Baseball started to lose me when the playoffs went from two to four teams. Each expansion makes it worse. I am old enough to remember when winning the pennant actually meant something. Now, I have no idea who the AL and NL "champions" are. Like Joe says it is meaningless to play 162 games to eliminate a little over half the teams. Soccer has managed to maintain the value of winning the league by surrounding the leagues with other competitions (Cups, Champions League, et.). MLB seems to have locked itself into the model of the other major sports in America with an all but meaningless regular season followed by ever expanding playoffs.
Here's my idea: An American League and a National League with 10 teams each, and a Federal League with the remaining 10 teams. The National and American champions (Pennant Winners!) play for the World Series. The 2nd and 3rd teams in each league play a 4 team playoff for the Giamatti Cup. The 9th and 10th place teams in the two leagues play for the Kuhn Cup. The two losing semifinalists are demoted to the Federal League. The top 4 teams in the Federal league play for the Miller Cup. The two finalists get promoted. The actual cup winner picks which league they want to enter.
Look what we get: Two actual pennant winners, a real World Series winner, and 14 teams playing post-season baseball. Teams eliminated from the pennant races still have something to play for late in the season, to avoid relegation, or to achieve promotion.
Of course this will never happen, but I can dream.
Well, now that MLB has announced the cancellation of the first week of the season, I guess it’s time to go back to feeling a little more pessimistic again, hunh Joe? I’m afraid the owners just really don’t care, and certainly do NOT have the best interests of Baseball or the fans at heart, and there isn’t much the players or us fans can do about it.
Even if there is an agreement reached, I think baseball is still in trouble. And players will still resent owners (as they should, in my opinion) and in 5 years (next CBA time) we’ll most likely be back in the same boat. But in 5 years, the trends in baseball will continue to make the game less enjoyable. And as the old fans start 1) dying off - we are an pretty old base after all and 2) some of the living will lose interest and disappear from the baseball scene to a large extent, I don’t think there will be as many new fans to take their place. I know lots and lots of younger people, some real sports addicts, who have no interest in baseball - none. So they aren’t encouraging their kids to follow baseball so there will be even fewer fans.
I think a way that could be a win- win- win (players, owners, and fans) would be for the owners to pony up more money than they want- a lot more, maybe even agree to shorter arbitration and/or free agency. In exchange for this the players agree to several on field changes:
1) robo umps for balls and strikes;
2) a pitchers clock tied into enforcement of batters being required to stay in the batters box;
3) some sort of incentive for runs generated without a home run to be worth more (maybe 2 runs each?) - this is a far out idea that I just recently read about, and think it might have some merit;
4) After so many strikeouts a team makes 10 in a game) any enduring strikeout counts as 2 outs;
5) both fewer number of pitchers allowed on a roster and a strict limit on moving guys up and down constantly between minors and MLB. Pitchers and teams beware- go all out on every pitch and injure your arm, team can’t replace you by a minor leaguer- unless you are out for the year.miss a month- your roster is down one pitcher. A real incentive for pitchers to take it a little easier.
Maybe other changes. Do something to both bring action back to the game and make games shorter. In the long run, that should add fans.
Would this happen- very unlikely. Owners want their money and they want it now. I don’t think most of them give a crap about the long term value of the sport. But it’ll be an eye opener when- and this may take several years- owners discover they not only can’t sell their teams for a huge profit, but they actually wold take a loss.
While typing this post got a notification that talks fell thru and games are scheduled to be cancelled- surprise surprise.
"Now, of course, it would be perfectly baseball for the two sides to get relatively close to a deal like this and then have the whole thing blow up over, you know, whatever."
If TV is paying the freight for playoffs, that's what really matters. And, of course, player salaries don't carry into the playoffs. They don't get paid that much after the regular season, even if they do enjoy playing for a championship. Playoff dollars are largely pigged by the owners. So, no surprise that expanded playoffs are very interesting to the owners.
I am happy to see Joe represent his dislike for expanded playoffs in more forceful language than usual. I even sense some hesitation there about whether he might not take a significant strike/lockout if it meant we didn't have them. That is where I come down. Of course, this is fantasy land; no one is contemplating missed games on this account. What I think we need is a constitution that would prevent baseball from fiddling with the number of playoff teams, since it is not in fans' interest. "You can do anything but that." And I'm sure we could think of three or four more temptations that should be outlawed.
The creativity I would have like to have seen, in addition to four-year free agency eligibility, of course, would be minimum salaries of three million. If you gave that, might not the players relent on likely less revenue (from fewer playoff games) and consequent lower average salaries?
Baseball does NOT have a revenue problem, in any normal sense of the term. It is big business with supremely paid performers. Why should a business that doesn't have a revenue problem be revenue-obsessed? It needn't be, with some creativity.
I for one am looking forward to a 60-75 Yankees team that is 23 games out of 1st place on Sept 1 roar back with a 22-5 stretch to end the season and make the playoffs, all on the backs of some unknown journeyman who bats .482 with 18 HRs and 50 RBIs during the stretch.
The fewer playoff teams, the more likely we will have the two "best" (or at least two of the best) teams in the World Series. Having a wild card team (or two) in the World Series cheapens the value of "World Champion" and certainly reduces my interest in watching the games. When one of the teams I follow squeaks into the playoffs, I know they are still bums who weren't good enough to win their division and they should go home and wait for next year.
can anyone name an owner who genuinely has the long term interests of fans and the game in mind? even one who's a fan himself, after yesterday? or anyone at 350 park? whores, really. all of them. macho, fake capitalists -- many of them bequeathed their billions from daddy -- who operate under rules right out of das kapital. "sportsmen" who try to lose. unless they let trump in the club, hard to imagine a more loathsome gathering
Would love to see the top team in each league (or perhaps just the top team overall) during the regular season awarded the "pennant". There needs to be a big trophy, a big bonus, and MLB needs to recognize this team as one of that season's champions, alongside the World Series winner. The league can begin to cover this as a big deal, and then other outlets will follow.
There is some question whether American audiences would take to such a system, but European football does this just fine. When Chelsea won the Champions League after finishing 4th in the Premier League, did that taint either Chelsea's title or Man City's?
I believe if baseball could successfully adopt such a system, it would take care of many of MLB's problems. The owners would get their expanded playoffs, and both the regular season and post-season would matter. Being the best team in the regular season currently has this almost-negative connotation: if you lose early in the playoffs, you wasted your season and probably lack "toughness". With the new system, the team that wins the pennant would be going for the "double". In addition, I think more traditional fans would be more accepting of the fun and madness of a 12-16-team postseason if it didn't erase the regular season.
Finally, it would truly make baseball its own sport in the U.S. The past several decades, MLB has been coming to terms with the fact that playoff extravaganzas are what really bring in the $$$. The tension has always been between the meaning of the regular season and that extravaganza. The dual system would make baseball the only American sport whose regular season matters, while still preserving an exciting postseason. A deep team could say they're going for the pennant, while a team with a dominant starter or two could aim for the postseason and some magic.
There are other ways to lean into such a change. Remove the divisions in each league, and give an award for finishing "top division". Celebrate combined success even below World-Series-winning level: "What a season for the Dodgers, second in the NL pennant race, and then made it to the NLCS!" Give an award for most wins in the decade, or for best combined success in some way. Give an MVP award for the whole postseason, instead of just the World Series. Maybe even lean into the differences and change postseason rules in larger ways, such as substitution rules. Whatever they do should be done with the goal that both the regular season and the postseason MATTER.
I am hopeful that this one change, if done with enough force, would revitalize baseball and make it more at peace with itself.
Here's my proposal (may be too radical but we'll see):
-Two 15-team leagues (AL and NL obviously) with no divisions.
-Top 7 teams in each league make Playoffs with the top records in each league receiving a bye to the LDS while 2 through 7 play in a best-of-3 Wild Card Series, but here's the catch:
-The Playoffs don't start until two weeks after the regular season. In that time, the NL and AL top seeds/pennant winners play the best-of-7 World Series. The World Series trophy is awarded to the winner of this series and since they're on bye, the players have time to celebrate and recover.
-Playoffs: best-of-3 Wild Card Series followed by best-of-3 Division Series and best-of-3 League Championship Series. Better record hosts all games and only off days are between series.
-Winner of NL Playoff and AL Playoff play in single-game, winner-take-all Playoff Championship Game at a Neutral Site.
All this could be done in a calendar month. Introduces a crazy tournament that anyone can win without de-valuing the Regular Season and World Series. Soccer leagues have multiple competitions per year, why not Baseball?
I would love to see Joe address this topic with his ideas (or build on yours). At the end of the day all sports events have exactly as much significance as the fans/media ascribe to it. So, I'm all in favor of Joe and others doing more to pump up the significance of the regular season.
I guess I'm not all that moved by the idea that extending the playoffs makes the 162 game season less meaningful. We have to remember that in a given season, at least until 1995, the 162 game season isn't meaningful at all, at least in terms of making it to October. Until the playoffs expanded, the majority of MLB teams were usually out of contention by July. As a Padres fan that has been true for me most of my life, with a few glorious exceptions now and then, and (hopefully) more to come. The beauty of the 162 game schedule is that there's always baseball to watch during the summer, especially now when every game is televised. But even back in the day, you had long homestands and local television airing games at least a few days a week (Padres, Angels, and Dodgers where I lived). And when your team is on the way to a 100-loss season, each game is not about October. It's about the enjoyment of now, hoping you're watching one of the 60 or so wins, waiting for memorable moments, anticipating the emergence of young players, or just enjoying some beer and popcorn during a warm summer evening. Expand the playoffs, or don't. I don't care. But keep the full 162 game schedule.
Fantastic viewpoint! I had lost the memory of the joy I used to feel just from watching baseball players competing, regardless of what the stakes were. I'm not sure when things changed for me--and that's across all sports, not just MLB. I don't know if your sparking my old brain will enable me to get back to those simpler times, but I appreciate the spark. Thank-you!
I'm bummed about the expanded playoffs. My connection to baseball has always been in the form of weeknight games in the middle of summer that may or may not have any playoff significance. I've always appreciated the consistency and grind of a 162-game season, and off-days are always downers. Much of my enjoyment of baseball comes from checking box scores to see how my favorite players did, or watching defensive highlights from otherwise "unimportant" games. Perhaps that's because my formative years as a baseball fan were during the '90s, when my team, the Dodgers, had no positive postseason moments.
What the heck is a 12-team playoff even going to look like? Do you split into 4 divisions? Do you take the top two from each of the 3 existing divisions? Do the top two teams get a bye in the first round? Maybe the three non-division winners play a round-robin to decide who gets to play the team with the best record?
In my mind, the only way a 12-team postseason makes sense is as a stepping stone to a 14-team playoff. Then you have three division winners and 4 extra teams in each league, and maybe those four teams do a final-four style bracket with best-of-three series to see who gets the privilege of playing the team with the best record. But that basically gives the six division winners a week off to rest while a bunch of 87-91 win teams duke it out, which is still awful, unless I suppose you're a Mariners' fan who hasn't had a team in the playoffs in 20 years, so you'll take your concession prize happily.
From what I have heard, the top two division winners get byes, while the other 4 teams play 3 game series at the higher seed's stadium. (The last division winner and top wild card will host) Down to 4 teams, the playoffs would finish as they have.
I wondered how it would look both ways. In fact, my idea for the 14 team playoff when I though that was inevitable(They would never do this but I think would be exciting) Would be to have all the division winners take a few days off while the other 4 teams play a tournament style double elimination style tournament at a single site (Maybe cities would bid on it) First day two games, however they decide to seed it. 2nd day winners play and losers play, 0-2 team eliminated. Two 1-1 teams play day three while the 2-0 team rests. The winner plays the 2-0 team the next day. If they win they play again as they are both 2-1, if the 2-0 team wins, it is over. They could do that as a day night double header, or use a 2nd day to build up the win or go home game on the last day, if it happens.
The real bottom line here is that baseball isn't really a competition between its member clubs, so much as it is a competition for entertainment dollars - and in that, the competition is baseball vs. the other major (and semi-major) sports leagues, movies (and the home equivalent), esports, and so on. That favors things like expanded playoffs and such, and so that is what baseball (and its remaining fans) are going to get.
Short-term it will seem to work. Long-term, it makes things terribly homogenized, and nobody will care. Why suffer through 162 games? Either one of the six good teams will eventually fall across the finish line first, or one of the six "fill out the bracket" teams will surprise and be crowned as a champion that people will mentally asterisk and disregard. Hooray for fifteen minutes, and "who actually won five years ago?" forever after.
The bold solution will never happen, which is to put that competitive pressure back onto the owners whom otherwise have no incentive to try to succeed - simply put, take their actions at face value and relegate them. Expand to 40 teams, then divide into a 24-club top-flight league and a 16-team, literal "second division." You will definitely get teams fighting to stay out of the bottom of the league and actively trying to improve, and you will get teams in the bottom actively trying to win that league and rejoin the World Series competition.
Sadly, Joe’s and many of our optimistic hopes went down the drain. ⚾️ cant get out of its own way
Baseball started to lose me when the playoffs went from two to four teams. Each expansion makes it worse. I am old enough to remember when winning the pennant actually meant something. Now, I have no idea who the AL and NL "champions" are. Like Joe says it is meaningless to play 162 games to eliminate a little over half the teams. Soccer has managed to maintain the value of winning the league by surrounding the leagues with other competitions (Cups, Champions League, et.). MLB seems to have locked itself into the model of the other major sports in America with an all but meaningless regular season followed by ever expanding playoffs.
Here's my idea: An American League and a National League with 10 teams each, and a Federal League with the remaining 10 teams. The National and American champions (Pennant Winners!) play for the World Series. The 2nd and 3rd teams in each league play a 4 team playoff for the Giamatti Cup. The 9th and 10th place teams in the two leagues play for the Kuhn Cup. The two losing semifinalists are demoted to the Federal League. The top 4 teams in the Federal league play for the Miller Cup. The two finalists get promoted. The actual cup winner picks which league they want to enter.
Look what we get: Two actual pennant winners, a real World Series winner, and 14 teams playing post-season baseball. Teams eliminated from the pennant races still have something to play for late in the season, to avoid relegation, or to achieve promotion.
Of course this will never happen, but I can dream.
Well, now that MLB has announced the cancellation of the first week of the season, I guess it’s time to go back to feeling a little more pessimistic again, hunh Joe? I’m afraid the owners just really don’t care, and certainly do NOT have the best interests of Baseball or the fans at heart, and there isn’t much the players or us fans can do about it.
"to sacrifice Opening Day over the dollars between the two offers would be pure madness." 🤪
Even if there is an agreement reached, I think baseball is still in trouble. And players will still resent owners (as they should, in my opinion) and in 5 years (next CBA time) we’ll most likely be back in the same boat. But in 5 years, the trends in baseball will continue to make the game less enjoyable. And as the old fans start 1) dying off - we are an pretty old base after all and 2) some of the living will lose interest and disappear from the baseball scene to a large extent, I don’t think there will be as many new fans to take their place. I know lots and lots of younger people, some real sports addicts, who have no interest in baseball - none. So they aren’t encouraging their kids to follow baseball so there will be even fewer fans.
I think a way that could be a win- win- win (players, owners, and fans) would be for the owners to pony up more money than they want- a lot more, maybe even agree to shorter arbitration and/or free agency. In exchange for this the players agree to several on field changes:
1) robo umps for balls and strikes;
2) a pitchers clock tied into enforcement of batters being required to stay in the batters box;
3) some sort of incentive for runs generated without a home run to be worth more (maybe 2 runs each?) - this is a far out idea that I just recently read about, and think it might have some merit;
4) After so many strikeouts a team makes 10 in a game) any enduring strikeout counts as 2 outs;
5) both fewer number of pitchers allowed on a roster and a strict limit on moving guys up and down constantly between minors and MLB. Pitchers and teams beware- go all out on every pitch and injure your arm, team can’t replace you by a minor leaguer- unless you are out for the year.miss a month- your roster is down one pitcher. A real incentive for pitchers to take it a little easier.
Maybe other changes. Do something to both bring action back to the game and make games shorter. In the long run, that should add fans.
Would this happen- very unlikely. Owners want their money and they want it now. I don’t think most of them give a crap about the long term value of the sport. But it’ll be an eye opener when- and this may take several years- owners discover they not only can’t sell their teams for a huge profit, but they actually wold take a loss.
While typing this post got a notification that talks fell thru and games are scheduled to be cancelled- surprise surprise.
"Now, of course, it would be perfectly baseball for the two sides to get relatively close to a deal like this and then have the whole thing blow up over, you know, whatever."
How prescient.
If TV is paying the freight for playoffs, that's what really matters. And, of course, player salaries don't carry into the playoffs. They don't get paid that much after the regular season, even if they do enjoy playing for a championship. Playoff dollars are largely pigged by the owners. So, no surprise that expanded playoffs are very interesting to the owners.
I am happy to see Joe represent his dislike for expanded playoffs in more forceful language than usual. I even sense some hesitation there about whether he might not take a significant strike/lockout if it meant we didn't have them. That is where I come down. Of course, this is fantasy land; no one is contemplating missed games on this account. What I think we need is a constitution that would prevent baseball from fiddling with the number of playoff teams, since it is not in fans' interest. "You can do anything but that." And I'm sure we could think of three or four more temptations that should be outlawed.
The creativity I would have like to have seen, in addition to four-year free agency eligibility, of course, would be minimum salaries of three million. If you gave that, might not the players relent on likely less revenue (from fewer playoff games) and consequent lower average salaries?
Baseball does NOT have a revenue problem, in any normal sense of the term. It is big business with supremely paid performers. Why should a business that doesn't have a revenue problem be revenue-obsessed? It needn't be, with some creativity.
I for one am looking forward to a 60-75 Yankees team that is 23 games out of 1st place on Sept 1 roar back with a 22-5 stretch to end the season and make the playoffs, all on the backs of some unknown journeyman who bats .482 with 18 HRs and 50 RBIs during the stretch.
The fewer playoff teams, the more likely we will have the two "best" (or at least two of the best) teams in the World Series. Having a wild card team (or two) in the World Series cheapens the value of "World Champion" and certainly reduces my interest in watching the games. When one of the teams I follow squeaks into the playoffs, I know they are still bums who weren't good enough to win their division and they should go home and wait for next year.
can anyone name an owner who genuinely has the long term interests of fans and the game in mind? even one who's a fan himself, after yesterday? or anyone at 350 park? whores, really. all of them. macho, fake capitalists -- many of them bequeathed their billions from daddy -- who operate under rules right out of das kapital. "sportsmen" who try to lose. unless they let trump in the club, hard to imagine a more loathsome gathering
Would love to see the top team in each league (or perhaps just the top team overall) during the regular season awarded the "pennant". There needs to be a big trophy, a big bonus, and MLB needs to recognize this team as one of that season's champions, alongside the World Series winner. The league can begin to cover this as a big deal, and then other outlets will follow.
There is some question whether American audiences would take to such a system, but European football does this just fine. When Chelsea won the Champions League after finishing 4th in the Premier League, did that taint either Chelsea's title or Man City's?
I believe if baseball could successfully adopt such a system, it would take care of many of MLB's problems. The owners would get their expanded playoffs, and both the regular season and post-season would matter. Being the best team in the regular season currently has this almost-negative connotation: if you lose early in the playoffs, you wasted your season and probably lack "toughness". With the new system, the team that wins the pennant would be going for the "double". In addition, I think more traditional fans would be more accepting of the fun and madness of a 12-16-team postseason if it didn't erase the regular season.
Finally, it would truly make baseball its own sport in the U.S. The past several decades, MLB has been coming to terms with the fact that playoff extravaganzas are what really bring in the $$$. The tension has always been between the meaning of the regular season and that extravaganza. The dual system would make baseball the only American sport whose regular season matters, while still preserving an exciting postseason. A deep team could say they're going for the pennant, while a team with a dominant starter or two could aim for the postseason and some magic.
There are other ways to lean into such a change. Remove the divisions in each league, and give an award for finishing "top division". Celebrate combined success even below World-Series-winning level: "What a season for the Dodgers, second in the NL pennant race, and then made it to the NLCS!" Give an award for most wins in the decade, or for best combined success in some way. Give an MVP award for the whole postseason, instead of just the World Series. Maybe even lean into the differences and change postseason rules in larger ways, such as substitution rules. Whatever they do should be done with the goal that both the regular season and the postseason MATTER.
I am hopeful that this one change, if done with enough force, would revitalize baseball and make it more at peace with itself.
Here's my proposal (may be too radical but we'll see):
-Two 15-team leagues (AL and NL obviously) with no divisions.
-Top 7 teams in each league make Playoffs with the top records in each league receiving a bye to the LDS while 2 through 7 play in a best-of-3 Wild Card Series, but here's the catch:
-The Playoffs don't start until two weeks after the regular season. In that time, the NL and AL top seeds/pennant winners play the best-of-7 World Series. The World Series trophy is awarded to the winner of this series and since they're on bye, the players have time to celebrate and recover.
-Playoffs: best-of-3 Wild Card Series followed by best-of-3 Division Series and best-of-3 League Championship Series. Better record hosts all games and only off days are between series.
-Winner of NL Playoff and AL Playoff play in single-game, winner-take-all Playoff Championship Game at a Neutral Site.
All this could be done in a calendar month. Introduces a crazy tournament that anyone can win without de-valuing the Regular Season and World Series. Soccer leagues have multiple competitions per year, why not Baseball?
I would love to see Joe address this topic with his ideas (or build on yours). At the end of the day all sports events have exactly as much significance as the fans/media ascribe to it. So, I'm all in favor of Joe and others doing more to pump up the significance of the regular season.
I guess I'm not all that moved by the idea that extending the playoffs makes the 162 game season less meaningful. We have to remember that in a given season, at least until 1995, the 162 game season isn't meaningful at all, at least in terms of making it to October. Until the playoffs expanded, the majority of MLB teams were usually out of contention by July. As a Padres fan that has been true for me most of my life, with a few glorious exceptions now and then, and (hopefully) more to come. The beauty of the 162 game schedule is that there's always baseball to watch during the summer, especially now when every game is televised. But even back in the day, you had long homestands and local television airing games at least a few days a week (Padres, Angels, and Dodgers where I lived). And when your team is on the way to a 100-loss season, each game is not about October. It's about the enjoyment of now, hoping you're watching one of the 60 or so wins, waiting for memorable moments, anticipating the emergence of young players, or just enjoying some beer and popcorn during a warm summer evening. Expand the playoffs, or don't. I don't care. But keep the full 162 game schedule.
Fantastic viewpoint! I had lost the memory of the joy I used to feel just from watching baseball players competing, regardless of what the stakes were. I'm not sure when things changed for me--and that's across all sports, not just MLB. I don't know if your sparking my old brain will enable me to get back to those simpler times, but I appreciate the spark. Thank-you!
I'm bummed about the expanded playoffs. My connection to baseball has always been in the form of weeknight games in the middle of summer that may or may not have any playoff significance. I've always appreciated the consistency and grind of a 162-game season, and off-days are always downers. Much of my enjoyment of baseball comes from checking box scores to see how my favorite players did, or watching defensive highlights from otherwise "unimportant" games. Perhaps that's because my formative years as a baseball fan were during the '90s, when my team, the Dodgers, had no positive postseason moments.
What the heck is a 12-team playoff even going to look like? Do you split into 4 divisions? Do you take the top two from each of the 3 existing divisions? Do the top two teams get a bye in the first round? Maybe the three non-division winners play a round-robin to decide who gets to play the team with the best record?
In my mind, the only way a 12-team postseason makes sense is as a stepping stone to a 14-team playoff. Then you have three division winners and 4 extra teams in each league, and maybe those four teams do a final-four style bracket with best-of-three series to see who gets the privilege of playing the team with the best record. But that basically gives the six division winners a week off to rest while a bunch of 87-91 win teams duke it out, which is still awful, unless I suppose you're a Mariners' fan who hasn't had a team in the playoffs in 20 years, so you'll take your concession prize happily.
From what I have heard, the top two division winners get byes, while the other 4 teams play 3 game series at the higher seed's stadium. (The last division winner and top wild card will host) Down to 4 teams, the playoffs would finish as they have.
I wondered how it would look both ways. In fact, my idea for the 14 team playoff when I though that was inevitable(They would never do this but I think would be exciting) Would be to have all the division winners take a few days off while the other 4 teams play a tournament style double elimination style tournament at a single site (Maybe cities would bid on it) First day two games, however they decide to seed it. 2nd day winners play and losers play, 0-2 team eliminated. Two 1-1 teams play day three while the 2-0 team rests. The winner plays the 2-0 team the next day. If they win they play again as they are both 2-1, if the 2-0 team wins, it is over. They could do that as a day night double header, or use a 2nd day to build up the win or go home game on the last day, if it happens.
Mariner fan here. Yes, yes I would sheepishly take that consolation prize.
The real bottom line here is that baseball isn't really a competition between its member clubs, so much as it is a competition for entertainment dollars - and in that, the competition is baseball vs. the other major (and semi-major) sports leagues, movies (and the home equivalent), esports, and so on. That favors things like expanded playoffs and such, and so that is what baseball (and its remaining fans) are going to get.
Short-term it will seem to work. Long-term, it makes things terribly homogenized, and nobody will care. Why suffer through 162 games? Either one of the six good teams will eventually fall across the finish line first, or one of the six "fill out the bracket" teams will surprise and be crowned as a champion that people will mentally asterisk and disregard. Hooray for fifteen minutes, and "who actually won five years ago?" forever after.
The bold solution will never happen, which is to put that competitive pressure back onto the owners whom otherwise have no incentive to try to succeed - simply put, take their actions at face value and relegate them. Expand to 40 teams, then divide into a 24-club top-flight league and a 16-team, literal "second division." You will definitely get teams fighting to stay out of the bottom of the league and actively trying to improve, and you will get teams in the bottom actively trying to win that league and rejoin the World Series competition.