-, 4- and 5-seeds, meaning they made up an entire side of the bracket!  And for the third time in the last five seasons, AL East teams had the top two records in the league.

What that says, more than anything, is how good the AL East is.  It's easily the best division in baseball.  Combine that with both the Central and West being down (the AL West, of course, had a historically bad season this year) and that's how you get the three best teams all being in the same division.  And, because Baseball has a set bracket, the quirk of all three of those teams having to get through each other while the other side is considerably weaker (although, last year's Mariners won 90 games and were certainly a deserving ALCS participant).

Is it necessarily fair to any of the AL East teams?  No.  Is it really a reward for the No. 1 seed to face the best remaining team (record-wise), especially when it's a team they're so familiar with and vice versa?  No.  But does that mean a complete overhaul of the entire system is required?  Also no.

This "problem" isn't unique to baseball.  In football, the division winners get the top four seeds.  There's inevitably going to be a division (NFC West) where two really good teams fight for the division title, only for one of them to end up a wild card and have to go on the road.  Every year, there's at least one game on Wild Card Weekend where the wild card team has the better record than the division winner they're facing.  Remember two years ago when the 14-3 Vikings were the 5-seed in the NFC?!  Was that "fair?"  Honestly, I have no problem with it.  It's a reward for winning your division.

That's exactly what Baseball's playoff format does.  The difference between the 1- seed and 4-seed (aka home field advantage in the Division Series) in the AL last year was the Blue Jays' kicking the Yankees' asses in Toronto all season.  Had one of those games been flipped, the seeds would've been too.  This format puts an emphasis on winning your division, which is the whole point of having divisions in the first place.

Teams know that.  If they don't win their division, they have to play an extra round.  Until 2022, not winning your division meant you had to play a single, winner-take-all game.  So, if you think about it, this format is more forgiving than the previous one.  Ever since the postseason was expanded beyond just four teams in each league, the impetus has been on winning your division.  Everybody knows that going in.  And it's not like the second-best team being a wild card is a new phenomenon either.

Of course, that hasn't stopped people from talking about the inherent unfairness of the AL East having its own side of the playoff bracket.  The most popular refrain is how they should reseed between the Wild Card Series and Division Series.  Although, I'm not sure how much that would actually help since, if the 3-seed were to beat the 6-seed, it wouldn't change the matchups anyway.  Logistically, that wouldn't work either.  In football, they can do it because they get a week off between games.  In baseball, they get one or two days.  You can't have the entire playoff field waiting around for the final series to end before they even know who they're playing in the next round.  (That's one of the reasons hockey went to its ridiculous current format.  Having the set bracket.)

Another common "solution" is seeding the teams strictly based on record, which is what the NBA and WNBA do (the WNBA doesn't even rank by conference, they do a European soccer model with just one leaguewide table).  But, again, what's the point of even having divisions then?  There needs to be an incentive for winning your division beyond just being guaranteed a playoff spot.  And, yes, sometimes the No. 1 seed will end up playing the second- or third-best team in the Division Series.  If you're the No. 1 seed, it means you're the best team.  So, that shouldn't matter.

Likewise, there's been some clamoring for extending the Wild Card Series from a best-of-3 to at least a best-of-5.  The argument there is based on the fact that the two lower-seeded wild card teams could end up not having a home playoff game.  "It's like they were never even in the playoffs," is the common complaint.  To which I say, "So?"  In the old format, they wouldn't have a home playoff game, either.  The 5-seed would visit the 4-seed in the single Wild Card Game (and not have a home game if they lost) and the 6-seed wouldn't even be in the playoffs.

Think about how difficult that would make things logistically, too.  I find it funny how people don't even realize the irony of wanting the playoffs to not extend too far into November, yet, at the same time, wanting to expand the Wild Card round.  You extend it, that means those series will run longer, which would obviously push back the start of the remaining rounds.  It would also mean that the 1- and 2-seeds would have an even longer wait between the end of the regular season and the start of the Division Series.

It's also worth keeping in mind that whatever you do in one league, you have to do in the other.  And there's been no issue with playoff seeding in the National League in either of the past two seasons.  In both 2025 and 2026, the NL seeds were totally aligned by record.  There actually hasn't been an NL wild card team with a better record than any of the division winners since the 2022 Mets (who had the same record as the Braves, but lost the tiebreaker).

So, there isn't any sort of "problem" whatsoever with the current playoff format in the National League.  What that shows is the NL has more balance than the AL.  It also shows how there's nothing wrong with the format.  If it works just fine in the NL, the "problem" is more about the imbalance in the AL than the playoff setup.  While it happens fairly regularly in the AL, it doesn't in the NL.  That should tell you all you need to know.  The AL is the problem.  Not the format!

Simply put, changing the format would be a massive overreaction.  It also wouldn't really do much since the top wild card would still be the 4-seed, and they'd still face the 1-seed in the Division Series.  Likewise, it would be a non-issue if the AL wasn't so top-heavy and the AL West wasn't so historically bad this season.  Don't forget, Houston was the dominant team in the American League for the better part of a decade.  So, it's not like it's always been like this or will continue to be like this indefinitely.

While it's unfortunate that the two best teams in the American League will meet in the Division Series instead of the ALCS, it's not like that hasn't happened before.  It's not the first time, and it won't be the last time.  That will be the case as long as the two best teams come from the same division.  Which is a "problem" that isn't exclusive to baseball.  Or anything that needs to be rectified.