MLB In Season Tournament

[wiguy94]

The NBA introduced an in season tournament and so far it’s seemed like a massive success. What are your thoughts on the MLB introducing an in season tournament?

I don’t know what the format would be but the MLB season is very long so introducing a tournament could be a great way to keep fans interested during the long season.

In the NBA all in season tournament games count towards regular season records except for the championship game which is an extra game, so this wouldn’t add games. NBA prize is $500K per player.  

[RedStickBrew]

I would be in favor of it. I am loving the NBA version this year. It has made for some more competitive early season games

[torts]

Yes yes yes!!!

[owbc]

What is the prize for winning the NBA one, other than the bonus for the players? Does the winner get a playoff spot? 

[wiguy94]

14 minutes ago, owbc said:

What is the prize for winning the NBA one, other than the bonus for the players? Does the winner get a playoff spot? 

Just the money I believe.

[SeaBass]

I think this has to be a must for MLB, the season is sooo long it's begging for something to add some extra stakes and interest. They could probably add a Championship Game during the All Star break.

[dlk9s]

If they paint the grass blue and the dirt yellow, I'm in.

[Playing Catch]

I loved the concept in the NBA immediately when I heard about it, and it seems to have a lot of fan interest.

I would need to see how it was set up in MLB to be a proponent. The schedules of the two sports are just so different. With this said, I've long felt that 162 games is too many.

[patrickgpe]

First of all, a tournament where all that is on the line is some money for players doesn't really interest me. MLB would be harder to pull off than NBA, it would probably have to be best of 3 series, at least in the knockout rounds. Group play could really be in a pod where games are played in 1 or 2 stadiums. 

[Jopal78]

It would never work in MLB. No network is going to carry Oakland vs. Kansas City even in a tournament format—not enough interested eyeballs. Thus there would be no additional revenue from Broadcast. There also would be no additional revenue from ticket sales because not many fans are going to decide to pay to see Oakland play Kansas City instead of staying home simply because it’s a “tournament” game. 

Unlike the NBA and NFL, the MLBPA is too strong and its PR machine is so much better than the oweners’. Thus if there’s prize money to be given to the players, their union will argue the owners have been ripping them off by hiding extra revenue. Then even adding one extra championship game would have to be negotiated with the players union, who 100% would demand additional compensation for that one game. The two sides could barely agree on the covid year and that was simply whether to play at all.
 

 

[Fear The Chorizo]

The in-season tournament is perfect for the NBA this time of year, because their regular season means absolutely nothing and we're in the stretch run for the NFL regular season/college football rivalry/championship weekends, plus NHL seasons are rolling...in other words, absolutely nobody cares about NBA regular season games in November/early December, so anything they can do to draw some sort of general fan interest and get their teams to actually play with sustained effort this time of year is a good thing.

I don't see how a similar format would would work at the MLB level, because teams just aren't going to alter pitching matchups that dramatically, and the frequency of games during the MLB regular season has to be almost daily, so a travel schedule for any sort of MLB tournament doesn't really work.  For the NBA, if teams care about the in season tourney they just play their stars more frequently instead of giving them rest games off this time of year.

 

[Underachiever]

Let's play this out. It's June 17th, and your team has made the finals. You have 90 games left in the season. It's the final game of the in-season tournament, are you pitching Corbin Burnes on three days' rest, or giving Julio Teheran his normal start? 

Baseball is just so different. And if you made it best of three, how do you keep some teams from not losing some of their 81 home games? 

[AKCheesehead]

I've long thought that some version of the 1981 split season playoff format could be fun and generate a ton of fan interest.  It would probably need a little tweaking, such as including a wild card so as not to repeat what happened to the Reds that year.  It would definitely add some excitement in the buildup to the end of the first half. 

[folly412]

It's a fun brainstorm.  What about doing more of a "kickoff" tournament coming out of spring training?  Like maybe every few years, not in WBC years.  The teams are already fairly close together in two locations, then there's a Cactus-Grapefruit championship game.  You can probably get away with a single elimination, with one team in each location getting a bye in the first round.

[Underachiever]

2 minutes ago, AKCheesehead said:

I've long thought that some version of the 1981 split season playoff format could be fun and generate a ton of fan interest.  It would probably need a little tweaking, such as including a wild card so as not to repeat what happened to the Reds that year.  It would definitely add some excitement in the buildup to the end of the first half. 

I agree, they would need to tweak it so that a team like the 1981 Reds wouldn't be left out despite having the best record. One additional tweak, though. Team with best record gets in, unless it's the Cardinals. Then, screw them. If that's the case, Cardinals get replaced by the actual 1981 Reds. Ron Oester and Paul Householder get redemption!

[owbc]

I agree that it would be harder to pull off, but not impossible. As noted above, they have figured out the WBC and the fans love it. 

if you dangle a playoff spot as an incentive then I could see teams moving around their rotation to win those games. 

As with the NBA, they don't really need to change the schedule much at all. Draft 4 pools and then play 'best of 3' series using the existing 3-game series in the schedule. Best series record wins the pool. Then, just set a flex week in the schedule in late summer to play the semifinals and finals, everyone else plays their regularly-scheduled games. 

All four semifinalists automatically win all postseason tiebreakers in exchange for having to play an unbalanced schedule. The tournament winner gets the automatic playoff spot which is the 3rd wild card if they wouldn't have otherwise made the postseason as a higher seed. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

As a casual basketball fan, I find the in-season tournament bewildering. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, it's just a new concept that I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head around.

So I'm not against it for MLB. Personally, I'd be interested in trying something like this, particularly if they shortened the season back to 154 games to accommodate both this and the lengthier postseason.

Slightly fewer games with more of them being high-stakes, intense games is probably a good idea for baseball.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

Soccer does it all the time, and it's great. Take Brighton, who's going to pretty much for sure be mid-table in the Premier League. They won't get relegated. They won't win the league (or make the Champions League), so being in the Europa League (2nd level all-Europe competition) adds interest and drama.

There's no reason MLB couldn't devote 25 games or more to an in-season tournament. 

I'd say the simplest approach is to go interleague style. You balance the schedule and count IL games double: once for regular season standings, once as part of the IL cup or whatever. End of schedule, 4 teams in each league with the best records play three best-of-3, knockout series, with the final being a "mini-World Series" for a trophy (I'd also just count them as regular season games too).

Scheduling is a the challenge. You'd have to a) front load IL games for everyone, hoping to finish the competition by late-August, I'd think and b) hold space for extra games. I think it's doable given all the modeling software out there. Competitively, I suppose counting theoretically difficult, IL Cup games double might be difficult, but there you're talking 9 games. Always going to be trade-offs.

You could also do something smaller. You could reduce the regular season to 150 games and budget 12 for some sort of mid-season cup in a single location. Maybe during the LLWS, and you could call it the "Little Big Leagues WS." You could even play it in Williamsport if you wanted. Two weeks in August where everyone starts from zero would be fun.

I fully support this in principle, and there will be a way to make it work. It will involve complications and trade-offs, but giving fans another competition to engage with is something a marathon sport like baseball desperately needs. The more I think about it, the more I'm a fan of the single-location tournament with full revenue sharing and a separate media rights deal. You'd think that would entice some owners to forego the 6 home games of lost revenue.

 

[Fear The Chorizo]

32 minutes ago, folly412 said:

It's a fun brainstorm.  What about doing more of a "kickoff" tournament coming out of spring training?  Like maybe every few years, not in WBC years.  The teams are already fairly close together in two locations, then there's a Cactus-Grapefruit championship game.  You can probably get away with a single elimination, with one team in each location getting a bye in the first round.

This would actually be a pretty cool way to get interest ramping up for the regular season....if they can structure it in a way that doesn't impede the actual point of Spring Training and the incentive for teams is enough to warrant them actually caring about how they perform, but not something carrying such a high incentive as to strain the normal ramp up pitchers have to get ready for the regular season grind.

Maybe halfway into Spring Training, identify one of each team's clubs (most spring training has games for multiple rosters to get onfield time for everyone) as the contestant, and then track their standings into the last week or so of Spring Training.  Then take the top two clubs in the Cactus and Grapefruit league standings to play in a 4 team, single elimination tournament - the four clubs get a mix of player shares (similar to WS payments), competitive balance tax/payroll incentives (either a deduction teams could use towards getting below the luxury tax threshold, or a credit teams could use to put towards their following season's payroll), and maybe a sandwich pick or two - with the winning club getting a bit more than than the others.

 

 

[Playing Catch]

I would push against anyone stating that an in-season tournament would be meaningless. Every single game is an exhibition. Spring Training is an exhibition, Series against the Cubs in August is an exhibition, World Series game 7 is an exhibition. It is culture, history and fans that determine the relative "value" of any of these exhibitions.

There is no rational reason that an in-season tournament cannot be held in esteem. Now I'm sure it would never hold as much esteem as a World Championship, but it would be foolish not to think that teams wouldn't add an in-season tournament trophy or pennant on the OF wall next to "Wild Card Participant".

[jerichoholicninja]

Short answer: No
Long answer: Lol, no.

If you want some sort of gimmick to make people care about the middle of the baseball season make it two halves and the top 2 teams from each half get a playoff spot.

[dlk9s]

Have the teams play a basketball tournament.