Jeff Passan Says MLB Postseason Could Be Expanded Past 2020

On Thursday, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players' Association agreed upon terms for an expanded Postseason field for the 2020 season, given how different this baseball season will be. The 2020 Postseason will include 16 teams, each playing a best-of-three series — with all three games at the home ballpark of the higher seed — to get down to the four teams in each league's Division Series.

While I don't think many baseball fans would have been thrilled with this news in a normal year, my guess is most people are ok with this for 2020 to ensure no good teams get screwed by a 60-game season. But according to Jeff Passan, this expanded format could be here to stay.

"In the end, I think both the players and the league are happy that this got done," Passan said Friday on ESPN's Get Up. "A Pandora's box is open, man. If it's happening this year, it is going to happen going forward."

Well now there's where you lose me. The beauty of the MLB Postseason has always been its exclusivity. As recently as 1993, only four teams in all of baseball made the playoffs. And while I think that's too few, I believe we have the number right where it needs to be currently: the three division winners are in and then you let two other teams battle it out for the last spot.

And that's not to mention the fact that this new system does not differentiate at all between the No. 1 and No. 8 seed. Sure, you have to go on the road, but that's far less of a disadvantage than a team which won 105 games having to play in the Wild Card round just to get into the Division Series.

The only part of this expanded format I would like to adopt is the three-game Wild Card series. Keep the field at five teams per league, but have the two Wild Card teams play a best-of-three at the home field of the higher seed. It has never seemed fair to me to have a 162-game season come down to one game.

But as for the rest of it, no thank you. Leave the 16-team playoff nonsense to the NBA and NHL.