The Clincher: How to Improve MLB's Regular Season
Baseball is the greatest game ever made, but the league just isn’t trying to shake things up to appeal to the fans. I’ll admit I love baseball to death, but I’ll also admit that it’s asking too much from us to care during a seven-month regular season with 162 games. Most fans nowadays tune in on April, then stop until July, in which they’ll resume unless their team is way out of playoff territory.
But the regular season remains a drag, it’s still 162 games, and I don’t see ownership willing to cut down on the amount of games without more playoff implications and matchups being tied in. The games are not too long unlike what Manfred is claiming; the season is too long, there’s too much meaningless baseball unfortunately. This is why attendance is down even though television ratings So how do we create a method to add importance to every game and give the regular season an extra burst of life before we reach the always-amazing MLB playoffs?
My (newest) proposal: splitting the regular season into fragments and creating clinching points.
I call it: The Clincher
Under my idea, there will be nine clinching points to claim throughout the course of the season in order to participate in the chance for a division title and a playoff spot. Each month in each division the team with the best record of said month, “clinches” a spot. The non-playoff months in the regular season will feature an equal 21 games for every single team, and the months containing playoffs or tournaments will have a slightly shorter schedule of 18 games—with 12 of the 18 being against your divisional foes to make things even more interesting.
Total amount of games: 120, 60 against your division, 60 against the rest of your league. There will be extra days off each month to allow for potential make-up dates and to allow for teams to take added rest and avoid interleague play—which is something I’m trying to eliminate under this proposal.
Here are the Regular Season Numbers under The Clincher:
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April: 21 Games
May: 21 Games
June: 21 Games
July: 18 Games (Because of All-Star Festivities)
August: 21 Games
September: 18 Games (Because playoffs will start earlier)
Total Games: 120
Division Games: 60 (15 vs. each opponent, 7 home, 7 away, 1 neutral spot)
Games against Rest of League (American or National): 60 (6 vs. each opponent)
9 Total Clinching Spots Up For Grabs:
April, May, June, July, August, September: Best Record in the Month
July: Midsummer Tournament Winner
Mid-July: Best Record at All-Star Break
Mid-September: Best Second Half Record
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July is the month with the most clinching spots, as it’s the midway point and features a mid-season tournament with a trophy and a clincher as the prize. July is where All Star Week expands, with the usual home run derby and All-Star game, but will also feature playoff-like games in the host city. All-Star Week can be a spectacular batch of baseball with exhibition harmless baseball mixed with playoff matches, culminating with the two remaining teams in the Midsummer Cup battling for a clincher and a chance to make some noise for September.
The Midsummer Cup will involve every team, giving every team a chance to participate and steal a playoff opportunity come September. Starting on July 4th and running through All-Star Week, the teams on each division with the best records gets home field advantage in the opening round of the winner-take-all tournament. The other division teams plays each other and the last one standing plays the current division leader on their home turf for the chance to advance to the next round. Every game is best-of-one, to give added strategy and to dramatically increase the stakes from the very first pitch.
The six remaining teams, the last ones standing from each division, will head to the city hosting the All-Star Game to close out the halfway point to the regular season and the Midsummer Cup. The American League team remaining will play the one from the National League. Under this proposal, it becomes the first interleague game, with the All-Star Game being the second and then no more interleague until Game 1 of the World Series. That way, you have the mystique of the AL/NL separation once again, and with a tournament with implications to boot. Most importantly, you have playoff-esque baseball and important baseball in the halfway point instead of waiting until September.
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Side-Note, because this idea is a tangent from my original article: The World Baseball Classic should still play in March to bring postseason baseball before the regular season even starts, and is good practice for some of the MLB professionals that want to represent their country and play high-stakes and fun baseball before the regular season grind. But the four remaining teams should save their final round for All-Star Week, with each team playing each other once in the host city and the teams with the top two records plays in the Championship Game. So for example, if it’s USA, Puerto Rico, Japan, and Dominican Republic as the remaining nations, they play in All-Star City for 5 days:
Day 1: USA/DR, Japan/PR
Day 2: USA/Japan, DR/PR
Day 3: USA/PR, DR/Japan
Day 4: Third-Place Game
Day 5: Championship Game
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Alright, back to the Clincher idea.
So if you are the Minnesota Twins or the New York Mets and had an amazing April, guess what you’ve automatically qualified for the chance to win the entire division come September. On a small technicality, the regular season splits into monthly “regular seasons” with Euro Soccer-like rewards for teams with the best records. This will keep the fanbases, the media, and the casual fans invested to see a chance to be one step closer towards the postseason literally every month. That being said, you have to constantly compete and try to rack up as many clinchers as possible to carve the best path to winning the division. At the same time, a team like the Tampa Bay Rays can have a couple bad months but still not be out of it. So even teams expected to tank can surprisingly emerge and grab a couple clincher spots to make things interesting. The Boston Red Sox dominated all of 2018, but with my idea even with a massive lead in the division, after the All-Star break a team like the Rays or the Yankees still has hope to land the divisional crown because there’s still three clinching spots up for grabs.
With the nine spots up for grabs, and six being division based, this guarantees at the very worst (in other words, most chaotic) we have a four-way tie to claim the division. And this is where having the best record comes in. It is not enough to just have two clinchers at your disposal, you need to also win as much as possible to have the home field advantage in case another team within your radius also racks up three clinchers. It would require the magic number of seven clinchers in order to claim the division completely and not need a three-game series to determine it. Otherwise, come the end of the season in mid-September, here are the potential scenarios:
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Magic Number For Automatic Division Title and First Round Bye: 7 Clinchers
Otherwise, Divisional Playoff Scenarios:
Two Divisional Teams with most Clinchers competes in best-of-three series for the Division Title.
If Two Teams Have Same Number of Clinchers: Better record gets home field advantage for series.
If Three Teams Have Same Number of Clinchers: Best Record hosts, #2/#3 seed play winner-take-all, winner plays #1 Seed in three-game series.
If Four Teams Tied: 4-team winner-take-all tournament for Division, Best Record among the four tied teams hosts.
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New Playoff Format:
1) Final Series to determine Division Champions
2) Wild Card Weekend for the 4th and Final Seed
3) Opening Round: Division Champ w/Best Record vs. Wild Card Winner
Division Winner vs. Division Winner
4) League Championship Series
5) World Series
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With the idea of the Clincher, you’ll have playoff baseball atmospheres at the end of every month, at the beginning of July with the tournament, and then an extra round of playoffs to determine the division champs and the wild card teams that have to battle to stay in the postseason hunt. So even though the season cuts from 162 to 120, the amount of playoff games and playoff-like games will increase exponentially.
There will be important baseball every single month, much fewer throwaway games. And even if you are having a bad game, you can still have something to play for, something to battle for. You can be down 8-0 in the seventh, but you still have to fight and scrap for some runs. How? We use the +/- system to determine the better team if multiple teams have the same record at the end of the month. So now even in the more meaningless games, scoring runs and preventing runs are more important with the Clinchers being up for grabs. We can even implement a mercy rule to increase pressure on scoring runs.
Imagine the Red Sox and the Yankees with similar records with a weekend series closing out the month of June, and the all-important clincher up for grabs—whereas normally a series in June doesn’t hold much value. Imagine the Reds potentially playing spoiler with a series against the division-leading Cubs in danger of falling into a clincher-number tie with the Cardinals in August. Imagine the Oakland Athletics surviving through the ringer and ending up in the Midsummer Cup Final against the San Francisco Giants before the All-Star Game. Imagine the Phillies and Nationals closing out the season with a series to try to grab the final clincher to have the chance play in the Divisional Playoff series against the Braves shortly afterwards. The idea of the clincher makes the divisional matchups much more important, makes the rivalries already in existence much stronger with fewer matchups and stronger stakes for each game.
With the shorter schedule and more days off, this allows for the MLB scheduling Gods to create intense matchups to finish off each month, especially since the final few games will have most teams scrambling for a last push to grab the elusive clincher. Value to the regular season has been the biggest setback to Major League Baseball considering it’s a whopping 162 games. This is why attendance is down; because the prices keep increasing, because going to the ballpark is now an expensive event that is more difficult to be consistent about. With the Clincher, each visit to the ballpark has become more valuable, and those end-of-month games are much more intense.
This is what the consumer wants; more intense, valuable baseball with actual stakes, with actual consequences, with both teams playing that day/night bringing out their best. No need to make noise on a meaningless April 29th baseball game nowadays. With The Clincher, now you have to show your support as whether your good team or Cinderella story marches towards an early ticket to the September postseason festivities. Even with this idea, if a team like the San Diego Padres suffers and struggles in the first half of the season and misses out on the first three clinchers, you can win the Midsummer Cup in July and immediately re-enter the playoff conversation in the span of a week. To add to that, there will be more game-watching as you have to see how the competition is faring at the end of the month to assess your team’s chances to maintaining the best record in the division.
Yes, there are definite obstacles to this idea. Cutting the season short will send heart attacks to ownership and probably the television networks. The Clincher will defy so many baseball traditions that baseball fans may reject it outright. But in a fast-paced world with so many options to choose in television and even in terms of sporting events, baseball needs to find a way to remain relevant, and has to display the sport at its best—-when its playoff baseball. Playoff baseball will not just occur earlier and more often; it will be felt midway into the season with a tournament, at the very beginning of the season when teams are just figuring out their identity for the year.
With a stronger and more-established schedule with more important events, baseball fans will have more to look forward to spread throughout the course of the year:
January: Vacation
February: Free Agency Period Ends
March: Spring Training, World Baseball Classic every four years
April: Beginning of Regular Season, Clincher Spot 1
May: Clincher Spot 2
June: Clincher Spot 3
July: Midsummer Cup, Clincher Spots 4-6, World Baseball Classic Final Round
August: Clincher Spot 7
September: Clincher Spot 8-9, Division Series Finale, Beginning of Postseason
October: End of Postseason, World Series
November: Beginning of Free Agency Period (Imagine starting the free agency period on Black Friday)
December: Winter Meetings
The Clincher will save baseball, will make each month have storylines and offer postseason implications and even invitations. Toss in a tournament in the halfway point to reward the host city, reduce the season, kill interleague, focus more on the divisional matchups and you’ll have an overall superior product with more attention, more media, more fans, and new fans becoming invested in the monthly insanity of Rivalry Baseball, Division Baseball, Tournament Baseball, and most importantly baseball that constantly has something major to play for.
If we are going to have a regular season with more than 100 games, we have to at least make them count…more. The Clincher accomplishes all this in spades.