MLB's ratings surge bodes well for expanded playoff format

When Major League Baseball decided to expand its postseason format to a 12-team field featuring best-of-three Wild Card series in each league, it had good reason to believe the excitement would translate to television ratings.

By expanding the field, it gave MLB a chance to showcase new stars in new markets to national audiences. Even if the 12-team format did nothing for Mike Trout, or the Chicago Cubs, it meant more money for the league. And that was probably good enough to keep it around for a while.

One thing the league did not foresee (but maybe should have): the randomness inherent to a best-of-three series.

The San Diego Padres eliminating a 101-win New York Mets team, and the 111-win Los Angeles Dodgers did nothing to boost the ratings for the National League bracket in 2022. Neither did an Arizona Diamondbacks-Texas Rangers World Series in 2023.

If the league deemed the preponderance of short-series upsets to be an acceptable risk, the apparent penalty to the top two seeds in each league was, at best, an unwelcome surprise.

Los Angeles and Atlanta had the top two seeds in 2022 and 2023 and neither won a series, going a combined 3-12 in playoff games. Baltimore finished with the best record in the American League last year, yet failed to win a postseason game. Many blamed the 5-day layoff that the top two seeds in each league receive after the regular season as more of a curse than a reward.

The knockdown effect this had on television ratings is almost implicit. A postseason field comprised of underdogs effectively penalizes the best teams. More than that, the playoff format makes it more likely for small or mid-market teams to sneak through despite having a worse regular season than a big-budget, large-market counterpart.

At least, that appeared to be the case two seasons into the experiment. The 2024 postseason has offered a counterfactual: what if the last two years were merely a small-sample fluke?

So far this October, the stars aligned.

Predictably, the Yankees, Dodgers and New York Mets ran the three of the sport's highest payrolls. Slightly less predictably, all three qualified for the postseason.

Even less predictably, all three teams have advanced to the Championship Series round — the Mets and Dodgers in the NL, the Yankees in the AL — along with the Cleveland Guardians. The result? An almost ideal postseason bracket for MLB's ratings-watchers in Manhattan, with big market behemoths, geographical rivals, and a single scrappy underdog to keep things interesting.

Not coincidental to any of this: the Division Series ratings were the best MLB has reported in seven years. Postseason viewership overall is up 18 percent compared to 2023.

None of this is necessarily a good thing for the majority of MLB fans. The October successes in New York and Los Angeles might inspire despair in places like Tampa Bay and Milwaukee. It's only one year. The verdict on the Cleveland Guardians' season is not yet in.

The upshot is this: any postseason format that doesn't reward the best teams has a good chance to be modified during the next round of collective bargaining. This is likely a greater concern among players than owners.

This year, the format has rewarded the best teams. It just so happens three of the best teams in 2024 reside in baseball's two biggest media markets — which resulted in outstanding ratings. Owners are happy. Players are happy. (Fans outside of New York, LA and Cleveland can decide for themselves.)

A few more of these, and the current postseason format might just stick around for a while.