Major League Baseball has scheduled a very abbreviated season for 2020, and the most significant factor that led to that was out of the league’s control. However, one Hall of Famer player thinks MLB should consider making the 162-game season a thing of the past.
There has been talk about expanding the playoffs when the current collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association expires next year, and pitching legend Tom Glavine is in favor of that. During an interview on 97.5 The Game in San Francisco this week, Glavine said he is “very much open” to the idea of a shorter regular season and more playoff teams.
Former MLB Pitcher Tom Glavine:
"I'm very much open to shortening the season'"
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— RADIO.COM Sports (@RDCSports) June 30, 2020
“I know the purists in the game probably hate that, but the purists in the game hated the Wild Card, and the Wild Card has been pretty good for baseball,” Glavine said, as transcribed by Joe Giglio of NJ.com. “The Wild Card play-in game has been pretty good. Anything you can do to add excitement to teams and cities late in the year that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have it, I don’t think is a bad thing.”
Glavine said he wouldn’t want MLB to expand to 16 playoff teams like the NBA or NHL, but the 300-game winner thinks one more round of postseason play would make for a better product.
“When you hear about adding another tier of playoffs the number that everybody seems to come up with that makes sense is 154 games,” Glavine added. “I’d be fine with that, and then you add an extra round of playoffs.”
We’ve long been in favor of eliminating some regular season games, and we laid out a detailed proposal for how MLB can fix the regular season and playoffs. Glavine is right that baseball purists probably would not be in favor of it, but it’s likely that the majority of fans would welcome the idea of eliminating meaningless games.
