The MLB Playoffs Could Stand to Be Less Random

Baseball involves far more randomness than basketball (even a great MLB team only wins about 60 percent of the time). The more average teams you include in your playoff format, the greater the chance that an average team wins the World Series mostly due to small sample size. Some people enjoy that level of unpredictability, but the downside is that it diminishes the value of the massive, 162 game regular season that millions of fans invest time and money into. If winning half your games leads to a World Series, then why should your fans sweat any day in particular? In theory, there’s incentive to win big because the top teams get a bye, but those teams just performed horribly.