October is going to get a lot more crowded.
Major League Baseball and the players association agreed Thursday afternoon to expand the number of playoff teams from 10 to 16 for the 2020 season.
Marly Rivera of ESPN was the first to report the agreement. Joel Sherman confirmed it would be 16 teams.
The first series will be a best-of-three with all games being played at the home of the team with the better record. There will be no travel day.
There will still be three division winners, and the team that finishes in second place in division will also make the postseason. The other two spots will go the remaining two best records.
While the league and players were interested in expanding playoffs as part of a new labor agreement for the 2020 season, the idea seemed dead once the two sides failed to reach a deal and decided to operate under the original March agreement instead. However, talks about expanding the number of playoff teams reignited Wednesday.
The deal had to be done before the first pitch of the regular season, which will be at 7:08 p.m. Eastern Time between the Nationals and Yankees, so this is getting done at the buzzer.
Back in June, the owners wanted the expanded playoffs for both 2020 and 2021, as it will be a reliable source of income to help replace the revenue lost from fans not attending games. Commissioner Rob Manfred offered to go back to the original playoff format in 2021 if the 2020 season could not be completed as one last olive branch in June, potentially giving players that bargaining chip back ahead of the negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement after the 2021 campaign.
The players will receive $50 million in playoff money. That's the figure they wanted in the June negotiations, with the owners offering $25 million.
While adding more playoff teams will certainly increase the odds of a dubious playoff team, it will also increase the odds of a team bouncing back from a cold start, like what happened with the eventual world champion Nationals in 2019.
So the odds of Buctober in 2020 just increased dramatically.
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