Since in-season tournaments are all the rage in the sports world, one can't help but wonder: What might a Major League Baseball version look like?
Unlike in the NBA, no such thing exists in MLB. Nor, unlike with NASCAR, is any such thing officially in the works for the near future. The door is therefore open for any random fool to dip into their imagination and throw a pitch.
If the idea is to have a tournament that causes minimal disruption to the schedule and business as usual, how about this:
- Two Leagues, Six Groups, Five Teams: The 15 teams in each of the American League and National League are sorted into three groups of five.
- Group Play: Within the groups, each team plays the other four teams in separate three-game series. Only the top team from each group moves on, and all six teams are then seeded for future competition.
- Quarterfinals and Semifinals: The No. 2 and No. 3 seeds in each league play a three-game series for the right to play a subsequent three-game series against the No. 1 seed, which gets a bye in the interim.
- Championship Game: The last two surviving teams play one game—yes, just one—as part of the All-Star festivities the Wednesday after the All-Star game.
- Prizes: Bonus money for players, and draft picks for the last two teams.
This, of course, is the broad strokes for what an MLB in-season tournament could look like. Let's dive deeper into how each of these elements would work.
How to Sort the Groups
The structure of the groups outlined above is similar to what the NBA does, but MLB need not take its cue for how to sort teams.
The five-team groups for the NBA's in-season tournament are "randomly drawn," but not really. Before the draw, each team is initially sorted into one of five pots of three teams, arranged according to records from the previous season.
If the idea is to create balance within each group, a more straightforward approach would be to bring together five teams whose records from the previous season more or less break even when added together.
Per teams' records from 2023, here's an example of what the groups for a 2024 in-season tournament could have looked like:
AL Group 1 (395-415)
- Baltimore Orioles: 101-61
- Toronto Blue Jays: 89-73
- New York Yankees: 82-80
- Los Angeles Angels: 73-89
- Oakland Athletics: 50-112
AL Group 2 (401-409)
- Tampa Bay Rays: 99-63
- Texas Rangers: 90-72
- Detroit Tigers: 78-84
- Boston Red Sox: 78-84
- Kansas City Royals: 56-106
AL Group 3 (402-408)
- Houston Astros: 90-72
- Seattle Mariners: 88-74
- Minnesota Twins: 87-75
- Cleveland Guardians: 76-86
- Chicago White Sox: 61-101
NL Group 1 (409-401)
- Atlanta (104-58)
- Milwaukee Brewers (92-70)
- San Francisco Giants (79-83)
- New York Mets (75-87)
- Colorado Rockies (59-103)
NL Group 2 (409-401)
- Los Angeles Dodgers (100-62)
- Arizona Diamondbacks (84-78)
- Chicago Cubs (83-79)
- St. Louis Cardinals (71-91)
- Washington Nationals (71-91)
NL Group 3 (414-396)
- Philadelphia Phillies (90-72)
- Miami Marlins (84-78)
- Cincinnati Reds (82-80)
- San Diego Padres (82-80)
- Pittsburgh Pirates (76-86)
The balance here isn't perfect, but we're talking a high of a .511 winning percentage (NL Group 3) and a low of a .488 winning percentage (AL Group 1). That's equivalent to the difference between an 83-win team and a 79-win team.
How Group Play, Advancement and Seeding Would Work
Scheduling-wise, probably the only way this would work is if Group Play happened toward the beginning of the season.
There would be two intra-group series happening at a time, with the other teams ideally playing an interleague series. Thankfully, the balanced schedule offers plenty of those.
This way, the survivors of Group Play would clash in subsequent rounds for the first time all year. Regardless of what's in the initial schedule, it may be feasible to change it so that two given teams' first meeting is a three-game set at the higher seed's home park.
As for how the winners of Group Play would be determined and seeded for the quarterfinals and semifinals, it would come down to the following tiebreakers:
- Record in Group Play
- Run differential in Group Play
- Hit differential in Group Play
- Baserunner differential in Group Play
If, say, two teams went 8-4 in Group Play but one of them outscored its opponents by 20 runs as opposed to 10 runs for the other team, then the first would be more deserving of the higher seed.
How the Championship Game Would Work
The important thing is that the Championship Game for the MLB in-season tournament would basically be an exhibition.
This is how it works for the NBA's in-season tournament, for which the Championship Game is not a regular-season affair but rather a separate entity. The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Indiana Pacers to win the tournament on Dec. 11, 2023, but you'd never know that from looking at the Lakers' regular-season schedule.
Would it be fairer if MLB's in-season championship was determined by a three-game series, a la the initial rounds of the tournament? Well, yes.
But since each AL team is only guaranteed one series against each NL team—and vice versa—this concept presents a scheduling nightmare.
It would be impossible to delay all interleague series until after the first three rounds of the tournament have played out. And even if the lone series between the two surviving teams hadn't already happened, what if it wasn't scheduled until the final weekend of the season? That long of a wait would suck the energy out of the whole thing.
Besides, shouldn't the in-season tournament culminate in a capital-E Event?
Making a single winner-take-all game part of the All-Star festivities would accomplish that. And if the Home Run Derby was on Monday, the All-Star Game was on Tuesday and the Championship Game was on Wednesday, the only real loss would be of an off day for the participants in the latter.
Not ideal for them, perhaps, but it wouldn't be hard to make it worth their while.
What Would Be In It for Teams, Players and Fans
As there is with the NBA's in-season tournament, the MLB version would have to offer cash prizes for the players.
For the NBA, each player on the last team left standing gets $500,000 in prize money. Rosters in MLB are bigger (26 players vs. 15 players) than in the NBA, but a $200,000 payout for the winners seems fair. There would also be smaller bonuses along the way, plus a special cash prize for the MVP of the tournament.
As for what's in it for the teams, how about a means to get at the sport's most valuable currency?
That's young talent, so we're talking draft picks. The winner could get a pick immediately after the first round of the next year's draft, in the same place where the prospect promotion incentive picks go. The runner-up could get a pick in one of the competitive balance rounds.
Also at stake in all this would be bragging rights, and not just for players and teams. Hopefully, fans would get into it as well.
To be sure, most MLB fans would see an in-season tournament for the gimmick that it obviously would be. But the thing about gimmicks is that they can be fun. Star Wars nights and bobblehead giveaways are gimmicks, but people still like them. And why not? They spice things up. Keep things interesting. Break up the monotony.
And as much as anything, that would be the point.
The MLB season is a very, very long thing that tends to feel like a very, very long thing. An in-season tournament wouldn't make it any shorter, but this version, at least, would inject some excitement between Opening Day and the trade deadline while leaving the floor clear for playoff races to take center stage during the stretch run.
There's a lot more to be gained than there is to be lost, in other words. So, what the heck, MLB? Give it a shot.
