[todeen]

Personally, I like the current 12 team format. I wouldn't change that. I also don't care that the best teams are losing. If Houston would lose, I would be all the happier. But I understand what people are saying, so I would tinker with the protocol.

Here's some things I've seen around:

Reseed each round of the playoffs to make sure the remaining top seeds always play the lowest remaining seed. For example, the NL #1 seed ended up playing a tougher team in the NLDS (#1 Braves vs #4 Phillies) than the #2 team (#2 LA vs #6 AZ). That should not have been.

Another idea I've heard is borrowed from KBO Korean baseball. Allow the higher seed to start with a one game advantage. So in a 5 game series, the higher seed only needs to win 2 games, while the lower seed needs to win 3 games.

Another idea I've heard is that you return the Wild Card series to one game, and then have the winner immediately travel to the bye team city and play the next day. This allows the bye team to have a shorter break rather than having to create fake games with split squads to stay in the groove.....which obviously didn't work.

Another idea I've heard, which I think is stupid, is that the lower seed cannot pitch pitchers on short rest. This ruins the chess match strategy of a lower seed trying to defeat a higher seed. So a #1 pitcher that throws in the WC round must wait until his next 5th day rotation spot comes back around. This supposedly would allow the higher seed in the Division Series to pitch their #1 seed against the #3/#4/#5 pitcher of the lower seed. But this also negatively impacts the drama of having the two top pitchers face each other.