Stat of the Week: What Could MLB Look Like With 82 Games and 14 Playoff Teams?

There are still many details to be hammered out before we have a baseball season, but it seems likely that we will have a season, even if it looks a little different than usual. An 82-game season with 14 playoff teams is the current proposed structure, one that changes what we should expect come playoff time. What could we reasonably expect in terms of teams making or missing the postseason with this format?

One way to look at this is through simulation. We simulated alternate versions of the 2019 season by drawing random games from the actual 2019 game-by-game results. Season durations of 132 and 32 games were also tested, just to provide context for the effect of a shortened season.

Because it would have been quite tough to simulate a perfect schedule, some teams in each simulation ended up with more or fewer games than the target number. To balance that out a bit, there were 200 simulated seasons of each length and only the 100 with the smallest ranges of games played among teams were used.

Given 100 simulated seasons of a given number of games per team, we can find a rough estimate of the playoff-worthy teams by taking the top 14 teams by win percentage in each pseudo-season.

Because there might be realignment in the shortened season anyway, league and division affiliation wasn’t considered, so the top teams by win percentage make the playoffs. Last season, for example, that would have put the Indians in the playoffs and left the Brewers out.

Here’s one way to think about how shortening the season might affect competitive balance. For each season duration, how many teams would make the “playoffs” at least once in a hundred simulations? At least ten times? Twenty?

Teams That Made the Playoffs at Least N Times in 100 Simulations of the 2019 Season, by Number of Games in Season

What do we learn from this table?

• Shorter seasons give weaker teams a fighting chance. With 14 playoff teams and a 32-game season, every team but the Tigers makes the postseason at least once in a hundred simulations. And an 82-game season looks more like a 32-game season than a 162-game season in this regard, with 25 teams making it at least once in a hundred tries.
• With the expected format of an 82-game season and 14 playoff teams, nineteen teams have at least a 1-in-100 chance of making the playoffs. However, the number of teams with at least a 20% chance to make the playoffs doesn’t really change if we have a half season.

It's worth noting that while adding playoff teams and shortening the season will definitely give the middle class of teams a better opportunity to make the playoffs, their likelihood of coming home with a World Series is still quite low. After all, the teams that squeak into the playoffs will have to face the best teams, and so are likely to be eliminated quickly.

But getting a shot at the postseason is better than no chance at all.