Here’s a controversial hot take: this year’s World Baseball Classic was amazing.
After their semifinal loss to Japan, Mexico’s manager, Benji
Gil, said “Japan moved on, but the world of baseball won today.”[1]
It did. It most definitely did.
Trea Turner made a name for himself. Over six games in the
WBC, Turner hit five homeruns (most in the WBC), drove in 11 runs (second only
to Masataka Yoshida’s 13 for Japan) and had an average of .391[2].
Nolan Arendao hit .385, Mookie Betts hit 3.13, Randy
Arozaren hit .450, Francisco Lindo hit .450, Yoan Moncada and Shohei Ohtani each
hit .435, just to name a few[3].
Ohtani also started three games and won both, got the save in the championship
round (we’ll come back to that), lead the WBC in innings pitched (9.2), had a
1.86 ERA and tied for third in strikeouts with 11[4].
Did I mention that Ohtani also hit a homerun in the championship game?
Plus, what a way to wrap everything up. Japan led 3-2. Japan
took Ohtani out of the field and put him on the mound. He did walk his first
batter, but then got Mookie Betts to ground into a double play. One out away from
their third WBC title, Japan’s Shohei Ohtani faced the USA’s Mike Trout. Or should
I say that Los Angeles Angels pitcher/DH Shohei Ohtani faced Los Angeles Angels
RF Mike Trout. Teammates battled it out with the world watching. Ohtani struck out Trout to clinch the title. It was theatrical. Hollywood would drooled over such a script.
The WBC featured teams representing 20 countries, originally
broken into four pools with five teams each, and played games in Taichung, Taiwan;
Tokyo, Japan; Phoenix, Arizona (USA); and Miami, FL (USA). The tournament began
on March 8 and wrapped up on March 21, a grand total of 14 days. Two weeks.
In 2022, the MLB Playoffs began on October 7 and concluded
with Game 5 of the World Series on November 5[5].
That’s a total of 30 days. A full month. Yet, there were only 12 teams in that
tournament.
All of the goodwill, hype, praise, and excitement coming out
of the WBC and heading into opening day of the 2023 baseball season begs the question:
can MLB take advantage of this momentum and keep it going?
This year, there will be a huge new rule in baseball: a
pitch clock. The idea of this is to speed up the games. Early signs in Spring
Training point to this new rule working. As of March 9, the average time it
took to complete a spring training game had dropped roughly 25 minutes from
2022 to 2023[6]
(from 3 hours and 1 minute in 2022 to 2 hours and 36 minutes in 2023). That’s
nearly a half hour trimmed from every baseball game. When one of the
stereotypical complaints about the sport is that it is “too slow” a pitch clock
saving nearly a half hour per game undoubtedly digs into that concern.
It is important to note, however, that the WBC did not use a
pitch clock. Games lasted, on average, 3 hours and 16 minutes[7].
They also did not implement the new MLB rule banning extreme shifts (two infielders
must be on either side of second base at all times). It is believed that the championship
game could be the most-watched baseball game ever played[8].
Okay, well, that’s a little misleading as many of those
viewers will be in Japan. Still, MLB has seen declines, so lessons need to be
learned.
If MLB wants to capitalize on the hype, one way may be to
look at tweaking the playoff format.
As of 2022, MLB features six teams
in each league. There are the three division winners, the top two each get a
bye, and three wild card teams. The Wild Card round is a best-of-three series,
the divisional round is best-of-five, and the league championship and World
Series are each best-of-seven. With MLB looking at possible expansion[9],
a shake up to a pool system may make sense.
MLB currently has 30 teams. If they were to expand to 32 as
is suggested/rumored, expanding the playoffs to 16 teams would allow for four
pools with four teams each. I know, it sounds odd to have half the league make
the playoffs, but the NBA has 20 of the 30 teams make the playoffs (counting
the play-in tournament), the NHL has 16 of 32 teams make the Stanley Cups Finals,
and the NFL has 14 of 32 (which is currently a higher percentage of teams than MLB
with 43.75% of NFL teams making the playoffs to currently just 40% of MLB
teams). So, instantly, more cities get involved in the push for the title.
By utilizing pool play, also, cities could bid to host, much
like they do for the WBC, the Super Bowl, and March Madness. If the top two teams
from each Pool advance to the quarterfinals, we could keep the idea of series
to a degree. The Divisional Round could become three games, the ALCS and NLCS could
become just five games, and we can keep the World Series at seven. Though it
would be fun to see single-elimination once Pool play has ended, it would be
hard to call the final the World Series. Perhaps, you call the whole tournament
that, like with March Madness in the NCAA, but even just shortening the other
series will add emphasis to the best-of-seven for it all.
Whether MLB considers this, let alone implements it, is
totally up to them. Regardless of how, it is vital to the future of baseball, especially
in the US, to capitalize on the momentum of the WBC. Otherwise, the Great
American Pastime will pass us by.
[6] https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/impact-of-mlbs-new-rules-shorter-games-more-steals-and-higher-averages-with-pitch-clock-shift-ban-in-place/#:~:text=The%20primary%20objective%20of%20the,and%2036%20minutes)%20this%20spring.
[7] https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/world-baseball-classic-winners-and-losers-perfection-for-shohei-ohtani-dr-disappoints-pitch-clock-missed/#:~:text=The%20WBC%20was%20not%20played,WBC%20game%20lasted%203%3A16.
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